'What?'

'The old ba-flum. I can handle this one.' He smiled at Bree and Stones. 'Perhaps we could, er, discuss the misunderstanding somewhere privately?'

Bree looked at Stones, who nodded.

'That's a good idea,' said Bree. 'Come,' she said, ushering Israel and Ted through the crowd and towards another brightly painted vehicle-'Phun! Phun! Phun!' it announced in splashy lettering across the front-that might once have been a horsebox.

Inside the horsebox there was a little miniature wood-burning stove, a wooden bed, rugs, and cushions and wooden shelves fixed to the wall. Wind chimes and pieces of glass on string hung down from the ceiling.

Israel, Ted, Stones and Bree sat down cosily on the floor.

'Can we offer you some tea perhaps?' said Bree.

'I'm not drinking your tea,' said Ted.

'Coffee?' said Israel.

'We don't drink coffee,' said Bree.

'Right. Well. Tea would be lovely, thank you.'

'Nettle?' said Bree.

'Tea?' said Israel.

'Yes,' said Bree.

'Mmm,' said Israel, wishing he'd said no. 'Lovely. Yes.'

'I thought that was for women's problems,' said Ted.

'Sshh,' said Israel. 'So,' he said, trying to think of a friendly way into the discussion. 'Are you actual New Age travellers then?'

'Ha! Some people would call us that, I suppose,' said Stones.

'We call ourselves the Folk Devils,' said Bree, busying herself with a pot on the stove.

'Oh, really? Do you, you know, play music?'

'Yes,' said Bree.

'But we call ourselves the Folk Devils because that's how people regard us,' said Stones. 'As outcasts or scapegoats.'

'Right,' said Israel. 'I've always wondered, actually, what you lot believe in?'

'Us lot?' said Stones. 'What do you mean, us lot?'

'You…sort of…people.'

'We're not a cult,' said Stones.

'We're more like an alliance,' said Bree.

'Yeah. That's right. There is no 'us lot'. Just among us here we've got pagans, and druids, and Crowleyites, witches,' said Stones. 'Personally, I believe in Jesus, and Buddha, and Karl Marx and the Earth Goddess.'

'Aye, right, and what about Mother Teresa and Bono then?' muttered Ted.

'You believe in all of them?' asked Israel.

'Yes.'

'At once?'

'Yeah. If God, as the Christians would have us believe, is great, then surely She is too big to be contained by any church?'

'She?' said Ted. 'Hold on!'

'We don't really believe in God in the way you think,' explained Bree. 'Cosmic energy is what we believe in.'

'Uh-huh,' said Israel.

'We are all daughters and sons of the Sun, and offspring of Mother Earth.'

'Speaking personally, like, I'm the son of a Ted Carson, of Cullybackey, and offspring of Margaret McAuley, from the Shankhill Road.'

'I'm talking about spiritual offspring,' said Bree. 'Obviously. Tea?'

Bree offered Israel a jam jar of what seemed to be warm, murky-looking water.

'Mmm. Great. Thanks.'

He took a sip. It tasted like the brewed floor scrapings of a health food shop.

'And what do you believe in, Israel?' asked Stones.

'Erm. Good question,' said Israel. He coughed. 'A…Higher Being?' Hoping this was the right answer. It wasn't.

'Your Hebrew God is a lie,' said Stones.

'Right. Yes. Uh-huh. Well, I say I believe in a Higher Being-'

'And a lie, when repeated and repeated eventually comes to appear as the truth.'

'Yes, well. Anyway. I would love to talk theology all day with you, but-'

'Money, then?' asked Stones.

'Sorry?' said Israel.

'You believe in money, presumably?'

'Well, no, not exactly,' said Israel.

'Money's not a religion,' said Ted.

'Money,' continued Stones, 'is a religion. People worship money. And yet in reality there is no such thing as money: money is a fiction; it's a symbol.'

'Ach!' said Ted.

