September

‘M arley was dead: to begin with. There was no doubt whatsoever

about that.’
Eddy’s uncle got to the immortal words first. It was a quotation
begging to be said that day. One of them had to say it, Eddy
supposed. Brain grabbed the moment.
Funny really, since Brain was a slow thinker and mover most of
the time. But he spoke the second they settled into the car. Then
he shut the passenger door softly — a full stop. Brain did most
things carefully, even delicately. This sometimes made Eddy itch.
Maybe he’d been waiting years to say it. Maybe, all that time
ago, he’d named Marley just so he could say the line when Marley
died. Only now he said it wrong.
‘No doubt whatever,’ said Eddy. Really, for a research librarian,
Brain could be surprisingly imprecise. He often fluffed song
lyrics and quotes. ‘No “so”.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Positive.’
Brain looked at Eddy: his baffled-animal look, the raccoon

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 Eddy, Eddy

eyebrows bending inward. He seemed to be staring at Eddy’s

forehead as if trying to make out the words, etched there or
something, proof.
‘Marley was dead:’ Eddy paused.
‘Colon,’ said Brain, with a wan smile.
‘Marley was dead colon: to begin with. There was no doubt
whatever about that.’
There really wasn’t any doubt. Marley was in the back seat, head
resting on her old pillow with its stains and holes and sprouting
kapok. She was wrapped in the Kaiapoi Pure Wool blanket. The
blanket was Eddy’s sole inheritance from his unknown maternal
grandmother. He’d donated it to Marley when she was a pup and
it had been her bed rug for as long as anyone could remember.
It was all felted up from years of washing, spattered with ragged
holes from Marley’s unclipped claws. She liked to rough up
the rug before she slept; she pawed at it, bunched it into little
hillocks then thumped down onto it exhaling noisily, her long
nose between front paws.
‘Memories of snow,’ Brain told Eddy all those years ago. ‘The
reptilian brain remembering Labrador — you know, all the snow,
how they paw up the snow for warmth.
‘Labrador. Where Labs come from,’ said Brain, unnecessarily.
Every moment a teaching moment. Labrador habits. Dreamtime
lore. The Jesuits’ misdeeds in China. Lines of poetry — misquoted
probably, now that Eddy thought about it. The arguments for
and against veganism. The meaning of thanatology  .  .  . It had
been all right when he was young, Eddy supposed. He couldn’t
stand it these days.

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Marley’s old rug would go with her now, into the ground
beneath the wattle in the backyard, where she had lain in the
shade all the hot afternoons of Eddy’s life.
He’d already prepared the hole, spent half the morning
marking out the plot and digging, manufacturing a decent sweat.
It was sweltering by 11 a.m., a breathless, pressing heat, though
it was only September. Eddy had derived a grim enjoyment from
the liquid gathering under his cap, leaking unpleasantly down
his neck and back. He imagined it glistening in the sun, a moist
and manly rebuke to Brain. One of them was practical, the sweat
said. One of them had borrowed the spade from next door and
prepared the grave.
Not that Brain had been watching. He was inside with Marley,
contemplating the animal soul. Saying a prayer, no doubt.
In the car now Brain still stared, dwelling on the quotation,
listening to it in his head. Everything in Brain’s head happened
at adagio.
‘Marley was dead: to begin with,’ he said again. ‘There was no
doubt whatever about that.’
Eddy had been there at the death. Brain too, but only Eddy
watched. Brain laid a big white hand on Marley’s flank but stared
fixedly at the poster on the otherwise bare clinic wall: an image
of a gadfly petrel, aslant against a blue sky.
Eddy held Marley’s shabby left forepaw. It had given her
gyp for years; she couldn’t manage a run longer than three
ks without developing a limp — a Marley limp, graceful and
apologetic. He massaged the furless patch on the side of the
paw with his thumb. He watched Marley’s face, the grizzled

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muzzle all slack now, her lovely eyes gummy with sickness.
At the same time, from the corner of his eye, he watched the
vet expertly filling the syringe.
‘It’s very quick,’ the vet said. ‘And completely painless.’ Eddy
doubted the vet knew this for sure, not being a dog. It was Fat
Vet. He was in practice with his brother Thin Vet: Fat Bob and
Thin Tim.
Yeah, but shut up, Fat Vet, Eddy thought. Don’t talk.
He liked Fat Vet well enough. He liked him much better
than Thin Vet, who was terse and kind of bitter. But Eddy didn’t
want Fat Vet talking, not while Marley was getting the needle.
He wanted it just to be Marley’s sounds, her little snuffles and
wheezy exhalations, the occasional tail thwomp, pathetically
tired. He wanted to hear her breathing right to the end.
Fat Vet obliged. He said nothing more. He felt around with
his competent sausage fingers for the soft gap in Marley’s neck
and slid the needle neatly into the cavity, and Marley was as dead
as a door-nail. In less than a minute. No doubt whatever.
‘Except,’ said Eddy now, ‘it isn’t “to begin” with. It’s the end.
The end of an era. The Marley Era. Marley was dead. Full stop.
The End.’
He started the car and pulled out into the road, pitted and
hummocky like so many of the roads in the area; even at normal
speed the going was bumpy. Today the traffic ambled, befuddled
by the heat. The air was hazy, filled with spores. This city is
comatose, thought Eddy. He imagined flooring it, frightening
all the dozy motorists, driving somewhere at great speed. He
pictured the long straight roads north of town, the magical

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vanishing point. But really, you couldn’t floor a Suzuki Alto with
any conviction.
‘Marley was dead to end with,’ said Brain, trying it out.
Eddy felt the familiar spike of irritation with his duffer uncle,
with Brain’s over-deliberate enunciation, his ponderous — as he
called them — cerebrations. He felt the evil little urge that visited
him sometimes, to pinch Brain some place painful.
‘To begin with is better,’ said Brain, oblivious. ‘God closes a
door, opens a window.’
If he closed his eyes, thought Eddy, they might end up in the
river, sink into the silted-up bottom, let the water close over the
Suzuki Alto, their banana-coloured coffin, Amen, Amen.
‘Lift up your heads, oh ye gates!’ sang Brain through the
windscreen, into the suburban middle-distance.

