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and affection, subtle attraction.
    ‘Eat your sandwiches and be quiet. Stop being serious.’
    I should leap to my feet, carve a symbol of union into a guardian tree, let Bernadette watch the happening as if I were a performance artist. Though no need. Already she’s watching with fondness given in sultry pulses. My Binny, with your lustrous hair, your delicious kissable neck.
    We settle, enclosed by wild angelica, tiers of poppies and daisies, canopy of foliage above. Lay kissing, caressing, embracing. Feeling warmth on the back of my neck, insistent burning weight which has stilled blossoms, held trunks tight. Murmur of leaves; distant sea folding and bending, moving as frothed white curtains to the beach. Affirming life-song, high flying dove, far-away breathy, clacking beat of a train.
    She must speak softly, quietly: ‘This is our place and our secret.’
    ‘Our place and secret, yes – just the three of us.’
    ‘Three?’
    ‘You, me and King Smythe.’ That’s all.
    Rhythm like tribal drums, beating louder, a solid pulse. Shrieking brakes; grinding and banging as though a train has left its track and is plunging from a plume of unreality through the forest, roaring into the trees, barging them aside as skittles and sending frightened birds flocking. The roll of drums is louder still, becoming frenzied as the Goliath machine charges headlong out of control through the woods, sending high trunks creaking and crashing to the ground, letting new light into hushed habitat for the first time in centuries.
    This beat is becoming deafening. The engine pulling its carriages, mashing those poppies to pulp. Thundering past, tearing more trees apart. Bernadette, tumble down the bank to safety. The drums are slowing until the train has come to rest at a platform. I seem to be standing on a platform.
    Clicking like castanets as train door buttons are pressed, doors sliding open, shuffling commuters boarding, sorting themselves to single files; a guard with his flag raised and a whistle clamped between his teeth; the doors finally shutting. A shrill peep then an electronic bell sounded. The train moved off.
    Clement sat by a window on the train. He watched without much interest as the station began sliding away.
    He became anxious all at once with his breathing irregular. He was certain he had forgotten something. Of course, he realised quickly, it wasn’t something, it was someone. And the solution was elementary. Create Dr Leibkov in a mindroom aligned with the outside.
    But there was no need. The doctor stepped out of a wardrobe and was strolling across the walkway above the train, seen as if without a single worry, not one care in the world.
    Not a care in the world. You’re well. Bernadette’s well. I’m well. Doctor, I might speak to you later though I’m sure there won’t be any need.

6
    T he train moved slowly from the station and under the walkway spanning the rails. It went through a short tunnel before coming out between the high walls of a cutting. The carriages set up a rocking motion. A wall moved by, streaked with ragged runs of dampness. The bricks were locked by boxes of mortar, cracked and crumbling. With the train’s lazy speed the wall appeared to be endless. Not only a ponderous repetition moving backwards but row upon row upwards. Clement tried to see the top by flattening his cheek to the window. Perhaps the wall soared upwards forever, and maybe it went on and on across the countryside, slicing through towns and villages, dividing houses and public buildings and parks. Conceivably it was an immense brick barrier with the earth as its epicentre, moving out forever to make separate vastnesses dividing the cosmos. Two sides of an infinite coin, yin and yang, Bernadette and Donald. Mrs Froby would like that concept, Clement thought.
    It was as if the oppressive walls possessed magnetic fieldscapable of pulling back the carriages – already they were decelerating. At this rate he was going to be