When I said nothing, he lurched forward and slapped the table suddenly like a volley of gunfire. "Bam bam bam! Bam bam bam!"

Wonder Boy, who was still sitting on the chair at the head of the table, p.r.i.c.ked back his ears at the noise and hissed, showing his horrible fangs. Then he leapt up on to the table in fighting pose, his back arched, his tail puffed out, and with a yowl he flew at Chaim Shapiro, going at his face with his claws. Chaim Shapiro fought back, trying to pull the big cat off, but Wonder Boy clung tight, his tail thrashing, his claws lashing. Mrs Shapiro shrieked frenziedly at both of them.

"Halt! Chaim! Stop this smecking! Wonder Boy! Raus!"

The cat hissed and fled, knocking over the jug of water that trickled down on to our legs. Chaim Shapiro pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed at his bleeding cheek. When he looked up, we saw that his gla.s.s eye had swivelled round grotesquely in its socket. Only the white was showing, staring out blankly like a boiled egg.

Everyone went quiet, as if shocked at how quickly the confrontation had flared up, and a sudden thought lit up like a light bulb in my head: these people-they're all completely mad. In another part of the house, we could hear a menacing yowl-Wonder Boy sizing up his next victim (feline, I suppose, for Mrs Shapiro's slippers were on her feet). It was Mrs Shapiro who spoke first. I noticed an appraising look in her eyes as she leaned over to Chaim and patted his arm.

"Darlink Chaim, there is no need to fight. If you heff no home you can live here mit us. You can take any room what you like-except of mine, of course. You can make all your beautiful renovations, mit your tool kit. Build in kitchen units. Dishwashers. Meekrowaves. My Nicky has told me everything what is needed for the modern kitchen." She took his hand and gave it a squeeze. "We will make dinner parties mit cultured conversations. Concerts in the evenings. Even we will heff poetry recitals if that is what you like." I could see his face softening as he pictured these delectable scenes. "You are my Arti's son, Chaim. This is always your home whenever you want. But my Attendents also must stay here mit me."

Her voice was so seductive that I might almost have applied for residency myself, even though I knew, as Chaim did not, about the Phantom Pooer. Chaim, I could tell, was already seduced.

"Ella, I can see you are quite a little home-pigeon, and I will gladly accept your invitation to take up my residence with you. And if the Arabs must stay, maybe we can divide the house between us. They keep to the top part of the house, and we stay in our part." He beamed magnanimously across the table.

"Hm! Next you will build a wall," said Mr Ali drily. "Checkpoint on the stairs. Then you will steal some more rooms for settlements."

Ishmail and Nabeel smiled confusedly.

"Have you got a sticking plaster, Mrs Shapiro?" I asked, to diffuse the tension.

Chaim's cheek was bleeding badly-Wonder Boy had taken quite a swipe. She scuttled off to find one. Mr Ali and the Attendents had convened a separate meeting in the kitchen. I could hear the clink of the coffee pot, and soon after the smell of freshly brewed coffee drifted into the room. So for a few minutes, Chaim Shapiro and I were alone together. He took off his jacket, hung it on the back of his chair, and undid the top b.u.t.ton of his white shirt. He was sweating profusely under the arms. Without the jacket he seemed to shrink in size. His bulk, I realised, was mainly shoulder pads.

The eye that looked at me-his good eye-was dark and sad, but it reminded me of the blazing brown eyes of the young woman in the photographs, and his round pudgy face ended in a little pointed chin like a crude copy of hers. I was still thinking that someone should stroke him behind the ears, but instead, I leaned forward and said, "You remind me of your mother."

He turned towards me and his look changed entirely, lit up with a smile so sweet and childlike it seemed to have strayed on to the wrong face.

"You knew my mother?"

"I didn't know her," I said. "I've seen her photo. You look like her."

"I wish you could have met her. Everybody who met her loved her." He was smiling that same baby smile, his heavy cheeks dimpling with pleasure at the memory.

"And your father..."

"Yes, Artem Shapiro. The musician. She was always talking about him, like the legs of a donkey."

"...why didn't he join her in Israel?" I found myself holding my breath.

"He was too sick. Lungs kaput. Ella was looking after him. Here in this house."

The death certificate had said lung cancer.

