still hinged out, making the edifice top-heavy, or whether it was simple good timing, of the sort weightlifters experience when they go for that final jerk and press, Lorimer did not know, nor could ever evaluate, but – in the event – the whole trolley went over with a dull but satisfyingly heavy bang and a great rushing of water as the metal vases and buckets voided themselves.
Marlobe and Slushing-Voice looked on in shock and some fear.
‘Fuck me,’ said Slushing-Voice.
Marlobe looked suddenly unmanned at this display of strength, all his confidence gone. He took half a step towards Lorimer, then stepped back. Lorimer realized he had his fists raised, his face locked in a grimace, full of hate.
‘There was no call for that,’ Marlobe said in a small voice. ‘No call at all. Bloody hell. Bastard.’ He bent down and began to pick up scattered flowers. ‘Look at my flowers.’
‘The next time you see her,’ Lorimer said, ‘apologize.’
‘We’ll get you, wanker! We’ll sort you, wanker!’ Lorimer heard Slushing-Voice bravely shout after him as he walked down Lupus Crescent. He could feel the adrenalin tremors and shiverings still firing in his body, not sure if it were the residue of his anger or merely the after-effect of his astonishing physical exertion. He opened the door, crossed the dark hall (thinking suddenly of Lady Haigh) and plodded up his stairs, feeling gloom and remorse, self-pity and depression struggling to take possession of his soul.
He stood in his hallway trying to calm himself, trying to bring his ragged breathing under control, and rested his palm talismanically on the crown of his Greek helmet.
An unfamiliar scratching noise on his carpet made him look round and he saw Jupiter nose open the door that led into the sitting room.
‘Hello, boy,’ he said, his voice brimming with pleasure and welcome, suddenly understanding why people kept dogs as pets, as if it were a revelation. He crouched to scratch Jupiter’s neck, pound his ribs, play with his flapping ears. ‘I’ve had a stinking, rotten, vile, depressing, stinking, shitty, vile, rotten day’ he said, suddenly realizing also why people talked to their dogs as if they could be understood. He needed some comfort, some reassurance, some notion of protection, somewhere safe.
He stood up, closed his eyes, opened them, saw his helmet there, picked it up, turned it in his hands and put it on.
It fitted him perfectly, or rather fitted him too perfectly, slipping on as if it had been made for him; and the moment he slid it on, round the back of his head over the bump of his prominent occipital bone, and felt it fit snugly under, almost with an audible click, he knew, he knew at once, that it would not come off.
He tried to take it off, of course, but it was the perfect curve round the back of the helmet, offsetting the small flare of the nape-guard, an elongated, inverted S-shape, a line he had often admired, that made removal impossible. It seemed as if the form of the helmet was designed for a head of exactly his phrenological configuration (perhaps, he suddenly thought, that was what he had subconsciously realized when he saw it? Sensed that recognition and so felt compelled to buy it?). His exact configuration but slightly smaller all round. The nose-guard lay parallel to the bridge of his nose, but not touching, ending the ideal one centimetre beyond his nose’s tip. The oval eye cutouts followed exactly the margin of the bones around the orbital cavity, the jut of the cheek-plates mimicked precisely the forward thrust of his jaw-bone.
He studied his reflection in the sitting-room mirror and liked what he saw. He looked good, he looked tremendous, in fact, exactly like a warrior, a Greek warrior, eyes gleaming behind the rigid metal features of the helmet, mouth firm between the corroded jade-coloured blades of the cheek-plates. The suit, the shirt and the tie looked incongruous but from the neck up he could have passed, he thought, for a minor classical deity.
A minor classical deity with a major problem, he concluded, as he refilled Jupiter’s water bowl and, for want of anything else, provided him with some sustenance in the form of squares of bread soaked in milk which, he was glad to see, Jupiter ate with tongue-smacking gusto.
He spent another ten fruitless minutes trying to ease the helmet off, but in vain. What to do? What to do? He paced about his flat-Jupiter dozing, sprawled indelicately on the