the web of metro tunnels deep down in the chill dark earth beneath all this, and wondered if what had been wild and untamed in this land had not been destroyed, but had retreated and leaked or crept down into the metro. She thought of the old man in the cream suit conjuring his green flame with its dark residue and imagined that what lay below the city might sometimes rise up in spectral threads or strange furtive flames.
That night, she dreamed the tunnel dream again, but this time it was the metro and the old beggar woman with her pram had found her way into it.
‘What are you looking for?’ she asked the girl in a raw crackle, clutching her wrist.
‘I don’t know.’
The woman shook her grizzled head. ‘Then you must learn or you will never find the shape of your heart’s desire.’
‘I don’t understand,’ the girl said.
The woman looked sad. ‘Then all is lost.’
The following day, the aunt chose which of the stiff new dresses the girl was to wear with which shoes and which cardigan to carry in which bag. The girl let herself be turned this way and that by the aunt and by D’lo, who said, ‘She fine. She sho’ lookin’ fine.’ D’lo had a voice than flowed as thick and golden viscous as warmed sap. The girl liked to hear her talk, and wondered what might be imparted in that voice, in the absence of her aunt.
They had been invited to luncheon and the aunt suggested they walk, since their destination was in the neighbourhood. They passed through a small park and the aunt reminisced about her poodle, , who had been walked there. He had died, but the aunt said passed away, dabbing at her eyes sentimentally and interpreting the girl’s silence as respect for . She told herself the child was perhaps only a little slow, and that was not so detrimental in a girl as in a boy. Indeed, looking at the mess her sister had made of her life, it might be said that cleverness was more of a disadvantage to a woman than anything else.
The girl was thinking about her dream, for it seemed to her that she had seen something in the tunnels just before the old beggar woman appeared. Something huge and white.
Their hosts’ apartment was stylish, with blond leather furniture and chilly, gleaming, marble floors. There were clear vases of yellow irises, heavy cream silk curtains and paintings in muted colours, but also many blank walls which had their own beauty. Most of all, there was empty space filled with shafts of sunlight.
Privately the aunt thought the apartment ostentatiously bare, though of course she admired her hosts’ exquisite taste. She preened when they insisted that her own apartment was much nicer, for this was exactly her own opinion.
Their host appeared with the daughter of the house and the girl was introduced to them both. As the man took her hand, an odour arose from him as if he carried something old and musky in his pocket. Instinctively the girl pulled her hand from his fingers when he made to press it to his lips. The other girl reached out a slender white hand and bobbed slightly, her eyes amused.
‘My daughter is just returning from her piano lesson,’ their hostess explained. The daughter smiled at the aunt and her niece and asked questions prettily, tossing a head of radiant honey curls adorned with a pink ribbon. The three adults smiled.
It became clear that the visit had been arranged in order that the two girls, who were the same age, could become friends, but though the girl answered the daughter of the house gravely, both understood at once that they had nothing in common. Under different circumstances, one would become the victim of the other.
The aunt regretfully compared the pink and gold feminine flirtatiousness of her friend’s daughter with her sister’s solemn child. Out of loyalty, she murmured to her hosts that the girl was very shy, having lived in isolation with only her parents for company.
As they ate a crumbly dark fruitcake and drank raspberry sirop, the girl was subjected to a smiling inquisition by their hosts. Her responses dissatisfied because she would only answer what she was asked. She could not be persuaded to elaborate on the one thing the adults wished to know but could not openly ask: what had caused her parents to part.
‘She is delightfully unspoiled,’ the friend murmured to the aunt when