Rox was now alight in the way people get when they are close to fame. It does something to them, smooths their skin, brightens their eyes. Roxanna stood with the remote in her hand flicking channels. It seemed as if my mother was on every one.

'She isn't even formally preselected for the seat,' she said.

'She'll get it,' Wally said. 'Vinny's got it fixed.' He had a pile of pale meat in a white bowl, and as he spoke he was browning it in a big copper pan, four or five pieces at a time. The room was rich with the smell of browning b.u.t.ter, the smell of raw onions.

When the telephone began to ring no one answered it. It was as if this was our family business, us and the vid, the luminous blue and yellow picture, the flickering fire, the sweet hot b.u.t.ter, the frying meat.

'She's good,' Roxanna said. 'Your maman is awful good. Listen to how she speaks.'

The phone rang and rang, and then the actors for it had been they who had been calling started to arrive. Sparrowgra.s.s first, but then all the others Annie, Claire Chen, Moey Perelli. It was only half past eight in the morning but they were all excited to be a.s.sociated with my mother, offering their services, phone numbers etc. They stood around the table, patting and fondling me like in the old days, already imagining the possibility of a Blue victory. I wanted to tell them I was going to be an actor, but it was not the time, and instead I held my good news, my fortune, held it tightly and secretly against my chest.

'All your maman's friends work on the vid,' Moey said to me. 'All those sold-out hacks and spin driers. You watch the s.p.a.ce she gets. You hear the noise.'

Wally put the lid on his copper pan and left it simmering. He washed his hands, lit a cigarette and was leaning against the wall, supporting the elbow of his smoking arm with the palm of his left hand. He had about him the air of an organizer, as if he, through his own secret methods, had put my maman on the vid and encircled me with actors. This was not so, of course, but when the handsome messenger arrived a young, muscular man, in a body-hugging blue suit Wally did not look at all surprised but merely nodded his head to where the messenger stood at the open doorway, dimple-chinned, solemn-faced, holding out a silver and blue box.

'Tristan Smith?' the messenger asked.

I turned my face away from the stranger, but Roxanna signed and brought the box to me.

Then she took my chair and I climbed on to her lap and nestled my head into her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She smelt sugary and alien, but she was soft and welcoming. I held the box in my lap, and no one asked me what was in it. They were drinking sweet Efican tea and staring at the vid. It was that sort of day. You could feel the world shifting its axis.

'I wanted to be an actress myself,' Roxanna said, spooning more blackberry conserve into her tea. 'That was my big dream before I met Reade. I would have given anything to be an actress, but my ankles were too thick.'

We both looked at her ankles. As for me, I would have given anything for ankles like that. Her feet were small, perhaps a little flat, but her ankles were full, generous, like her calves. For me, whose own legs were little more than bones, Roxanna's ankles had always appeared to be perfection itself.

'You need thin ankles,' she said.

'I ... have ... thin ... ankles,' I said.

This made Roxanna pause a moment.

'Well, mine are thick,' she said at last. 'And I'm stuck with them until they bury me. Your mother has very nice legs. She could do well in almost anything. Thick ankles are a real disadvantage, for a woman particularly. Today I really have to find my suit for the auction.'

'You ... don't ... have ... to ... buy ... a ... suit ... for ... an ... auction,' I said. 'I've ... been ... to ... auctions ... with ... Wally. I've ... been ... to ... lots.'

'For this one, I need a suit,' she said. 'All I'll be thinking about is my b.o.o.bs and my ankles, make the most of the one, the least of the other. Oh G.o.d,' Rox said, 'look at her. How can she lose? She's just so beautiful.'

My mother was now on a panel discussion, surrounded by men in suits.

'Oh G.o.d,' Roxanna said. 'Oh G.o.d. I didn't know she is just so beautiful.'

Wally was now separating the small bones from what looked like chicken. He worked deftly, shredding the meat with his big fingers as he went.

'What's for dinner?' Sparrow asked.

'Nothing for you,' Wally said. 'Something special for Roxanna, for tomorrow.'

'For me? For dinner? I won't be here.'

'Oh.' Wally smiled. 'I think you will be when you know.'

I felt Roxanna's body harden.

'What?' she said.

'Mollo-mollo,' Wally said, smiling, but strangely. He turned to place the bowl of meat in the refrigerator and then began to tidy up the kitchen table.

'What?' Roxanna insisted.

It was at about this stage as Roxanna said what? what? one more time that the actors began to vanish. They wrote their numbers or addresses on the refrigerator with magic marker. Neither Roxanna nor Wally said goodbye to them. Roxanna slid out from under me and walked across the kitchen to Wally. one more time that the actors began to vanish. They wrote their numbers or addresses on the refrigerator with magic marker. Neither Roxanna nor Wally said goodbye to them. Roxanna slid out from under me and walked across the kitchen to Wally.

