While the trio were away, gathering the fourth and final load of the day, Julia lost 
her temper with the unpacking. It was a disaster, she said; everything had been parceled 
up and put into the tea chests in the wrong order. She was having to disinter perfectly 
useless items to get access to the bare necessities.
    Kirsty kept her silence, and her place in the kitchen, washing the soiled cups.
    Cursing louder, Julia left the chaos and went out for a cigarette on the front step. 
She leaned against the open door, and breathed the pollen-gilded air. Already, though it 
was only the twenty-first of August, the afternoon was tinged with a smoky scent that 
heralded autumn.
    She had lost track of how fast the day had gone, for as she stood there a bell began 
to ring for Evensong: the run of chimes rising and falling in lazy waves. The sound was 
reassuring. It made her think of her childhood, though not-that she could remember-of any 
particular day or place. Simply of being young, of mystery.
    It was four years since she'd last stepped into a church: the day of her marriage to 
Rory, in fact. The thought of that day-or rather, of the promise it had failed to 
fulfill-soured the moment. She left the step, the chimes in full flight, and turned back 
into the house. After the touch of the sun on her upturned face, the interior seemed 
gloomy. Suddenly she tired to the point of tears.
    They would have to assemble the bed before they could put their heads down to sleep 
tonight, and they had yet to decide which room they would use as the master bedroom. She 
would do that now, she elected, and so avoid having to return to the front room, and to 
ever-mournful Kirsty.
    The bell was still pealing when she opened the door of the front room on the second 
floor. It was the largest of the three upper rooms-a natural choice-but the sun had not 
got in today (or any other day this summer) because the blinds were drawn across the 
window. The room was consequently chillier than anywhere else in the house; the air 
stagnant. She crossed the stained floorboards to the window, intending to remove the 
blind.
    At the sill, a strange thing. The blind had been securely nailed to the window frame, 
effectively cutting out the least intrusion of life from the sunlit street beyond. She 
tried to pull the material free, but failed. The workman, whoever he'd been, had done a 
thorough job.
    No matter; she'd have Rory take a claw hammer to the nails when he got back. She 
turned from the window, and as she did so she was suddenly and forcibly aware that the 
bell was still summoning the faithful. Were they not coming tonight? Was the hook not 
sufficiently baited with promises of paradise? The thought was only half alive; it 
withered in moments. But the bell rolled on, reverberating around the room. Her limbs, 
already aching with fatigue, seemed dragged down further by each peal. Her head throbbed 
intolerably.
    The room was hateful, she'd decided; it was stale, and its benighted walls clammy. 
Despite its size, she would not let Rory persuade her into using it as the master 
bedroom. Let it rot.
    She started toward the door, but as she came within a yard of it, the corners of the 
room seemed to creak, and the door slammed. Her nerves jangled. It was all she could do 
to prevent herself from sobbing.
    Instead she simply said, "Go to hell," and snatched at the handle. It turned easily 
(why should it not? yet she was relieved) and the door swung open. From the hall below, a 
splash of warmth and ocher light.
    She closed the door behind her and, with a queer satisfaction the root of which she 
couldn't or wouldn't fathom turned the key in the lock.
    As she did so, the bell stopped.
    
    4
    "But it's the biggest of the rooms..."
    "I don't like it, Rory. It's damp. We can use the back room."
    "If we can get the bloody bed through the door."
    "Of course we can. You know we can."
    "Seems a waste of a good room," he protested, knowing full well that this was a fait 
accompli.
    "Mother knows best," she told him, and smiled at him with eyes whose luster was far 
from maternal.
    
    
    THREE
    
    1
    The seasons long for each other, like men and women, in order that they may be cured 
of their excesses.
    Spring, if it lingers more than a week beyond its span, starts to hunger for summer 
to end the days of perpetual promise. Summer in its turn soon begins to sweat for 
something to quench its heat, and the mellowest of autumns will tire of gentility at 
last, and ache for a quick sharp frost to kill its fruitfulness.
    Even winter-the hardest season, the most implacable-dreams, as February creeps on, of 
the flame that will presently melt it away. Everything tires with time, and starts to 
seek some opposition, to save it from itself.
    So August gave way to September and there were few complaints.
    
    2
    With work, the house on Lodovico Street began to look more hospitable. There were 
even visits from neighbors, who-after sizing up the couple-spoke freely of how happy they 
were to have number fifty-five occupied again. Only one of them made any mention of 
Frank, referring in passing to the odd fellow who'd lived in the house for a few weeks 
the previous summer. There was a moment of embarrassment when Rory revealed the tenant to 
have been his brother, but it was soon glossed over by Julia, whose power to charm knew 
no bounds.
    Rory had seldom made mention of Frank during the years of his marriage to Julia, 
though he and his brother were only eighteen months apart in age, and had, as children, 
been inseparable. This Julia had learned on an occasion of drunken reminiscing-a month or 
two before the wedding-when Rory had spoken at length about Frank. It had been melancholy 
talk. The brothers' paths had diverged considerably once they'd passed through 
adolescence, and Rory regretted it. Regretted still more the pain Frank's wild life-style 
had brought to their parents. It seemed that when Frank appeared, once in a blue moon, 
from whichever corner of the globe he was presently laying waste, he only brought grief. 
His tales of adventures in the shallows of criminality, his talk of whores and petty 
theft, all appalled their parents. But there had been worse, or so Rory had said. In his 
wilder moments Frank had talked of a life lived in delirium, of an appetite for 
experience that conceded no moral imperative.
    Was it the tone of Rory's telling, a mixture of revulsion and envy, that had so 
piqued Julia's curiosity? Whatever the reason, she had been quickly seized by an 
unquenchable curiosity concerning this madman.