If it is not too far-fetched a comparison, the sexual and cultural revolution we have experiencedthese past two decades is not a million miles away from the horticultural revolution that has takenplace in our herbaceous borders and sunken beds. Where once we were satisfied with our biennials,poorly coloured flowers thrusting weakly out of the earth and blooming a few times a year (if wewere lucky), now we are demanding both variety and continuity in our flowers, the passionatecolours of exotic blooms 365 days a year. Where once gardeners swore by the reliability2 of theself-pollinating plant in which pollen3 is transferred from the stamen to the stigma4 of the sameflower (autogamy), now we are more adventurous5, positively6 singing the praises of crosspollination where pollen is transferred from one flower to another on the same plant (geitonogamy),or to a flower of another plant of the same species (xenogamy). The birds and the bees, the thickhaze of pollen these are all to be encouraged! Yes, self-pollination is the simpler and more certainof the two fertilization processes, especially for many species that colonize8 by copiously9 repeatingthe same parental10 strain. But a species cloning such uniform offspring runs the risk of having itsentire population wiped out by a single evolutionary11 event. In the garden, as in the social andpolitical arena12, change should be the only constant. Our parents and our parents' petunias13 havelearnt this lesson the hard way. The March of History is unsentimental, tramping over a generationand its annuals with ruthless determination.
The fact is, cross-pollination produces more varied15 offspring that are better able to cope with achanged environment. It is said cross pollinating plants also tend to produce more and better-qualityseeds. If my one-year-old son is anything to go by (a cross-pollination between a lapsed-Catholichorticulturalist feminist16, and an intellectual Jew!), then I can certainly vouch17 for the truth of this.
Sisters, the bottom line is this: if we are to continue wearing flowers in our hair into the next decade,they must be hardy18 and ever at hand, somethingonly the truly mothering gardener can ensure. If we wish to provide happy playgrounds for ourchildren, and corners of contemplation for our husbands, we need to create gardens of diversity andinterest. Mother Earth is great and plentiful19, but even she requires the occasional helping20 hand!
Joyce Chalfen, from The New Flower Power, pub. 1976, Caterpillar21 PressJoyce Chalfen wrote The New Flower Power in a poky attic22 room overlooking her ownrambling garden during the blistering24 summer of '76. It was an ingenuous25 beginning for a strangelittle book more about relationships than flowers that went on to sell well and steadily28 through thelate seventies (not a coffee table essential by any means, but a close look at any baby-boomer'sbookshelves will reveal it lying dusty and neglected near those other familiars, Dr. Spock, ShirleyConran, a battered29 Women's Press copy of The Third Life of Grange Copeland by Alice Walker).
The popularity of The New Flower Power surprised no one more than Joyce. It had practicallywritten itself, taking only three months, most of which she spent dressed in a tiny t-shirt and a pairof briefs in an attempt to beat the heat, breast-feeding joshua intermittently30, almost absent-mindedly,and thinking to herself, between easy-flowing paragraphs, that this was exactly the life she hadhoped for. This was the future she dared to envisage31 when she first saw Marcus's intelligent littleeyes giving her big white legs the once-over as she crossed the quad32 of his Oxbridge college,miniskirted, seven years earlier. She was one of those people who knew immediately, at first sight,even as her future spouse33 opened his mouth to say an initial, nervous hello.
A very happy marriage. That summer of '76, what with the heat and the flies and the endless melodies of ice-cream vans,things happened in a haze7 sometimes Joyce had to pinch herself to make sure this was real.
Marcus's office was down the hall on the right; twice a day she'd pace down the corridor, Joshua onone substantial hip27, nudging open the door with the other, just to check he was still there, that hereally existed, and, leaning lustily over the desk, she'd grab a kiss from her favourite genius, hard atwork on his peculiar34 helixes, his letters and numbers. She liked to pull him away from all that andshow him the latest remarkable35 thing that Joshua had done or learnt; sounds, letter recognition,coordinated movement, imitation: just like you, she'd say to Marcus, good genes36, he'd say to her,patting her behind and luxurious37 thighs38, weighing each breast in his hand, patting her small belly,generally admiring his English Pear, his earth goddess . and then she'd be satisfied, padding back toher office like a big cat with a cub39 in its jaws40, covered in a light layer of happy sweat. In an aimlesshappy way, she could hear herself murmuring, an oral version of the toilet-door doodles ofadolescents: Joyce and Marcus, Marcus and Joyce.
Marcus was also writing a book that summer of '76. Not so much a book (in Joyce's sense) as astudy. It was called Chimeric41 Mice: An Evaluation42 and Practical Exploration of the Work ofBrinster(1974) Concerning the Embryonic44 Fusion45 of Mouse Strains at the Eight-cell Stage of Development.
Joyce had read biology in college, but she didn't attempt to touch the many-paged manuscript thatwas growing like a molehill at her husband's feet. Joyce knew her limitations. She had no greatdesire to read Marcus's books. It was enough just to know they were being written, somehow. Itwas enough to know the man she had married was writing them. Her husband didn't just makemoney, he didn't just make things, or sell things that other people had made, he created beings. Hewent to the edges of his God's imagination and made mice Yahweh could not conceive of: micewith rabbit genes, mice with webbed feet (or so Joyce imagined, she didn't ask), mice who yearafter year expressed more and more eloquently46 Marcus's designs: from the hit-or-miss process of selective breeding, to the chimeric fusion of embryos47, and then the rapid developments that lay beyond Joyce's ken1 and in Marcus's future DNA48 micro injection retrovirus-mediated trans genesis (for which he came within an inch of the Nobel, 1987), embryonic stem cell-mediated gene14 transfer all processes by which Marcusmanipulated ova, regulated the over or under expression of a gene, planting instructions andimperatives in the germ line to be realized in physical characteristics. Creating mice whose verybodies did exactly what Marcus told them. And always with humanity in mind a cure for cancer,cerebral palsy, Parkinson's always with the firm belief in the perfectibility of all life, in the possibility of making it moreefficient, more logical (for illness was, to Marcus, nothing more than bad logic49 on the part of thegenome, just as capitalism50 was nothing more than bad logic on the part of the social animal), moreeffective, more Chalfenist in the way it proceeded. He expressed contempt equally towards theanimal-rights maniacs51 horrible people Joyce had to shoo from the door with a curtain pole when afew extremists caught wind of Marcus's dealings in mice or theA hippies or the tree people oranyone who failed to grasp the simple fact that social and scientific progress were brothers-in-arms.
It was the Chalfen way, handed down the family for generations; they had a congenital inability tosuffer fools gladly or otherwise. If you were arguing with a Chalfen, trying to put a case for thesestrange French men who think truth is a function of language, or that history is interpretive and science metaphorical53, the Chalfen in question would hear you out quietly, then wave his hand, dismissive, feeling no need to dignify54 such bunkum with a retort. Truth was truth to a Chalfen. And Genius was genius. Marcus created beings. And Joyce was his wife, industrious55 in creating smallerversions of Marcus.
Fifteen years later and Joyce would still challenge anyone to show her a happier marriage thanhers. Three more children had followed Joshua: Benjamin (fourteen), Jack56 (twelve) and Oscar (six),bouncy, curly-haired boys, all articulate and amusing. The Inner Life of Houseplants (1984) and acollege chair for Marcus had seen them through the eighties boom and bust57, financing an extrabathroom, a conservatory58 and life's pleasures: old cheese, good wine, winters in Florence. Nowthere were two new works in-progress: The Secret Passions of the Climbing Rose and TransgenicMice: A Study of the Inherent Limitations of DNA Microinjection (Gordon and Ruddle, 1981) inComparison with Embryonic Stem (ES) Cell-mediated Gene Transfer (Gassier et al, 1986). Marcuswas also working on a 'pop science' book, against his better judgement, a collaboration59 with anovelist that he hoped would finance at least the first two children well into their university years.
Joshua was a star maths pupil, Benjamin wanted to be a geneticist just like his father, Jack's passionwas psychiatry61, and Oscar could checkmate his father's king in fifteen moves. And all this despitethe fact that the Chalfens had sent their kids to Glenard Oak, daring to take the ideological63 gambletheir peers guiltily avoided, those nervous liberals who shrugged65 their shoulders and coughed upthe cash for a private education. And not only were they bright children, they were happy, nothot-housed in any way. Their only after-school activity (they despised sport) was the individualtherapy five times a week at the hands of an old fashioned Freudian called Marjorie who did Joyceand Marcus (separately) on weekends. It might appear extreme to non Chalfens, but Marcus hadbeen brought up with a strong respect for therapy (in his family therapy had long supplantedJudaism) and there was no arguing with the result. Every Chalfen proclaimed themselves mentallyhealthy and emotionally stable. The children had their oedipal complexes early and in the rightorder, they were all fiercely heterosexual, they adored their mother and admired their father, and,unusually, this feeling only increased as they reached adolescence66. Rows were rare, playful and only ever over political or intellectualtopics (the importance of anarchy67, the need for higher taxes, the problem of South Africa, the soulbody dichotomy), upon which they all agreed anyway.
