But the voice was a visual in itself: cockney yet refined, a voice that had had much work done

upon it missing key consonants and adding others where they were never meant to be, and all

delivered through the nose with only the slightest help from the mouth.

"Fine mornin', Mrs. B." fine mornin'. Somefing to fankthe Lord for."

Hortense seemed terribly nervous about the imminentlikelihood that he should raise his head

and spot the girl standing by the stove. She kept beckoning Me forward and then shooing her back,

uncertain whether they should meet at all.

"Oh yes, Mr. Topps, it is, an' I am ready as ready can be. My hat give me a little trouble, you

know, but I just got a pin an '

"But the Lord ain't interested in the vanities of the flesh, now, is he Mrs. B.?" said Ryan, slowly

and painfully enunciating each word while crouching awkwardly and removing his left boot.

"Jehovah is in need of your soul."

"Oh yes, surely dat is de holy troot," said Hortense anxiously, fingering her plasticated

carnations. "But at de same time, surely

a Witness lady don' wan' look like a, well, a buguyaga in de house of de Lord."

Ryan frowned. "My point is, you must avoid interpretin' scripture" title="n.手稿；文件；经典">scripture by yourself, Mrs. Bowden. In

future, discuss it wiv myself and my colleagues. Ask us: is pleasant clothing a concern of the Lord's?

And myself and my colleagues amongst the Anointed, will look up the necessary chapter and verse ..."

Ryan's sentence faded into a general Erhummmm, a sound he was prone to making. It began in

his arched nostrils and reverberated through his slight, elongated, misshapen limbs like the final

shiver of a hanged man.

"I don' know why I do it, Mr. Topps," said Hortense shaking her head. "Sometime I tink I could

be one of dem dat teach, you know? Even though I am a woman ... I feel like the Lord talk to me in

a special way ... It jus' a bad habit.. . but so much in de church change recently, sometimes me kyan

keep up wid all de rules and regulations."

Ryan looked out through the double glazing. His face was pained. "Nuffin' changes about the

word of God, Mrs. B. Only people are mistaken. The best thing you can do for the Truth, is just

pray that the Brooklyn Hall will soon deliver us with the final date. Erhummmm."

"Oh yes, Mr. Topps. I do it day and night."

Ryan clapped his hands together in a pale imitation of enthusiasm. "Now, did I 'ear you say

plantain for breakfast, Mrs. B.?"

"Oh yes, Mr. Topps, and dem tomatoes if you will be kind enough to ban' dem over to de chef."

As Hortense had hoped, the passing of the tomatoes coincided with the spotting of Irie.

"Now, dis is my grand darter Me Ambrosia Jones. And dis is Mr. Ryan Topps. Say hello, Irie, dear."

Irie did so, stepping forward nervously and reaching out her hand to shake his. But there was no

response from Ryan Topps, and the inequality was only increased when on the sudden he

Me 1990, 1907

seemed to recognize her; there was a pulse of familiarity as his eyes moved over her, whereas

Me saw nothing, not even a type, not even a genre of face in his; the monstrosity of him was quite

unique, redder than any red-head, more freckled than the freckled, more blue-veined than a lobster.

"She's she's Clara's darter said Hortense tentatively. "Mr. Topps knew your mudder, long time.

But it all right, Mr. Topps, she come to live wid us now."

"Only for a little time Me corrected hurriedly" title="ad.仓促地，忙乱地">hurriedly, noting the look of vague horror on Mr. Topps's

face. "Just for a few months maybe, through the winter while I study. I've got exams in June/

Mr. Topps did not move. Moreover nothing on him moved. Like one of China's terra cotta army,

he seemed poised for battle yet unable to move.

"Clara's darter repeated Hortense in a tearful whisper. "She might have been yours."

Nothing surprised Me about this final, whispered aside; she just added it to the list: Ambrosia

Bowden gave birth in an earthquake .. . Captain Charlie Durham was a no-good djam fool bwoy.. .

false teeth in a glass .. . she might have been yours .. .

Half-heartedly, with no expectation of an answer, Me asked, "What?"

"Oh, nuttin', Me, dear. Nuttin', nuttin'. Let me start fryin'. I can hear bellies rumblin'. You

remember Clara, don't you Mr. Topps? You and she were quite good .. . friends. Mr. Topps?"

For two minutes now Ryan had been fixing Me with an unwavering stare, his body held

absolutely straight, his mouth slightly open. At the question, he seemed to compose himself, closed

his mouth and took his seat at the un laid table.