2
The month of Marley’s death was the two-year anniversary of
the first earthquake. Which meant it was exactly two years since
the death of Brain’s mother. She had probably died during the
long shaking, though no one could say for sure. Bad heart. They
had found Doris in her narrow bed when they went around to
check on her, an hour after the quake. Could have gone at any
time, the doctor said. It might have been the quake.
‘Frightened to death,’ said Brain mournfully, but Eddy
doubted it. Doris was quite the termagant. Mostly, people were
frightened of her. He had frequently witnessed her admonishing

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tradies and shop assistants, hapless passers-by. In church she

recited the prayers at an uncomfortable volume, in competition
with the rest of the congregation. Once, she had barked out her
disagreement during the sermon. Heads had turned, but the
priest ploughed serenely on, used to Doris, no doubt. Eddy, ten
years old at the time, had gone hot and horrified. He refused ever
to accompany his grandmother to Mass again.
This weekend, Brain had arranged for the Modern Priest to
say an anniversary Mass for the repose of Doris’s seized-up little
soul. In their living room, on a Saturday evening. The Modern
Priest loved a house Mass; he grieved for the 1970s when
everyone and their aunt apparently took up home-style worship.
‘Count me out,’ said Eddy, even as he automatically helped
Brain push the couch across the room to make space for the
temporary altar trestle. Eddy had not been to a church since the
quakes and before that he’d gone solely to sing in the Cathedral
choir. The choir loft was sufficiently far away from the priest and
the progress of the Mass to make it feel you were uninvolved,
practically elsewhere, which suited Eddy fine.
He’d finally let his friend Thomas More talk him into the choir.
Thos More was an inconsistent theist, but he had unshakeable
faith in music of all kinds and the glory of voices raised in chorus.
Eddy had resisted joining because Brain was the deputy choir
master, but Thos More worked on him, wore him down like a
faltering surface under a power drill.
In fact, Eddy loved singing just as much as Thos. He loved
singing with Thos. They’d been in every school choir together
since primary school, had formed countless short-lived bands,

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 September

all with satisfyingly abstruse names. Their last band (Steal Away)
had been barely a band: just the two of them, harmonising
Thos More’s increasingly strange secular spirituals: Thos liked a
paradox.
‘Ginge will be here,’ said Brain. He smoothed the woven table
runner carefully across the table top.
Eddy was very fond of cousin Ginge, a bachelor like Brain,
with a houseful of cats (last count, six) instead of a nephew.
Cat-love on Ginge’s scale was possibly pathological but Eddy
approved of it: if not for Ginge’s interventions, the moggies
were destined for the prick in the paw. Ginge was a union
organiser and sometimes as dufferish as Brain, but he was a
committed communist, and very droll. Also an atheist, though
— more paradox — he went often to Mass: in his ancient army
coat and Doc Martens — for old times’ sake, he said. If you
considered Brain and Ginge with a cool eye you could not fail to
conclude that the Smallbone genetic make-up was peculiar. And
coming to an end. Any reproductive glory was up to Eddy.
‘Bridgie’s coming too,’ said Brain. He placed the pottery
candlesticks at either end of the trestle. Next, he would get the
oval Temuka pottery bowl for a makeshift chalice. Eddy just
knew Brain was imagining himself as an early Christian
preparing for the Eucharist in a Roman atrium.
Well, Bridgie. Bridgie was wild. She was Eddy’s godmother,
though she believed neither in God nor mothering. She taught
piano and viola and played in the symphony orchestra, had in
fact played in two of his and Thos More’s five-minute bands.
Bridgie dressed extravagantly and pursued a dangerous line in

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conversation. She sometimes enquired after Ginge and Brain’s

peckers: had they shrivelled and fallen off yet, due to long-term
lack of use?
The quartet’s friendship was a mystery to Eddy, but they
went way back. Back through the mists of time to Our Lady
of Perpetual Succour, their hallowed primary school where
fragrant and beautiful nuns had cast an unfathomable spell,
and when the Modern Priest (chief altar boy) had answered to
the name Christopher Mangan. They had all regularly played at
Masses in Chris Mangan’s bedroom, and in Eddy’s view, they
were playing still.
‘When I was a child, I spake as a child,’ said Eddy, watching
Brain fold the lily-white table napkin he kept especially as a
purificator to wash out the pottery chalice. Brain was pretending
he hadn’t heard.
‘But when I became a man, I put away childish things.’
‘King James?’ said Brain.
Eddy pretended he hadn’t heard. They sometimes did this. It
was 1.50 p.m. He had a pick-up in forty minutes.
‘I’m off,’ he said.

3
He walked to Paparoa Street, a zigzag route that dodged the
worst of St Albans’ chewed-up footpaths. He had a bike, but
lately a disturbing thing happened whenever he swung his leg
over. Slowly, terribly, he felt himself turning into Brain. He felt

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 September

his arse spread and his fingers plump up. His scalp itched as
his hairline seemed to recede. The pedals moved as if through
porridge. He could have cycled naked but still it would have felt
like he was wearing a navy blazer, wheat-coloured corduroys and
polished brogues.
This sort of horror had happened at intervals throughout his
adolescence, especially once his voice had broken and settled
in the same baritone range as Brain’s. Eddy had been violently
alarmed by the first of these episodes, bursting from Thos More’s
sleekly appointed sleep-out into a cold June night, his breaths
short and his scalp prickling on the inside.
Wtf ? said Thos More by way of his eyebrow, when Eddy finally
came back inside. Had he sounded like Brain? asked Eddy. Thos
thought about it. ‘No more than usual,’ he concluded. Eddy was
appalled. ‘It’s the vocabulary,’ said Thos. ‘How many fourteen-
year-olds say concatenation? And, you know, the sound — same
timbre as Brain’s.’ Thanks for nothing, thought Eddy. And btw,
how many fourteen-year-olds said timbre?
He’d tried to keep watch on vocabulary after that, suppressing
Brain-type words. Interstices. Adumbrate. Desuetude. He would
lead a two-syllable life. He tried to speak in less well-formed
sentences, too, use a basser voice. It was hopeless, of course.
He’d been a sitting duck: fourteen years with Brain was a full-
scale colonisation. He would never escape his uncle’s words, his
grammar and tone, his cerebrations. Occasionally Brain’s voice
even narrated passages inside his head while he was reading.
Did this happen to everyone at some stage — their parents or
caregivers taking up passive-aggressive occupation inside them,

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a desperate stakeout just before their offspring left forever?