The Chalfens had no friends. They interacted mainly with the Chalfen extended family (thegood genes which were so often referred to: two scientists, one mathematician68, three psychiatristsand a young cousin working for the Labour Party). Under sufferance and on public holidays, theyvisited Joyce's long-rejected lineage, the Connor clan69, Daily Mail letter-writers who even nowcould not disguise their distaste for Joyce's Israelite love-match. Bottom line: the Chalfens didn'tneed other people. They referred to themselves as nouns, verbs and occasionally adjectives: It's theChalfen way, And then he came out with a real Chalfenism, He's Chalfening again, We need to be abit more Chalfenist about this. Joyce challenged anyone to show her a happier family, a moreChalfenist family than theirs.
And yet, and yet.. . Joyce pined for the golden age when she was the linchpin of the Chalfenfamily. When people couldn't eat without her. When people couldn't dress without her assistance.
Now even Oscar could make himself a snack. Sometimes there seemed nothing to improve, nothingto cultivate; recently she found herself pruning70 the dead sections from her rambling23 rose, wishing she could find some fault of Joshua's worthy71 of attention, some secret trauma72 of Jack's orBenjamin's, a perversion73 in Oscar. But they were all perfect. Sometimes, when the Chalfens satround their Sunday dinner, tearing apart a chicken until there was nothing left but a tattered74 ribcage,gobbling silently, speaking only to retrieve75 the salt or the pepper the boredom76 was palpable. Thecentury was drawing to a close and the Chalfens were bored. Like clones of each other, their dinnertable was an exercise in mirrored perfection, Chalfenism and all its principles reflecting itselfinfinitely, bouncing from Oscar to Joyce, Joyce to Joshua, Joshua to Marcus, Marcus to Benjamin,Benjamin to Jack ad nauseam across the meat and vcg. They were still the same remarkable family they always hadbeen. But having cut all ties with their Oxbridge peers judges, TV execs, advertisers, lawyers,actors and other frivolous78 professions Chalfenism sneered79 at there was no one left to admireChalfenism itself. Its gorgeous logic, its compassion80, its intellect. They were like wild-eyedpassengers of The Mayflower with no rock in sight. Pilgrims and prophets with no strange land.
They were bored, and none more than Joyce.
To fill long days left alone in the house (Marcus commuted81 to his college), Joyce's boredomoften drove her to flick82 through the Chalfens' enormous supply of delivered magazines (NewMarxism, Living Marxism, New Scientist, Oxfam Report, Third World Action, Anarchist's Journal)and feel a yearning83 for the bald Romanians or beautiful pot-bellied Ethiopians yes, she knew it wasawful, but there it was children crying out from glossy84 paper, needing her. She needed to be needed.
She'd be the first to admit it. She hated it, for example, when one after the other her children,pop-eyed addicts85 of breast milk, finally kicked the habit. She usually stretched it to two or threeyears, and, in the case of Joshua, four, but though the supply never ended, the demand did. Shelived in dread86 of the inevitable87 moment when they moved from soft drugs to hard, the switch fromcalcium to the sugared delights of Ribena. It was when she finished breastfeeding Oscar that shethrew herself back into gardening, back into the warm mulch where tiny things relied on her.
Then one fine day Millat Iqbal and Me Jones walked reluctantly into her life. She was in theback garden at the time, tearfully examining her Garter Knight88 delphiniums (heliotrope and cobaltblue with a jet-black centre, like a bullet hole in the sky) for signs of thrip a nasty pest that hadalready butchered her bocconia. The doorbell rang. Tilting89 her head back, Joyce waited till shecould hear the slippered90 feet of Marcus running down the stairs from his study and then, satisfied that he would answer it, delved91 back into the thick. With raised eyebrow92 she inspected the mouthy double blooms which stood to attention along thedelphinium's eight-foot spine93. Thrip, she said to herself out loud, acknowledging the dog-earedmutation on every other flower; thrip, she repeated, not without pleasure, for it would need seeingto now, and might even give rise to a book or at least a chapter; thrip. Joyce knew a thing or twoabout thrip:
Thrips, common name for minute insects that feed on a wide range of plants, enjoying inparticular the warm atmosphere required for an indoor or exotic plant. Most species are no morethan 1.5 mm (0.06 inch) long as adults; some are wingless, but others have two pairs of short wingsfringed with hairs. Both adults and nymphs have sucking, piercing mouth parts. Although thripspollinate some plants and also eat some insect pests, they are both boon94 and bane for the moderngardener and are generally considered pests to be controlled with insecticides, such as Lindex.
Scientific classification: thrips make up the order Thysanoptera. -Joyce Chalfen, The Inner Life of Houseplants from the index on pests and parasites95 Yes. Thrips have good instincts: essentially96 they are charitable, productive organisms whichhelp the plant in its development. Thrips mean well, but thrips go too far, thrips go beyondpollinating and eating pests; thrips begin to eat the plant itself, to eat it from within. Thrip willinfect generation after generation of j delphiniums if you let it. What can one do about thrip if, as inthis case, the Lindex hadn't worked? What can you do but prune97 hard, prune ruthlessly and beginfrom the beginning? Joyce took a deep breath. She was doing this for the delphinium. She wasdoing this because without her the delphinium had no chance. Joyce slipped the huge gardenscissors out of her apron98 pocket, grabbed the screaming orange handles firmly and placed the exposed throat of a blue delphinium bloom between two slices of silver. Tough love.
"Joyce! Ja-oyce! Joshua and his marijuana-smoking friends are here!"Pulchritude99. From the Latin, pulcher, beautiful. That was the word that first struck Joyce whenMillat Iqbal stepped forward on to the steps of her conservatory, sneering100 at Marcus's bad jokes,shading his violet eyes from a fading winter sun. Pulchritude: not just the concept but the wholephysical word appeared before her as if someone had typed it on to her retina Pulchritude beautywhere you would least suspect it, hidden in a word that looked like it should signify a belch101 or askin infection. Beauty in a tall brown young man who should have been indistinguishable to Joycefrom those she regularly bought milk and bread from, gave her accounts to for inspection102, or passedher chequebook to from behind the thick glass of a bank till.
"Mill-yat Ick-Ball," said Marcus, making a performance of the foreign syllables103. "And IrieJones, apparently104. Friends of Josh's. I was just saying to Josh, these are the best-looking friends ofhis we've ever seen! They're usually small and weedy, so long sighted they're short-sighted, andwith club-feet. And they're never female. Well!" continued Marcus jovially105, dismissing Joshua'slook of horror. "It's a damn good thing you turned up. We've been looking for a woman to marryold Joshua .. ."Marcus was standing106 on the garden steps, quite openly admiring Irie's breasts (though, to be fair,Irie was a good head and shoulders taller than him). "He's a good sort, smart, a bit weak on fractalsbut we love him anyway. Well.. ."Marcus paused for Joyce to come out of the garden, take off her gloves, shake hands with Millatand follow them all into the kitchen. "You are a big girl.""Er .. . thanks.""We like that around here a healthy eater. All Chalfens are healthy eaters. I don't put on a pound,but Joyce does. In all the right places, naturally. You're staying for dinner?"Irie stood dumb in the middle of the kitchen, too nervous to speak. These were not any speciesof parent she recognized.
"Oh, don't worry about Marcus," said Joshua with a jolly wink107. "He's a bit of an old letch. It's aChalfen joke. They like to bombard you the minute you get in the door. Find out how sharp you are.
Chalfens don't think there's any point in pleasantries. Joyce, this is Irie and Millat. They're the twofrom behind the science block."Joyce, partially108 recovered from the vision of Millat Iqbal, gathered herself together sufficientlyto play her designated role as Mother Chalfen.
"So you're the two who've been corrupting110 my eldest111 son. I'm Joyce. Do you want some tea? Soyou're Josh's bad crowd. I was just pruning the delphiniums. This is Benjamin, Jack and that'sOscar in the hallway. Strawberry and mango or normal?" "Normal for me, thanks, Joyce," said Joshua.
"Same, thanks," said Irie.
"Yeah," said Millat.
"Three normal and one mango, please, Marcus, darling, please."Marcus, who was just heading out the door with a newly packed tobacco pipe, backtracked witha weary smile. "I'm a slave to this woman," he said, grabbing her around the waist, like a gamblercollecting his chips in circled arms. "But if I wasn't, she might run off with any pretty young manwho rolled into the house. I don't fancy falling victim to Darwinism this week."This hug, explicit112 as a hug can be, was directed front-ways-on, seemingly for the appreciationof Millat. Joyce's big milky-blue eyes were on him all the time.
"That's what you want, Me," said Joyce in a familial stage whisper, as if they'd known eachother for five years rather than five minutes, 'a man like Marcus for the long term. Thesefly-by-nights are all right for fun, but what kind of fathers do they make?"Joshua coloured. "Joyce, she just stepped into the house! Let her have some tea!"Joyce feigned113 surprise. "I haven't embarrassed you, have I? You have to forgive Mother Chalfen,my foot and mouth are on intimate terms."But Me wasn't embarrassed; she was fascinated, enamoured after five minutes. No one in theJones household made jokes about Darwin, or said 'my foot and mouth are on intimate terms', oroffered choices of tea, or let speech flow freely from adult to child, child to adult, as if the channelof communication between these two tribes was untrammelled, unblocked by history, free.
"Well," said Joyce, released by Marcus and planting herself down at the circular table, invitingthem to do the same, 'you look very exotic. Where are you from, if you don't mind me asking?""Willesden," said Irie and Millat simultaneously114.
