But the only person with whom you might possibly split it, you think as you reluctantly close the rear doors of the Tahoe and lock it, is not even close to the person you wish.

* * *

It is five days before the Viewing. A hot August night. A round moon shines morosely over the River Leam, the body of water which glides from Northamptonshire to Warwickshire, lulling to sleep every night the near twenty thousand who still populate the sleepy in-between town of Royal Leamington Spa.

Titus Downing, alone in his bedroom, can hear the river moving. He is not sleeping. He is brightly awake, lying on top of his bed in his underclothes, for it is much too hot to lie anywhere else, and Downing’s bed is a large four-post canopy over which he hung long aubergine velvet drapes the day it was bought. When he touches the drapes, they remind him that although he is not rich, he is not poor like his parents in Northumberland.

Tonight, the drapes are wide open, and though he is feeling confident about the aardvark, about the events to come, nights before Viewings are always a torment to Downing. Every outside noise vexes the senses. Downing knows that he will not sleep and listens unhappily to the steady rush of water flowing from the weir of Jephson Gardens, the lone baroo of a hound, the steady clup of the horses on cobblestones, the sporadic profanities from drunks as they sing, swinging themselves around the stone columns of the Royal Pump Rooms and Baths, Leamington Spa’s old famous pools once filled with healing waters which, it turned out, did not heal anyone.

Downing would perhaps be more at ease were it not for the letter he received two days ago from Rebecca Ostlet.

Lady Ostlet read about the Viewing in the London papers, she has written, and given that she never got to thank Downing in person for assisting her at a time when she most needed assistance, and given that the beast, the Orycteropus afer, was the last procured by her husband—whose “essence” now has, by the by, at last departed from Gloucester Walk—she has decided that she would rather like to see the so-called “aardvark” for herself, and Downing should thus prepare for her coming, and postscript: might there be space for the Brontës?

Downing changes position several times in his bed, worrying about Rebecca Ostlet, her three feathery dogs, and whatever else the woman might bring with her.

Because although many women came to View Downing’s giraffe, the giraffe was obviously too big to be Viewed inside the shop, and so it was presented outside, and it occurs to Downing now, in his bed, that no woman has ever before actually crossed the threshold into his taxidermy shop, and any previous delight imagining women fainting in front of the aardvark is now replaced by the knowledge that they will be inside his shop to see it, and Downing decides that while he has rather less concern about the rest of them, he cannot shake the image of pretty, thin-waisted Mrs. Ostlet running her delicate woman fingers over his animal hides, picking up his glues or his brushes or calipers—and he imagines her handling his prized Currier knife, his glass bottles of lacquer, his Essence of Pearl, and by god, if it takes a while for Downing to return to an animal’s jiva when he is disturbed by a delivery boy, then heaven knows how long it will take for his shop to feel like his own again once the woman’s passed through it.