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steamers anchored at Tilbury, gas-mantle-ssssh! in the upper atmosphere – and higher still, the clouds flickering far below. In one aperture pickelhaube-helmeted Junkers slash each other’s cheeks to ribbons, in another the Tsarina kisses an egg set with rubies and garnets. The beam is so high now that Stanley’s atoms sweep into orbit, girdling the earth once, twice, thrice! Before tending down and down into the viridian heart of Africa, where, in a jungle clearing, awaits Fortescue, my mechanic , cranking the handle of an apparatus that sucks the beam into its celluloid funnel. Stanley is an apparition that swiftly solidifies, panting in a patented woollen Jaeger bicycling suit. He and Fortescue shake hands vigorously. Capital shot, old bean! the mechanic says, as a nigger chief steps forward from the trees, his honour guard of naked warriors dropping their tribute of tusks at the feet of the scientific adventurer . . .
    . . . Olive , Olive! Oh, I dunno, there’s summat wrong wiv you, girlie, carncher see yer father’s wantin’ izale? Olive turns back to the scullery, limping on the toes of her too-tight boots – she almost lays a hand on the ruddy range to steady herself. Audrey agrees there’s summat wrong wiv that girlie , and moreover: They’re in cahoots , they want her to be like this, lost, confused, a top spinnin’ round ’em . Sam plucks the beaded cloth from the jug and pours a draught into his moustache cup, and there are beads of sweat on Mary Jane Death’s forehead. Above her in the cabbage-steam-fug hangs a sampler Audrey sewed at school. — One, two, three, four, girrrls. One: needle in the right hand. Two: thread in the left. Three: Through the eye. Then four: loop and knot. Now, thimble drill . . . Audrey’s hands, not suited to this fine work, twitched and shook in an ague that she felt incapable of mastering, or even to be a part of her at all, but something that snowed down poisonously from the arsenical-green ceiling . . . Thimbles on yer thumbs, one-two, thim-thumbs, thimthums, tee-to-tum . . . — Out of the eater, she says, came forth meat and out of the strong came forth – Burrrurp! Really, Samuel, Mary Jane says, laughing, mussyer? They’re in cahoots , together they’ve made five now an’ loss none . Stanley laughs at his father’s eructation and says, Judges, Chapter 14, Verse 14 – thass evens, guv’nor. Albert, without looking up, grimaces and Audrey can hear what he hears: the echo of one brother inside the other’s bony cave. I’m inbertween ’em – I’m a prism or a lens. Beams of Stanley, beams of Albert, playing, each on the other brother’s blank face . . .
    The curious round-’ousing of a big man pulling himself together with his braces – his moustache is wet wiv beer and tobacco-stained above his hidden lip. Hard to imagine that there is a lip beneath it, because Samuel Death’s hair is so fleshy in tone, and, if it weren’t for the reddening of his cheeks, you would think the tache wuzziz lip , while there are waxy skin strands plastered at the back of his bare domed head: Bedlam engraved in the Illustrated London News. — A large worthy-looking body walking along the quayside of a Mediterranean port, a basket of laundry dumped on her head. Four sailors dice in front of a tangle of ropes and spars while gazing at her behind. None of the Deaths know where this racy print has come from – it simply cropped up on the wall, hiding the wallpaper with its criss-cross pattern of violets and pansies, wallpaper that is steam-slackened, torn into strips, and certainly antedates the Deaths, for, when Audrey was a littler girl, she was convinced her baby sister had been named after it. — Violet now clambers on to the chair her father has risen from, and, smuts on her cheeks, reaches up to fasten his collar stud. All of them have been dragooned into his toilet: Stanley sent to fetch the showy coat from the hook in the passage, Olive buckles his gaiters, Audrey