"Clara's daughter, is it? Erhummmm .. ." He removed what looked like a small policeman's pad

from his breast pocket and poised a pen upon it as if this would kick start his memory.

"You see, many of the episodes, people and events from my earlier life have been, as it were,

severed from myself by the

mighty" title="a.万能的；全能的">almighty sword that cut me from my past when the Lord Jehovah saw fit to enlighten me with

the Truth, and as he has chosen me for a new role I must, as Paul so wisely recommended in his

epistle to the Corinfians, put away childish things, allowing earlier incarnations of myself to be

enveloped into a great smog in which said Ryan Topps, taking only the smallest breath and his

cutlery from Hortense, 'it appears that your mother, and any memory I might 'ave of her, 'ave

disappeared. Erhummmm."

"She never mentioned you either," said Me.

"Well, it was all a long time ago now," said Hortense with forced joviality. "But you did try

your best wider Mr. Topps. She was my miracle child, Clara. I was forty-eight! I taut she was God's

child. But Clara was bound for evil .. . she never was a godly girl an' in de end dere was nuttin' to

be done."

"He will send down His vengeance, Mrs. B.," said Ryan, with more cheerful animation than Me

had yet seen him display. "He will send terrible torture to those who 'ave earned it. Three plantain

for me, if you please."

Hortense set all three plates down and Me, realizing she hadn't eaten since the previous

morning, scraped a mountain of plantain on to her plate.

"Ah! It's hot!"

"Better hot clan lukewarm," said Hortense grimly, with a meaningful shudder. "Ever so, ha men

"Amen," echoed Ryan, braving the red-hot plantain. "Amen. So. What exactly is it that you are

study inT he asked, looking so intently past Me that it took a moment before she realized he was

addressing her.

"Chemistry, biology and religious studies." Me blew on a hot piece of plantain. "I want to be a

dentist."

Ryan perked up. "Religious studies? And do they acquaint you with the only true church?"

Me shifted in her seat. "Er .. . I guess it's more the big three. Jews, Christians, Muslims. We did

a month on Catholicism."

Ryan grimaced. "And do you have any uwer inter-rests?"

Irie considered. "Music. I like music. Concerts, clubs, that kind of thing."

"Yes, erhummmm. I used to go in for all that myself at one time. Until the Good News was

delivered unto me. Large gatherings of yoof, of the kind that frequent popular conceits, are

commonlybreeding grounds for devil worship. A girl of your physical .. . assets might find herself

lured into the lascivious arms of a sexualist," said Ryan, standing up from the table and looking at

his watch. "Now that I fink about it, in a certain light you look a lot like your mother. Similar .. .

cheekbones."

Ryan wiped a pearly line of sweat from his forehead. There was a silence in which Hortense

stood motionless, clinging nervously to a dishcloth, and Irie had to physically cross the room for a

glass of water to remove herself from Mr. Topps's stare.

"Well. That's twenty minutes and counting, Mrs. B. I'll get the gear, shall I?"

"Oh yes, Mr. Topps," said Hortense beaming. But the moment Ryan left the room the beam

turned to a scowl.

"Why must you go an' say tings like dat, hmm? You wan' 'im to tink you some devilishheathen

gal? Why kyan you say stamp-collecting or some ting? Come on, I gat to clean deez plates finish up."

Irie looked at the pile of food left on her plate and guiltily tapped her stomach.

"Cho! Just as I sus peck Your eyes see more clan your belly can hoi'! Give it 'ere."

Hortense leant against the sink and began popping bits of plantain into her mouth. "Now, you

don' back chat Mr. Topps while you here. You gat study to do an' he gat study too," said Hortense,

lowering her voice. "He's in consultation with the Brooklyn gentlemen at de moment .. . fixing de

final date; no mistakes dis time. You jus' 'ave to look at de trouble goin' on in de world to know we

That far from de appointed day."

Chalfenism versus Bovcdenism

"I won't be any trouble," said Me, approaching the washing-up as a gesture of goodwill. "He

just seems a little .. . weird."

"De ones who are chosen by the Lord always seem peculiar to de heathen. Mr. Topps is jus'

misunderstood. "Im mean a lot to me. Me never have nobody before. Your mudder don' like to tell

you since she got all hitey-titey, but de Bowden family have had it hard long time. I was barn

during an cart-quake. Almost kill fore I was barn. An' den when me a fully grown woman, my own

darter run from me. Me never see my only grandpickney. I only have de Lord, all dem years. Mr.

