was a tap on the front door. It was so soft that for a moment she thought she had misheard it. But then it came again, louder, two taps. Alice glanced at her reflection in the mirror, impatiently tweaked off the djellaba, threw back the mass of her dark hair and went out into the hall and opened the door.
There was a young man on the doorstep. When Alice opened the door he pulled off his woolly bobble-hat and smiled nervously.
‘Oh!’ he said. His voice was light, shy. His smile was engaging. His close-cropped brown hair was curly, his pebble glasses magnified his eyes, which were pale and blue. Alice felt a rush of unexpected and uncontrollable lust.
‘Mrs Hartley!’ he exclaimed. ‘I am sorry to trouble you so late, but we were moving scenery later than we meant.’
Alice noted the large removal van behind him. She tossed back her hair and glowed at him. ‘That’s quite all right,’ she said. ‘Won’t you come in? I don’t quite know what this is all about?’
He stepped lightly over the doorstep. The hall was narrow. Alice turned so that her large rounded breasts brushed against his denim jacket.
‘It’s Suffix Theatre Players,’ he said. His voice quavered into a little squeak but he soon had it under control again. ‘We’re doing a play “The Intruder”, and we need a psychiatrist’s couch. Your husband very kindly said we could borrow his. I’ve come to collect it. But perhaps I’m a bit late.’
Alice gave a little gasp. ‘Wait here,’ she ordered and she spun on her bare heel and pattered quickly upstairs. A faint tinkling sound from the little bells and the coins followed her as she opened the door to the spare bedroom at the front of the house where she guessed Charles had retreated.
He was lying flat on his back in the spare bed. A small brown bottle of Mogadon pills beside his bed indicated that he had avoided a further confrontation with Alice by hiding in deep sleep. The slow sensual grunts which came from his half-parted lips indicated to a wife who knew him well that he was not hiding from Miranda Bloomfeather.
Alice’s dark gaze hardened. Then she closed the door softly and went back downstairs. The moon face of the young student looked up at her as she came down like some dark goddess descending from an inner place of sacrifice.
‘Professor Hartley’s asleep,’ she said sweetly. ‘But I’ll help you with the couch. I’ll just slip some sandals on.’
The student dumbly nodded.
‘What’s your name?’ Alice asked. She pulled up the layers of kaftan and silk petticoats to tie the straps of her sandals. The student caught a glimpse of pale knee, of pale thigh, of darker – could it be? surely not? –
‘M-M-M-Michael Coulter,’ he said.
Alice stroked down her layers of skirts. ‘Michael,’ she said, as if the word had some hidden meaning. ‘How lovely! My name is Alice.’
‘He – llo,’ Michael said weakly. He had a terrible feeling that he was behaving like a wimp.
‘Now,’ Alice said determinedly. ‘Do you have much space in that lovely big van of yours?’
Michael gulped and waved his arms vaguely in the air to indicate wide open spaces. The van was quite empty. He had hired it in error, thinking he was getting a little tailgate wagon. When he had come to collect it he had found a vehicle the size of a pantechnicon and a bill to match.
‘Would you do me a favour?’ Alice breathed.
Michael goggled, nodded.
‘I’m moving house,’ Alice said. ‘Could you help me take a few, just a few of my special things now? I’ll come back for the rest in the morning. I’ll help you with the couch – and would the Professor’s desk be of any use? – and then we can put some of my little things in.’
Alice rolled up her skirt at the waistband. Michael took off his jacket. They set to work.
They started with the study. Alice insisted that the Suffix Theatre Players should have anything which would add authenticity to their set. They stripped the study of all the furniture, the rugs, and even the Professor’s framed degrees off the wall and the curtains from the window.
‘Charles won’t mind!’ Alice said blithely.
They moved on to the dining-room, the kitchen, and the sitting-room. They had to leave the piano: it was a baby grand.
‘It seems a shame,’ Alice said sorrowfully. ‘It looks so lonely there, all on its own, with no other furniture in the room and the carpet up off the floor.’
‘Come back for it tomorrow,’ Michael gasped. There was a sheen of cold sweat on his pale face from the effort of humping his end of the Wilton carpet. Alice was flushed, nothing more.
‘Upstairs,’ she said. She put a hand on Michael’s bare forearm. ‘Very, very quietly,’ she cautioned him. ‘We don’t want to wake the Professor. This is going to be a lovely surprise for him in the morning.’ She gleamed in the half-light of the hall, thinking of Charles waking to a house stripped bare of all the carefully accumulated possessions of a lifetime. ‘He’s going to think the fairies have been!’ she said gaily.
Michael, hypnotized and hyperventilating from effort, nodded dumbly.
Alice led the way. The door to the spare bedroom was tight shut. Behind it, locked in dreams, Charles bore Miranda Bloomfeather to the ground on the white shores of a tropical beach. The towering waves broke over them, Miranda shuddered in grateful ecstasy. The crash when Michael dropped his end of the double pine bed frame was the Pacific rollers beating on the coral seashore. Alice’s squeak of alarm when she lost her grip on her end of the wardrobe was Miranda crying like one of the gulls on ‘Desert Island Discs’, ‘Again! Again! Charles, again!’
Michael and Alice stood on the doorstep. The house gutted and dark stood empty behind them.
‘Could you give me a lift?’ Alice asked.
Michael’s body was shaking like unset jelly from the strain of unaccustomed exertion. ‘Of course, Mrs Hartley,’ he said gallantly. ‘I’d love to.’
‘I’ll get my cape,’ Alice said and went back into the house. Michael collapsed into his seat in the cab. He started the van to get the heater going, he rested his head in his hands on the steering-wheel. He let out a soft sob of fatigue. He had never worked so hard in all his life. He could not have believed he was capable of such hard work. But Mrs Hartley was a wonder! And at her age, and everything!
Inside the house Alice took her cape from the hook under the stairs. It was the only garment left. All Charles’s clothes, like all Charles’s books, pictures, notes, sporting trophies, horse brasses, like all Charles’s furniture and curtains, were packed up and loaded in the providential van. Alice stole around the house with her cape wrapped close against the chill, confirming that everything, yes, everything, was safely packed up. Only one room of the house was untouched. The spare bedroom where Charles snuffled and dreamed of a tropical paradise and Miranda.
It seemed such a shame to leave the job half-done. Alice hesitated outside the door once more. She opened it softly and peeped in. Charles stirred in his sleep and turned his face towards the door. Alice crept in. She stood in silence and waited in case he should sense her presence. Waited