"Yes, yes, of course, but where originally'?""Oh," said Millat, putting on what he called a bud-budding-ding accent. "You are meaningwhere from am I originally."Joyce looked confused. "Yes, originally.""Whitechapel," said Millat, pulling out a fag. "Via the Royal London Hospital and the 207 bus."All the Chalfens milling through the kitchen, Marcus, Josh, Benjamin, Jack, exploded intolaughter. Joyce obediently followed suit.
"Chill out, man," said Millat, suspicious. "It wasn't that fucking funny."But the Chalfens carried on. Chalfens rarely made jokes unless they were exceptionally lame115 ornumerical in nature or both: What did the zero say to the eight? Nice belt.
"Are you going to smoke that?" asked Joyce suddenly when the laughter died down, a note ofpanic in her voice. "In here? Only,we hate the smell. We only like the smell of German tobacco. And if we smoke it we smoke itin Marcus's room, because it upsets Oscar otherwise, doesn't it, Oscar?""No," said Oscar, the youngest and most cherubic of the boys, busy building a Lego empire, "Idon't care.""It upsets Oscar," repeated Joyce, in that stage-whisper again. "He hates it."Till.. . take ... it... to ... the .. . garden," said Millat slowly, in the kind of voice you use on theinsane or foreign. "Back ... in ... a ... minute."As soon as Millat was out of earshot, and as Marcus brought over the teas, the years seemed to fall like dead skin from Joyce and she bent116 across the table like a schoolgirl. "God, he's gorgeous,isn't he? Like Omar Sharif thirty years ago. Funny Roman nose. Are you and he .. . ?""Leave the girl alone, Joyce," admonished117 Marcus. "She's hardly going to tell you about it, isshe?""No," said Irie, feeling she'd like to tell these people everything. "We're not.""Just as well. His parents probably have something arranged for him, no? The headmaster toldme he was a Muslim boy. I suppose he should be thankful he's not a girl, though, hmm?
Unbelievable what they do to the girls. Remember that Time article, Marcus?"Marcus was foraging118 in the fridge for a cold plate of yesterday's potatoes. "Mmm.
Unbelievable.""But you know, just from the little I've seen, he doesn't seem at all like most Muslim children. Imean, I'm talking from personal experience, I go into a lot of schools with my gardening, workingwith kids of all ages. They're usually so silent, you know, terribly meek119 but he's so full of... spunk120!
But boys like that want the tall blondes, don't they? I mean, that's the bottom line, when . they'rethat handsome. I know how you feel... I used to like the troublemakers121 when I was your age, butyou learn later, you really do. Danger isn't really sexy, take my word for it. You'd do a lot better with someone like Joshua.""Mum!""He's been talking about you non-stop all week.""Mum!"Joyce faced her reprimand with a little smile. "Well, maybe I'm being too frank for you youngpeople. I don't know ... in my day, you just were a lot more direct, you had to be if you wanted tocatch the right man. Two hundred girls in the university and two thousand men! They were fightingfor a girl but if you were smart, you were choosy.""My, you were choosy," said Marcus, shuffling122 up behind her and kissing her ear. "And withsuch good taste."Joyce took the kisses like a girl indulging her best friend's younger brother.
"But your mother wasn't sure, was she? She thought I was too intellectual, that I wouldn't wantchildren.""But you convinced her. Those hips26 would convince anyone!""Yes, in the end .. . but she underestimated me, didn't she? She didn't think I was Chalfenmaterial.""She just didn't know you then.""Well, we surprised her, didn't we!""A lot of hard copulation went into pleasing that woman!""Four grandchildren later!"During this exchange, Me tried to concentrate on Oscar, now creating an ouroboros from a bigpink elephant by stuffing the trunk into its own rear end. She'd never been so close to this strangeand beautiful thing, the middle class, and experienced the kind of embarrassment123 that is actuallyintrigue, fascination124. It was both strange and wondrous125. She felt like the prude who walks through anudist beach, examining the sand. She felt like Columbus meeting the exposed arawaks, notknowing where to look.
"Excuse my parents," said Joshua. They can't keep their hands off each other."But even this was said with pride, because the Chalfen children knew their parents were rarecreatures, a happily married couple, numbering no more than a dozen in the whole of Glenard Oak.
Me thought of her own parents, whose touches were now virtual, existing only in the absenceswhere both sets of fingers had previously126 been: the remote control, the biscuit tin lid, the lightswitches.
She said, "It must be great to feel that way after twenty years or whatever."Joyce swivelled round as if someone had released a catch. "It's marvelous! It's incredible! Youjust wake up one morning and realize monogamy isn't a bind127 it sets you free! And children need togrow up around that. I don't know if you've ever experienced it you read a lot about howAfro-Caribbeans seem to find it hard to establish long-term relationships. That's terribly sad, isn't it?
I wrote about one Dominican woman in The Inner Life of Houseplants who had moved her pottedazalea through six different men's houses; once by the windowsill, then in a dark corner, then in thesouth-facing bedroom, etc. You just can't do that to a plant."This was a classic Joyce tangent, and Marcus and Joshua rolled their eyes, affectionately.
Millat, fag finished, sloped back in.
"Are we going to get some studying done, yeah? This is all very nice but I want to go out thisevening. At some point."While Me had been lost in her reveries assessing the Chalfens like a romantic anthropologist,Millat had been out in the garden, looking through the windows, casing the joint128. Where Me sawculture, refinement129, class, intellect, Millat saw money, lazy money, money that was just hangingaround this family not doing anything in particular, money in need of a good cause that might aswell be him.
"So," said Joyce, clapping her hands, trying to keep them all in the room a little longer, trying tohold off, for as long as possible, the reassertion of Chalfen silence, 'y u're all going to be studyingtogether! Well, you and Me are really welcome. I was saying to your headmaster, wasn't I, Marcus,that this really shouldn't feel like punishment. It's not exactly a heinous130 crime. Between us, I usedto be a pretty good marijuana gardener myself at one time .. .""Way out," said Millat.
Nurture131, thought Joyce. Be patient, water regularly and don't lose your temper when pruning.
'.. . and your headmaster explained to us how your own home environments aren't exactly .. .
well .. . I'm sure you'll find it easier to work here. Such an important year, the GCSEs. And it's soobvious that you're both bright anyone can tell that just by looking at your eyes. Can't they,Marcus?"Josh, your mother's asking me whether IQ expresses itself in the secondary physicalcharacteristics of eye colour, eye shape, etc. Is there a sensible answer to this inquiry132?"Joyce pressed on. Mice and men, genes and germs, that was Marcus's corner. Seedlings133, lightsources, growth, nurture, the buried heart of things that was hers. As on any missionary134 vessel,tasks were delegated. Marcus on the prow135, looking for the storm. Joyce beneath deck, checking thelinen for bedbugs.
"Your headmaster knows how much I hate to see potential wasted that's why he sent you to us.""And because he knows most of the Chalfens are four hundred times smarter than him!" said Jack, doing a star jump. He was still young and hadn't yet learnt to demonstrate his pride in hisfamily in a more socially acceptable manner. "Even Oscar is.""No, I'm not," said Oscar, kicking in a Lego garage he had recently made. "I'm the stupidest inthe world.""Oscar's got an IQ of 178," whispered Joyce. "It's a bit daunting136, even when you're his mum.""Wow," said Me, turning, with the rest of the room, to appreciate Oscar trying to ingest the headof a plastic giraffe. "That's remarkable.""Yes, but he's had everything, and so much of it is nurture, isn't it? I really believe that. We'vejust been lucky enough to give him so much and with a daddy like Marcus it's like having a strongsunbeam shining on him twenty-four hours a day, isn't it, darling? He's so fortunate to have that.
Well, they all are. Now, you may think this sounds strange, but it was always my aim to marry aman cleverer than me." Joyce put her hands on her hips and waited for Me to think that soundedstrange. "No, I really did. And I'm a staunch feminist, Marcus will tell you.""She's a staunch feminist," said Marcus from the inner sanctum of the fridge.
"I don't suppose you can understand that your generation have different ideas but I knew itwould be liberating137. And I knew what kind of father I wanted for my children. Now, that's surprisedyou, hasn't it? I'm sorry, but we really don't do small talk around here. If you're going to be hereevery week, I thought it best you got a proper dose of the Chalfensrnow."All the Chalfens who were in earshot for this last comment smiled and nodded.
Joyce paused and looked at Me and Millat the way she had looked at her Garter Knightdelphinium. She was a quick and experienced detector138 of illness, and there was damage here. Therewas a quiet pain in the first one (Irieanthits negressium marcus ilia a lack of a father figure perhaps,an intellect untapped, a low self-esteem; and in the second (Millaturea. brandolidia joyculatus)there was a deeper sadness, a terrible loss, a gaping139 wound. A hole that needed more than educationor money. That needed love. Joyce longed to touch the site with the tip of her Chalfen green fingerclose the gap, knit the skin.
"Can I ask? Your father? What does he?"(Joyce wondered what the parents did, what they had done.
When she found a mutated first bloom, she wanted to know where the cutting had come from.
Wrong question. It wasn't the parents, it wasn't just one generation, it was the whole century. Notthe bud but the bush.)"Curry-shifter," said Millat. "Bus-boy. Waiter.""Paper," began Irie. "Kind of folding it ... and working on things like perforations .. . kind ofdirect mail advertising140 but not really advertising, at least not the ideas end .. . kind of folding ' Shegave up. "It's hard to explain.""Oh yes. Yes, yes, yes. When there's a lack of a male role model you see .. . that's when thingsreally go awry141, in my experience. I wrote an article for Women's Earth recently. I described a schoolI worked in where I gave all the children a potted Busy Lizzie and told them to look after it for aweek like a daddy or mummy looks after a baby. Each child chose which parent they were going toemulate. This lovely little Jamaican boy, Winston, chose his daddy. The next week his motherphoned and asked why I'd asked Winston to feed his plant Pepsi and put it in front of the television.
