Bliss

themselves as not only beekeepers but magicians, musicians, story-tellers, newsgatherers and peacemakers, never quite belonging to anyone place and treated with both respect and reserve in the places they came to.

'Unny Ba-ba.'

'Honey Barbara?'

'Unny Barba.' But the baleful eye did not leave the silk shirt and, looking down, Daze saw he had left two dirty thumb prints underneath the collar.

'Ah,' he said, 'Honey Barbara. You're a friend of Honey Barbara's.'

He did not have a high opinion of friends of Honey Bar-bara's. He had not forgiven her for Albert, her most famous friend and even though they had got many useful parts from his crashed Peugeot he had also brought the police and the newspapers to Bog Onion Road.

'I'll just take this tick out for you,' he said, 'and then I'll try and carry you down as far as Clive's.'

It took him a while to pack, fitting the sledgehammer and wedges into the broken case, but in the end, after a few false starts, he managed to, carrying both the man and the suitcase, and they made their way back down the ridge with rests every two hundred yards or so.

It was cooler in the·brick house, and the dirt floor they lay him on felt softer than anywhere he had lain for days. They put him on his back and he could see, through his good eye, that the naked man named Clive was too big for his silk shirts. He was barrel-chested and hipless, broader rather than taller. He pulled the shirt on, but his arms filled the sleeves.

'This is a little boy's shirt,' he said. 'It is just a little boy's shirt.' The shirt hung open across his furry chest, hanging like a curtain beside his uncircumcised penis, which looked like a decoration for the window ledge.

Daze was sitting out of Harry's vision. He still wore the shirt and trousers. Clive was trying to look at the back of the shirt with a round shaving mirror. 'Do you think Heather would split this down the back for me,' he said, 'and put a patch down the back, and widen the arms?'

'You better ask him first.'

'He's a spy,' Clive said. 'Anyway, we gave him water. We saved his life.'

'He's a friend of Honey Barbara's.'

'Honey Barbara's got too many friends. Do you think Heather would do that for me? I'll swap her two hours' work.'

'You already owe her a day's work,' Daze said tentatively.

Harry saw Clive lift his head and jut his jaw and let his gapped rabbity teeth show for a moment. 'I pay my debts,' he said.

'I'm going to get Honey Barbara.'

Harry saw that Daze, when he crossed his field of vision, had taken off the tailored trousers. He was wearing the silk shirt hanging over the shorts. 'I'll just wear this,' he said to Harry, 'until I come back. O.K.?'

'Take him with you.'

'I'm not walking down the hill with him. I'll get Honey Barbara and come back.'

Harry's mind was wandering. His throat was parched. He could hardly breathe. Sometimes he felt he had to make himself breathe or his body would forget to do it for him.

Some time later Clive's face, very big, loomed in front of his.

'If you turn out to be a spy,' Clive said, 'I'll hang you up by your left foot on that beam over there.'

Harry could see the beams above his head. They were huge tree trunks.

'And I'll get my brush hook and I'll run a little line down your lovely soft tummy and then I'll open you up and wind your guts out on to a jam jar.'

He smiled at Harry. He pushed his gap-toothed smile very close. He had a square head with a short, bristly hair cut.

'I bet you don't even know what a brush hook is,' he said.

He held up a long-handled tool with a curved blade on the end.

'This is a brush hook,' he said, and then he sat down on the floor and began to sharpen it with a file. While he did this, he talked.

'All sorts of vermin come looking out here,' he said. 'You understand? You know what a vermin is. A vermin is a rat, or a louse, or anything that carries diseases with it. All sorts of vermin, yes,' he nodded his head, 'that's right.'

Harry could hear the file on the brush-hook blade. His head ached. He wanted to vomit.

'I'll use a file on this first and then when I've got it really sharp I'll get a stone, yes, and make it ...'

Harry was frightened that if he vomited he'd choke.

'You ask anyone,' Clive said, 'about my brush hook.'

Harry passed out. When he woke he could hear cooking. He could smell fat frying. The minute his eyes opened Clive was talking again. 'You people think you can just come here. You see that concrete tank. You can't see that concrete tank because you're too weak, but if you could see it you'd know what work is. You look at those beams, mate. That's work. You look at that stone. You know how long it takes to lay that stone, to carry it? and all you buggers sitting in the city, sitting on yours arses laughing, and when you finally realise what's happening you come running along to mummy. Mummy, mummy,' Clive called, piling potato chips on to his plate and sitting on a cushion near Harry's head.

'No use you eating,' he said. 'You'd only chuck it up.'

'You see those bolts there. No, there. You can see them, near the window.' It hurt Harry to even move his eye, but he did not want to upset Clive. He looked at the bolts. He didn't know where he was. He knew it couldn't be Bog Onion Road.

'That's right. See, you can do it if you try. Well that's a machine-gun mounting. That's right,' he laughed with his mouth full. 'That's right, a machine gun. Yes. And if any of your vermin friends come running up the hill, I'll be here, mate. And when I run out of bullets I’ve got a lovely brush hook. I can take off into the bush and I won't die. You'll die. I won't. You can't even pull your own ticks out.'

'Won't be long now,' Clive said, 'Any day now, next year, the year after, they'll come running up here, but you can't drive in your little motor car, can you?'

'I've got a dam down there,' he said, 'with five million gallons of unpolluted water. Perfect water. I've got fish in it, big fat bass. I won't starve. You'd sit down there and starve because you wouldn't know how to catch them.'

Clive ate his last potato chip with regret and relish.

'You want some water? Don't fucking glutton it.' He snatched the water back. 'That's enough.'

'Years ago,' he said, sitting down on the cushion again and cutting up a large pawpaw, 'when I was on the dole, there was a bloke just like you who used to interrogate me.'

''Mr Boswell,' he'd say, 'we can't have this. You've been on our files for five years without a job.''

Clive jabbed the knife at Harry's nose.

''Well you tell me,' I’d say, 'what have you done to get me a job? How much do they pay?' I'd say. 'It's your job,' I'd say, 'to get me a job, and you are incompetent.'

'What do you do out there all day, Mr Boswell?'

''Well,' I’d say, I haven't got a car and I’m just trying to feed myself, but since you people have been harassing me I've been trying to teach myself to read so I can get a job.'

''Very good,' he'd say, 'very good, Mr Boswell.'

'''But,'' I'd say, 'I only had a Bible and a friend came over and told me how it ended, in the Apocalypse, and when I heard that, I couldn't see the point.'

'I said that,' he told Harry, 'because I thought was a fucking Christian.'

''What have you done?' they'd say.'

''What have you offered me?' I'd say.'

'They couldn't handle me, mate. I was on the dole longer than anyone in this district until they kicked us all off. I built this place on the dole.

'I don't need anything. You need everything. I don't smoke. I don't drink. I don't take drugs. I don't eat meat. I have fruit and vegetables. You look at that pawpaw. That pawpaw is fucking nectar. Look at this pumpkin. That's