'What the f.u.c.k have you done?' she asked.

Wally held out his hands, so his fingers touched her elbows. Roxanna flinched.

'What?'

Wally put his foot on the kitchen tidy. I heard the lid fly up, saw Roxanna look down and her chin drop.

I scampered off my chair and looked in too. It was filled with feathers.

'No!' she said, angry.

Wally's face was pale, waxy.

'No!' she said; she touched his face with her hand.

Wally's Adam's apple bobbed.

'I can't eat,' she said. 'I'm going to an auction.'

I was still confused as to what had happened. I put my hand into the bin and plunged in amongst the bed of soft grey and brown feathers pigeon feathers. When I looked up I saw Roxanna's face, tears flooding her cheeks, her mascara running like spilt ink.

'You crazy man,' she said, 'you crazy ballot ...' And then, without a glance at me, she took him by the hand and led him from the room. In their absence I could smell the feathers, like wet ashes.

I climbed back on my chair and, in the empty kitchen, with the stove still burning and my mother's image still shining from the vid, I carefully undid the box the messenger had delivered.

There was a small ivory card with hand-torn decalled edging. On it was written: 'For my favourite actor.'

Inside was an object wrapped in pale yellow tissue paper which, even though I tore it impatiently, did not reveal its secrets easily. What I found was a surface, burnished like a tea pot, lacquered with eggsh.e.l.l white, deep, l.u.s.trous blacks and greys.

Only when the last paper fell away did I realize that my maman had sent me not merely a Bruder Mouse mask, but one far superior to the one I had destroyed. It was heavy, not light. It felt like porcelain, or wood, but in any case not papier-mache. It was hard as the fender of Vincent's Corniche, and glazed. On its inside, in the centre of the forehead, was a little red sticker with the phases of the moon in yellow symbols of a Voorstand import.

I did not know it was a valuable antique.* Indeed, apart from the folk stories in the Badberg Edition I knew nothing about the history of Bruder Mouse, or even my mother's personal relationship with it. Indeed, apart from the folk stories in the Badberg Edition I knew nothing about the history of Bruder Mouse, or even my mother's personal relationship with it. I was already I was already feeding feeding, guiltily, greedily, fiddling with its buckles, pulling it over my head. It felt heavy, shiny, and it smelt of pine needles and expensive leather. There was no elastic band to hold it on, but a series of complicated straps and fasteners like the back of roller-hockey pads.

When I had the mask on, I drew up a chair and sat alone in the slightly overheated kitchen watching my mother on the vid. We were in our new lives. I was the actor. She was the politician. I could see her frailty, a very slight tremor in her voice, a slight uncertainty in her hand gestures, but a stranger would not have picked it up she would appear to be funny, charming and, with her new steel-framed spectacles, rather stern. She was presenting her paper on armed neutrality. She evoked the images of Oncle Dog, Phantome Drool, Bruder Mouse, the whole panoply of Sirkus characters. She painted the Phantome as a spy, the Dog as a soldier, the sharp-toothed blue-coated Mouse as a paranoid its white-gloved finger hovering above a b.u.t.ton which might destroy the planet.

No one who watched the speech would have believed that she had dressed her own son in the visage of the enemy, and that the son now sat, not listening to a word his mother said, dreaming his own flickering dreams, peering at her through the half-moon slits in the back of Bruder Mouse's eyes.

*In Voorstand, of course, you have a word for all these different degrees of public notoriety. In Saarlim you would say that my maman was experiencing vid-glorie. vid-glorie. [TS] [TS]*This mask, dating from the first century of Voorstand, had the serrated forehead ridge which distinguishes the Sirkus masks from the Neu Zwolfe settlement. It was atypical in that it had two chipped teeth, not one. [TS] [TS] My mother's childhood, more than thirty years before, was not so different from the life depicted in De Kok's paintings of the previous century the crowds in Demos Platz, the fat-a.r.s.ed factory owners rubbing shoulders with the poor and middle cla.s.s, the ex-prisoners of Voorstand's wars, Egyptians, Germans, Ugandans in saris, the makers of Pow-pow music in their Sunday checks, the picnickers, the pretty skaters, the amiable figure of Bruder Mouse, say, extending a white-gloved hand to accept a dollar from a smiling pink-cheeked matron. My mother's childhood, more than thirty years before, was not so different from the life depicted in De Kok's paintings of the previous century the crowds in Demos Platz, the fat-a.r.s.ed factory owners rubbing shoulders with the poor and middle cla.s.s, the ex-prisoners of Voorstand's wars, Egyptians, Germans, Ugandans in saris, the makers of Pow-pow music in their Sunday checks, the picnickers, the pretty skaters, the amiable figure of Bruder Mouse, say, extending a white-gloved hand to accept a dollar from a smiling pink-cheeked matron.

