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garden’s far end. He tilts his head to one side, then the other; then he slowly rotates his whole body above the spot on which he’s standing. The bees’ hum first grows and then recedes, changing pitch as his ears turn through the air. As trees, grass and hedge run together, the bees seem to relocate, and hum from a new spot within his head, their pitch and volume being modulated from inside him now, not outside. He rotates several more times, relishing the acoustic effect, its repetition.
    Eventually he returns to his trolley, swings it round and pushes it back across the Low Lawn, steering it off the path after he rounds the house’s edge. A swathe has been mown through the longer grass, leading up to and through a large metal gate set in tall stone walls. The gate is open. Serge follows the swathe between the gate’s obelisk-topped supporting columns and enters the Crypt Park.
    It’s darker in here. Tall hedges wall him in; the obelisks cast shadows on the ground. Trees and bushes sprout up willy-nilly, closing off most lines of view. Serge pushes onwards, following the mown swathe until, beside an empty bench, it suddenly gives out. He continues, but from here on in the going’s harder: grass-strands twine themselves around the trolley’s wheels; the blocks slide and jump across its floor. Serge rests beside a tree stump and, looking up, catches sight of his mother. She’s sitting on another bench, leaning her back against the Crypt. On the bench beside her a teapot, a cup, a jar of honey and a little phial are laid out.
    Serge pushes his trolley over to the bench, pulls to a halt in front of it and leans into his mother’s knees. These give a little but not much. He looks up at her face: it’s staring at some point beyond the trees and bushes. He climbs onto the bench beside her and tugs at her shoulders. She looks down at him and her eyes look like honey, warm and murky. She smiles through him, at the ground, or something underneath it. Serge dips his finger in her honey jar, pulls it out again and sticks it in his mouth, rolling and smearing it around the inside of his cheeks. The bench’s surface has a sticky patch on it between the jar and the cup. A wasp has landed in this and is drawing off the syrup with its needle-like mandible. Its legs have broken through the honey’s surface; they tread slightly, trying to free themselves, but they’re already immersed; its mandible, meanwhile, continues drawing. Serge watches it for a while, then takes the phial and presses it down across the insect’s body, using its rim to slice apart the bridge where thorax meets abdomen. The wasp’s legs continue their treading and its mandible its drawing even after they’re no longer joined. Its thorax throbs, then stiffens and is still. Serge takes his trolley’s handle up again and pushes on.
    Light dapples his shoulders as he passes beneath budding conker trees. Eventually he arrives at the stream that hems in the Crypt Park on the side furthest from the house. Beyond the stream, he can see sheep grazing on Arcady Field, diminishing in size as the field rises into Telegraph Hill. Serge gathers up the blocks and, cradling them once more in his left arm, edges towards the stream. He crouches down close to it and sees the slope of Telegraph Hill and the bright sky above it reflected in the water. He leans forward and catches sight of the top of his own head, his eyes, his nose and mouth. Then he takes a block from his left arm and places it gently on the surface of the water. The block floats. He prods it with his finger and it sinks, then bobs back to the surface again. Its upper face has a flat, in-profile football player on it. He prods it off-centre so as to spin it in the water; the block sinks and bobs, tumbling; when it comes to rest, a lone triangle is uppermost. Serge floats a second block, then a third. As he prods them they drift further from the bank. He leans out after them, so far that he can see his