Chapter II.3

They ambled along the road beside the shops then into a cul-de-sac of terraced bungalows, all identical, with the tell-tale shabbiness of council control. Loofah carried the two heaviest bags and chatted amicably with Mrs Armitage—as his companion had introduced herself—about the weather, gardening, and the vicissitudes of village life. The sun shone and everything seemed so suburban and normal; perhaps it wasn't such a bad little village after all.

She had a key to the old man's front door—corporation green, half glazed with an oxide-white aluminium letter-box—and called out from the hall as she let herself in. Stepping across the threshold, Loofah was enveloped in geriatric dinginess. The wallpaper and woodwork had mellowed over the decades to a dull nicotine yellow, which contrasted sharply with the lurid, swirling colours of the worn nylon carpet. An oriental girl with a green face smiled alluringly from a plastic frame, apparently oblivious to the all-pervading smell of cabbage boiling in stale urine.

'We'll put the shopping in here,' said Mrs Armitage, then lead him into a kitchen of painted wood cupboards and stained linoleum, with a small gas cooker in yellow enamel.

'I'll just go and see if he's OK,' she whispered, 'Have you got time for a quick cuppa, or must you dash?'

The pipes crunched and rattled as Loofah filled the heavy chrome kettle. He plugged it in and leaned against the fridge to wait. The four bulging bags of shopping were stacked next to the sink; might as well unpack, he thought, fired by his new-found altruism.

He started laying out the groceries on the worn Formica work-surface: four tins of cat food, a box of soap powder, more cat food, a bag of economy potatoes, and a jar of blackcurrant and apple conserve, seventy-nine pee for four hundred and fifty-four grams. As he was putting this down he felt a faint tremor against his palm, as if there was something alive inside it. He hesitated for a second, then wrenched off the lid—and out popped the little brown head, with globs of dark jelly stuck to its fur.

'What a relief!' it squeaked, 'I was in a bit of a jam, there. "A jam"—geddit?'

'Oh, you again,' said Loofah, neither surprised nor amused.

'Don't sound so pleased to see me, will you?'

'Look, I don't mean to be rude, but I've come all this way and all you keep doing is popping out of silly places and then disappearing again.'

'But I'm the Emergent Propensity—what else am I supposed to do?'

'I don't know really. I think I was hoping you might, you know, tell me things.'

'Tell you "things"? What sort of "things"?'

'Well, for a start—who I am?'

'That's easy. You're The Seeker.'

'But I knew that alread—,' he started, but it was gone. He peered into the jar: nothing but cheap jam, stiff with sugar and industrial colouring.

'Unpacking?—that's nice of you,' said Mrs Armitage, standing at the open door, 'Do come and meet Mr Wilson. He's such a dear old soul.'

The living room had same lurid carpet as the hall, with net curtains cutting out most of the light. There was a sagging sofa with a fading nylon cover and more Woolworth's prints on the walls: cartoon street urchins with enormous eyes, white horses galloping through the surf on a sunset beach, and a happy gaggle of school-girl spaniels playing hopscotch. Sitting on a straight backed chair by the window, the old man was silhouetted against the filtered light; Loofah could just make out tartan slippers and stained grey trousers, a dark green cardigan with leather buttons, and withered liver-spotted hands lying limply in his lap.

'Mr Wilson,' said Mrs Armitage in a slow loud voice, 'This is the kind gentleman I told you about.'

Loofah stepped forward to greet his host, but stopped—there was something wrong with the old man's head. For instead of a face there was just hair, an incongruously luxuriant tress of thick heavy ringlets. Then he realised that it wasn't hair at all but genitalia, a mass of wrinkled phalluses and slack greasy scrota that covered the whole head from crown to neck, as if it belonged to some Freudian nightmare Medusa. While Loofah stared, numbed to paralysis, the old man reached up and scratched where his right ear should have been, pushing his fingers into the dangling mass, and then held out his hand in a gesture of welcome and friendship. Before he knew what he was doing, Loofah was shaking the proffered hand.

'He doesn't get out much now,' whispered Mrs Armitage, 'And I do like to pop in every now and then to cheer him up.'

'Very kind,' muttered Loofah, fighting down a strange lightness that was rising up his gullet.

'I always make him a nice cup of tea and a slice of bread and jam. And he does like this.' As she spoke she began to unbutton the front of her dress. 'You like this, don't you?' she repeated, slowly and loudly for the old man to hear.