Not that Eddy was leaving any time soon. The quakes had seen
to that. The city’s housing stock was gutted. Rentals were thin on
the ground or beyond his pocket. But also, in his many interior
fantasies of Moving Day, there appeared always a reduced and
stoical Brain helping him lug furniture, pressing household linen
and appliances on him, waving a brave farewell from the front
porch. Eddy couldn’t do it to him. He might just have done it
while Marley was still alive — he could have trusted Brain to
Marley’s care. But that ship had sailed.
As it was, on most days they were both engaged in elaborate
delaying tactics re arrival home from their respective jobs. It was
the silence that came down the path to greet you, the lack of
hustle and operatic whimpering. And being alone in the house.
Nothing, nowhere, felt as it should. No dribbling dog-love when
Eddy slumped on the couch. No slavish companion padding
alongside him down the hallway or curled like a conch beside
his bed. He didn’t like going to the fridge or the pantry, the dog
roll and the half-full bag of Eukanuba staring back at him, all sad
and unemployed. He meant to take them next door for Pluto the
Maltese but somehow never got round to it.
Brain, for his part, had suddenly organised extra choir
rehearsals. He’d dreamed up new parish good-works: taking
Communion to the elderly, writing material for the parish
bulletin, visiting lonely parishioners. Dusting the Bishop’s
mitre, for all Eddy knew. They were in a figurative slow-bike
race: seeing who could be last to the home finish line and claim
victory. He couldn’t leave Brain to the ghost of Marley and

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the accusing dog roll. It was infuriating.

Which was why he made his way now to Paparoa Street, where
a new entry in his portfolio of pet-minding jobs awaited him. So
far he had four dogs (walking), two cats (feeding while owners
away), and a shifting miscellany of tropical fish, guinea pigs and
budgies, also Rhode Island Red hens who were prodigious layers.
The best way to continue living with Brain, Eddy had concluded,
was to live with him as little as possible. Evening and weekend
employment was essential.
He’d moved through a number of jobs since leaving school
two months before the first quake. In the dizzying days after
his abrupt departure he’d signed on as a builder’s labourer. His
grandmother had been infinitely sardonic.
‘From cloth cap to cloth cap in four generations,’ said Doris.
She seemed almost pleased, as if Eddy had proved some private
thesis. But his grandmother had always been grudging about
him — ungrateful, Eddy thought: he was her only grandchild,
after all. It was because he’d been born out of wedlock, an
antique notion to which Doris still subscribed. Sometimes,
Eddy thought he could see the word bastard shimmering above
his grandmother’s head, a malign aura, emanating toxins. It was
hardly his fault. If anything, it was her fault. She was the one
who’d reared a feckless son.
Eddy’s great-grandfather had been a railway labourer and
his grandfather a doctor, a socially upward leap in Doris’s eyes.
Brain’s job — librarian — was something of a comedown.
Jobbing builder’s boy was beneath contempt. Except Eddy’d had
the last laugh, hadn’t he? Because now there were building sites

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all over the city and every man and his dog wanting a job on
them. It was the new gold rush.
Except, really, he hadn’t had the last laugh because he’d broken
his foot six months after the February quake and the delicate bud
that was his building career had withered and died. A  shame,
because hefting four-by-twos, sawhorses and bags of tools —
really his building career was just lifting, carting and digging —
had provoked some embryonic upper body muscles.
On the other hand, though the sudden release from uniforms,
timetables, earnest teachers and the need to memorise myriad
facts had been initially thrilling, by the time the June quake
rolled round, ha, Eddy had begun to feel that builder’s labouring
was not for him. It was interesting only up to a point. He wasn’t
really making anything. This had been his pitch to Brain — the
pleasure of seeing something solid, something material, come
into being, he’d said. What had he been thinking? He hadn’t of
course. He’d become allergic to thinking. Thinking made him
sick, he told Brain, he was sick of reading, writing, researching
and regurgitating. He was sick of being inside his head, being
a swot and a nerd.
No, he wasn’t making anything, or rather he wasn’t making
anything. Cullen & Kelleher Homes was doing the making —
and pretty ordinary it was too. If anything, he was unmaking,
Eddy thought. Digging holes, for instance, that was an absence
of something, a pit, an abyss. He wound himself into a bitter
little state every so often dwelling on this. Clearly labouring
didn’t completely obviate thinking. Plus, it was tiring — no,
exhausting. He was mostly too whacked to go out at night and

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when he did, he regretted it the next morning, rising in the dark

at 5 a.m. He loathed the alarm.
It was exhaustion that made him break his foot: exhaustion
and Thos More’s effete boots. He’d worn them home after a
night in the sleep-out composing an anti-disaster-capitalist
rant, ‘Eat my Aggregates’, which Thos was planning to perform
outside the CERA offices, if he could ever make it out of
bed. The boots were too narrow for Eddy’s feet, which meant
that when he climbed the gate at Snorebins Park’s east exit
and dropped as carefully as possible to the ground, the left
boot rolled disastrously and somehow this had broken two
metatarsals. He was laid up for a week with a monstrously
swollen foot, the pain throbbing throughout his body, and only
a pile of Brain’s Inspector Wexford novels to divert him. He
read them helplessly, one after another, and was brought very
low by this further evidence of Brain-creep.
Thereafter he’d hobbled about with crutches, then crutchless
but jobless, then finally with just an imperceptible favouring of
his right foot. Occasionally a twinge still surprised him if he
encountered a treacherous footpath eruption.
Doris would have cared little for his broken foot — she
had been a famously heartless nurse, heedless of anyone’s sore
stomachs or headaches. ‘Go to the toilet,’ she said, in answer to
every complaint.
‘She was forged in different times,’ said Brain.
And actually out of iron, thought Eddy. He learned to shut up.
‘Doris was born crabby,’ Bridgie told him once. ‘And then
there was Vincent.’

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Well, Eddy conceded, a dead drug addict son was a bummer

for sure.