I mean, it's just terrible, isn't it. But I think a lot of these parents just don't appreciate their children sufficiently109. Partly, it's the culture, you know? It just makes me so angry. The only thing I allowOscar to watch is Newsround for half an hour a day. That's more than enough.""Lucky Oscar," said Millat.
"Anyway, I'm just really excited about you being here because, because, the Chalfens, I mean itmay sound peculiar, but I really wanted to persuade your headmaster this was the best idea, andnow I've met you both I'm even more certain because the Chalfens-'
"Know how to bring the right things out in people," finished Joshua, 'they did with me.""Yes," said Joyce, relieved her search for the words was over, radiating pride. "Yes."Joshua pushed his chair back from the table and stood up.
"Well, we'd better get down to some study. Marcus, could you come up and help us a bit lateron the biology? I'm really bad at reducing the reproductive stuff in bite-size chunks142.""Sure. I'm working on my Future Mouse though." This was the family joke name for Marcus'sproject, and the younger Chalfens sang Future Mouse after him, imagining an anthropomorphicrodent in red shorts. "And I've got to play a bit of piano with Jack first. Scott Joplin. Jack's the lefthand, I'm the right. Not quite Art Tatum," he said, ruffling143 Jack's hair. "But we get by."Me tried her hardest to imagine Mr. Iqbal playing the right hand of Scott Joplin with his deadgrey digits144. Or Mr. Jones turning anything into bite-size chunks. She felt her cheeks flush with thewarm heat of Chalfenist revelation. So there existed fathers who dealt in the present, who didn'tdrag ancient history around like a chain and ball. So there were men who were not neck-high andsinking in the quagmire145 of the past.
"You'll stay for dinner, won't you?" pleaded Joyce. "Oscar really wants you to stay. Oscar loveshaving strangers in the house, he finds it really stimulating146. Especially brown strangers! Don't you,Oscar?""No, I don't," confided147 Oscar, spitting in Irie's ear. "I hate brown strangers.""He finds brown strangers really stimulating," whispered Joyce.
This has been the century of strangers, brown, yellow and white. This has been the century ofthe great immigrant experiment. It is only this late in the day that you can walk into a playgroundand find Isaac Leung by the fish pond, Danny Rahman in the football cage, Quang O'Rourkebouncing a basketball, and Me Jones humming a tune148. Children with first and last names on a directcollision course. Names that secrete149 within them mass exodus150, cramped151 boats and planes, coldarrivals, medical checks.
It is only this late in the day, and possibly only in Willesden, that you can find best friends Sitaand Sharon, constantly mistaken for each other because Sita is white (her mother liked the name)and Sharon is Pakistani (her mother thought it best less trouble). Yet, despite all the mixing up,despite the fact that we have finally slipped into each other's lives with reasonable comfort (like aman returning to his lover's bed after a midnight walk), despite all this, it is still hard to admit thatthere is no one more English than the Indian, no one more Indian than the English. There are stillyoung white men who are angry about that; who will roll out at closing time into the poorly litstreets with a kitchen knife wrapped in a tight fist.
But it makes an immigrant laugh to hear the fears of the nationalist, scared of infection,penetration, miscegenation152, when this is small fry, peanuts, compared to what the immigrant fearsdissolution, disappearance153. Even the unflappable Alsana Iqbal would regularly wake up in a puddleof her own sweat after a night visited by visions of Millat (genetically BB; where B stands for Bengali-ness) marrying someone called Sarah (aa where 'a' stands for Aryan), resulting in a childcalled Michael (Ba), who in turn marries somebody called Lucy (aa), leaving Alsana with a legacyof unrecognizable great-grandchildren (Aaaaaaa!), their Bengali-ness thoroughly154 diluted155, genotypehidden by phenotype. It is both the most irrational156 and natural feeling in the world. In Jamaica it iseven in the grammar: there is no choice of personal pronoun, no splits between me or you or they,there is only the pure, homogenous157 I. When Hortense Bowden, half white herself, got to hearingabout Clara's marriage, she came round to the house, stood on the doorstep, said, "Understand: Iand I don't speak from this moment forth," turned on her heel and was true to her word. Hortensehadn't put all that effort into marrying black, into dragging her genes back from the brink158, just soher daughter could bring yet more high-coloured children into the world.
Likewise, in the Iqbal house the lines of battle were clearly drawn159. When Millat brought anEmily or a Lucy back home, Alsana quietly wept in the kitchen, Samad went into the garden toattack the coriander. The next morning was a waiting game, a furious biting of tongues until theEmily or Lucy left the house and the war of words could begin. But with Me and Clara the issuewas mostly unspoken, for Clara knew she was not in a position to preach. Still, she made noattempt to disguise her disappointment or the aching sadness. From Irie's bedroom shrine160 ofgreen-eyed Hollywood idols161 to the gaggle of white friends who regularly trooped in and out of herbedroom, Clara saw an ocean of pink skins surrounding her daughter and she feared the tide thatwould take her away.
It was partly for this reason that Me didn't mention the Chalfens to her parents. It wasn't that sheintended to mate with the Chalfens.. . but the instinct was the same. She had a nebulousfifteen-year-old's passion for them, overwhelming, yet with no real direction or object. She justwanted to, well, kind of, merge162 with them. She wanted their Englishness. Their Chalfishness. Thepurity of it. It didn't occur to her that the Chalfens were, after a fashion, immigrants too (thirdgeneration, by way of Germany and Poland, nee Chalfenovsky), or that they might be as needy163 ofher as she was of them. To Me, the Chalfens were more English than the English. When Mestepped over the threshold of the Chalfen house, she felt an illicit164 thrill, like a Jew munching165 asausage or a Hindu grabbing a Big Mac. She was crossing borders, sneaking166 into England; it feltlike some terribly mutinous167 act, wearing somebody else's uniform or somebody else's skin.
She just said she had netball on Tuesday evenings and left it at that.
Conversation flowed at the Chalfen house. It seemed to Me that here nobody prayed or hid theirfeelings in a toolbox or silently stroked fading photographs wondering what might have been. Conversation was the stuff oflife.
"Hello, Me! Come in, come in, Joshua's in the kitchen with Joyce, you're looking well. Millatnot with you?""Coming later. He's got a date.""Ah, yes. Well, if there are any questions in your exams on oral communication, he'll flythrough them. Joyce! Irie's here! So how's the study going? It's been what? Four months now? TheChalfen genius rubbing off?""Yeah, not bad, not bad. I never thought I had a scientific bone in my body but... it seems to beworking. I don't know, though. Sometimes my brain hurts.""That's just the right side of your brain waking up after a long sleep, getting back into the swing of things. I'm really impressed; I told you it was possible to turn a wishy-washy arts student into ascience student in no time at all oh, and I've got the Future Mouse pictures. Remind me later, youwanted to see them, no? Joyce, the big brown goddess has arrived!""Marcus, chill out, man .. . Hi, Joyce. Hi, Josh. Hey, Jack. Oooh, hell-low, Oscar, you cutie.""Hello, Me! Come here and give me a kiss. Oscar, look, it's Irie come to see us again! Oh, lookat his face .. . he's wondering where Millat is, aren't you, Oscar?""No, I'm not.""Oh dear, yes he is ... look at his little face ... he gets very upset when Millat doesn't turn up.
Tell Irie the name of the new monkey, Oscar, the one Daddy gave you.""George.""No, not George you called it Millat the Monkey, remember? Because monkeys aremischievous and Millat's just as bad, isn't he, Oscar?""Don't know. Don't care.""Oscar gets terribly upset when Millat doesn't come.""He'll be along in a while. He's on a date."Me 1990, 1907"When isn't he on a date! All those busty girls! We might get jealous, mightn't we, Oscar? Hespends more time with them than us. But we shouldn't joke. I suppose it's a bit difficult for you.""No, I don't mind, Joyce, really. I'm used to it.""But everybody loves Millat, don't they, Oscar! It's so hard not to, isn't it, Oscar? We love him,don't we, Oscar?""I hate him.""Oh, Oscar, don't say silly things.""Can we all stop talking about Millat, please.""Yes, Joshua, all right. Do you hear how he gets jealous? I try to explain to him that Millatneeds a little extra care, you know. He's from a very difficult background. It's just like when I givemore time to my peonies than my Michaelmas daisies, daisies will grow anywhere .. . you knowyou can be very selfish sometimes, Joshi.""OK, Mum, OK. What's happening with dinner-before study or after?""Before, I think, Joyce, no? I've got to work on Future Mouse all night."Future Mouse"Shh, Oscar, I'm trying to listen to Daddy.""Because I'm delivering a paper tomorrow so best have dinner early. If that's all right with you,Me, I know how you like your food.""That's fine.""Don't say things like that, Marcus, dear, she's very touchy168 about her weight.""No, I'm really not'
"Touchy? About her weight? But everybody likes a big girl, don't they? I know I do.""Evening all. Door was ajar. Let myself in. One day somebody's going to wander in here andmurder the fucking lot of you.""Millat! Oscar, look it's Millat! Oscar, you're very happy to see Millat, aren't you, darling?"Oscar screwed up his nose, pretended to barf and threw a wooden hammer at Millat's shins.