'Is that the time?' said Loofah, glancing at the mantelpiece, 'I really must be going.'

'Oh, do wait.' Mrs Armitage lifted her left breast from its white lace cup. 'It's so nice to see him when he's all perked up.'

While Loofah backed towards the door, manically wiping his right hand against his jeans, she turned to face the old man and started caressing her nipple and moaning theatrically in the age-old tradition of low-budget adult entertainment. At this her appreciative audience began to tremble; his withered hands twitched in his lap and the Medusa-head stirred as the greasy snakes came to life, first stretching languorously like indolent dogs and then, when she lifted her dress to rub at her groin, raising themselves uncertainly from recumbency. Loofah had now reached the open doorway, but still he stared, mesmerised by a strange sliminess trickling down his spine, while the altruistic neighbour twisted and gyrated towards her artificial crescendo on the thread-bare polyester hearth rug and the phallic protuberances reached full tumescence, sticking out from the old man's head, akin to the moussed hair of a fashion conscious youth.

Something flew across the room between Loofah and the gyrating woman. Then another buzzed out from behind the net curtain, and soon there were five or six of them, all hovering round the old man's head. They seemed to be flies—but flies the size of young sparrows.

'Oh dear,' said Mrs Armitage, breaking her act, 'We always have trouble with these pesky things.'

Though each creature had a pair of diaphanous insect wings, there was no sign of any head or legs, the entire body being a folded calix of flesh, an intricate oval of turgid petals ringed by a border of stiff dark setae.

'Go away, you horrid little pests!' Mrs Armitage was now waving her arms about over the old man's head, trying the stop the repellent insects from settling over swollen tips of the quivering phalluses.

At that moment there was a rising howl from the kettle in the kitchen—and Loofah's trance broke.

As he burst out of dingy half-light of the old man's hallway, the sunlight hit him like an atomic blast. He breathed deeply, exhaling damp lungfuls of cabbage water and sucking in the sunlight, cleansing and pure.

When the glare had mellowed somewhat and the degree of pollution in his soul was down to base levels, he set off back up towards the centre of the village. He had gone no more than twenty yards, however, when he felt a tickle under the instep of his right foot. There was something in his shoe, it felt like a dry leaf. Leaning against a lamppost, he pulled off the shoe and peered into it. But instead of the anticipated item of crumpled plant matter, two furry ears came pushing up towards him and the little head popped out into the sunshine.

'Yo!' squeaked the animal, ''Spect where due.'

This time Loofah decided to try a more positive approach. 'You!' he exclaimed, 'I'm so glad to see you again.'

'That's better, my son. Make a soul feel a bit welcome.'

'Glad to see you because I was hoping for a few more answers.'

'Not a problem,' it squeaked, 'Fire away.'

'Well, back in Mr Wilson's kitchen you told me I was this Seeker person.'

'And I did not lie—for you are indeed blessed with that fine sobriquet.'

'Yes, so everybody keeps telling me—but what exactly is "The Seeker"?'

'You are!' it squeaked, smugly.

'Wait!'

'Wait?—but I'm not going anywhere.'

'Sorry—I thought you were about to disappear,' said Loofah.

'I am!' And it was gone.

'Damn!' But as the expletive left his lips, the little head popped back up.

'Only joking!' it squeaked, with a merry titter.

Loofah stifled an exasperated sigh. 'Right,' he said, 'I'm The Seeker and The Seeker is me—I've got that. But how does everybody know?'

The creature leaned forward to stare at his chest and with exaggerated effort, like a backward child, started to read.

'S—E—E—K—.'

'Yes, alright, I know what's on my tee-shirt,' interrupted Loofah, 'But it seems as if you've all been expecting me.'

'Of course we have, my son—it was in the official memoranda,' it squeaked, with a mysterious wink.

'Official memoranda? What official memoranda?'

'The ones about the arrival of The Seeker.'

'And these documents said that I was coming?' The brown head nodded. 'And what I looked like?'

'A full description, my son—the tee-shirt, the specs, the jacket. Oh, and not forgetting the dapper little shoes, of course.' The little animal looked around itself at the fawn leather, twitched its nose appreciatively, and was gone.

He crossed the road at the church and then stood on the grass verge watching a couple of rubbery luminous cars wobble past. The village was now completely deserted and despite the broad daylight was suffused with a strange somnolence, like a pueblo during siesta. Catching the atmosphere, Loofah too felt suddenly heavy, as if his brain were a lump of lead wrapped in cotton wool. But then the day had been long and hard, just one nightmare event after another in a relentless driving sequence—he had a right to be tired.