4
Paparoa Street had done okay in the quakes, Eddy thought. He
assessed all parts of the city in this way: Avonhead, scot-free;
Papanui, surface wounds; St Albans, broken limbs; Dallington,
six feet under.
Paparoa Street was bungalowed, big-sectioned, abundantly
gardened, deciduously treed; high-sided trampolines and swing-
sets ubiquitous. Number 62 was two-storeyed, the wood exterior
pristine white. The job was for a Josie Mulholland. They had two
dogs, she’d emailed, a spoodle (of course, the dog du jour) and
a golden retriever. Thank God. A retriever offered some gravitas
amid his doodle-dominated charges: thus far, two spoodles, a
cavoodle, and a completely insane chipoo with overactive tear
glands. He had turned down a peekapoo, ostensibly because
its owners lived outside the parameters he’d determined — no
more than five ks in each direction from home — but really,
it was one ridiculous cross-breed too many. He was hanging
out for something noble: a border collie, a boxer, a standard
poodle. Even a German shepherd. No Labs though. Or not yet.
Eddy felt a terrible ache around the heart each time he saw one
— which was often; since Marley’s death the suburbs seemed
riddled with Labradors.
He couldn’t imagine having another dog himself. A replace-

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ment companion. Some people acquired new pets with impunity

— his old friend Ollie, for instance. That family’s pooches were
always getting run over, or poisoned, or falling prey to bizarre
medical conditions. But Ollie and his brothers shed their dog
attachments with ease. They found new puppies speedily, like
necessary household items, a kettle or toilet seat, and life went
on as usual. Until the new dog met its inevitable end, providing
more compost for their vegetable garden and the chance for a bit
of a ceremony. Eddy had attended at least three dog funerals in
Ollie’s backyard.
These pet care jobs — when did a cluster of jobs become an
actual business? — they filled an emotional hole. He was dog-
adjacent but not fully involved. Hands on but no strings. Was this
how early childhood carers felt? Or teachers? He could certainly
do with the kind of variety a nursery of children provided. At
the moment it felt like he was in charge of a dispersed multiple
birth — all skittish and hairy. Bring on the retriever.
It was 2.30 p.m. Eddy pressed Josie Mulholland’s doorbell.
The Mulhollands’ house was large. Its décor would be the
opulent sort he knew from his ex-girlfriend Hazel and her
friends’ houses on the west side of town. Marble benches,
leather sofas that sucked at your skin, vast beds with oppressive
numbers of pillows and cushions, everything conspicuously
clean, tucked up and tidy.
The boy who’d answered the door was conspicuously unclean.
He wore ancient jeans and a manky, spattered hoodie. Sparse
hair sprouted hopefully from his chin. He was barefoot and
sizeable and said nothing. A wave of fruity sweat met Eddy.

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‘Eddy,’ he said, stepping back. ‘To see Josie about the dogs.’
‘She’s out.’ The boy looked past Eddy, his face expressionless.
Eddy turned to see what was behind him. Nothing.
‘You can just take them,’ the boy said. He turned and lumbered
down the hallway. A big lad, as Ginge would say. Eddy followed,
feeling slight and tubercular, as he always did around substantial
people.
‘In there,’ said the boy, pointing to a door. He pushed through
another door and was gone.
In there was a kind of conservatory, Eddy supposed, sun-filled
and awash with shiny-leaved plants. A girl dressed in white sat
in a rocker, a dog in her lap, another by the side of the chair.
He was suddenly in a Tennessee Williams play. But then the
dogs rushed him (undisciplined!) and it was the inevitable first
meeting mêlée. He gave them the love, of course. Oh, the old
doggo slavering, it never disappointed; even if you didn’t know
the dogs, out went your hands involuntarily and back came
their paws and tongues, the snuffling, the trembling bodies. It
was another language, and he was fluent. You stayed patient and
attentive and their frenzy eventually settled, the sniff test sorted
on both sides.
‘I’ve been trying to train them,’ said the girl. ‘But it’s not
working. We went to a class, but Dad hated it.’ She was young
— nine, ten? He could never tell kids’ ages. Was she wearing
an enormous nightie? Stick arms and legs poked from it like a
scarecrow’s. Her hair was like straw.
‘Don’t you mind?’ she said, watching the maul.
‘Love it,’ said Eddy.

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The spoodle was mental, wanting full lip kisses already. ‘Hey
you! Not on the first date.’
She giggled. ‘Rizzo’s needy.’
‘What’s this one called?’ The retriever sat now, earnest and
aquiver. Eddy gave him an approving pat.
‘Waffle.’
‘Because?’
She sighed. ‘He’s kind of toasted like waffles. I was only four
when we got him. I’d probably call him something different
now. Like Henry or Toby. A proper dog’s name. My dad had a
German shepherd once called Norman.’
Clearly the talker of the family.
‘We got Waffle from the pound. He had a terrible life. But
Rizzo was from a dog breeder. Two thousand dollars Dad’ll never
see again. That’s what he said. She was my present for sleeping in
my own bed for a month.’
And where did they get you? wondered Eddy.
‘I’m Delphine,’ she said.
‘Eddy.’ He held Rizzo firmly away from his face, waited for
her to slacken.
‘I know. Eddy Smallbone. And you’re a dog walker.’
‘Amazing no one’s made that joke before.’
‘That was my brother who answered the door. He hates doing
it, but I’m not allowed. In case of kidnapping. I’m not making
that up. Dad says it could happen to anyone.’
Pity the kidnapper, thought Eddy. She was like a brat-sprite,
precocious and invasive, all angles and ghostly skin and a high
insistent voice.

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He gave in to Rizzo then, tired of disciplining. He knelt

properly and her nose went straight into his crotch. Delphine
looked at him askew.
‘In case you’re wondering,’ she said, ‘I have a wandering eye.’
‘All good.’
She rocked a little in the chair, looking at his ear. ‘Sometimes
I have double vision. I could see two of you.’
‘Twice as much fun,’ said Eddy.
‘Our last walker was a failure. He lost Rizzo; he was a student.
We had to make signs and put them on lampposts. It was three
days before we got her back.’
Eddy stood, looking for the leashes.
‘Is dog walking your actual job?’ said Delphine, pitching
forward, holding the rocking chair in place with her bare feet.
‘Mum said you walk lots of dogs. She found out about you
from her friend Erica. She’s got a spoodle too, but she calls
it a cockapoo? She used to have a Maltipoo. Two poos.’ She
laughed maniacally. ‘Did you know there’s a designer dog called
a whoodle?’
In fact, Eddy did know this, having been driven to doodle
sites on learning there was a breed as risible as a chipoo. But he’d
had enough of Delphine. He took the leads from the arm of an
overstuffed chair.
‘Well, is dog walking your job?’ She rocked herself up and
out of the chair.
‘It’s one of them,’ said Eddy.
‘What are the others?’
‘Gravedigging and dentistry.’

