choked it down. There was a spasm in Vaughan’s chest. He coughed, gasped, reached for the water again and drank half the glass of it. He took an experimental breath to see if his chest was free.
‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Why won’t you help me?’
‘I would like to help you. You are in need of help. You cannot go on much longer like this. But what you have asked me today, besides being impossible, would do no good.’
He got to his feet, made an exasperated gesture with his arm. For a ridiculous moment he wondered whether he was about to raise his palms to his eyes and weep. He shook his head.
‘I’ll go, then.’
She rose too. ‘If you ever wish to come back, please do. You will be welcome.’
‘Why should I come back? You can do nothing for me. You have made that perfectly plain.’
‘That’s not quite what I said. Do refresh yourself, if you would like to. There is water and a clean towel on the side there.’
When she had gone, he splashed water on to his face, buried his face in the soft cotton towel, and felt marginally better for it. He took out his watch. There was a train on the half-hour and he had just time to be on it.
In the street, as he hurried, Anthony Vaughan chided himself for his foolishness. Suppose the woman had jumped at his idea? Suppose he had taken Helena there and word had got out? It might have done something for the wife of the man in the story, but Helena … Helena was not like other men’s wives.
On the platform a number of other passengers were waiting for the train. He stood a little away from them. He did not like to be spotted. Small talk with people you were only distantly acquainted with was something he avoided whenever he could, and the curiosity of strangers, who sometimes knew his face when he did not know theirs, was even worse.
According to the station clock, the train would be approaching in a minute or two, and while he waited he congratulated himself on a narrow escape. What her game was in refusing his money he couldn’t tell, but no doubt she’d intended to get a pound of flesh from him one way or another.
He was so absorbed in thoughts of his recent encounter that it took a little while for him to become aware of the sensation that tugged quietly at his mind. Then he did notice it but, still befuddled by the strangeness of the events at Number 17, it took a moment to separate this new feeling from the oddness of a little while ago. When he did, he recognized it: anticipation. He shook his head to dispel his weariness. It had been a long day. He was waiting for a train and the train was about to come. That was all.
The train arrived; he mounted, found an empty first-class carriage and sat by the window. The sense of anticipation that had begun on the platform was reluctant to fade. In fact, as the train left Oxford and he looked through the darkening mist towards the place where the river lay invisible in the gloom, the presentiment increased. The rhythm of the train on the tracks suggested words to his overtired brain and he heard them as clearly as if an unseen person had pronounced them: Something is going to happen.
Lily’s Nightmare
ON THE OTHER side of the river from the Vaughans’ grand house and half a mile downstream, there was a patch of land that was too wet even for watercress. Set back from the river, three oak trees grew there, and their roots drank thirstily from the wet soil, but any acorn that fell on the river side of its parent rotted before it could germinate. It was a godforsaken place, good only for drowning dogs, but the river must have been more biddable in the past because at one time somebody had built a cottage there, between the oaks and the water.
The little dwelling was a squat box of lichened stone containing two rooms, two windows and a door. There was no bedroom, but in the kitchen steps led up to a platform just wide enough for a straw mattress. At one end this sleeping ledge adjoined the chimney, so if the fire had been lit the sleeper’s head or feet might be warm for the first hours of the night. It was an impoverished place and