Topps de first human man who look pon me and take pity an' care. Your mudder was a fool to letim

go, true sir!"

Irie gave it one last try. "What? What does that mean?"

"Oh, nuttin, nuttin, dear Lord... I and I talking all over de place dis marnin .. . Oh Mr. Topps,

dere you are. We not going to be late now, are we?"

Mr. Topps, who had just re-entered the room, was fully adorned in leather from head to toe, a

huge motorcycle helmet on his head, a small red light attached to his left ankle and a small white

light strapped to his right. He flipped up the visor.

"No, we're all right, by the grace of God. Where's your helmet, Mrs. B.?"

"Oh, I've started keepin' it in the oven. Keeps it warm and toasty on de col' marnins. Irie

Ambrosia, fetch it for me please."

Sure enough, on the middle shelf preheated to gas mark 2 sat Hortense's helmet. Irie scooped it

out and carefully fitted it over her grandmother's plasticated carnations.

"You ride a motorbike," said Irie, by way of conversation.

But Mr. Topps seemed defensive. "A G S Vespa. Nuffink fancy. I did fink about givin' it away at

one point. It represented a life I'd raaver forget, if you get my meaning. A motorbike is a sexual

magnet, an' God forgive me, but I misused it in that fashion. I was all set on getting' rid of it. But

then Mrs. B. convinced me that what wiv all my public speaking, I need somefing quick to get

Me 1990, 1907

around on. An' Mrs. B. don't want to be messin' about with buses and trains at her age, do you

Mrs. B.?"

"No, indeed. He got me dis little buggy '

"Sidecar," corrected Ryan tetchily. "It's called a sidecar. Minetto Motorcycle-combination, 1973

model."

"Yes, of course, a sidecar, an' it is comfortable as a bed. We go everywhere in it, Mr. Topps an'

I."

Hortense took down her overcoat from a hook on the door, and reached in the pockets for two

Velcro reflector bands which she strapped round each arm.

"Now, Me, I've got a great deal of biz ness to be getting' on with today, so you're going to have

to cook for yourself, because I kyan tell what time we'll be home. But don' worry. Me soon come."

"No problem."

Hortense sucked her teeth. "No problem. Dat's what her name mean in patois: Irie, no problem.

Now, what kind of a name is dat to .. . ?"

Mr. Topps didn't answer. He was already out on the pavement, revving up the Vespa.

"First I have to keep her from those Chalfens," growls Clara over the phone, her voice a

resonant tremolando of anger and fear. "And now you people again."

On the other end, her mother takes the washing out of the machine and listens silently through

the cordless that is tucked between ear and weary shoulder, biding her time.

"Hortense, I don't want you filling her head with a whole load of nonsense. You hear me? Your

mother was fool to it, and then you were fool to it, but the buck stopped with me and it ain't going

no further. If Irie comes home spouting any of that claptrap, you can forget about the Second

Comin' 'cos you'll be dead by the time it arrives."

Big words. But how fragile is Clara's atheism! Like one of those tiny glass doves Hortense

keeps in the lounge cabinet a breath would knock it over. Talking of which, Clara still holds hers

when passing churches the same way adolescent vegetarians scurry by butchers; she avoids Kilburn

on a Saturday for fear of streetside preachers on their upturned apple crates. Hortense senses Clara's

terror. Coolly cramming in another load of whites and measuring out the liquid with a thrifty

woman's eye, she is short and decided: "Don' you worry about Me Ambrosia. She in a good place

now. She'll tell you herself As if she had ascended with the heavenly host rather than entombed

herself below ground in the borough of Lambeth with Ryan Topps.

Clara hears her daughter getting on the extension; an initialcrackle and then a voice as clear as

a carillon. "Look, I'm not coming home, all right, so don't bother. I'll be back when I'm back, just

don't worry about me." And there should be nothing to worry about and there is nothing to worry

about, except maybe that outside in the streets it is cold packed on cold, even the dogshit has

crystallized, there is the first suggestion of ice on the windscreens and Clara has been in that house

through the winters. She knows what it means. Oh, wonderfully bright at 6 a.m., yes, wonderfully

clear for an hour. But the shorter the days, the longer the nights, the darker the house, the easier it is,

the easier it is, the easier it is, to mistake a shadow for the writing on the wall, the sound of

overland footsteps for the distant crack of thunder, and the midnight chime of a New Year clock for

the bell that tolls the end of the world.