To the side of the church was a small green that shimmered like an emerald pillow in the late afternoon sunlight—no feather bed, however soft and cosy, had ever seemed more enticing to a tired man. He ambled across the grass with two leg-tables meandering around him, a male and a female spinning together in a half-hearted mating dance, and in the middle of the green lay down on the sweet, cool turf. For a while he stared at the grass beside his cheek, each undulating blade shining like a splinter of fluorescent glass, and then—acting of their own accord—his eyelids slid gently down.

A dark tide of sleep tried to push its way in, but failed—for his head was already too full.

Images whirled around inside his cranium in a manic mobile: a heavy jowled face with a homicidal glint in its porcine eyes, a terrier thrashing to death with a lacerated throat, a young man's naked body with skin like golden silk, reaching to fold him into its warm embrace. He wriggled against the damp grass, trying to get comfortable, but it was no good, they kept coming, looming at him out of the darkness one after the other, whirling around and around and around. At the centre he now saw there was an empty space, the suction vacuum that was powering the vortex. And, although it was a space, it was a space with a shape, a shape that he knew belonged to the mysterious double woman.

He rolled over, opened his eyes, closed them again, then pressed a hand against his skull as if to stop it from bursting open. Something else now appeared in the maelstrom, the figure of a white-clad girl, calm and still despite the storm. Immediately the pressure eased. She separated from the boiling mass and floated forward, filling his brain with her dark hair, her shining body and her sunshine smile. The whirling jumble behind her slowed and then faded to irrelevance and soon there was just her—the storm was gone, peace reigned. Then she too began to slur and fade, as sleep at last found space to flood in.

But just as he teetered on the very edge of blessed oblivion there was tickle in the darkness quickly followed by a quiet rumble, getting steadily louder. It was a giant earthworm boring up through the soil towards his head—and not stopping when it reached the surface, but crawling up his ear canal, through his ear-drum and relentlessly onwards into the soft jelly of his brain. Loofah snapped awake and jerked himself up as the grass where his head had been exploded softly.

'Hi-dee-hi!' squeaked the little brown head, shaking soil from its whiskers.

'Ughh!' Loofah said with a shudder, 'You gave me a shock.'

'Oo! Sorr-ee! Only doing me job, mate.'

'Yes—er—right—of course.' Loofah shook his head, trying with limited success to banish the cobwebs of drowsiness that still clung to the inside of his skull. 'More questions?' he managed to blurt.

''S'wot I'm here for!' squeaked the Propensity, with annoying brightness, 'Ask and you shall be answered, as the actress said to the bishop—or was it the other way round?'

'Now look,' Loofah began, following a valiant effort to marshal his half-somnolent thoughts, 'if I'm The Seeker, and I've arrived—.'

'Which you quite obviously have.'

'Then I must have arrived from somewhere.'

'Can't argue with that.'

'But where?'

'Somewhere that's not here.'

'You mean—' Loofah spoke with quiet awe '—somewhere else?'

'Spot on, my son.'

'I see.' Loofah paused for a second as the truth sank into the mud of his sleep-fuddled mind. 'But—but—where is here?'

'Here?' said the animal, as if puzzled by the question, 'Why, here is here, of course. Where else could it be?'

'Yes, I think I follow that,' said Loofah, slowly, 'But if I have come from somewhere else—.'

'Which you have.'

'And I am now here—.'

'Which you are.'

'Then I am not—um? —where I belong.'

'Can't fault your logic, my son.'

'So I'm an alien—just like Miss Leggett said.'

'Not a pretty word, not a pretty word at all—let's just say you're a visitor, shall we?'

'But say I wanted to be back where I belong, say I wanted to go home?'

'Then you would have to get from here—' the little animal paused for dramatic effect '—to there!'

It looked up at him with a smug twitch of its whiskers, clearly delighted with its own analytical powers.

'Yes, I see. But how?'

'How?' squeaked the Propensity, then shook its head with a sharp intake of breath. 'Not easy, not at all easy. A real hard one in fact.'

'Well?'

'One way and one way only.'

'Yes?'

'Forget the train, leave your car at home, let the plane take off without you.'

'Right?'

'Because if you want get home, you've got no choice—you've got to find—.'

'The Woman Who Looks Both Ways?'