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She stared at him, the eye roaming. ‘Can you tell me about the
gravedigging?’
‘No,’ said Eddy, clipping a lead to Rizzo’s collar. Waffle stood
to attention. Good boy. Sorry about the name.
‘Mum says they need a long one and there are poo bags in the
kitchen drawer. They’re compostable.’ She trailed Eddy from the
room.
‘I wish I could come. I used to go with Dad, but he’s shifted
out now. But I’m having a nightie day because I didn’t go to
school. Do you have those? Or a pyjama day?’
‘No,’ said Eddy. He never wore pyjamas. Brain wore pyjamas.
Pale blue striped ones from Ballantynes, bought every three years
since the Bronze Age.
‘Mum’s at the gym. And Jasper never goes out if he can help it.
Except sometimes at night. Like a bat.’
‘What about school?’ He opened the front door.
‘Correspondence,’ she said, looking up at his face, more or less.
‘I’ll be about an hour,’ said Eddy.
‘Mum said she’d be back.’
He felt her eyes as he went down the path, drilling a hole in
his spine, or thereabouts.
‘Careful,’ he called. ‘Kidnappers!’
The door slammed and the dogs pulled him through the front
gate.

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5
‘There are two really good things about dog walking,’ Eddy had
once told Thos More.
‘Let me guess,’ said Thos. He languished pale and interesting
on his bed, like The Death of Chatterton, only without the lilac
trousers. ‘There’s the dog. And? Oh yes of course, the walking.’
Illness had greatly increased his satirical tendency.
‘It’s much more nuanced than that,’ said Eddy.
‘Do tell.’
But really, he couldn’t adequately express the deep pleasure
and comfort of dogs-plus-walking, except that it had something
to do with the rhythm of footsteps and his wandering mind, the
great green stretches of parks, the scents on the air, whatever was
coming through his earphones, and the eternal entertainment
of pooches and their mysterious distractions, a sensory world,
an intelligence, to which he had no entry. Thos could never
understand anyway; he’d renounced pets since catching
salmonella from his two red-eared terrapins. He’d lost a third of
his body weight, and was still recovering months later, tired all
the time.
Eddy missed the turtles. He’d spent much time lying in front
of their tank, staring at their Yoda-ish necks and old eyes while
Thos went on and on. Sickness did not dim his monologues,
scurrilous and interminable.
It took just minutes to discern the personalities of new dogs.
By the time they’d walked the back streets of Papanui and

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Merivale and explored a couple of parks, Eddy knew that Waffle

was keen to please and Rizzo wanted medicating. Neediness plus
attention-deficit plus no sense of consequence. A potential topic
of conversation with Brain next time he was home for dinner.
Brain liked to hear about Eddy’s various charges. There had
always been cats and fish and birds in Eddy’s young life and
Brain had fed him a steady supply of animal books. For his sixth
birthday, Eddy had asked for a blue-tongued skink and a frilled
lizard, both in a book of Australian animals. Brain had explained
in his tirelessly instructional way that these were not animals for
houses or cities. Their most full and happy life could only occur in
their natural habitat.
Despite Eddy’s current irritations, creatures remained a point
of connection between him and Brain. In the fortnight following
Marley’s death they had by unspoken agreement rewatched every
episode of The Life of Mammals, Eddy’s fiftieth birthday present
to Brain. Sunk in the couch with him, Eddy had been both
consoled and tormented by their mutual need. It was spring in
their wrecked city and he was nineteen, but it was also every
Friday night of his life for as long as he could remember:
cheese and chutney toasties, ice-cream sandwiches, a wildlife
documentary, and his wheezy, soft-hearted uncle at hand.

6
Delphine waved madly from the bay window of the front
room as Eddy ushered the dogs back through the gate. Rizzo

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immediately lay down on the warm path.

‘Vanquished,’ said Eddy. He jerked the lead gently, but she
wasn’t having it, so he gathered her up and carried her to the
front door, Waffle in lockstep beside him.
Josie Mulholland answered the door. She was still in her gym
gear, her face pink, hair piled on top of her head. The child was
on tiptoes clinging to her mother’s back.
‘Eddy, I presume.’ She held out her hand. ‘Don’t crowd me
please, Delphine.’
‘I told you he had a man bun,’ said Delphine. ‘And a tattoo.’
‘It’s a low bun,’ said Eddy, repressively. He shook Josie
Mulholland’s damp hand.
‘Seventy minutes,’ he told her. ‘They’re good and tired,
especially this one. And wanting water.’
‘Mum says you’re too young to be a dentist!’
‘Enough, Delphine,’ said Josie. She took the child by the
shoulders and steered her towards the plant room. ‘Let me talk
to Eddy.’
‘Did your tattoo hurt?’
‘Delphine.’
The child lolled against the door gargoyling at her mother.
‘Just ignore her,’ said Josie, taking Rizzo from Eddy. ‘You have
time for a coffee?’ She nuzzled the dog’s neck. ‘A big walk, eh?
We like a tired Rizzo. And please take off my nightie,’ she called
to the child, though not with much conviction.
‘I have another job at five-thirty,’ said Eddy. ‘But coffee’s good.’
‘Some gravedigging probably,’ shouted Delphine after them.
‘For coffins.’

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‘Sorry about that,’ said Josie in the kitchen. Glass-fronted

cupboards, a half-wall of wine bottles, high stools and acres of
bench. She filled the gleaming espresso machine with water. The
dogs drank furiously from grand aluminium bowls.
‘They go okay?’
‘All good,’ said Eddy. ‘Rizzo needs a tight leash, but the big
boy’s a sweetie.’ No outright criticism of your charges’ behaviour,
he’d learned. Owners never failed to take it personally.
‘Milk?’
‘Thanks.’ Eddy sat on a high stool, watching Josie Mulholland.
He studied mothers habitually, auditioning them for a role in
his past. There was a show reel in his head: his friends’ mothers;
teachers; the pet owners; retailers; strangers — all alien and a
little alluring.
Josie Mulholland was one of the quietly efficient ones: coffee
brewed, cups filled, bench wiped, biscuits from a tin, all smoothly
done. Not a chatterer.
‘Bought, I’m afraid,’ she said, holding out the plate of biscuits.
‘I used to bake, but what good does that do?’ Eddy took a biscuit.
‘Bran,’ she said. It looked unnervingly like Marley’s dinner
biscuits.
‘I wanted to ask, I know you’re in demand, but could you
possibly manage every weekday? If I begged hard enough?’ She
blew on her coffee. ‘Things are tight right now. My husband
was the dog walker, but we’ve recently separated.’ She paused,
as if this information surprised her. ‘I’m hoping he’ll take Waffle
eventually, but right now he’s in a no-pets townhouse so I can’t
push it.’