But Clara needn't have feared. Irie's atheism was robust. It was Chalfenist in its confidence, and

she approached her stay with Hortense with detached amusement. She was intrigued by the

Bowden household. It was a place of end games and after times full stops and finales; where to

count on the arrival of tomorrow

was an indulgence, and every service in the house, from the milkman to the electricity, was paid

for on a strictly daily basis so as not to spend money on utilities or goods that would be wasted

should God turn up in all his holy vengeance the very next day. Bowdenism gave a whole new

meaning to the phrase 'hand-to-mouth'. This was living in the eternal instant, ceaselessly teetering

on the precipice of total annihilation; there are people who take a great deal of drugs simply to

experience something comparable to 84-year-old Hortense Bowden's day-to-day existence. So

you've seen dwarfs rip open their bellies and show you their insides, you've been a television

switched off without warning, you've experienced the whole world as one Krishna consciousness,

free of individual ego, floating through the infinite cosmos of the soul? Big fucking deal. That's all

bullshit next to St. John's trip when Christ laid the twenty-two chapters of Revelation on him. It

must have been a hell of a shock for the apostle (after that thorough spin-job, the New Testament,

all those sweet words and sublime sentiments) to discover Old Testament vengeance lurking round

the corner after all. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. That must have been some eye-opener.

Revelation is where all crazy people end up. It's the last stop on the nut so express. And

Bowdenism, which was the Witnesses plus Revelation and then some, was as left field as they

come. Par exemple: Hortense Bowden interpreted Revelation 3:15 - / know thy works, that thou an

neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou an lukewarm, and neither

cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth as a literal mandate. She understood 'lukewarm' to be

an evil property in and of itself. She kept a microwave on hand at all times (her sole concession to

modern technology for a long time it was a toss-up between pleasing the Lord and laying oneself

open to the United States mind-ray control programme as operated through high-frequency radio

waves in order to heat every meal to an impossible temperature; she kept whole buckets of ice to

chill every glass of water 'colder than cold'. She wore two pairs of knickers at all times like a wary

potential traffic-victim; when Me asked why, she sheepishly revealed that upon hearing the first

signs of the Lord (approaching thunder, bellowing voice, Wagner's Ring Cycle), she intended to

whip off the one closest to her and replace it with the outer pair, so that Jesus would find her fresh

and odour less and ready for heaven. She kept a tub of black paint in the hallway so when the time

came she might daub the neighbours' doors with the sign of the Beast, saving the Lord all that

trouble of weeding out the baddies, separating sheep from goats. And you couldn't form any

sentence in that house which included the words 'end', 'finished', 'done', etc." for these were like so

many triggers setting off both Hortense and Ryan with the usual ghoulish relish:

Irie: I finished the washing-up.

Ryan Topps (shaking his head solemnly at the truth of it): As one day we all shall be finished,

Irie, my dear; be zealous therefore, and repent. Or

Irie: It was a such a good film. The end was great! Hortense Bowden (tearfully): And dem dat

ex peck such an end to dis world will be sorely disappointed, for He will come trailin' terror and Lo

de generation dat witness de events of 1914 shall now witness de turd part of de trees burn, and the

turd part of de sea become as blood, and de turd part of de .. .

And then there was Hortense's horror of weather reports. Whoever it was, however benign,

honey-voiced and inoffensively dressed, she cursed them bitterly for the five minutes they stood

there, and then, out of what appeared to be sheer perversity, proceeded to take the opposite of

whatever advice had been proffered (light jacket and no umbrella for rain, full cagoule a

rain hat for sun). It was several weeks before Me understood that weathermen were the secular

antithesis of Hortense's life work, which was, essentially, a kind of supercosrnic attempt to second

guess the Lord with one mighty" title="a.万能的；全能的">almighty biblical exegesis of a weather report. Next to that weathermen

were nothing but upstarts .. . And tomorrow, coming in from the east, we can expect a great furnace

to rise up and envelop the area with flames that give no light, but rather darkness visible .. . while

I'm afraid the northern regions are advised to wrap up warm against thick-ribbed ice, and there's a

fair likelihood that the coast will be beaten with perpetual storms of whirlwind and dire hail which

on firm land thaws not... Michael Fish and his ilk were stabbers-in-the-dark, trusting to the

tomfoolery of the Met Office, making a mockery of that precise science, eschatology, that Hortense

had spent over fifty years in the study of.