He fished into his pocket and produced a pound coin. 'What do you call this then?'

'I call it a curse,' said Stones.

'Aye, right. Well, I call it a blessing,' said Ted.

'That's perhaps where we differ,' said Stones.

'Anyway,' said Israel, desperate to avoid a confrontation. 'How did you sort of…end up, doing…this sort of thing?'

'Bree was with the Dongas,' explained Stones.

'The whatters?' said Ted.

'The Dongas. Road protests? Reclaim the Streets?'

'Oh, right.'

'We met in Seattle in 1999,' said Bree.

'Oh? I've got a friend from school who went to work for Microsoft actually,' said Israel. 'In Seattle.'

'We were at the G8 protest,' said Bree.

'Ah, yes, of course.'

'Bunch of Luddites,' said Ted.

'The modern world is a psychological and spiritual wasteland, Ted,' said Stones.

'Is it now?' said Ted.

'And you've never even lived in Northern Ireland!' said Israel.

'People want to reconnect with the Earth Mother,' said Bree. 'Israel, I sense that you are terrified of the Great Mother.'

'Am I?' said Israel, trying not to sip his tea. 'I mean, my own mother certainly, I-'

'I sense that you've closed yourself off to the creative goddess.'

'Right. Well, possibly, yes, I-'

'Shekinah.'

'Sorry?'

'Gaia, Mother Earth. Whatever you want to call her, that's her. You're denying her force in your life. You've closed yourself off to the cosmic part of the human psyche.'

'Have I?'

'Yes, you have.'

'Ach, Jesus,' said Ted.

'Sshh,' said Israel.

'Ach, come on,' said Ted. 'I have never heard such a lot of crap. I don't know how you can believe any of that stuff at all. It's like astrology. It's a lot of-'

'You believe in the sun and the moon, don't you, Ted?' asked Bree, with an ironic smile.

'Yes, of course.'

'Well, astrology is simply the study of the vibrations sent forth by the sun and the moon and their effect on our psychological makeup.'

'I don't believe in astrology.'

'You're Scorpio, right?'

Ted blinked. 'How did you know that? Did someone tell you that? Did he just tell you that?'

Israel shrugged.

'No!' Bree laughed. She had a phlegmy sort of laugh, which was quite sexy, actually, Israel found, but also suggested that she could have done with sleeping somewhere with cavity-wall insulation and central heating. She reminded him of Gloria. 'It's just,' she continued. 'You're temperamental. You have a tendency to the…' She was teasing him now. 'Tyrannous. Tell me, do you suffer from ulcers, Ted?'

Ted had been taking medication for ulcers on and off for years.

'How did you…?' said Ted.

Bree smiled serenely. 'I can do you a birth chart, if you'd like,' she said.

'I don't think so,' said Ted.

'Ha, Ted!' said Israel. 'She got you!'

'And what about you, Israel?' said Bree.

'Me? Sorry?' said Israel.

'I'd say you were probably…' Bree eyed him up and down. 'Sagittarius.'

'How did you…?'

'Long nose. Full lips.'

'He's Jewish, you know,' said Ted.

'Oh,' said Bree. 'Well, you of all people should understand our predicament here.'

'Well,' said Israel. 'I don't know if…'

'The travellers are the Jews of England,' said Stones.

'Erm. Well. Aren't the Jews the Jews of England?' said Israel.

'Stones often speaks metaphorically,' said Bree.

'Stones often speaks bullshit,' muttered Ted.

'When one of the trilithons went missing back in the eighteenth century, they blamed the Gypsies,' continued Bree.

'We've been hunted down like dogs for centuries,' said Stones. 'My own parents were involved in the Windsor Great Park festivals, you know?'

'Erm. No, sorry.'

'My father was one of the Global Village Trucking Company. I was taken away from my family when I was only three years old, in 1985, after the Battle of the Beanfield. Taken to a children's home. It took them a year to get me back.'

'Really?' said Israel. 'God, that's-'