Graham felt sick, and left soon afterwards. He got throwing-up drunk all by himself in Leyton that night.

The day in the park had been good, though. He had kept his head on Sara's shoulder for ages, until his back and neck ached, but she hadn't appeared to mind, and once had even stroked his hair, absently, with one caressing hand. Ed had come back later on; he'd had a half-hour's row on the Serpentine.

"You should've come down when I was nearer the front of the queue, you should," he told them. He had bought some small dumpy cans of McEwan's Export, and handed the others one each. He sat down to read.

"You see?" Slater said loudly, still lying down, his voice slightly affected by the champagne he'd drunk. This man is a fucking socialist at heart and even he doesn't realise it!"

"Give it a rest, Dick," Ed told him mildly.

Slater poured the last of his champagne over his own forehead. "He calls me Dick," he gasped in a strangled voice, and rolled over onto his face. "Me: the communal ranger, superhom, the pinko pimpernel, the man in the Faberge mask; I'll scratch the mark of Zero on your foreskin, you -"

"Shush now," Sara ffitch said, her voice resonating in her chest, buzzing Graham's head with glorious sensation. Slater went quiet; he started snoring lightly a few minutes later.

A pretty girl, blonde, wearing a short bouncy skin and a thin pink top through which Graham could just make out the outlines of her nipples, passed him on Penton Street. He watched her walk by, but didn't make it obvious.

He had always worried about this. He didn't want to be sexist, but how the hell did you not look at attractive women? He didn't say anything to them, or try to touch them; he'd never dream of that; he despised the stupid idiots who did that sort of thing; they made him ashamed to be a man; they were the sort Slater accused of "carrying their brains in their scrotums" (or did Slater say "scrota'?); but looking...as long as it didn't embarrass the woman... that was all right.

Especially now, or maybe, with a bit of luck, until now. It had been a strange, awkwardly sexual time for him. He had been worrying - of all things! - about masturbating.

He found it difficult, almost unpleasant to think of Sara at night, in bed, before he went to sleep. But to think of other women, previous sexual encounters, seemed wrong too. It was absurd, it was crazy, it was like being pubescent again, or worse; it didn't even make much sense in terms of the beliefs he had worked out long before about sexual fidelity, but there it was. He hated the idea of pornography, even soft pornography, but he had almost come round to the idea that it might be better to buy one of the glossy girlie magazines and accept the inhuman, labial beauty of those seductive image-women; it would at least absolve the release of his sexuality from the responsibilities of the real world.

"Most people's ultimate sexual fantasies, their idealised desires, are built of clay," he recalled Slater saying. Slater had just discovered that most of the weight of a glossy magazine came from kaolin, the same clay used in a morphine mixture to clog up people's guts when they had the runs. Graham seemed to remember Slater had been talking about gay photo-mags, but the point was the same.

Anyway, what did it matter now? It might all be over soon; all the worrying and waiting and empty desiring. He was opposite the pub now; he would turn the corner on to the short length of Maygood Street, and there would be Half Moon Crescent.

The name fascinated him.

He made a symbol of it:

)

_

2

Half. Moon. Crescent.

MR SHARPE

Drunk!

He sat on a park bench in the small triangular piece of ground which was called Islington Green. Mr Sharpe sat by his side; they were both drinking from large bottles of cider. Mr Sharpe was smoking a cigarette. Steven felt quite drunk.

"I mean," Mr Sharpe said, stabbing at the air with his cigarette, "they don't "ave to stay where they fackin" well are, do they? "Course they don't... do they?" Steven shook his head in case Mr Sharpe was really asking him a question. Most of the questions seemed to be rhetorical, though. He couldn't remember what Mr Sharpe was talking about now. Was it the Jews? The Blacks? Scroungers?