"Any news, Mr. Topps?" (This question almost invariably asked over breakfast; and girlishly,

breathlessly, like a child asking after Santa.)

"No, Mrs. B. We are still completing our studies. You must let my colleagues and myself

deliberatethoroughly. In this life there are them that are teachers and then there are them that are

pupils. There are eight million Witnesses of Jehovah waiting for our decision, waiting for the

Judgement Day. But you must learn to leave such tings to them that 'ave the direct line, Mrs. B." the

direct line."

After bunking for a few weeks, Me returned to school. But it seemed so distant; even the

journey from South to North each morning felt like an mighty" title="a.万能的；全能的">almighty polar trek, and worse, one that

stopped short of its goal and ended up instead in the tepid regions, a non-event compared with the

boiling maelstrom of the Bowden home. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor

hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. You become so used to extremity, suddenly nothing else will

do.

She saw Millat regularly, but their conversations were brief. He was green-tied now and

otherwise engaged. She still did Marcus's filing twice a week, but avoided the rest of the family.

She saw Josh fleetingly. He seemed to be avoiding the Chalfens as assiduously as she. Her parents

she saw on weekends, icy occasions when everybody called everybody by their first names (Irie,

can you pass the salt to Archie? Clara, Archie wants to know where the scissors are), and all parties

felt deserted. She sensed that she was being whispered about in the way North Londoners will

when they suspect someone of coming down with religion, that nasty disease. So she hurried back

to No. 28 Lindaker Road, Lambeth, relieved to be back in the darkness, for it was like hibernating

or being cocooned, and she was as curious as everyone else to see what kind of Irie would emerge.

It wasn't any kind of prison. That house was an adventure. In cupboards and neglected drawers and

in grimy frames were the secrets that had been hoarded for so long, as if secrets were going out of

fashion. She found pictures of her great-grandmother Ambrosia, a bony, beautiful thing, with huge

almond eyes, and one of Charlie "Whitey' Durham standing in a pile of rubble with a sepia-print

sea behind him. She found a bible with one line torn from it. She found photo-booth snaps of Clara

in school uniform, grinning maniacally, the true horror of the teeth revealed. She read alternately

from Dental Anatomy by Gerald M. Cathey and The Good News Bible, and raced voraciously

through Hortense's small and eclectic library, blowing the red dust of a Jamaican schoolhouse off

the covers and often using a pen knife to cut never-before-read pages. February's list was as

follows:

An Account of a West Indian Sanatorium, by Geo. J. H. Sutton Moxly. London: Sampson, Low,

Marston & Co." 1886. (There was an inverse correlation between the length of the author's name

and the poor quality of his book.)

Tom Cringle's Log, by Michael Scott. Edinburgh: 1875.

In Sugar Cane Land, by Eden Phillpotts. London: McClure &

Co." 1893. Dominica: Hints and Notes to Intending Settlers, by His Honour

H. Hesketh Bell, CMC. London: A. & C. Black, 1906.

The more she read, the more that picture of dashing Capt. Durham aroused her natural curiosity:

handsome and melancholy, surveying the bricks of half a church, looking worldly-wise despite his

youth, looking every inch the Englishman, looking like he could tell someone or another a thing or

two about something. Maybe Me herself. Just in case, she kept him under her pillow. And in the

mornings it wasn't Italian ate vineyards out there any more, it was sugar, sugar, sugar, and next door

was nothing but tobacco and she presumptuously fancied that the smell of plantain sent her back to

somewhere, somewhere quite fictional, for she'd never been there. Somewhere Columbus called St.

Jago but the arawaks stubbornly re-named Xaymaca, the name lasting longer than they did.

Well-wooded and Watered. Not that Me had heard of those little sweet-tempered potbellied victims

of their own sweet-tempers. Those were some other Jamaicans, fallen short of the attention-span of

history. She laid claim to the past her version of the past aggressively, as if retrieving misdirected

mail. So this was where she came from. This all belonged to her, her birthright, like a pair of pearl

earrings or a post office bond. X marks the spot, and Me put an X on everything she found,

collecting bits and bobs (birth certificates, maps, army reports, news articles) and storing them

under the sofa, so that as if by osmosis the richness of them would pass through the fabric while she

was sleeping and seep right into her.

As the buds came with the spring, so like any anchoress she was visited. First, by voices.

Coming crackling over Hortense's neolithic radio, Joyce Chalfen on Gardeners' Question Time:

Foreman: Another question from the audience, I think. Mrs. Sally Whitaker from Bournemouth