"And she never went back to him?"

"She wanted to build a garden in the desert. Can you imagine-with her naked hands? She would never leave until it was finished." A shadow settled over him and he seemed to shrivel up even more inside the white polyester shirt. "Then she got sick. Blood sickness. She died when I was ten years old. A few months after my father."

I remembered the date on the letter from Lydda. Chaim was born in 1950, so she must have died in 1960.

"I'm sorry. To lose your whole family...And then your injury..."

I wanted to ask how it had happened. I guessed he didn't know without looking in a mirror that the gla.s.s eye was turned the wrong way in its socket.

"But my family was the moshav-father, mother, sister, brother. After she died I stayed there with them. Everybody was family in our new nation."

It must have been the same moshav she wrote about in the letter, the stony hillside where she'd cradled her newborn baby in her arms, looking out to the west and waiting for her husband. I still had her photo at home in my bedroom. I'd bring it for him next time.

"Was she from Byelorussia too?"

"No, she came from Denmark. But they met in Sweden. They were married in London. And I was born in Israel." He smiled that chubby dimply smile. "Naomi Shapiro. She was a person who knew how to dream."

"She dreamed of a promised land?"

"Our homeland. Zion." His cheeks dimpled again. "Home sweet home."

But something was niggling me. Why does everyone go on about homeland? Surely what really matters is the people we're attached to? Ben and Stella were my homeland-yes, and Rip. I tried to imagine what it would be like to love a country more than them. I thought about the woman in the photographs-those dark eyes blazing with conviction. She'd left her love behind to find the homeland of her dreams and someone else-another Naomi Shapiro-had stepped into her place.

"But isn't it your homeland, too, Chaim? More so, because you were born there? Haven't you got a family? Friends? Colleagues? I can't understand why you want to make your life here."

At your age, I meant to add, but didn't want to seem rude.

"I was a teacher for thirty years. English language and literature." He shuffled in his chair. "Now I am retired. Not married. What woman wants to marry a one-eyed man?"

"Oh, I don't know..." Mrs Shapiro will soon sort you out, I was thinking.

She had reappeared with a rather grubby curling-at-the-corners sticking plaster, which she applied to his cheek with a little pat.

"Now your home is mit us, isn't it?"

I noticed that there were a couple of cat hairs adhering underneath.

"Thank you, Ella. My mother told me you were very solicitous to my father in his illness. And encouraging him to go to Israel upon his recovery. She showed me the letter you wrote."

I glanced across at Mrs Shapiro.

"It was very long ago," she said. Some inscrutable emotion flitted across her face and she gave a little shrug. "Sometimes it's better to let the past alone."

"Yes, long ago." He sat back heavily in his chair. "You know, Ella, this country, this Israel, it is not the same country she dreamed of. It should have been a beautiful country-prosperous, modern, democratic. Founded on justice and the rule of law. But they they have spoiled it with their fanaticism." have spoiled it with their fanaticism."

He gestured with his head towards the kitchen where Mr Ali and the Attendents were still chatting in Arabic. There was a clink of coffee being poured.

"You know, Miss Georgiana, no teacher wants to have blood of children on his hands. Not even of little stone-throwing Arab ratscallions."

But I wasn't really listening, my mind had drifted back to what he was saying before Wonder Boy had lashed out with his claws. To do a great right, do a little wrong. That was Ba.s.sanio, in The Merchant of Venice The Merchant of Venice. I'd done it for 'A' level. But what was it that Portia had said? Something about the quality of mercy. When mercy seasons justice. That was it.

"So what do you think is the solution?" I asked.

"There is no solution. I can see no possibility of peace in my lifetime." He sank lower in his chair, resting his chin on his hands. "So long as they continue with their attacks, we will continue our defences. We are trapped in t.i.ts for tats. It is impossible for someone so sensitive like myself to live life this way."

"But...it's never too late, is it? For peace? I mean, if only the will is there I was thinking even as I spoke that the words sounded good, but they were probably tosh. The will for peace-Rip and I had still not managed to work it out, had we? Too late for me, Miss Georgiana." He sighed. "For at my back I always hear time's horse-drawn chariot galloping near."

"Winged." I couldn't stop myself, but he was lost in his thoughts and didn't hear. Maybe I should introduce him to Mark Diabello. They would have the same taste in poetry.

