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ambled to the rear of its enclosure. It moved joint by joint as if made by an armourer. Its skin looked as if laid on it in plates, by nails. It did not look real at all, Hugh thought. Perhaps what seemed ordinary reality was no less odd than his new world after all, just as the new world could come to seem as ordinary as reality.
    The other three waited outside the house.
    “We’ve had enough of this. Let’s eat in the park,” said Penn.
    “We could row on the lake then, afterwards,” said Hugh, glad at the thought of escape, “I’ve got enough money left.”
    “The letters,” Jean said. “Will you post them, Hugh?”
    Hugh stood staring at the letters, blinking furiously, his eyes taking an inordinate time to adjust themselves to daylight.
    “What’s the matter?” asked Penn, echoed by Jean. All of them were staring at him oddly, Hugh thought. He glanced around wildly, he wanted to escape, but he could not; anywhere he turned he saw them, castles. The elephant house, the bear terraces, the seal rocks all looked rugged, turreted, like castles with battlements and towers.
    He held up each of the letters in turn. There had been a new issue of stamps only yesterday. Hugh had never seen these before. One letter bore a stamp to go to America, another a fivepenny, the third a threepenny stamp. The theme was the castles of England: the first had Carmarthen Castle, the second Windsor, the third, Harlech Castle.
    “Castles,” Hugh said to himself, and then out loud “Castles.” He managed to shift himself and set off running through the crowds to find the postbox at the main gate. He could not get rid of the letters fast enough, they felt like fires in his hand, imagined or real he could not judge by now. He went to the wrong gate, and so could not find the postbox at first, dodging frantically through the milling and purposeless crowd, mistaking a woman in red for the box once, and finding it at last more by luck than decision, throwing the letters in immediately. One missed the slot, it dropped, he had to pick it up again. And when it was done, when all three were gone, he leaned against the box, gasping, to the surprise of the postman who came at that moment to empty it.
    “You all right, mate? You a student then? You’ve got the student look.”
    Hugh shook his head, and walked away soberly. His panic worked through him; slowly cooled, uncoiled itself. He took in the ordinary zoo for almost the first time that day, the sour smells of animal and chip fat and DDT: how hot it was and how hopelessly crowded. There were queues for everything, lavatories, snackbars, camel rides. Thousands of children in their best clothes ran around freely, but increasingly fractious, while animals prowled behind bars or ditches, or lay stretched, panting, in the heat of the sun.

CHAPTER TEN
    Anna and Hugh shared one boat; Jean and Penn another. Anna very slowly and deliberately climbed into a boat with Hugh, Penn visibly annoyed by this, Jean upset because Penn was annoyed at having to share with her. Her way of demonstrating it was to be sharp and bossy, organizing her face into a smile sometimes, but wasting it only on the water.
    Penn demonstrated his annoyance by showing off wildly. He climbed to his feet, stood on the thwart, balancing precariously. Jean stopped smiling altogether, said “Don’t, Penn”, anxiously, first on his account and then on her own, as the boat swayed dangerously.
    The boatman bellowed at them from his landing stage, threatening to fetch them in at once. Everyone rowing on the lake, the people walking along the shore, turned to look at them, making Jean blush scarlet. Penn muttered rudely, nothing that the boatman could have heard, sat down and began to row with furious but quite elegant efficiency, making the boat shoot through the water. He kept his eye triumphantly on Hugh struggling more clumsily at his oars behind, but though Hugh glanced round occasionally and coolly admired Penn’s skill,