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Eddy scrolled his mental timetable. Did he want to interface

with Rizzo five days a week? On the other hand, he could do
some decent training. And Waffle was a lovely soul.
‘I could do four days,’ he said, hating the bran biscuit. It was
like eating hay. ‘An hour. I’d play Fetch with Waffle, too.’ He’d
read up on retriever muscle health last night. ‘You have a Frisbee?’
‘Hardly. Not an outdoor household. And I’m — what’s the
phrase? Time poor.’
Eddy was unsurprised. But why did these people have dogs?
It maddened him. On the other hand, feckless dog owning was
proving lucrative. Against the grain of the times, his work life
was gathering steam.
‘I should get one, anyway,’ he said. ‘A tool of the trade.’
‘You really couldn’t stretch to five days?’ said Josie Mulholland.
Mascara flaked in the soft wrinkles under her eyes. ‘I’m happy to
pay more. Do I sound winning?’
‘Sorry, can’t at the moment.’ He was a bit sorry. She seemed
nice and kind of harried. ‘Are afternoons good with you? Do
I need a key?’ He was used to all the details now, knew what
to ask for. People gave him their key box codes, or spares. He
had a little collection on his Our Lady of Guadalupe key ring, a
present from Hazel.
‘You know I can only use this ironically,’ Eddy had told her.
‘Our Lady believes in you, even if you don’t believe in her,’
Hazel whispered into his neck with hot little accompanying
kisses. They’d broken up soon after that, but Eddy was attached
to Our Lady after all, to her sorrowful face and the holy rays
springing from her sides like anteater spines.

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‘Jasper’s here every day,’ said Josie. ‘But he collects Delphine

in the afternoons, so a key might be good.’ She took one from a
drawer and handed it to him. ‘You’ll keep me in mind, if you get
a space? I don’t suppose you cook or clean?’
Well yes, actually, he did both very competently thanks to his
uncle’s training over the years and the job-before-last at Wilbur
and Orville’s. But no thanks. For sure they’d be gluten free or
dairy free or egg-allergic. Or grain intolerant. Needing three
different meals. He’d cooked for a family very briefly in the
winter, business people on and off planes all week. One kid ate
only chicken nuggets, the other no meat at all, but the parents
did the full nutritional range. A nightmare. He’d deleted cooking
from his CV.
‘Full book, sorry,’ said Eddy. He waved his phone vaguely.
Delphine was at the front door as he left, still in the nightie.
‘Upstairs now, please,’ said her mother. ‘No arguing. Take that
off.’
‘Are you coming back?’ said Delphine. She took backwards
steps towards the stairs, not looking at her mother. He wasn’t
sure where she was looking.
‘Monday,’ said Eddy. He felt sorry for her, her whacko vision
and irritating personality. That spindly little frame.
‘Happy gravedigging,’ she said, continuing in reverse up the
stairs.
‘That was a joke,’ said Eddy. ‘My other job’s at New World.’
‘Fah-la-la-la-lah,’ bellowed Delphine, turning away, waving
upside down behind her back.

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7
It was a forty-minute walk to the supermarket. He was thrashing
his sneakers these days, what with pooch-walking and this new
bike phobia. He tried not to drive the Suzuki in daylight. The
car had been Doris’s, left to Brain with the rest of her modest
estate, but Brain had never had a licence, never learned to drive.
He’d been riding his bicycle — he always called it a bicycle — for
fifty years, and now, in this globally-warmed, earthquake-ridden
universe, the incurably uncool, rule-abiding Brain had become
both an eco-conscious exemplar and a wily gamer of the traffic
queues endured by their city.
‘Think of the car as yours,’ said Brain generously, once Doris’s
estate was settled. But was a yellow car really a generous gift?
Briefly, Eddy contemplated a paint job. But it would still be a
Suzuki, a flimsy toy car. Thos More occasionally refused to get
in it.
‘It compromises my masculinity.’
‘What masculinity?’
‘True,’ said Thos. ‘But still.’
They’d been preparing for a clothes-shopping expedition.
Following the salmonella curse, all garments hung limp and
baggy on Thos’s reduced frame. Naked, he resembled Saint
Sebastian, minus the arrows. His mother had given him her
credit card to reclothe himself, instructing him to go only
to decent shops. But his mother’s definition of decent was
irretrievably bougie, Thos said. Instead they headed for the op

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shops, dispersed now around the suburbs.

‘Also, I want bang for my buck,’ said Thos.
‘In fact, your mother’s buck,’ said Eddy.
Thos had never had jobs, part-time or otherwise. His parents
believed he should rest in the school holidays, rest before
university, rest after the salmonella. They rewarded this resting
with regular deposits in his bank account. Thos squirrelled
the money, enjoying it piling up. ‘What for?’ Eddy enquired,
wanting a new keyboard for Steal Away. ‘Rainy days, rainy
days,’ said Thos. Eddy had argued more than once that receiving
what amounted to a stipend from rampant capitalists (the
Mores had a large property portfolio) was inconsistent with
Thos’s alleged anti-capitalism. Thos had various florid counter-
arguments to this charge but the truth was he didn’t give a
rat’s arse about consistency. His relationship with capitalism
was as incontinent as his relationship with God.
In relation to New World, Thos was an anarcho-activist. Or a
thief, depending on how you viewed these things. He regularly
stole fruit, sweets and craft beer. It was anarcho-activism,
apparently, because supermarkets were virtual monopolies
that exploited producers, paid their labour force crap, and held
consumers wretchedly captive to price and supply. And by the
way, their increasingly cunning surveillance systems not only
raised privacy issues, they would soon be putting hardworking
shoplifters out of business.
Yes, yes, thought Eddy as he walked westward, listening to
Alynda Segarra, enjoying the soft wind on his bare arms. It was
all true, or most of it — could kleptomaniacs really be styled