I noticed, as I walked home in the early evening, that the silver buds of the p.u.s.s.y willow had opened out, and flaunted golden flecks of pollen in their fur. The air was soft and moist. A fine spring rain dampened my face and settled like mist on my hair; it glistened on the leaves and fell in slow heavy drops from the overhanging branches. Everything was cool and green. It was a different world to that of Chaim Shapiro and Mustafa Ali-but it was the same world. We all had to learn to live here somehow.

I'd felt so full of pity when Mr Ali had told me his story, if I'd had a gun, I would have gone out myself to seek revenge for his lost home and violated family. Now I was beginning to feel sorry for this sad crumpled man, this one-eyed orphan of his mother's broken dreams. My parents had taught me always to look out for the underdog, but even underdogs can snap and snarl. How could I know who'd started it? Whose fault it really was? Maybe that was the wrong question to ask in the first place. If you could just get the human bonding right, maybe the other details-laws, boundaries, const.i.tution-would all fall into place. It was just a case of finding the right adhesive for the adherends. Mercy. Forgiveness. If only it came in tubes.

It wasn't until I was almost at home that I remembered I'd never asked Chaim how he had lost his eye. Had he been caught up in the revenge attack at Lydda airport? I recalled my conversation with Ben a week or so ago-the ancient prophecy of the battle between Jesus and Antichrist at the gates of Lydda which was supposed to precede the end of the world. An airport is is a kind of a gate to a city-isn't it? But surely the terrorists wouldn't have known the words of the prophets. I felt a small quake of dread in my guts. How could the present reach back into the past? What mysterious tendrils of causation could have brought about this connection? No wonder Ben was so rattled. And Dajjal, the devil with one eye? But Chaim Shapiro was no devil, he was a casualty, too-a stray soul who had lost his mother too young. Without his shoulder pads, he was just a sweaty middle-aged man in a polyester shirt. Still, I felt a shudder as if an ancient hand had tapped my shoulder and a voice from another world had whispered, " a kind of a gate to a city-isn't it? But surely the terrorists wouldn't have known the words of the prophets. I felt a small quake of dread in my guts. How could the present reach back into the past? What mysterious tendrils of causation could have brought about this connection? No wonder Ben was so rattled. And Dajjal, the devil with one eye? But Chaim Shapiro was no devil, he was a casualty, too-a stray soul who had lost his mother too young. Without his shoulder pads, he was just a sweaty middle-aged man in a polyester shirt. Still, I felt a shudder as if an ancient hand had tapped my shoulder and a voice from another world had whispered, "Armageddon."

43.

Unpromising adherends As I approached my house, the daylight was already fading and I could see through Ben's window that his computer monitor was on, the screen saver flickering white and black. That was strange. Ben was supposed to be with Rip. Maybe he'd forgotten to turn it off before he left. Or maybe he'd come back early.

"Hi, Ben!" I shouted up the stairs as I came in through the door. There was no reply. I put the kettle on, then I went up and tapped on the door of his room. No answer. So I pushed it open.

There was that musty smell of socks and trainers, and there was the screen saver whizzing around in the dusk, hurling its dizzying pattern against the walls. White! Red! Black! White! Red! Black! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! The walls lit up, burst into flames, blackened to char. My ears were filled with a terrifying sound that I thought at first was the computer until I recognized the roar of blood beating in my own head. From across the room, a lumbering monster with hideous teeth lurched towards me-Ben's Ore poster, fleet-ingly illuminated by the flare of the screen. Then I saw Ben. He was lying on the floor between the bed and the desk, crumpled like a bundle of rags among his scattered clothes.

"Ben!" I screamed. But as if in a nightmare the word came out of my mouth as a voiceless croak.

Then I realised it wasn't just the jerky light; Ben was moving; twitching. Head thrown back, eyes open and rolled back in their sockets like Chaim Shapiro's gla.s.s eye, flecks of foam or vomit dribbling from the corners of his mouth. I stumbled towards him, and as I did so, I knocked the chair which was snagged the around cable of the mouse, and the screen he'd been viewing came up-the same fiery red on black screen with dancing flames and one flashing word: Armageddon Armageddon.