The brown head nodded slowly in affirmation and then, with uncharacteristic solemnity, began to sink slowly out of sight.

'Wait a minute.' It paused, expectantly. 'Why are you doing all this?'

'All this what, mate?'

'All this popping in and popping out, all this telling me things?'

It looked quickly from side to side and then indicated him to lean closer.

'Government business, mate,' it whispered into his ear, 'Top priority. Undercover. All very hush-hush.'

Then it looked around again, very carefully, gave its whiskers a conspiratorial twitch, and disappeared into the soil.

As soon as it was gone waves of sleep again began to lap over him. He pushed the soil back into the creature's hole and repaired the turf as best he could, concerned not to be associated with any further acts of damage to public property. Then again he lay down and closed his eyes, lulled by gentle images of a London taxi being driven by a woman with two heads and of a furry little animal in Whitehall pinstripes carrying a red leather document case embossed with the Royal arms.

'You shouldn't lie there, you know—not on damp grass at this time of day.'

Two polished brown brogues were planted on the turf in front of his face and from these beige trouser-legs soared upwards, like a pair of neatly pressed Manhattan skyscrapers. Loofah lifted his head and looked up; over him towered a young man, smiling benignly down. He was wearing a tweed jacket with a tie to match the trousers.

'So sorry,' stammered Loofah, still dull with drowsiness, 'I'm just a bit tired, that's all.'

The young man helped him to his feet. 'Come over to the pavilion,' he said kindly, 'You can rest in there.'

He nodded towards a wooden hut on the edge of the green, standing beside a tall cricket score board. Loofah hadn't noticed these before.

'Not very salubrious, I'm afraid,' continued the young man, 'But it's dry and there's an old sofa you can lie on.'

As they ambled across the green together, Loofah sensed that something was missing.

'There doesn't seem to a wicket marked out,' he said, 'And in any case isn't the green too small for cricket?'

'It is indeed,' replied his companion, 'But it's not a problem—we always play away, you see.'

They stepped onto the creaking veranda and through a door with peeling white paint and a sign saying 'Players only'. Inside the air was dark and musty, with the mixed smells of leather and linseed oil.

The young man lead the way along a long dim corridor, past a rusting line-making machine clogged with cracking white paste, a tattered canvas bag with one grass-stained pad and a jumble of stumps, and then on into the bowels of the building. Loofah followed like an automaton, lulled by the rising tide of drowsiness, thinking of nothing but the promised sofa.

The corridor turned and turned again. There was lighting in this part of the building—ornate wall lamps on brass holders—and a thick red carpet and matching wallpaper with felt stripes, as in a Victorian hotel. Not the décor he'd expected in a cricket pavilion, thought Loofah sleepily, but then his grasp of the arcane intricacies of the game had always been tenuous at best.

At last they reached a door. The young man paused, knocked discreetly, then ushered Loofah through. Here it was no brighter than the corridor, but it was a gentle, soothing dimness. A middle-aged lady in a blue nurse's uniform stepped forward and smiled a kindly, caring smile.

'This way,' she said, taking his arm.

He realised he was in a wood, surrounded by huge beech trunks with the salmon-pink evening light filtering through the thick canopy. Had he not just come out of a door? He looked around—nothing but trees. Wasn't there supposed to be a cricket pavilion and where had the village green got to? His thoughts, however, lacked vigour and blurred slowly into the soporific fog; he let himself be led by the nurse, drifting beside her in a half-dream. It was so peaceful here, with the gentle murmurings of evening and a faint smell of milk, sweet and comforting. They weren't alone in the wood; other nurses moved quietly to and fro, kind and efficient in their crisp blue uniforms, carrying steel bowls and towels, nappies and babies' bottles.

They approached a clearing, where the pink green light was brighter, less shadowed by the trees. In the centre of the clearing was appeared to be a small hillock, though it was a moving hillock, stirring and quivering gently. The murmurings were now more distinct: the gentle cooing of a woman's voice with sleepy infant grunts and the noise of slow, steady sucking. Nurses bustled around, quiet and efficient like worker ants. And pervading everything was the sweet smell of milk.

Loofah's nurse led him into the clearing. He saw now—without a trace of surprise—that the hillock was a mountain of female flesh. Breasts: huge and turgid, all soft curves with warm puckered flesh and nipples like dark saucers, the teats dribbling pure whiteness. Breasts: piled one on top of the other, warm sacks of giving flesh tumbling over each other in a cascading mound of plenty.

