The Satanic Verses

that she could pretend to scold the impossible stranger for trespassing on her land.
    Usually she was implacable in defence of her beloved fragment of the coast, and when summer weekenders strayed above the high tide line she descended upon them
like a wolf on the fold
, her phrase for it, to explain and to demand: – This is my garden, do you see. – And if they grew brazen, – getoutofitsillyoldmoo, itsthesoddingbeach, – she would return home to bring out a long green garden hose and turn it remorselessly upon their tartan blankets and plastic cricket bats and bottles of sun-tan lotion, she would smash their children’s sandcastles and soak their liver-sausage sandwiches, smiling sweetly all the while:
You won’t mind if I just water my lawn
? … O, she was a One, known in the village, they couldn’t lock her away in any old folks’ home, sent her whole family packing when they dared to suggest it, never darken her doorstep, she told them, cut the whole lot off without a penny or a by your leave. All on her own now, she was, never a visitor from week to blessed week, not even Dora Shufflebotham who went in and did for her all those years, Dora passed over September last, may she rest, still it’s a wonder at her age how the old trout manages, all those stairs, she may be a bit of a bee but give the devil her due, there’s many’s’d go barmy being that alone.
    For Gibreel there was neither a hosepipe nor the
sharp end
of her tongue. Rosa uttered token words of reproof, held her nostrils while examining the fallen and newly sulphurous Saladin (who had not, at this point, removed his bowler hat), and then, with an access of shyness which she greeted with nostalgic astonishment, stammered an invitation, yyou bbetter bring your ffriend in out of the cccold, and stamped back up the shingle to put the kettle on,grateful to the bite of the winter air for reddening her cheeks and
saving
, in the old comforting phrase,
her blushes
.

    As a young man Saladin Chamcha had possessed a face of quite exceptional innocence, a face that did not seem ever to have encountered disillusion or evil, with skin as soft and smooth as a princess’s palm. It had served him well in his dealings with women, and had, in point of fact, been one of the first reasons his future wife Pamela Lovelace had given for falling in love with him. ‘So round and cherubic,’ she marvelled, cupping her hands under his chin. ‘Like a rubber ball.’
    He was offended. ‘I’ve got bones,’ he protested. ‘Bone
structure
.’
    ‘Somewhere in there,’ she conceded. ‘Everybody does.’
    After that he was haunted for a time by the notion that he looked like a featureless jellyfish, and it was in large part to assuage this feeling that he set about developing the narrow, haughty demeanour that was now second nature to him. It was, therefore, a matter of some consequence when, on arising from a long slumber racked by a series of intolerable dreams, prominent among which were images of Zeeny Vakil, transformed into a mermaid, singing to him from an iceberg in tones of agonizing sweetness, lamenting her inability to join him on dry land, calling him, calling; – but when he went to her she shut him up fast in the heart of her ice-mountain, and her song changed to one of triumph and revenge … it was, I say, a serious matter when Saladin Chamcha woke up, looked into a mirror framed in blue-and-gold Japonaiserie lacquer, and found that old cherubic face staring out at him once again; while, at his temples, he observed a brace of fearfully discoloured swellings, indications that he must have suffered, at some point in his recent adventures, a couple of mighty blows.
    Looking into the mirror at his altered face, Chamcha attempted to remind himself of himself. I am a real man, he told the mirror, with a real history and a planned-out future. I am a man to whom certain things are of importance: rigour, self-discipline, reason, thepursuit of what is noble without recourse to that old crutch, God. The ideal of beauty, the possibility of exaltation, the mind. I am: a married man. But in spite of his litany, perverse thoughts insisted on visiting him. As for instance: that the world did not exist beyond that beach down there, and, now, this house. That if he weren’t careful, if he rushed matters, he would fall off the edge, into clouds. Things had to be
made
. Or again: that if he were to telephone his home, right now, as he should, if he were to