"Oscar gets so excited when he sees you. Well. You're just in time for dinner. Chicken withcauliflower cheese. Sit down. Josh, put Millat's coat somewhere. So. How are things?" Millat sat down at the table with violence and eyes that looked like they had recently seen tears.
He pulled out his pouch169 of tobacco and little bag of weed.
"Fuckin' awful.""Awful how?" inquired Marcus with little attention, otherwise engaged in cutting himself achunk from an enormous block of Stilton. "Couldn't get in girl's pants? Girl wouldn't get in yourpants? Girl not wearing pants? Out of interest, what kind of pants was she '
"Dad! Give it a rest," moaned Joshua.
"Well, if you ever actually got in anybody's pants, Josh," said Marcus, looking pointedly171 at Me,"I'd be able to get my kicks through you, but so far'
"Shhh, the two of you," snapped Joyce. "I'm trying to listen to Millat."Four months ago, having a cool mate like Millat had seemed to Josh one hell of a lucky break.
Having him round his house every Tuesday had upped Josh's ante at Glenard Oak by more than hecould have imagined. And now that Millat, encouraged by Me, had begun to come of his ownaccord, to come socially, Joshua Chalfen, the Chalfen the Chubster, should have felt his star rising.
But he didn't. He felt pissed off. For Joshua had not bargained on the power of Millat'sattractiveness. His magnet-like qualities. He saw that Me was still, deep down, stuck on him like apaper clip and even his own mother seemed sometimes to take Millat as her only focus; all herenergy for her gardening, her children, her husband, streamlined and drawn to this one object likeso many iron filings. It pissed him off.
"I can't talk now? I can't talk in my own house?""Joshi, don't be silly. Millat's obviously upset.. . I'm just trying to deal with that at the moment.""Poor little Joshi," said Millat in slow, malicious172, purring tones. "Not getting enough attentionfrom his mummy? Want mummy to wipe his bottom for him?""Fuck you, Millat," said Joshua.
"OooooooOOO .. .""Joyce, Marcus," appealed Joshua, looking for an external judgement. "Tell him."Marcus popped a great wedge of cheese in his mouth and shrugged his shoulders. "I'm afwaidMiyat's oar173 mu'rer's jurishdicshun." "Let me just deal with this first, Joshi," began Joyce. "And thenlater .. ." Joyce allowed the rest of her sentence to get jammed in the kitchen door just as her eldestson slammed it.
"Shall I go after .. . ?" asked Benjamin.
Joyce shook her head and kissed Benjamin on the cheek. "No, Benji. Best leave him to it."She turned back to Millat, touching174 his face, tracing the salt path of an old tear with her finger.
"Now. What's been going on?"Millat began slowly rolling his spliff. He liked to make them wait. You could get more out of aChalfen if you made them wait.
"Oh, Millat, don't smoke that stuff. Every time we see you these days you're smoking. It upsetsOscar so much. He's not that young and he understands more than you think. He understands aboutmarijuana.""What's mary wana?" asked Oscar.
"You know what it is, Oscar. It's what makes Millat all horrible, like we were talking abouttoday, and it's what kills the little brain cells he has.""Get off my fucking back, Joyce." "I'm just trying to .. Joyce sighed with melodrama175, and drewher fingers through her hair. "Millat, what's the matter? Do you need some money?""Yeah, I do, as it happens"Why? What happened? Millat. Talk to me. Family again?"Millat tucked the orange cardboard roach in and stuck the joint between his lips. "Dad chuckedme out, didn't he?""Oh God," said Joyce, tears springing immediately, pulling her chair closer and taking his hand,'if I was your mother, I'd well, anyway I'm not, am I ... but she's just so incompetent176 ... it makes meso.. . I mean, imagine letting your husband take away one of your children and do God knows whatwith the other one, I just-'
"Don't talk about my mother. You've never met her. I wasn't even talking about her.""Well, she refuses to meet me, doesn't she? As if it were some kind of competition.""Shut the fuck up, Joyce.""Well, there's no point, is there? Going into ... it upsets you to ... I can see that, clearly, it's alltoo close to the .. . Marcus, get some tea, he needs tea.""For fucks sake I don't want any fucking tea. All you ever do is drink tea! You lot must pisspure bloody177 tea.""Millat, I'm just try '
"Well, don't."A little hash seed fell out of Millat's joint and stuck on his lips. He picked it off and popped it inhis mouth. "I could do with some brandy, though, if there is any."Joyce motioned to Irie with a what can you do look and mimed178 a tiny measure of herthirty-year-old Napoleon brandy between forefinger179 and thumb. Irie stood on an overturned bucketto get it off the top shelf.
"OK, let's all calm down. OK? OK. So. What happened this time?""I called him a cunt. He is a cunt." Millat walloped Oscar'sMe 1990, 1907creeping fingers that were looking for a plaything and reaching speculatively180 for his matches.
Till need somewhere to stay for a bit.""Well, that's not even a question, you can stay at ours, naturally."Me reached between the two of them, Joyce and Millat, to place the big-bottomed brandy glasson the table.
"OK, Me, give him a little space right now, I think.""I was just-'
"Yes, OK, Me he just doesn't need crowding right at this moment-'
"He's a bloody hypocrite, man," Millat cut in with a growl181, looking into the middle distance andspeaking to the conservatory as much as to anyone, 'he prays five times a day but he still drinks andhe doesn't have any Muslim friends, then he has a go at me for fucking a white girl. And then he'spissed off about Magid. He takes all his shit out on me. And he wants me to stop hanging aroundwith KEVIN. I'm more of a fucking Muslim than he is. Fuck him!""Do you want to talk about it with all this lot about," said Joyce, looking meaningfully roundthe room. "Or just us?""Joyce," said Millat, downing his brandy in one, "I don't give a fuck'
Joyce took that to mean just us and ushered182 the rest of them out of the room with her eyes.
Me was glad to leave. In the four months that she and Millat had been turning up to theChalfens, ploughing through Double Science, band I, and eating their selection of boiled food, astrange pattern had developed. The more progress Me made whether in her studies, her attempts tomake polite conversation or her studied imitation of Chalfenism the less interest Joyce showed inher. Yet the more Millat veered183 off the rails turning up uninvited on a Sunday night, off his face,bringing round girls, smoking weed all over the house, drinking their 1964 DomPerignon on the sly, pissing on the rose garden, holding a K E VIN meeting in the front room,running up a three hundred pound phone bill calling Bangladesh, telling Marcus he was queer,threatening to castrate Joshua, calling Oscar a spoilt little shit, accusing Joyce herself of being amaniac the more Joyce adored him. In four months he already owed her over three hundred pounds,a new duvet and a bike wheel.
"Are you coming upstairs?" asked Marcus, as he closed the kitchen door on the two of them,and bent this way and that like a reed while his children blew past him. "I've got those pictures youwanted to see."Irie gave Marcus a thankful smile. It was Marcus who seemed to keep an eye out for her. It wasMarcus who had helped her these four months as her brain changed from something mushy tosomething hard and defined, as she slowly gained a familiarity with the Chalfen way of thinking.
She had thought of this as a great sacrifice on the part of a busy man, but more recently shewondered if there was not some enjoyment184 in it. Like watching a blind man feeling out the contoursof a new object, maybe. Or a laboratory rat making sense of a maze185. Either way, in exchange for hisattention, Irie had begun to take an interest, first strategic and now genuine, in his Future MouseConsequently invitations to Marcus's study at the very top of the house, by far her favourite room,had become more frequent.
"Well, don't stand there grinning like the village idiot. Come on up."Marcus's room was like no place Irie had ever seen. It had no communal186 utility, no otherpurpose in the house apart from being Marcus's room; it stored no toys, bric-a-brac, broken things,spare ironing boards; no one ate in it, slept in it or made love in it. It wasn't like Clara's attic space,a Xanadu of crap, all carefully stored in boxes and labelled just in case she should ever need to fleethis land for another one. It wasn't like the spare rooms of immigrants packed to the rafters with allthat they have ever possessed187, no matter how defective188 or damaged, mountains of odds189 and ends thatstand testament190 to the fact that they have things now, where before they had nothing.) Marcus'sroom was purely191 devoted192 to Marcus and Marcus's work. A study. Like in Austen or Upstairs,Downstairs or Sherlock Holmes. Except this was the first study Me had ever seen in real life.
The room itself was small and irregular with a sloping floor, wooden eaves that meant it waspossible to stand in certain places but not others and a skylight rather than a window which let lightthrough in slices, spotlights193 for dancing dust. There were four filing cabinets, open-mouthed beastsspitting paper; paper in piles on the floor, on the shelves, in circles around the chairs. The smell of arich, sweet Germanic tobacco sat in a cloud just above head level, staining the leaves of the highestbooks yellow, and there was an elaborate smoking set on a side table spare mouthpieces, pipesranging from the standard U-bend to ever more curious shapes, snuffboxes, a selection of gauzes alllaid out in a velvet-lined leather case like a doctor's instruments. Scattered194 about the walls andlining the fireplace were photos of the Chalfen clan, including comely195 portraits of Joyce in her pert-breasted hippy youth, a retrousse nose sneaking out between two great sheaths of hair. Andthen a few larger framed centre pieces A map of the Chalfen family tree. A head shot of Mendellooking pleased with himself. A big poster of Einstein in his American icon196 stage Nutty Professorhair, 'surprised' look and huge pipe subtitled with the quote God does not play dice197 with the world.