48.

Roxanna gave herself to Wally, solemnly, gratefully, in his bleak little room where circus apprentices had once spent their nights, stacked three-high in bunk beds, their bodies bruised from falls and Ducrow's English leather boot, young boys still dreaming of their mothers.

Her eyes were br.i.m.m.i.n.g, her lips plump and lingering, and all her swiftly naked body for she shed her dress with a single zip was baby-soft, newly born, not muscled like an actress, yet not obviously damaged by her life. At twenty-five years of age, she had no scars, no silver marks. She had a small plump stomach, not exactly fat, but with a round curve her lover could, and did, fit in the palm of his hand. When she brought her pale pretty lips to his, her eyes dropped and her small round chin dimpled.

Afterwards, she rested her coa.r.s.e, tangled blonde hair on his foreign shoulder and rubbed at her kohl-black tears as they fell into the grey hair on his chest.

'What is it?' he asked her.

What could she tell him?

There was a long livid scar beside his lower rib. She ran her fingers over it, the slippery smooth skin, like freshly shaven skin, but silkier. It was a Mongrel Day in Chemin Rouge, yellow melancholy light, the window sashes rattling in their frames. Her tears kept falling, fat and dirty.

'What is it?' he insisted.

It was the pigeons, of course. It made her feel so pitiful to admit the low level of her life no one had ever done such a thing for her before. She had sucked their c.o.c.ks, put her tongue up their a.r.s.e-holes, but no one ever did anything for her they did not want to do.

'Tell me,' he said.

'I was sad about the birds,' she said. Then, blowing her nose, 'I know it's silly.'

'They got born. Someone sold them, someone bought them. Life's very sad, don't you think it is? Even for birds.'

She was crying. It was crazy. She was not even worried about the pigeons. She could have strangled them herself, personally.

'I'm not blaming you,' she said. 'I didn't mean to cry and ruin it.'

'Life is a f.u.c.king miracle,' he said. He kissed her ear. Why did hard men always have such baby-soft lips?

'Don't talk like that,' she said.

For answer, he cupped his hand again on her straw-coloured mound of pubic hair. He held her. 'You're a miracle, Roxanna.'

'You're an old hog fart,' she said. He lay back and she felt him smile.

'You know I'm leaving. You know that well and truly. I never hid it from you.'

'Don't worry about me,' he said. 'I'm a big boy.'

But he was not, not really, he was quivering with need such very soft lips, such grey, sad, freckled eyes with the pretty rusty wash flooding outwards from the island of pupil. She said, 'Just remember what you knew first time you saw me ...'

'Which was?'

She grinned. 'Your d.i.c.k got hard.'

'Don't kid yourself.'

'You saw a spin drier in high-heels.' She smiled. 'I know what you saw.'

'Don't talk like that.'

'I'm not a nice person, Wally,' she said. 'You knew it then, when you saw me first. Now you're just making up some other story.'

'What I know is, you're just like me. Things have happened to us.'

'Boo-hoo-hoo.'

'I don't need to know exactly what they are.'

'Well, listen to me, please. I'm not sorry I had s.e.x with you. It was really lovely. It was. But you're not the man for me, OK?'

'You can't know that.'

'It's not to do with you. It's to do with me. Honey, I am going to the Chemin Rouge antique fair tomorrow night. There are going to be rich men there from all over the world. I am going to get me one of them. Watch me. I told you what I was. You knew what I was.'

'You want to be rich?'

'Don't say it like that. Say it how you like. I'm going to find someone there who thinks I am a treasure. And I'm not going to cheat them. I'm going to be that for them.'

'You mightn't.'

'Find anyone? I will.'

'How do you know?'

'Because I decided. Because I planned. Because I have worked, and studied, and prepared. BECAUSE I CAN f.u.c.kING WELL DO IT.'

'But what if there is no one there you like?'

'There will be.'

He smiled. It was exactly the same smile that Reade gave when he came home and saw her reading could not believe a woman could understand a book he couldn't.

'Don't smirk at me, you a.s.s-hole.'

'Hey.'

'You listen to me,' Roxanna said. 'You kill a f.u.c.king pigeon, you think you own me. You try and make me eat eat it, well f.u.c.k you.' She stood up. it, well f.u.c.k you.' She stood up. 'You 'You eat it.' eat it.'

'Rox,' he said, 'you make no sense.'