At the top of the hillock was a mother's head, a generous face that beamed love and kindness to all around her. With her several arms she reached out to caress her babies, the men and boys who lay curled among the cushions of soft flesh, each fixed onto a nipple, each sucking contentedly with eyes closed, grunting with quiet happiness. Nurses buzzed quietly over the hill, replacing lost nipples between lips, changing nappies, turning the helpless, foetal bodies.

Loofah hesitated for a moment, as a tiny finger of concern prodded at the soporific padding around his brain. But then his mother turned to him and smiled, and the smile poured in like warm milk, filling every corner of his being, flooding him with a quiet intense joy. He had come home, this was where he was meant to be. That smile was his world now, his entire complete world. Two of her arms opened wide in loving welcome and he stumbled forward with hot tears rolling down his cheeks and happiness pumping in his heart.

Guided by the nurse, he climbed up to the nipple that was his. A young man beside him smiled sleepily in greeting and a small boy on the breast above gurgled, sucking hard and wriggling contentedly inside his hugely oversized clothes. Loofah settled himself into his soft cushions of flesh and the nurse slipped the warm rubbery teat between his eager lips.

He paused for a moment to prepare himself for the ecstasy he knew would follow. Then he sucked and a jet of pure hot love pulsed across his tongue, filling his mouth. He swallowed, first turning his gullet into a pillar of bliss before the liquid delight flooded into his stomach and burst like a depth charge to send shock waves of quiet joy reverberating through his soul.

He sucked and he sucked, drinking in mouthful after mouthful of heaven, satisfying every thirst or hunger he had ever felt. Anxieties and fears melted like April frost then slipped away in harmless rivulets of tepid water. As he lay back into the softness, pummelling the yielding flesh with his fists, he was first enveloped in the sweet smell of milk and the motherly warmth of the breasts, and then gradually began to sink away from himself into the green still water of the warm sea of emptiness, leaving the troubled surface far above and drifting into happiness and forgetting, wanting nothing but the softness, the nipple and the jets of warm, white love.

Peace—infinite loving peace.

Tender hands turned him gently and he opened his eyes, letting the green light flood into the empty hall of his mind. The young man beside him had gone and there was now a boy in his place. No, it was the same man, but younger, much, much younger. And on the breast above two nurses leaned over a new-born baby that kicked happily inside a man's shirt and trousers.

'This one's ready,' murmured one of the nurses. The baby struggled weakly as she picked it up, the nipple popping out of its tiny puckered lips. When they had carried the baby away, Loofah again closed his eyes, drifting back into infinity.

A wail like a siren pulled him back. One of the nurses was now below him on the pile; while she held a breast to one side like a heavy fleshy curtain, her colleague was feeding the howling baby feet first between a pair of eager mucous-slick lips beneath. For a few seconds there was vigorous sucking, with the whole mountain shuddering and quivering in a fleshy earth tremor, until after a final convulsion the baby slipped away, its last cry being muffled to silence as the lips closed over its tiny head. The great mother sighed with contentment and then relaxed, cooing gently to quieten her disturbed children.

Only mildly unsettled by the disturbance, Loofah soon began to drift again, though this time sinking deeper and deeper until the dark waves enveloped him and all was blackness.

He is in front of a nice new house with a well-trimmed lawn and neat flower beds. Other houses are all around, the same but different. On the driveway, beside the freshly polished car, stand a woman and two children, a boy and a young girl with yellow hair. All three are watching him, their faces devoid of all expression.

He opens his mouth to speak but nothing happens. They just watch him, blankly.

Then without warning they turn away from him and walk slowly into the house. He tries to follow but cannot—his body will not move. He calls but no sound comes.

They go into the house without looking back and the front door closes behind them.

Loofah woke abruptly. But as he sucked at the nipple, desperate to melt away the cold lump of angst that was gagging in his throat, it was pulled from his lips, the stream of liquid love spattering uselessly across his chin. Two men were leaning over him, both faces iron-hard with eyes shaded and jet-black hair slicked back. The pain twisted inside and he wailed, reaching helplessly for the lost nipple as uncaring hands pulled him off his warm soft bed.

A nurse approached, white with fury. Without so much as a flicker of expression the man closest to Loofah reached inside his jacket and pulled out a huge revolver, an artillery piece of dark metal. He fired casually, the solid thud hardly shaking his shirt cuff, and the nurse staggered backwards, eyes wide with surprise, as a black plume burst behind her to spray breasts and babies with gore. She teetered for a moment, then fell sideways, clutching at empty space with clawed hands.