Finally, Marcus's large oaken armchair backed on to a portrait of Crick and Watson looking tiredbut elated in front of their model of deoxyribonucleic acid, a spiral staircase of metal clamps,reaching from the floor of their Cambridge lab to beyond the scope of the photographer's lens.
"But where's Wilkins?" inquired Marcus, bending where the ceiling got low and tapping thephoto with a pencil. '1962, Wilkins won the Nobel in medicine with Crick and Watson. But no signof Wilkins in the photos. Just Crick and Watson. Watson and Crick. History likes lone77 geniusesor double acts. But it's got no time for threesomes." Marcus thought again. "Unless they'recomedians or jazz musicians.""Spose you'll have to be a lone genius, then," said Me cheerfully, turning from the picture andsitting down on a Swedish backless chair.
"Ah, but I have a mentor198, you see." He pointed170 to a poster-sized black and white photograph onthe other wall. "And mentors199 are a whole other kettle offish."It was an extreme close-up of an extremely old man, the contours of his face clearly defined byline200 and shade, hachures on a topographic map.
"Grand old Frenchman, a gentleman and a scholar. Taught me practically everything I know.
Seventy-odd and sharp as a whip. But you see, with a mentor you needn't credit them directly.
That's the great thing about them. Now where's this bloody photoWhile Marcus scrabbled about in a filing cabinet, Me studied a small slice of the Chalfenfamily tree, an elaborate illustrated201 oak that stretched back into the i6oos and forward into thepresent day. The differences between the Chalfens and the Jones/ Bowdens were immediately plain.
For starters, in the Chalfen family everybody seemed to have a normal number of children. More tothe point, everybody knew whose children were whose. The men lived longer than the women. Themarriages were singular and long lasting202. Dates of birth and death were concrete. And the Chalfensactually knew who they were in 1675. Archie Jones could give no longer record of his family thanhis father's own haphazard203 appearance on the planet in the back-room of a Bromley public housecirca 1895 or 1896 or quite possibly 1897, depending on which nonagenarian ex-barmaid youspoke to. Clara Bowden knew a little about her grandmother, and half believed the story that herfamed and prolific204 Uncle P. had thirty-four children, but could only state definitively205 that her own mother was born at 2.45 p.m.
14 January 1907, in a Catholic church in the middle of the Kingston earthquake. The rest wasrumour, folk-tale and myth:
another man & Great-great-great-Grandma (Lady The?) & Great-great-great-Grandfatheranother man & [Way Back When-Lord Knows]
Old man Bob [Hoi heap of time]
[Way Back When-Lord Knows]
I I I | ^ IGreat-grandmother Great Uncle P. Great Auntie Great Auntie Great AuntieAmbrosia Bowden [iSpoish- i96oish] Meeshell Lavinia Patricia[iSpoish-ipsoish] & God knows how & some no-good Si Captain Charlie many women raggamuffins"Whitey' Durham [i88oish-Lord Knows]
Grandmother 34 children. unknown unknown 3 kidsHortense Bowden Amongst them, issue issue[1907- ] Auntie Susie, Bobo,= fm. 1947] G-man, Delroy,Darcus Bowden Bigface,[1910-1985] Lady PenelopeClara Bowden = Archie Jones [1955- ] [1927- ]
fm. 1975]
Irie Ambrosia206 Jones [1975- ]
Key& = copulated with % = paternity unsure ? = child's name unknown G = brought up by grandmother"You guys go so far back," said Irie, as Marcus came up behind her to see what was of interest.
"It's incredible. I can't imagine what that must feel like.""Nonsensical statement. We all go back as far as each other. It's just that the Chalfens havealways written things down said Marcus thoughtfully, stuffing his pipe with fresh tobacco. "It helpsif you want to be remembered"I guess my family's more of an oral tradition said Irie with a shrug64. "But, man, you should askMillat about his. He's the descendant of-'
"A great revolutionary. So I've heard. I wouldn't take any of that seriously, if I were you. Onepart truth to three parts fiction in that family, I fancy. Any historical figure of note in your lot?"asked Marcus, and then, immediately uninterested in his own question, returned to his search offiling cabinet number two.
"No ... no one .. . significant. But my grandmother was born in January 1907, during the Kingston '
"Here we are!"Marcus emerged triumphant207 from a steel drawer, brandishing208 a thin plastic folder209 with a fewpieces of paper in it.
"Photographs. Especially for you. If the animal-rights lot saw these, I'd have a contract out onmy life. One by one now. Don't grab Marcus passed Irie the first photo. It was of a mouse on its back. Its stomach was littered withlittle mushroom-like growths, brown and puffy. Its mouth was unnaturally210 extended, by theprostrate position, into a cry of agony. But not genuine agony, Irie thought, more like theatricalagony. More like a mouse who was making a big show of something. A barn-mouse. Aluwie-mouse. There was something sarcastic211 about it.
"You see, embryo43 cells are all very well, they help us understand the genetic60 elements that maycontribute to cancer, but what you really want to know is how a tumour212 progresses in living tissue,I mean, you can't approximate that in a culture, not really. So then you move on to introducingchemical carcinogens in a target organ but Irie was half listening, half engrossed213 in the pictures passed to her. The next one was of th same mouse, as far as she could tell, this time on its front, wherethe tumours214 were bigger. There was one on its neck that appeared practically the same size as its ear. But the mouse looked quite pleased about it. Almost as if it had purposefully grown new apparatus215 to hear what Marcus was saying about him. Irie was aware this was a stupid thing to think about a lab mouse. But, once again, the mouse-face had a mouse-cunning about it. There was amouse-sarcasm in its mouse-eyes. A mouse-smirk played about its mouse-lips. Terminal disease?
(the mouse said to Irie) What terminal disease? '.. . slow and imprecise. But if you're-engineer the actual genome, so that specific cancers are expressed in specific tissues at predetermined, times in the mouse's development, then you're nolonger dealing52 with the random216. You're eliminating the random actions of a mutagen. Now you'retalking the genetic program of the mouse, a force activating217 oncogenes within cells. Now you see,this particular mouse is a young male .. ."Now FutureMouse(c) was being held by his front paws by two pink giant fingers and made tostand vertical218 like a cartoon mouse, thus forcing his head up. He seemed to be sticking out his littlepink mouse-tongue, at the cameraman initially219 and now at Irie. On his chin the tumours hung likebig droplets220 of dirty rain. '.. . and he expresses the H-ras oncogene in certain of his skin cells, so he develops multiplebenign skin papillomas. Now what's interesting, of course, is young females don't develop it, whichis .. ."One eye was closed, the other open. Like a wink. A crafty221 mouse-wink.
'.. . and why? Because of inter-male rivalry222 the fights lead to abrasion223. Not a biologicalimperative but a social one. Genetic result: the same. You see? And it's only with trans genic mice,by adding experimentally to the genome, that you can understand those kind of differences. Andthis mouse, the one you're looking at, is a unique mouse, Me. I plant a cancer and a cancer turns up precisely224 when I expect it.
Fifteen weeks into the development. Its genetic code is new. New breed. No better argument for apatent, if you ask me. Or at least some kind of royalties225 deal: 80 per cent God, 20 per cent me. Orthe other way round, depending on how good my lawyer is. Those poor bastards226 in Harvard are stillfighting the point. I'm not interested in the patent, personally. I'm interested in the science.""Wow," said Me, passing back the pictures reluctantly. "It's pretty hard to take in. I half get itand I half don't get it at all. It's just amazing.""Well," said Marcus, mock humble227. "It fills the time.""Being able to eliminate the random .. .""You eliminate the random, you rule the world," said Marcus simply. "Why stick to oncogenes?
One could program every step in the development of an organism: reproduction, food habits, lifeexpectancy' automaton228 voice, arms out like a zombie, rolling eyeballs "WORLDDOMINA-SHUN." "I can see the tabloid229 headlines," said Me.
"Seriously though," said Marcus, rearranging his photos in the folder and moving towards thecabinet to refile them, 'the study of isolated230 breeds of trans genic animals sheds crucial light on therandom. Are you following me? One mouse sacrificed for 5.3 billion humans. Hardly mouseapocalypse. Not too much to ask.""No, of course not.""Damn! This thing is such a bloody mess!"Marcus tried three times to shut the bottom drawer of his cabinet, and then, losing patience,levelled a kick at its steel sides. "Bloody thing!"Me peered over the open drawer. "You need more dividers," she said decidedly. "And a lot of the paper you're using is A3, a 2 or irregular. You need some kind of folding policy; at the momentyou're just shoving them in."Marcus threw his head back and laughed. "Folding policy!
Well, I suppose you should know; like father like daughter."He crouched231 down by the drawer and gave it a few more pushes.
"I'm serious. I don't know how you work like that. My school shit is better organized, and I'mnot in the business of World Domination."Marcus looked up at her from where he was kneeling. She was like a mountain range from thatangle; a soft and pillowy version of the Andes.
"Look, how about this: I'll pay you fifteen quid a week if you come round twice a week and geta grip on this filing disaster. You'll learn more, and I'll get something I need done, done. Hey? Whatabout it?"What about it. Joyce already paid Millat a total of thirty-five quid a week for such diverseactivities as baby-sitting Oscar, washing the car, weeding, doing the windows and recycling all thecoloured paper. What she was really paying for, of course, was the presence of Millat. That energyaround her. And that reliance.