I screwed up my eyes and reached across to pull the plug out of the socket. The room went dark. I switched the light on. Ben moaned and flailed with his arms and legs. A sickly sour smell was coming from him. A trickle of moisture darkened his trousers and puddled on the floor. I lay down beside him and folded him in my arms, stroking his cheeks and his forehead, whispering his name. I wasn't sure whether it was the right thing to do, but I held him tight until he lay still and his breathing slowed down. Then I phoned for an ambulance.

The next stage all happened very fast, in a whirl of panic and brisk paramedics and blue flashing lights. I tried ringing Rip from the ambulance but there was no reply so I sent him a text. After a few minutes Ben came round. He lifted his head from the stretcher, looking around him with a dazed expression.

"Where am I?"

"You're on your way to hospital."

"Oh." He seemed disappointed.

"I'm your mum."

"I know that."

I held his hand, whispering little mother-words as we ripped through the evening streets, siren howling.

The ward they admitted him to was the same one Mrs Shapiro had been in that first time. The sister-I didn't recognise her-came and drew the curtain around us. It was frightening to be on the inside of that drawn curtain. I remembered the gurglings that had come from the next bed as the lady of the pink dressing gown pa.s.sed away. The doctor who came round to see us seemed hardly older than Ben-in fact he had the same gelled-up hairstyle as Damian.

"It seems like he's had a fit," he said. His voice had a nasal Liverpool tw.a.n.g.

"What-epilepsy?"

"Could be. Could just be a one-off."

"But why?"

"Too early to tell. We'll have a better idea when we've done the MRI scan."

"When will that be?"

"Tomorrow. He'll see the neurologist. Let him sleep it off tonight. We'll keep an eye on him, don't worry. It's not that uncommon, you know, in young people his age."

He smiled awkwardly, fiddling with the stethoscope that hung round his neck. He was trying to be kind, but he was too young to be convincing.

Then the curtain parted and Rip and Stella came in. Rip ignored me, and I think I might have done a runner if Stella hadn't come straight up and hugged me.

"What's up with Ben, Mum?"

How pretty she was, but so thin-too thin. She smelled of apple shampoo and neroli. I held her and stroked her hair that sheafed down her back like dark silk. I wanted to burst into tears, but I forced a cheerful grin on to my face.

"Something happened-he had a fit, or something. I think he's going to be okay."

Stella squeezed her brother's hand. "Yer daft little beggar." She was putting on a thick Leeds voice, the voice of their shared childhood banter.

He opened his eyes and looked around with a beatific smile on his face.

"Hey, everybody!" Then he drifted off again.

Rip stood framed by the curtain, trying to hector the doctor into conversation, demanding explanations and clarifications which the young man was clearly unable to give, and all the time carefully avoiding meeting my eyes. When the doctor left he came and sat on the other side of the bed, still ignoring me, and took Ben's other hand, leaning over and talking in a sickly cooey-cooey voice. I got up and walked out.

I went as far as the swing doors, then I stopped. I knew I was being ridiculous. I turned round and went and sat in the day room to calm down, clenching and unclenching my hands-in-two - -three-four; out-two-three - -four-breathing in the heavy medical air that was thick with all the anxiety and grief that had been exuded in this room. I remembered the drip lady, and the wild cackling. What had all that been about? It seemed an age ago. A minute later, the door swung open and Stella came in. Her face was red and blotchy. At first I thought she was upset; then I realised she was furious.

"Mum, you're mental-you and Dad-you've got to stop acting like kids. We're sick of it, me and Ben. We want you to...I dunno...like, grow up."

She was chewing at a strand of hair that had straggled across her face, just like she'd done as a child. I stared at her. She was twenty years old, as skinny as a twig, and she was wearing a skirt that showed her knickers when she bent over; and I'd carried her in my belly and fed her at my breast, and here she was telling me me to grow up. to grow up.

"Yes, but what about him? him?" I whined.

"Him, too. I've told him, too. Both of you. You've got to stop it."

She sounded just like Mrs Rowbottom reprimanding Gavin Connolly for flicking pellets.

"But he started it."

"Doesn't matter who started it. We're fed up of it. And it And it's not doing Ben any good."

She brushed back the hair from her face and tried to look stern.

"Okay. Well, I will if he will. But I'm not..."