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tonight?"
        He sounded so anxious that she took pity on him. "I'll look after you."
        He glanced behind him, presumably for Toby, but there was no sign of Toby among the crowd silhouetted against the dazzle from outside. Above the bar the one o'clock news had been interrupted by commercials. Aproned women with sheaves in their hands danced through a field of wheat to the strains of Vaughan Williams, and a maternal voice murmured "Staff o' Life-simply English" as the words appeared on the screen. Now here was the news footage Sandy had edited, the line of constables blocking a road into Surrey, the wandering convoy which the media had christened Enoch's Army fuming at the roadblock, the leader burying his fingers in his beard which was massive as his head while a policeman gestured him and his followers onward to yet another county, children staring out of vehicles at children jeering "Hippies" at them from a school at the edge of the road. "Scapegoats, you mean," Graham muttered.
        "I hope people can see that's what they are."
        "All you can do is try and show the truth," Graham said, and jumped as someone loomed at him out of the crowd.
        It was only Toby. He stroked Graham's head in passing, and leaned against the wall beside Sandy, wriggling his broad shoulders to work out tension. In his plump face, made paler by the bristling shock of ginger hair, his blue eyes were wide with frustration. "Thank you, Dionysos, for this oasis in the jungle," he said, elevating his glass.
        "Trouble with the natives?" Graham suggested.
        "Not with us at all. Hitler youths on their way to a bierkeller almost shoved me under a bus, and two gnomes in Bermuda shorts sneaked in front of me for the last of the pasta in Old Compton Street. 'Look, Martha, it's like we get at home. Thank the Lord for some honest to God food instead of all this foreign garbage.' They ought to have been thanking the Lord for my concern for international relations."
        "Never mind, love. Sandy'll be joining us tonight, by the way."
        "It'll be a sorry buffet, I warn you-whatever I concoct from the little I managed to save from the locust hordes."
        "The two of you are enough of a feast," Sandy declared, raising her voice to drown out a man at the bar who was telling a joke about gays and AIDS. She thought he might be unaware of the periphery of his audience until he and his cronies stared at Graham and Toby and burst out laughing.
        "I think we may adjourn to our place," Graham said, "lest my mood be spoiled."
        "Just as you like," Toby said, his mouth stiff, blood flaring high on his cheeks. Sandy could tell that he wanted to confront the speaker on Graham's behalf. She ushered her friends past the bar, where the men turned their thick necks toward them. The joker's eyes met hers in the mirror between the inverted bottles. His face was a mask made of beef. When he smirked she said, "You must feel very inadequate."
        "Queers and women's libbers, I can do without the lot of them," he told a crony out of the corner of his mouth.
        "Then you'll have to take yourself in hand," Sandy laughed.
        He understood more quickly than she would have expected, and wheeled bull-like on the stool, lowering his head as if he were stepping into a ring. She didn't even need to imagine him in drag in order to render him absurd. She shook her head reprovingly and urged her friends out of the pub. "You make sure our Graham enjoys his triumph," she told Toby, patting his angry cheeks.
        "We'll enjoy it more for sharing it with you," he said, and took Graham's hand as they crossed over to the park.
        
***
        
        Sandy lingered outside Metropolitan as they strode rapidly past Speaker's Corner. The man with the raw scalp was still ranting, but only the sound of traffic appeared to emerge from his mouth. A tramp or a tangle of litter stirred behind a bench as Graham