Darling, said Valerie Stevenson. You’re so young.

It made you bite your lip. It made you feel you were standing in something that was not quite clean. Valerie Stevenson’s mental eye visualizing events.

If only you’d come, but of course you didn’t, that’s silly of me, Valerie said. There are ways and means, if only. Now let me see. I’d forgotten about that man.

You went cold. It was impersonal enough, Valerie’s voice. But attached to the other end of it, you couldn’t deaden your own mortification.

She thought he was at 15 Dawson Street, Valerie said. Anyway, it was quite easy. It was just off Theobalds Road. There was a place that sold baths on the ground floor. The house looked sort of Morris-y. Red. With plaques and things. And the man, didn’t it slay you, his name, his name was Jewel!

Against the iron railing that sprouted from the pavement, the afternoon was thin, the sky pale, the whole thin perspective of the street, in which was the voice of a woman selling violets. Finding the purpose in an errand, your feet still loitered, your eyes lingered on the shape of a bath. You found to the last detail, down to the last plaque, the Morris lily in its shabby red, the description given by Valerie, that was also a remembered dream, before the climax, that you avoided, resisted, that came up hot and panting to overwhelm.

Eden Standish rang a bell.

Now, she said, now. There were still violets. And the white violets that you brought home to arrange. You must have the china shoe, Mrs Macarthy said, if you are good, if you eat up your sago like a good girl, you shall pretend it is as white as violets. Elyot said he was asleep, the moon said, he was white upon his pillow. She shivered in the paler light of Theobalds Road, where the past sat oddly, extinct. It was better, she decided, not to think.

Yes? he asked.

He was reddish, both the skin and, over it, the pervading stubble. His mouth had that sewn-up look. Opening on words, it remained fastened in the corners, drawn together by unseen stitches. There was sleep in the corners of his eyes.

I’ve come – she said. It’s – I heard – that perhaps you have the Morning Post?

Yes, he said, doubting her from tpp to toe.

But he opened up the door.

She walked, after many ages, down the passage, after footsteps that sounded through an always empty house. She heard her own feet fraying the carpet of downward steps. His sleeve was frayed, resting on a doorknob. She stood in a room, sickly with the light from areas and the naked bulb. Somewhere water dripped.

Sit down, he said.

The chair squeaked.

She was sitting, empty of any substance, of all emotion, she was a glass shell, but easily broken, beyond which the accumulation of disgust, of horror, was waiting to flood.

Now, he said, advancing. Let me see.