Mr Sharpe was a small man of about fifty-five. He was going bald and his eyes looked yellow in the grey-pink skin of his face, which was lined with grey stubble. He wore a big old coat and working boots. He had approached Grout in the pub he had gone to, the Nag's Head. Steven usually avoided pub drunks, and it was fairly obvious Mr Sharpe was the resident PD in the Nag's Head that lunchtime, but Steven was quite drunk himself, and apart from Mr Sharpe seeming to be encouragingly worried about conspiracies -Grout hadn't entirely given up the idea of finding a fellow exile and cooperating to escape together - Mr Sharpe had also displayed what appeared to be genuine good-heartedness when Steven told him it was his birthday. A few small tears had come to his eyes, in fact, when Mr Sharpe shook his hand for a long time and wished him many happy returns several times in a loud voice.

Steven had bought most of the drinks from then on, as Mr Sharpe wasn't working and didn't have very much money, but Steven didn't mind. He showed Mr Sharpe all the money he had, explaining that he had been paid off that day.

"The cans," Mr Sharpe had said, spitting inadvertently, "the fackin" cans; I bet it was them unions, wasn't it?"

Grout hadn't been sure about that, but he told Mr Sharpe he wasn't sorry anyway. He did say he couldn't spend all the money, of course, he had to keep some by for his rent and food and things, and he had to wait for his unemployment money. Mr Sharpe said he was quite right, but to watch out; there were plenty of smart jewboys and big black muggers around; the jewboys would swindle it off you and the niggers would slit your throat as soon as look at you.

After the pub shut at three, they went over to the Green with a couple of bottles of stout they had bought to carry out. Steven had bought Mr Sharpe a packet of cigarettes, too, and some matches. "You're a gent, Steve, that's what you are; a gent," Mr Sharpe had said, and Steven felt almost as good as when the policeman had called him "sir'. He sniffed, eyes tingling.

They drank the bottles of stout, then Mr Sharpe said why didn't they nip over to the off-licence in Marks and Sparks on Chapel Market and get a couple of bottles of cider? It was cheap. In fact, if Steve would lend him the money; a fiver, say... no, make it a tenner, seeing as he felt generous and Steve was a real pal... he'd get the drink himself, seeing as Steve had been so generous in the pub and all. He'd pay him back next Wednesday, when his Giro came through.

Steven thought this sounded fair, and so he gave Mr Sharpe two ten pound notes. "Have twenty," he said. Mr Sharpe was taken aback and said again what a gent Steven was. He went off to the shop and got four bottles of cider and a canon of cigarettes.

Although he felt drunk, Steven didn't feel all morose like he usually did when he'd had a lot to drink; he felt quite happy, sitting on the bench under the trees of Islington Green with the traffic rushing harmlessly by all around. It was nice to have somebody to talk to, somebody you felt was on your side, who didn't laugh at you or show contempt for you, who felt sympathy for the way you were treated but not pity for who or what you were; somebody who wished you happy birthday. He didn't mind that Mr Sharpe was doing all the talking.

"You take the likes of my old boss, right?" Mr Sharpe was saying, drawing smoky patterns with the cigarette he held between his fingers. "Good bloke, good bloke, you know; strict but fair; wouldn't stand for any nonsense or people turning up late or anyfink, but straight, know what I mean? In the textile trade "e was; "ad to mix with a lot of Jews. Didn't like it, of course, but that's business, innit? "E went bust last year, didn't "e? "Ad to lay me an" the rest of the lads off, see? Recession, it was, basically, but also the fackin" unions. "E used to give them short shrift, I can tell you; wouldn't "ave them in the place, an" quite right too, say I, but "e reckoned they'd got at "im be'ind "is back, like, an "e's a smart bloke, right? Anyway, it was the recession what really did it, "e said, and "e said "e was really choked "e "ad to let us go on account of "ow we'd all stood be'ind "im. An" we did; when "e explained to us what was "appenin" a couple of years ago, we didn't take no pay rise, did we? We even took a pay cut last year, that was "ow much we was prepared to look after our jobs, see? Not like these fackin" union cans; we was responsible, we was. Yeah, "e was really choked, Mr Inglis was. That was "is name, was'n" it? 'Inglis by name and English by birth, and proud of it', "e would say." Mr Sharpe laughed.