He bellowed—pain or denial—and swung a fist at where the measurement of his other hand told him the wall was. The lining boards buckled but did not give. He cursed me for a damned whore and a horrible bitch and announced that my ongoing spinsterhood reflected the verdict of all of male humanity, that I was pious and barren and unworthy of the family name. He roared that my mother would never have dreamed of taking such liberties as I, ungrateful serpent, had taken. And through all of these insults I stood and cried and repeated that I loved him until he found a mug and sent it tumbling through the air to where my voice had told him my head was. And it missed by so very little that I fled his dismal shack, more in grief than fright.

The dog growled irritably as I crossed the verandah, my charity forgotten.

~

Srinivas reappeared at my residence early the following morning, waiting on the doorstep without a sound, so that when I rushed out to fetch kindling I nearly ran into him. The Coopers had no objection to me receiving visitors in my quarters, but no one ever came; thus my surprise. I must have muttered some reproach: You might have knocked, or something similar.

‘But Miss Grayling,’ he replied, ‘I was not entering.’

‘Fine,’ I hissed. ‘Come in, then.’

He inclined his head. ‘If it is not too much trouble.’ He was wearing a suit, and he held a package in his hands, bound with string.

‘I am very pleased to have seen your father,’ he ventured, as I indicated a seat. He sat himself down and placed the package on the table.

‘I would vastly prefer that you hadn’t, sir. And what right do you have to follow me all those miles? You’re fortunate I wasn’t armed.’

His hand rested unconsciously on the place where I’d laid into his belly. ‘He will want to go,’ he said, speaking, in that way of his, almost to himself.

I couldn’t contain my frustration with the man any longer. ‘He is blind. Blind. He cannot do any such thing.’

‘That was an unexpected discovery, I must say.’

‘Not if you’ve seen him drink.’ I tried to break a stick to add to the kindling and the thing wouldn’t yield, so I stood it against the bricks of the hearth and kicked at it, far too hard. The snapped half flew past my face. Over at the table, some internal adjustment was occurring. Srinivas peered at his fingers, curled and uncurled them. Then he looked up, directly into my eyes, in a way he hadn’t done until then.

‘You must go with him.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake.’

‘You must, yes. It must be this way, it seems.’ He nodded in fervent agreement with himself.