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hardworking? Maybe. In their own way. But he had developed

an instant and profound affection for New World North-West
and all who worked there. He had banned Thos More from this
corner of food retail under sentence of severed friendship. In
exchange, he weathered regular denunciations of the place and
its people.
He’d swerved derision from that terminal employment snob
Doris, at least. By the time Eddy’s foot had mended and he’d
scored the job, his grandmother had been six feet under for
some months. Although, even Doris might have conceded that
the combined effects of the quakes and the recession made the
securing of any job, however cloth-cap, a small triumph. Though
it was really old school tie, he supposed. Dirty luck. Hazel’s
parents owned the supermarket.
In principle, Eddy maintained a mealy mouth towards the
west side of town — it had largely escaped crippled houses,
fissured roads, mud baths, unreliable sewage, fused schools, no-
go parks, bulldozed shops, insurance bastards. But he’d needed
the job. And Hazel’s mother — Judith — felt sorry for him
because he was an orphan saddled with a duffer uncle who was a
librarian. Probably Hazel did too. Hazel was a law student now
and had acquired a new law student boyfriend named Anzac who
wore suit jackets with jeans and was, by Thos More’s pungent
reckoning, an immense twat. Eddy agreed. He and Hazel didn’t
have much to say to each other these days. She was, it turned out,
uncomfortable with an ex-boyfriend at the checkout.
And Thos was fully wrong about the supermarket: it wasn’t a
terrible place — it was marvellous, a great clockwork universe with

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dozens of moving parts, a glorious, edifying cooperative, a . . .

new world! It was an alternative family at least, encompassing
multitudes, unlike his own extended family, which now
comprised just an uncle, a first cousin once removed and a
second cousin who lived in Timaru. They were an etiolated clan
barely worthy of the name.
His supermarket family, though — it was full and fabulous,
thrillingly ordinary and lunatic. Brad the butchery apprentice,
for instance, who could rap lyrically on lamb and beef cuts,
mincing methods and the underappreciated beauty of offal.
And Bernardine, tiny and wrinkled, who moved like a wind-
up mouse; she worked every possible shelf-filling shift to get
away from her husband and could provide in-the-moment
coded commentary on high-maintenance customers. Alefosio,
the bakery manager: whenever they saw Eddy, they enveloped
him in a lengthy hug and begged him to join the New World
touch team. Marcus, the liquor manager, of indeterminate age,
shy and prone to stuttering, who had blurted to him one day last
December that he was flying to Wellington to hear the Messiah.
Eddy had been astonished on so many counts. And Shamura in
the deli, beautiful as the day. Sometimes he bought ham slices
or Scotch eggs just to watch her wielding the tongs, weighing
and wrapping, handing over packages with a gloved hand and
spectacular smile.
Plus the trolley boys. He watched them on his coffee breaks.
They were fierce and determined and wrenchingly humourless.
Each had his own collecting system and strange navigational
path around the car park. They were almost balletic with their

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trolley trains. And long-suffering with the ruder clientele, who

roared across their paths in high-up cars. Not a flicker crossed the
trolley boys’ faces. They’d been schooled — they all had — never
to show the slightest exasperation, even to the most imperious
of matrons, of which there were plenty, btw, on the west side of
the ragged city.
As for Eddy’s own in-store duties, these were unexpectedly
diverting. Take shelf-filling. It was interesting to learn about new
lines of produce — artisan cracker biscuits, say, or yet another
paleo-muesli brand. Or to wonder about the price differentials
in caper or prune or coconut milk brands.
After he was shifted to checkout — a promotion! — Eddy
perfected the art of packing a shopping bag, the proper weight
distribution and layering of goods. He was curious about what
people bought, too. He liked to watch the unfolding contents of
a trolley and imagine the various snacks and meals they might
turn into, the people who ate them. The west side of town, he
noted with a newly alert sociological eye, ate fully and well.
A lot of vegetables and protein. Moderate sugar and fat intake.
Much alcohol. He was forever raising his hand for one of the
managers to okay a wine purchase, a practice he never failed to
find humiliating.
Generally, interactions with a manager had a humiliating
edge. They were all women and perfectly pleasant — it was their
overt motherliness that made him bristle. They patted him or
gave his back proprietary rubs. Maureen, not even old enough
to be anyone’s mother, had once squeezed his cheek in a hearty
and presumptuous way. Judith had doubtless been sharing his

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history. She was the worst: caring eyes and a certain tone and
her glance straying regretfully to the quotation tattooed the
length of his right arm.
Eddy looked at his arm now. It always pleased him to see the
words, the way they seemed to rear and rebuke. He’d had to cover
up once he was on checkout. ‘But it’s biblical,’ he’d argued, just
for the sake of it. ‘Possibly offensive to customers,’ said Judith,
and the warped truth of this was perversely satisfying. But he
dutifully wore the long sleeves, he tied his hair back in a bun, he
joked with the customers. And sometimes when he saw Judith
on her rounds, he imagined stopping suddenly in front of her and
intoning a different though equally scolding quotation: ‘for ye pay
tithe of mint and anise and cumin, and have omitted the weightier
matters . . .’ That was the great thing about the Bible. It had as
many apposite quotes as Friends.

8
Eddy caught a ride home on the back of Reuben-from-accounts’
motorcycle; Reuben carried a spare helmet for potential passen-
gers, which said something about him. He lived in Sydenham so
Eddy’s was out of his way, but nothing was a bother. Eddy put
a pilsner in his saddlebag as thanks — accounting gave you a
powerful thirst, Reuben said. Eddy had marvelled at this thirst
during last year’s Christmas party when Reuben and Sylvester-
from-breakdown had put away three dozen beers between them.
His own capacity for beer was extremely limited. ‘Pitiful is the

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word,’ said Thos More when three beers had once laid Eddy out.
‘If you must do it at all, do it properly.’
This made no sense to Eddy, but he hadn’t been in any
condition to argue. Thos himself drank only sometimes and only
purloined beer. He was always mortifying the flesh in one way or
another — fasting, praying naked on frosty mornings, swearing
off stimulants, having ice-cold baths — even in his semi-atheist
phases. ‘A young man of troubling extremes,’ the Modern Priest
had pronounced one evening after five glasses of wine: Eddy had
counted. These days he believed scarcely a word that fell from the
Modern Priest’s mendacious lips. Even and and the were suspect,
as the saying went. But he had parked that comment.
Annoyingly, when he arrived home, there was the Modern
Priest ensconced in the reordered living room. Eddy had been
looking forward to the trace of snuffed candles, a melancholy
comfort. Instead the pervasive aroma was chilli beans. Ginge
and Bridgie had dug in for the evening as well. There were three
empty bottles of wine and another half-full amidst the dinner
dishes on the coffee table. Dinner. He hadn’t eaten since Josie
Mulholland’s horrible bran biscuit.
‘Hail, Eddy!’ said Ginge, picking up the bottle. He too had
a prodigious thirst and was helplessly convivial, loving nothing
more than to pour large glasses for everyone else. The Smallbone
family tree was weighty with drinkers.
‘A glass of red, Ed? You deserve it, working for the man from
dawn to dusk.’
Well, it was half true. And he had been up at 6 a.m. to feed
the cats, in Edgeware and Richmond, respectively, and then to