Me knew the deal she was about to make; she didn't run into it drunk or stoned or desperate orconfused, as Millat did. Furthermore, she wanted it; she wanted to merge with the Chal fens62, to beof one flesh; separated from the chaotic232, random flesh of her own family and transgenically fusedwith another. A unique animal. A new breed.
Marcus frowned. "Why all the deliberation? I'd like an answer this millennium233, if you don'tmind. Is it a good idea or isn't it?" Me nodded and smiled. "Sure is. When do I start?"Alsana and Clara were none too pleased. But it took them a little while to compare notes andconsolidate their displeasure. Clara was in night school three days a week (courses: BritishImperialism 1765 to the Present; Medieval Welsh Literature; Black Femin ism), Alsana was on the sewing machine all the daylight hours God gave while a family war raged around her. They talked on the phone only occasionally and saw each other even less. Butboth felt an independent uneasiness about the Chalfens, of whom they had gradually heard moreand more. After a few months of covert234 surveillance, Alsana was now certain that it was to theChalfens Millat went during his regular absences from the family home. As for Clara, she waslucky to catch Me in on a week night, and had long ago rumbled235 her netball excuses. For monthsnow it had been the Chalfens this and the Chalfens that; Joyce said this wonderful thing, Marcus isso terribly clever. But Clara wasn't one to kick up a fuss; she wanted desperately236 what was best forIrie', and she had always been convinced that sacrifice was nine tenths of parenting. She evensuggested a meeting, b
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reliability
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pollen
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stigma
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| n.耻辱，污名；(花的)柱头 | |
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adventurous
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| adj.爱冒险的；惊心动魄的，惊险的，刺激的 | |
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6
positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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7
haze
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| n.霾，烟雾；懵懂，迷糊；vi.(over)变模糊 | |
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8
colonize
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| v.建立殖民地，拓殖；定居，居于 | |
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9
copiously
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| adv.丰富地，充裕地 | |
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10
parental
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| adj.父母的；父的；母的 | |
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11
evolutionary
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| adj.进化的；演化的，演变的；[生]进化论的 | |
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12
arena
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| n.竞技场，运动场所；竞争场所，舞台 | |
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13
petunias
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| n.矮牵牛（花）( petunia的名词复数 ) | |
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14
gene
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| n.遗传因子，基因 | |
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15
varied
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| adj.多样的，多变化的 | |
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16
feminist
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| adj.主张男女平等的，女权主义的 | |
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17
vouch
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| v.担保；断定；n.被担保者 | |
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18
hardy
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| adj.勇敢的，果断的，吃苦的；耐寒的 | |
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19
plentiful
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| adj.富裕的，丰富的 | |
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20
helping
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| n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的 | |
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21
caterpillar
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| n.毛虫，蝴蝶的幼虫 | |
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22
attic
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| n.顶楼，屋顶室 | |
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23
rambling
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| adj.[建]凌乱的，杂乱的 | |
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24
blistering
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| adj.酷热的；猛烈的；使起疱的；可恶的v.起水疱；起气泡；使受暴晒n.[涂料] 起泡 | |
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25
ingenuous
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| adj.纯朴的，单纯的；天真的；坦率的 | |
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26
hips
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| abbr.high impact polystyrene 高冲击强度聚苯乙烯，耐冲性聚苯乙烯n.臀部( hip的名词复数 )；[建筑学]屋脊；臀围（尺寸）；臀部…的 | |
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27
hip
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| n.臀部，髋；屋脊 | |
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28
steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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29
battered
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| adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损 | |
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30
intermittently
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| adv.间歇地；断断续续 | |
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31
envisage
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| v.想象，设想，展望，正视 | |
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32
quad
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| n.四方院；四胞胎之一；v.在…填补空铅 | |
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33
spouse
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| n.配偶(指夫或妻) | |
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34
peculiar
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|
| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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35
remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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36
genes
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| n.基因( gene的名词复数 ) | |
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37
luxurious
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| adj.精美而昂贵的；豪华的 | |
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38
thighs
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|
| n.股，大腿( thigh的名词复数 )；食用的鸡（等的）腿 | |
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39
cub
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| n.幼兽，年轻无经验的人 | |
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40
jaws
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| n.口部；嘴 | |
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41
chimeric
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|
| adj.妄想的，荒诞不经的 | |
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42
evaluation
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| n.估价，评价；赋值 | |
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43
embryo
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| n.胚胎，萌芽的事物 | |
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44
embryonic
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| adj.胚胎的 | |
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45
fusion
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| n.溶化；熔解；熔化状态，熔和；熔接 | |
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46
eloquently
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| adv. 雄辩地(有口才地, 富于表情地) | |
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47
embryos
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| n.晶胚；胚，胚胎( embryo的名词复数 ) | |
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48
DNA
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| (缩)deoxyribonucleic acid 脱氧核糖核酸 | |
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49
logic
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| n.逻辑(学)；逻辑性 | |
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50
capitalism
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| n.资本主义 | |
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51
maniacs
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| n.疯子（maniac的复数形式） | |
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52
dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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53
metaphorical
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| a.隐喻的，比喻的 | |
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54
dignify
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| vt.使有尊严；使崇高；给增光 | |
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55
industrious
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| adj.勤劳的，刻苦的，奋发的 | |
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56
jack
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|
| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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57
bust
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| vt.打破；vi.爆裂；n.半身像；胸部 | |
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58
conservatory
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| n.温室，音乐学院；adj.保存性的，有保存力的 | |
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59
collaboration
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| n.合作，协作；勾结 | |
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60
genetic
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| adj.遗传的，遗传学的 | |
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61
psychiatry
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| n.精神病学，精神病疗法 | |
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62
fens
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| n.（尤指英格兰东部的）沼泽地带( fen的名词复数 ) | |
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63
ideological
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| a.意识形态的 | |
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64
shrug
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|
| v.耸肩(表示怀疑、冷漠、不知等) | |
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65
shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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66
adolescence
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| n.青春期，青少年 | |
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67
anarchy
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|
| n.无政府状态；社会秩序混乱，无秩序 | |
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68
mathematician
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| n.数学家 | |
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69
clan
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| n.氏族，部落，宗族，家族，宗派 | |
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70
pruning
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|
| n.修枝，剪枝，修剪v.修剪（树木等）( prune的现在分词 )；精简某事物，除去某事物多余的部分 | |
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71
worthy
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|
| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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72
trauma
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|
| n.外伤，精神创伤 | |
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73
perversion
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| n.曲解；堕落；反常 | |
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74
tattered
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|
| adj.破旧的，衣衫破的 | |
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75
retrieve
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|
| vt.重新得到，收回；挽回，补救；检索 | |
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76
boredom
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|
| n.厌烦，厌倦，乏味，无聊 | |
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77
lone
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|
| adj.孤寂的，单独的；唯一的 | |
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78
frivolous
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|
| adj.轻薄的；轻率的 | |
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79
sneered
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|
| 讥笑，冷笑( sneer的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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80
compassion
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|
| n.同情，怜悯 | |
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81
commuted
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| 通勤( commute的过去式和过去分词 )； 减（刑）； 代偿 | |
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82
flick
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| n.快速的轻打，轻打声，弹开；v.轻弹，轻轻拂去，忽然摇动 | |
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83
yearning
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|
| a.渴望的；向往的；怀念的 | |
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84
glossy
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|
| adj.平滑的；有光泽的 | |
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85
addicts
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| 有…瘾的人( addict的名词复数 )； 入迷的人 | |
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86
dread
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|
| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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87
inevitable
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|
| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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88
knight
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| n.骑士，武士；爵士 | |
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89
tilting
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| 倾斜，倾卸 | |
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90
slippered
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| 穿拖鞋的 | |
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91
delved
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| v.深入探究，钻研( delve的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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92
eyebrow
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| n.眉毛，眉 | |
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93
spine
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|
| n.脊柱，脊椎；(动植物的)刺；书脊 | |
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94
boon
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| n.恩赐，恩物，恩惠 | |
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95
parasites
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|
| 寄生物( parasite的名词复数 )； 靠他人为生的人； 诸虫 | |
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96
essentially
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|
| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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97
prune
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| n.酶干；vt.修剪，砍掉，削减；vi.删除 | |
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98
apron
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| n.围裙；工作裙 | |
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99
pulchritude
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| n.美丽 | |
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100
sneering
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| 嘲笑的，轻蔑的 | |
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101
belch
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| v.打嗝，喷出 | |
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102
inspection
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| n.检查，审查，检阅 | |
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103
syllables
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|
| n.音节( syllable的名词复数 ) | |
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104
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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105
jovially
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| adv.愉快地，高兴地 | |
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106
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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107
wink
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| n.眨眼，使眼色，瞬间；v.眨眼，使眼色，闪烁 | |
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108
partially
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|
| adv.部分地，从某些方面讲 | |
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109
sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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110
corrupting
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|
| （使）败坏( corrupt的现在分词 )； （使）腐化； 引起（计算机文件等的）错误； 破坏 | |
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111
eldest
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| adj.最年长的，最年老的 | |
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112
explicit
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| adj.详述的，明确的；坦率的；显然的 | |
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113
feigned
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| a.假装的，不真诚的 | |
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114
simultaneously
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| adv.同时发生地，同时进行地 | |
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115
lame
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| adj.跛的，(辩解、论据等)无说服力的 | |
