He has begun with animals, and he would have humans and money by nightfall. I have enough rope to noose an army, he thinks, and, for the wandering man, these are times of plenty, because there is, like some invisible web cast from the heavens, a reordering at play in this world; or, at the very least, general across this island on which he roams. Intransigent chaos has blurred man into animal, turned law into farce, shifted man into corpse, yoked child into slave, disposed of all previous hierarchies more ruthlessly and indiscriminately than any uprising has ever done, and, why, amidst so much confusion, carnage and distress, should a healthy, resourceful man like himself, who has always had so little of what he has craved, not become a little richer?

Curious, he leads the animals forward until he comes upon the source of the knocking, and is immediately overpowered by the strangeness of what he sees.

A woman, her dress stripped so its upper half hangs down over her waist, is struggling to cut down a dead, leafless ash tree with an axe that is too big for her. Her shoulders, ears and arms are soft pink with the foreshadowing of sunburn. It is as though a gentle dye has been poured on her from above, the pink diluting as it descends into the milky paleness of her lower back. She is shapely, and grunting with her efforts; he sees her only from behind. He watches, for some time, her back rippling, the generous deposits of fat around her hips shuddering with her motion. Her black locks are damp, stuck to her shoulders. Hacquelebacq’s peeping is finally interrupted when one of the calves, the lonelier orphan, bawls, and it is a very melancholy sound altogether.

The woman turns round, lowers her axe and leans on it, puts her other arm against the tree. There is an imprint of blood around the axe handle from where her hands, freshly blistered, had gripped it.

‘That looks like little Glynis’s calf,’ she calls.

He wonders which one she is referring to; they look the same to him.

‘I assure madame it is not,’ he says, wishing he had some still water in which to regard himself as the heat always makes his brilliant orange hair frizz and stick out like tangled brush.

‘May I approach?’

‘Whose calf is it, then?’

Her voice is hissing, expectorating and messy with each utterance.

‘My own,’ he says.

‘And who are you?’

He licks his palm, and flattens out his mop, feeling a little handsome once he has done so.

‘Perhaps its face looks similar to some other calf’s,’ he says.

‘No, their faces are as distinct as humans, and more recognisable from afar, their eyes being more expressive than ours. Who are you, man?’