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take Bunny the chipoo to the vet. More drops for the lachrymose
eyes.
‘Sure,’ said Eddy, checking the state of the bean dish. Plenty.
Brain always provided for an army; before library training, he’d
cooked for a youth remand facility. Eddy filled a bowl, drowned
it in cheese and sour cream, and thumped down on the couch
between Ginge and Bridgie.
‘How are you, George?’ said Bridgie. ‘How are you, really?’
This was a joke between them, the really both serious and not.
Bridgie had also been calling him George for years, for no reason
Eddy could determine.
‘Not so bad.’ Sweet Jesus, the ultimate Brain phrase,
communicating nothing. The chilli was excellent, though. Fire
in the digestive tract. Nice wine too. A Chilean grape no doubt.
Or Argentinian. Ginge had been on a South American jag since
the quakes, reading up on anarcho-syndicalism. He read and
drank in quantity, and only red wine, the proper Marxist libation,
he said.
‘In your eye,’ said Eddy, holding up his glass, not looking at
the Modern Priest, though he knew the Modern Priest was
looking at him, at his tattoo Eddy hoped, uncovered now, out
and proud.
‘Alla vostra,’ said the Modern Priest. He’d spent years at the
Vatican; he dropped Italian phrases like dog do.
‘Cent’anni!’ said Bridgie, leaning into Eddy, giving him a
smacker on his cheek. She was well liquored, smelled comfort-
ingly of her smoky perfume. Brain looked sleepy, though he
generally nursed a single glass through an evening.

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‘Edmundo! I have another customer for you,’ said the

Modern Priest.
He detested the Modern Priest calling him Edmundo. But
it was an uncomfortable fact that the foundations of his pet
business (surely eight clients constituted a business?) had come
through the well-oiled connections of Father Chris Mangan,
one-time Cathedral administrator, now disgraced. The
Cathedral lay in ruins, the parish was scattered, the choirmaster
had lost a leg, and the Modern Priest had been removed from his
position. Yet he carried on regardless, glad-handing, spreading
god-dust, shepherding an invisible flock.
‘Much obliged,’ said Eddy, shovelling a forkful of chilli and
keeping his eyes on the bowl. Expunging the Modern Priest
from his emotional universe, though without making it too
obvious, sometimes drove him to act and speak like a lowly
character from Dickens.
‘In Phillipstown,’ said the Modern Priest. ‘The owner’s in
Vietnam for three months. His frog needs feeding. Live flies—’
‘True?’ said Brain. ‘It’s getting heavy, Ed.’
Eddy granted his uncle a smile and a nod. This was, for some
reason, always easier when the Modern Priest was around.
Context was everything.
‘You should be keeping a journal,’ said Bridgie. ‘Rhode Island
hens, guinea pigs, frogs and flies . . . It’s My Family and Other
Animals.’ A quotation slid across Eddy’s brain: smooth blue muscles
of wave. Brain had read him that book when he was nine years
old and then, night after night, he’d listened to a library CD of
the story too, understanding only half of it, but gathering that

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crazy family around him like a giant blanket.

‘To frogs and flies — and cockapoos — and cabbages and kings,’
said Ginge, raising his glass, too swiftly this time. A wavelet of
wine broke over the edge and splashed his nose. The other three
laughed immoderately.
The moon was shining sulkily, thought Eddy. Brain had regularly
recited ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’ too. For a long time Eddy
had squinted at full moons, trying to make out their aggrieved
faces.
‘You’d better stay, Ginge,’ said Brain. He always said this, but
Ginge would not leave his cats alone overnight. Sometimes
Eddy drove him home, sometimes Bridgie, though she was
certainly over the limit right now. If only he could stop reflexively
monitoring their intoxication levels.
‘I can take Ginge,’ said the Modern Priest, somehow reading
Eddy’s mind. Most unpleasant. ‘I’ll leave the Phillipstown details.’
‘Right you are,’ said Eddy, standing, picking up the empty
bottles from the table. ‘Mercy Buttercup. Kia ora, homies.’
‘Right you are, Eddy,’ said Ginge, thrusting his glass up again.
‘Workers of the World Unite!’ Indulgent chuckles all round.
Jesus wept. They were like a bad 80s sitcom. Eddy felt a
scream might suddenly burst from him.
Instead, he took refuge in his long-serving rage-repellent:
he began to whistle as he mooched from the room. It was the
patter song from The Pirates of Penzance, a great favourite of
the Modern Priest’s. He had once played the Modern Major-
General to Brain’s Frederick in a school production. They
were surely the last two Gilbert & Sullivan devotees on earth.

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Sometimes after several wines, the Modern Priest got down on

Brain’s old vinyl, and it was all ‘Take a Pair of Sparkling Eyes’
and ‘Poor Wandering One’. Against his will, Eddy had, over
the years, become familiar enough with the loathsome G&S
repertoire, just as he was conversant with an entire antediluvian
alternative culture unknown to his peers: the Father Brown
stories, great tracts of T.S. Eliot, Vaughan Williams’ choral
music, and the spiritual songs of the Medical Mission nuns.
He was somehow simultaneously an Edwardian and a child of
the 1960s, though he’d been born in 1993.
‘What do you expect?’ said Thos More. ‘Your adoptive uncle-
father was a born great-granddad.’ Well, quite.
The patter song parody had been Eddy’s idea. He and Thos
had written the lyrics in an afternoon, gleefully rehearsing until
they had it all by heart. Of course, its full glory would only ever
be performed to themselves, but Eddy had whistled the tune
many times in the Modern Priest’s company, softly or with rude
heartiness. It was a disguised insult, a dagger to the heart under
cover of camaraderie — though perhaps he had once or twice
seen unease flit across the Modern Priest’s handsome face . . .
He rinsed the wine bottles and put them in the recycling box,
whistling adagio. The song should be up-tempo, but he liked to
hit the notes in their true tuneful middle, hear the lyrics clearly
in his head: a perfectly camp caricature, and a bitter lament.
I am the very model of a modern man of Goh-hoh-hod
I catechise, I weaponise the armies of the Catholic squad
I’m liturgi-cally forward, I have earned the name of Father Mod
I baptise, I sermonise, I steer my peeps from birth to sod . . .

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