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116
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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117
admonished
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| v.劝告( admonish的过去式和过去分词 )；训诫；（温和地）责备；轻责 | |
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118
foraging
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| v.搜寻（食物），尤指动物觅（食）( forage的现在分词 )；（尤指用手）搜寻（东西） | |
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119
meek
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| adj.温顺的，逆来顺受的 | |
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120
spunk
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| n.勇气，胆量 | |
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121
troublemakers
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| n.惹是生非者，捣乱者( troublemaker的名词复数 ) | |
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122
shuffling
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| adj. 慢慢移动的, 滑移的 动词shuffle的现在分词形式 | |
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123
embarrassment
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| n.尴尬；使人为难的人(事物)；障碍；窘迫 | |
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124
fascination
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| n.令人着迷的事物，魅力，迷恋 | |
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125
wondrous
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|
| adj.令人惊奇的，奇妙的；adv.惊人地；异乎寻常地；令人惊叹地 | |
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126
previously
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|
| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
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127
bind
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|
| vt.捆，包扎；装订；约束；使凝固；vi.变硬 | |
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128
joint
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| adj.联合的，共同的；n.关节，接合处；v.连接，贴合 | |
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129
refinement
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| n.文雅；高尚；精美；精制；精炼 | |
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130
heinous
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| adj.可憎的，十恶不赦的 | |
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131
nurture
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| n.养育，照顾，教育；滋养，营养品；vt.养育，给与营养物，教养，扶持 | |
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132
inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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133
seedlings
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| n.刚出芽的幼苗( seedling的名词复数 ) | |
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134
missionary
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| adj.教会的，传教(士)的；n.传教士 | |
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135
prow
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|
| n.(飞机)机头，船头 | |
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136
daunting
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| adj.使人畏缩的 | |
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137
liberating
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|
| 解放，释放( liberate的现在分词 ) | |
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138
detector
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| n.发觉者，探测器 | |
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139
gaping
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| adj.口的；张口的；敞口的；多洞穴的v.目瞪口呆地凝视( gape的现在分词 )；张开，张大 | |
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140
advertising
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| n.广告业；广告活动 a.广告的；广告业务的 | |
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141
awry
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| adj.扭曲的，错的 | |
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142
chunks
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| 厚厚的一块( chunk的名词复数 )； （某物）相当大的数量或部分 | |
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143
ruffling
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| 弄皱( ruffle的现在分词 )； 弄乱； 激怒； 扰乱 | |
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144
digits
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| n.数字( digit的名词复数 )；手指，足趾 | |
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145
quagmire
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| n.沼地 | |
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146
stimulating
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| adj.有启发性的，能激发人思考的 | |
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147
confided
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| v.吐露（秘密，心事等）( confide的过去式和过去分词 )；（向某人）吐露（隐私、秘密等） | |
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148
tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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149
secrete
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| vt.分泌；隐匿，使隐秘 | |
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150
exodus
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| v.大批离去，成群外出 | |
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151
cramped
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| a.狭窄的 | |
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152
miscegenation
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| n.人种混杂；混血 | |
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153
disappearance
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| n.消失，消散，失踪 | |
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154
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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155
diluted
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| 无力的，冲淡的 | |
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156
irrational
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| adj.无理性的，失去理性的 | |
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157
homogenous
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| adj.同类的，同质的，纯系的 | |
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158
brink
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| n.(悬崖、河流等的)边缘，边沿 | |
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159
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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160
shrine
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| n.圣地，神龛，庙；v.将...置于神龛内，把...奉为神圣 | |
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161
idols
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| 偶像( idol的名词复数 )； 受崇拜的人或物； 受到热爱和崇拜的人或物； 神像 | |
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162
merge
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| v.(使)结合，(使)合并，(使)合为一体 | |
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163
needy
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| adj.贫穷的，贫困的，生活艰苦的 | |
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164
illicit
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| adj.非法的，禁止的，不正当的 | |
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165
munching
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| v.用力咀嚼（某物），大嚼( munch的现在分词 ) | |
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166
sneaking
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| a.秘密的，不公开的 | |
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167
mutinous
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| adj.叛变的，反抗的；adv.反抗地，叛变地；n.反抗，叛变 | |
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168
touchy
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| adj.易怒的；棘手的 | |
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169
pouch
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| n.小袋，小包，囊状袋；vt.装...入袋中，用袋运输；vi.用袋送信件 | |
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170
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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171
pointedly
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| adv.尖地，明显地 | |
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172
malicious
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| adj.有恶意的，心怀恶意的 | |
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173
oar
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| n.桨，橹，划手；v.划行 | |
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174
touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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175
melodrama
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| n.音乐剧；情节剧 | |
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176
incompetent
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| adj.无能力的，不能胜任的 | |
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177
bloody
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| adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染 | |
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178
mimed
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| v.指手画脚地表演，用哑剧的形式表演( mime的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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179
forefinger
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| n.食指 | |
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180
speculatively
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| adv.思考地，思索地；投机地 | |
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181
growl
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| v.（狗等）嗥叫，（炮等）轰鸣；n.嗥叫，轰鸣 | |
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182
ushered
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| v.引，领，陪同( usher的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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183
veered
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| v.（尤指交通工具）改变方向或路线( veer的过去式和过去分词 )；（指谈话内容、人的行为或观点）突然改变；（指风） （在北半球按顺时针方向、在南半球按逆时针方向）逐渐转向；风向顺时针转 | |
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184
enjoyment
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| n.乐趣；享有；享用 | |
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185
maze
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| n.迷宫，八阵图，混乱，迷惑 | |
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186
communal
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| adj.公有的，公共的，公社的，公社制的 | |
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187
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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188
defective
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| adj.有毛病的，有问题的，有瑕疵的 | |
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189
odds
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| n.让步，机率，可能性，比率；胜败优劣之别 | |
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190
testament
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| n.遗嘱；证明 | |
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191
purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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192
devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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193
spotlights
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| n.聚光灯（的光）( spotlight的名词复数 )；公众注意的中心v.聚光照明( spotlight的第三人称单数 )；使公众注意，使突出醒目 | |
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194
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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195
comely
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| adj.漂亮的，合宜的 | |
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196
icon
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| n.偶像，崇拜的对象，画像 | |
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197
dice
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| n.骰子；vt.把（食物）切成小方块，冒险 | |
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198
mentor
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| n.指导者，良师益友；v.指导 | |
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199
mentors
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| n.（无经验之人的）有经验可信赖的顾问( mentor的名词复数 )v.（无经验之人的）有经验可信赖的顾问( mentor的第三人称单数 ) | |
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200
byline
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| n.署名；v.署名 | |
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201
illustrated
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| adj. 有插图的，列举的 动词illustrate的过去式和过去分词 | |
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202
lasting
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| adj.永久的，永恒的；vbl.持续，维持 | |
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203
haphazard
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| adj.无计划的，随意的，杂乱无章的 | |
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204
prolific
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| adj.丰富的，大量的；多产的，富有创造力的 | |
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205
definitively
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| adv.决定性地，最后地 | |
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206
ambrosia
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| n.神的食物；蜂食 | |
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207
triumphant
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| adj.胜利的，成功的；狂欢的，喜悦的 | |
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208
brandishing
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| v.挥舞( brandish的现在分词 )；炫耀 | |
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209
folder
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| n.纸夹，文件夹 | |
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210
unnaturally
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| adv.违反习俗地；不自然地；勉强地；不近人情地 | |
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211
sarcastic
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| adj.讥讽的，讽刺的，嘲弄的 | |
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212
tumour
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| n.(tumor)(肿)瘤，肿块 | |
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213
engrossed
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| adj.全神贯注的 | |
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214
tumours
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| 肿瘤( tumour的名词复数 ) | |
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215
apparatus
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| n.装置，器械；器具，设备 | |
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216
random
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| adj.随机的；任意的；n.偶然的(或随便的)行动 | |
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217
activating
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| 活动的，活性的 | |
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218
vertical
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| adj.垂直的，顶点的，纵向的；n.垂直物，垂直的位置 | |
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219
initially
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| adv.最初，开始 | |
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220
droplets
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| n.小滴( droplet的名词复数 ) | |
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221
crafty
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| adj.狡猾的，诡诈的 | |
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222
rivalry
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| n.竞争，竞赛，对抗 | |
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223
abrasion
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| n.磨（擦）破，表面磨损 | |
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224
precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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225
royalties
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| 特许权使用费 | |
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226
bastards
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| 私生子( bastard的名词复数 )； 坏蛋； 讨厌的事物； 麻烦事 （认为别人走运或不幸时说）家伙 | |
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227
humble
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| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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228
automaton
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| n.自动机器，机器人 | |
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229
tabloid
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| adj.轰动性的，庸俗的；n.小报，文摘 | |
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230
isolated
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| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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231
crouched
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| v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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232
chaotic
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| adj.混沌的，一片混乱的，一团糟的 | |
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233
millennium
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| n.一千年，千禧年；太平盛世 | |
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234
covert
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| adj.隐藏的；暗地里的 | |
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235
rumbled
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| 发出隆隆声，发出辘辘声( rumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 轰鸣着缓慢行进； 发现…的真相； 看穿（阴谋） | |
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236
desperately
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| adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地 | |
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