Coriander. I forgot coriander. A whiff of it just came stealing out from behind my screen. But Nal was right. We didn’t know each other long enough to develop a grand passion, but we did indeed part good friends, my first King of Pentacles and I.

Tuesday,

April 26th, 1960

I had an odd encounter with Toby this evening, the first time I’ve seen him since Nal and I left the Apollyon together.

He’s been slogging away at a portrait of Flo for two months, and it’s been driving him mad with frustration. So when I saw him in the front hall, I asked him how it was going.

“Oh, a thousand thanks for your highness’s interest!” he snarled. “Am I expected to kowtow to show you how terrifically grateful I am for the enquiry?”

My head rocked as if he’d slapped me—what on earth was he angry about? “No,” I answered politely, “of course not. Last time we were talking, you weren’t happy about it, which is why you were looking for your mentor, Martin.”

That good-mannered reply made him look ashamed of himself. He stuck out a hand. “Sorry, Harriet. Shake?”

I shook.

“Come up and see for yourself,” he said then.

To my admittedly unschooled eyes, the portrait was stunning—also unbearably sad. My wee angel! Toby had succeeded in making Flo’s flesh tissue-thin without suggesting ill treatment, her face was just a frame for those huge amber eyes, and the whole background was peopled with shadows like ghosts forming out of a grey fog. Toby and I had never talked much about Flo, so to see that background came as a shock. Was her otherworldliness that obvious to everybody? Or was it just Toby, with the discerning eye of the artist?

“It’s brilliant,” I said sincerely. “Last time I saw it, Flo looked as if she lived in a concentration camp. Now, you’ve managed to retain the essence without making her look abused.”

“Ta,” he said gruffly, but he didn’t invite me to sit down or partake of coffee. “Is love fled?” he asked suddenly.

“Yes, last Saturday.”

“Broken-hearted? Want to cry on Uncle Toby’s shoulder?”

I laughed. “No, idiot! It wasn’t like that at all.”

“What was it like?”

Toby, to ask something so personal? “Very nice,” I said.

His eyes went quite red, his face twisted up ferociously. “You’re not hurt?”

So that was it! God bless Toby, always protecting the women of The House. I shook my head. “Not a bit, cross my heart. It was a flutter, mate. A flutter I needed rather badly after years and years of David.”

The anger rose even higher, he bared his teeth. “How can you call that a flutter?” he demanded.

“Oh, honestly! You sound like someone in a Victorian novel!” I said, baring my own teeth. “I gave you more credit, Toby Evans, than to think that you subscribe to the double standard! Men can dip their wicks from their early teens, but women have to sit on it until they’re married! Well, get stuffed!” I yelled.

“Keep your shirt on, keep your shirt on!” he said, getting over his anger, but not sure what his next mood was going to be. Or that was what I fancied. I might be wrong, I don’t know, it was all so strange, so unlike him.

“I intend to keep all my clothes on, Mr. Evans!” I snapped. “A flutter with an Indian peacock does not mean that I intend to go flying with any Australian crows!”

“Peace, peace!” he cried, holding both hands up, palms out.

I was still smouldering, but the last thing in the world I ever want is to be at outs with Toby, his friendship is far too precious to me. So I changed the subject. “I know Ezra was going to ask his wife for a divorce two weekends ago,” I said, “but I haven’t seen Pappy to find out what the wife said.”

His mood had gone from red to brown; now it went a sort of flat black. “Ezra didn’t turn up last weekend, so she doesn’t know how it’s going. Except that he phoned on Friday to say the wife was being very difficult, so he’d have to visit her again.”

“Maybe she’s desperate enough to offer a bit of fellatio,” I said without thinking.

Toby stared at me as if paralysed, then turned abruptly away from me, grabbed the bottle of three-star from the table, and poured himself a whole glassful. It was only as I went down the stairs that I realised he must have thought it was Nal informed me of that term, probably in practice. I’d understood for some time that for all his liberality, Toby was old-fashioned about women and their activities. In his catalogue I was a woman. Jim, Bob and Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz weren’t. Aren’t men peculiar?

Friday,

April 29th, 1960

I do like Joe Dwyer, who works the bottle department at the Piccadilly pub. Tonight I stopped in to buy a quart of three-star for my Sunday afternoon session with Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz. He wrapped it in a brown paper bag and handed it over with a big grin. “For the seeing-eye tigress upstairs,” he said.

I remarked that that sounded as if he knew the seeing-eye tigress upstairs extremely well, which made him laugh. “Oh, she’s one of the great Cross characters,” he said. “You might say I’ve known her for at least a couple of lifetimes.”

Something in his voice suggested knowledge in the biblical sense, and I found myself wondering how many of the elderly—and not so elderly—men Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz knows are past lovers. Whenever I see the shy, shadowy Lerner Chusovich, who smokes our eels and sometimes eats with Klaus, he speaks of our landlady with tender yearning. Why ever she might choose a man, it wouldn’t be for anyone else’s reasons. She is a law unto herself.

As the upstairs toilet is in a separate room from the upstairs bathroom, I often use the upstairs bathroom because it has a shower head over the bath, and I prefer a shower to a bath any day. My odd working hours mean that when I need a shower, the rest of The House are either gone or immersed in the evening’s activities, so I don’t inconvenience a soul. Truth to tell, one bathroom isn’t enough for a four-storey house. No one goes down to the laundry.

Get to the point, Harriet! Harold. The upstairs bathroom and toilet lie between Harold’s domain just above my living room and Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz’s bedroom and kitchen, which I’ve never seen because their doors are always closed. He seems to know when I’m coming, though I swear I’m silent-footed, nor do I arrive at the same hour thanks to Cas X-ray’s irregularities. But he’s always there in that hall, which is always plunged into darkness—the bulb seems to blow every day, though when I remarked on it to Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz, she looked surprised and said it worked for her. Does that mean that Harold slips it from its bayonet when his antennae tell him I’m coming? It’s possible to see because the toilet light is always on and its door is always ajar, but the hall itself is pitch-black corners, in one of which he’s always standing when I come round the stairs. He never says a word, he just stands fused into the wall and glares his hatred at me, and I confess that I walk warily, ready to elude him if he goes for me with a knife or a bit of washing-line wire.

Why don’t I content myself with a bath downstairs? Because there’s a stubborn streak in me, or maybe it’s more accurate to say that I’m more afraid of cowardice than I am even of Harold. If I give in and don’t have my shower, I’m telling Harold that I’m too frightened of him to invade his territory, and that gives him the advantage over me. It hands my power over to him. That can’t happen, I can’t let it happen. So I go upstairs for my shower, and I pretend that Harold isn’t there in the darkness, that I’m not the only target of the evil in him.

Sunday,

May 1st, 1960

The crystal ball was sitting uncovered on the table in the living room when I came in. Summer’s well gone, and the air has a nip in it, which I suppose is why Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz has removed herself from the balcony. Today it’s raining as well.