Eva Ibbotson

At five, the practical concluded, he made his way along the corridor to his corner of the research lab where a neat row of black boxes—each containing a hundred perfectly mounted microscope slides of flattened fleas—awaited him. He had classified (mainly by means of the bristles edging the head capsule) some eighteen species, but this work would take a lifetime. Not that he regretted taking on the Aphaniptera… his supervisor had been perfectly right when he said that fleas were virgin territory… but before he placed the next slide under his binocular, Edward allowed himself a long and lusting look at the serried rows of butterflies pinned in cases on the wall above him. Fleas were Edward’s bread and butter, but the Lepidoptera were his passion.

Punctually at six-thirty, he tidied up and bicycled back to his rooms. But before he prepared to shave and change into his dinner-jacket, he sent one of the college servants to the buttery for a pork pie. Edward had not yet dined at the Mortons’, but he had twice taken luncheon there and knew that it was best to be prepared.

It was to be a rather special dinner party—the first time that Edward had been to dinner and the first chance for Marchmont (the new Classics lecturer) and his young wife to meet the Professor in the relaxed informality of his home.

So Louisa was taking trouble. In the dining-room grate, behind the iron grille of the fireguard, at least half-a-dozen coals were actually alight, constituting by the standards of Scroope Terrace a blazing fire. Moreover she had permitted the maids to replace the electric light bulbs which she had removed, for reasons of economy, from the central chandelier. The carpet, with its squares of brown and mustard, had been freshly brushed with tea-leaves, the Professor’s portrait in cap and gown hung straight above the sideboard and though she had balked at the purchase of flowers so early in the year, the cup that her brother had won as an undergraduate in the Horatian oratory contest made, she thought now, an excellent epergne.

Descending to the basement, she found in the kitchen a similar air of festive abandonment. To her everyday soup of turnips and bacon bones Cook had added chopped carrots, giving the broth a pleasant yellowish tint. A cold codling waited in liquid for its sauce tartare and the leg of mutton (a real bargain from an enterprising butcher who specialized in cheap meat from injured but perfectly healthy animals which had to be despatched in situ) was already sizzling in the range.

“That seems to be all right, Cook. What about the dessert?”

Cook motioned her head toward a large plate on which a coffee blancmange, just turned out of its mold, still shivered faintly.

“I’m going to stick glacé cherries round it,” offered Cook.

“I must say that seems a little excessive,” said Louisa. She frowned, thinking. Still, it was a dinner party. “All right, then—but halve them first.”

She made her way upstairs again and was just in time to encounter her niece coming in from her dancing class.

It was always difficult for Harriet to leave the friendly, interesting streets and re-enter the dark house where the temperature generally seemed to be several degrees lower than that outside. Today, with Dubrov’s words still sounding in her ears, she stood more forlornly than usual in the hallway, lost in her unattainable dreams—and justifiably annoyed her aunt.

“For goodness’ sake, Harriet, don’t dawdle! Have you forgotten we have dinner guests? I want you changed and in the drawing room by seven o’clock.”

“Yes, Aunt Louisa.”

“You are to wear the pink crepe de chine. And you can put up your hair.”

In her attic Harriet slowly washed, changed into the hideous dress her aunt had bought in the January sales and embarked on the battle to put up the long, soft hair which only curved slightly at the tips and needed a battery of pins to keep it in the coronet of plaits which the Trumpington Ladies had deemed suitable. She would have given anything for a quiet evening in which to re-live what had happened… anything not to face Edward with his pompous and proprietary manner and the underlying kindness which made it impossible to dislike him as one longed to do.

When she had finished she went over to the bookcase and took down a volume of poetry, turning the pages until she found what she was looking for: a poem simply called “Life”:

I asked no other thing.

No other was denied.

I offered Being for it;

The mighty merchant smiled.

Brazil? He twirled a button

Without a glance my way

“But Madam, is there nothing else,

That we can show today?”

She stood for a long time looking at the verses in which Emily Dickinson had chronicled her heartbreak. Loneliness had taught Harriet that there was always someone who understood—it was just that so very often they were dead, and in a book.