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something so reassuring about these twin groups of quite ordinary people gathered in circles of S-framed, khaki-bottomed chairs, under the flickering neon of the church hall. The Al Anon group met in the room set aside for the Sunday school, and as Carol’s ears were warmed by tales of casual bashing and buggery, her washed-out blue eyes roamed over the walls, where a collage alphabet had been created by the children, and thecurate had stuck up naive bible story pictures with red and gold sticky tape.
    The drinking of instant coffee and the smoking of many, many cigarettes; the business of the group, concerned as it was with the treasury, the coffee rota and the sale of pamphlet literature; these were secure facts and routines that drew Carol in. As for the catharsis afforded by speaking of one’s innermost hurts, fears and desires to a room full of strangers, Carol felt this too; albeit that her provision of the therapeutic goods was closely constrained by an unusual talent for compliance.
    But this needn’t surprise us. We know Carol to be like this. We have remarked before on her tendency always, always to take the line of least resistance. Why can’t we let her have her Dralon confession in peace? After all, it might help her with that other, more intimate, more pressing problem.
    While Carol was getting integrated, Dan, in a quiet and unspectacular way, was doing the same. From the day of Dave 2’s advent and his first meeting at St Simon’s, Dan had put down the alcohol. He found the admission that he was powerless over alcohol, the first and pre-eminent statement of the AA credo, easy to make. Since his student days at Stourbridge Dan had felt intensely that his conscious will was but an impotent, flopping marionette, inanimate until vivified—until sought out by the lager of Lamot. This WD40 of the soul would flood out of its can and form a thick, white cloud in Dan’s narrow head. The cloud would over anumber of hours resolve itself into a Genie, a giggling djinn that would manipulate the marionette-that-was-Dan, jerk him this way and that.
    Dan, like Carol, found it hard to speak at the AA meetings. But unlike Carol, it wasn’t because Dan had anything to hide. On the contrary, with Dan there was a niceness to the fit between his inarticulacy, his inhibition and his simplicity of mind, that is fortunately rare. Otherwise we would all be a great deal more bored than we are already. No, it was just that Dan had very little to say. But if catharsis was unnecessary, at least Dan now had access to the relief that came with learning that alcoholism was a disease. A disease with its own aetiology and pathology. A disease recognised by as august a body as the WHO. A disease prominently listed in the Observer’s Guide…AA told him the disease was both chronic and incurable—that was the downside. The upside was that the symptoms of this disease could be entirely alleviated, given vigorous attendance at AA meetings and rigorous abstinence. Prior to this Good News Dan had feared that his mind, really as delicate and ductile as one of the paper sculptures he himself used to make, might have been on the verge of crumpling itself up into a little wadded ball of insanity.
    Now Dan had friends, supportive friends. Dave 2 was so supportive that he would come home with Dan after the meeting to preach to him further. They would find Carol already at the flat—the Al Anon meeting startedand finished a half hour in advance of the AA meeting — and the kettle on the boil. The three of them would then sit down around the breakfast counter to share the articles of Dave 2’s faith. These he would pronounce with the kind of affectedly natural sincerity that is most typical of an Anglican priest at his worst.
    The rubric of Dave 2’s sermons was that of a kind of spiritual ’n’ tell. He had a great number of quasi-devotional postcards and stickers that he liked to distribute to his new acolytes. An example of what was