Four of the men now held him, all identical in dark suits, white shirts and black ties, and all with wrap-around sunglasses and faces carved from pale marble, cold and hard. They moved swiftly but without haste, man-handling Loofah down the shuddering pile as he struggled and screamed in frantic desperation.

As soon as they reached solid ground two more nurses advanced, hexagon-facetted eyes glaring hatred, fingers hooked into black insect talons. Reports thudded in quick succession; the first nurse's head exploded in a bloom of chitin and slime, the second kept coming as the bullets bit into her one after the other, excavating tunnels through her crouching body. She finally collapsed at their feet, with black foam gurgling from her mandibles and her jointed limbs thrashing mechanically in her death throes.

Just as the nurse fell a ripping-metal scream of naked fury tore through the air. Glaring hatred at his captors from hemispheres of cut black glass, the great mother reached down for Loofah with armoured feelers and flexing claws. Two of the men turned to face her, levelling their firearms.

'No-o-o-o!' screamed Loofah, as anguish rent his tortured soul.

The steady hollow thudding was like a slow handclap. A mandible shattered and swung away like a broken window shutter and breasts exploded softly in splatters of green foam then deflated like punctured bladders, spewing white milk and black slime over their own satin soft skin. As the hail of death burst into her, the queen snarled and spat and struggled to move her vast carcass after them, desperate to save her stolen child. Loofah screamed again, thrashing with frantic grief in his captors' grip.

As they carried him out of the clearing and away into the woods the nurses came from all sides, slashing furiously at the air with black scythe fore-legs, uniforms tearing over spined carapaces. The staccato crackle of gunfire echoed through the trees, while bullets smashed through chitin, splintering mandibles and insect limbs. Shattered bodies staggered on into the lethal swathe before they fell, writhing and twitching to stillness on the slime-slippery earth. The last nurse almost reached them and spattered one of the men with glutinous gore as she fell. His ice-face cracked briefly into a faint sneer of revulsion as he wiped his sleeve with a starched white handkerchief.

At last the firing stopped. They pulled up behind a tree and two of men held Loofah's arms while another forced a flask between his lips; he spluttered and spat as a foul bitterness trickled into his mouth, then his stomach clenched like a fist, squeezing hot bile up his gullet.

He vomited, spewing out his mother's precious milk in a stream of black slime. The stench of it made him dizzy, amplifying the whirling blur of nausea and leaving him helpless, a mass of convulsing retching gut.

Like a householder returning home after a long absence, Loofah reoccupied his body, pushing out into each of its limbs, wrapping himself in the unfamiliar blanket of its sensations. Almost the first full awareness he had was of the foulness and bitter filth that filled his mouth. A bottle was being pressed to his lips and he twisted away, retching in disgust.

'It is water, my friend,' murmured a voice at his shoulder, 'For the out-washing of your mouth.'

Loofah gulped, rinsed and spat out filth—and the high tide of his nausea began to ebb.

He was kneeling beside the trunk of an ancient beech, with green moss soft under his knees. Two of the dark suited men were holding his arms, supporting him, and a pool of black foulness slithered like a disease on the ground in front of him. He winced with revulsion and then struggled to get up.

'It is alright, my friend,' said the voice, now strangely familiar, 'You are being in the safeness now.'

The two men at his side helped Loofah to his feet and led him away from the mess. There were five them in total, all dressed identically, all wearing the same ice-cool shades. Two still held their revolvers, on guard against any last desperate attempts by the remaining termite nurses.

Loofah breathed deeply, sucking in the fresh damp air of the cool wood. The morning light filtered through the emerald canopy and dew sparkled like diamond dust on the green velvet moss.

'Walk a little—this will be clearing of your tête.'

Though still confused by the slicked-back black hair and marble-pale skin, Loofah now recognised the accent.

'Norbert?' he said, 'Is it you? You look—different.'

'You are liking the suit?' said Dentressangle, lightly fingering the lapel of his jacket, 'Giorgio Armani—pure wool, stitched par the hand.'

As Loofah struggled to raise an appreciative smile, the Frenchman removed his sunglasses and examined them dubiously.

'Mais I am not being so sure about these,' he said, 'Police. Stylish enough, though I think that perhaps Rayban has the more—how are you saying?—chic.'