This story based on early 1970s musings about a newspaper report of a number of acts of vandalism in the United Kingdom involving the burning of the contents of letter boxes. In those days, mail was the prime form of distance communication. It took precedent over telephone and predated instant modern internet and e-mail communication. This being so this story speculates on the kind of devastation such vandalism might incur.

After the five-thirty pm collection few people used the letterbox next to the Civic Cambers on George Street, Edinburgh. They included a couple of tardy secretaries with large bundles of mail, a solitary man who drove up in a car to post his letter and a cleaner on her way to work. It was a standard box, the same as those scattered in their repetitive millions all over the United Kingdom. The surrounding monochrome grey granite buildings silhouetted its scarlet body. The absence of traffic and movement in the wide regal thoroughfare further accentuated its impact, so that its lonely splash of red radiated down wind-swept pavements. It exerted an uncanny attraction towards itself. Robert felt this attraction as he paused to look mechanically up and down the street for traffic before crossing on his way home from a pub in Rose Street. The friendly warm color beckoned and its familiar shape reassured. He idly changed direction and walked towards it.

The wind, a cold October “Norther”, now blew directly onto his beer-flushed face tingling his ruddy complexion. The gusty wind played on the regular Georgian facades of the street’s gaunt buildings and plucked a mournful tune from their harmoniously proportioned porticos and pediments. The lonely-whistled cries echoed across the street as the buildings asked each other why George Street, on this March night of 1971, should be so deserted when it had been designed to be Edinburgh’s main street. Their calls reminded each other of the irony of the Georgian New Town with its wide parallel streets, imposing squares, and series of residential crescents and circles whose purpose had all been eclipsed by the emergence of Prince’s Street as a main tourist attraction and shopping thoroughfare. Robert listened to the lonely cries, but to him the lamenting loneliness was not the buildings’ solitude but cries of a man’s loneliness. They were his cries of anguish due to the inactivity of unemployment in the young and healthy, his cries of frustration to be living at home in a tiny crowded two up two down, and his feeling of emptiness and uselessness when each day is the same and slips quickly and uneventfully away.

When he reached the letterbox he stopped and stood nonchalantly beside it hoping to draw comfort from its red side. But, when he touched it, it was cold, cold as steel. Feeling cheated he kicked it. He would have done so again except the impact telescoped thorough his thin shoe and hurt his foot. Then he took out his cigarettes and matches and, crouching beside the rounded body for shelter, lit himself one. As he inhaled a first soothing drag of smoke he noticed the letterboxes’ mouth. It was a wide-open gaping mouth asking to be fed. He thrust the lighted match into its jaws. Nothing happened, the street remained just as empty, the air just as cold, and the grey stone buildings just as somber, he felt just as bored and aimless. He lit another match and pushed it into the red mouth, then another and another until a small drift of smoke began to emerge, like a dragon’s breath, from the scarlet body. The wind whisked the thin wisps away in its embrace so quickly that they also seemed futile and insignificant.

He crossed the street and walked down the other side past the City Hall, to one of the many cross streets. He paused for a moment and looked back to inspect the result of his efforts. A small curl of smoke could be seen drifting out of its red lips. “Yes,” he thought “that is so in keeping with its color. I wonder why they don’t make them blue or green or yellow, then, I wouldn’t have to give them smoky breath.” His conscience appeased, he took in the whole street, half hoping to see another letterbox, but both pavements were empty, his box was the only one. He threw his cigarette butt into the gutter and thrust his hands in his pockets turning over the few coins which he had left. He walked up to Princes Street.

The still brightly lit Princes Street presented an equally cold sidewalk with a biting wind blowing across the Loch, or central valley, which runs adjacent to the street. The tourist season was over but a few people walked its well-used pavements, their bodies shrunken into their coats. Robert passed them by, his hands thrust even deeper into his pockets, his shoulders slouched, as he tried to coax a little extra warmth out of his old coat. Occasionally, he paused to look into the shop windows. As always, he stopped to gaze into an electrical shop opposite Waverley Station. He liked to watch the television figures moving across multiple screens, reproduced, soundless, like pictures in a kaleidoscope.

He walked on beside the station looking down on its massive pitched roofs, filling the entire valley incline with their organized lines. Then he turned to go down the Waverley steps. As usual, an exceptionally strong blast of icy air met him as he hurried down. The first shock almost knocked him over, and then, as he pushed downwards, it turned itself into a twisting upwards movement which gustily lifted his light coat and blew through his clothing to his skin. He cursed himself under his breath as he could easily have taken the other station entry for he knew that this wind was not exceptional. But he liked the place as it reminded him of Christine. He had met her at a party which he had gate crashed. They had danced all evening in an ecstatic whirl and then spent several weeks together enjoying a brief interlude of joy. Robert had not known real love or passion until those few idyllic days. Then, all too quickly, she was gone to take up a position in Glasgow. They had said a final goodbye on these same steps. He had wanted to keep in touch. She had insisted otherwise, partly because of her new position in Glasgow and partly as her family was a rather upstage affluent one who would sneer at Robert’s poverty. Now, it seemed, his only hope of ever seeing her again would be to win the Pools. Ah, if only he could do that, then he would marry her.

He entered the station and made his way to the station cafeteria which he knew to be warm, and open at this late hour. It was a typical British Railways place with a tall Victorian ceiling decorated with dirty plaster molding some twenty feet above its bare tables and polypropylene chairs. At one time it must have been a beautifully proportioned room but now a flimsy partition divided it into kitchen and cafeteria, making nonsense of the rich cornice and symmetrical windows. Tonight the warm room caused condensation to pour down the dirty windows and form dark pools on the window sills, while unsophisticated lights glared through the hazy air giving the occupants a bubonic plague-like green pallor.

He entered, and glanced around the room to assess the clientele: a few isolated travelers, their eyes sunken deep into grey sockets under the bright light, their clothes creased; and a couple tramps slowly eating large hunks of bread-and-butter which they washed down with thick tea. He went over to the counter and bought a cup of tea and some scones. He carried it away on a flimsy plastic plate and chose a corner table. He ate methodically without enjoyment; he thought that the scones tasted like play-dough. Just as he finished someone sat beside him.

The newcomer looked peculiarly out of place and, although now drunk, appeared to be unaccustomed to drinking. He had reached a lachrymose state of melancholy and grief quite unbefitting to his high position in his firm. Indeed, if he sober, could have seen himself now he would have been utterly disgusted. His well-cut blue suit hung from him in a crumpled mess and his expensive tie, tied in a tight knot was lost somewhere on his chest. He staggered so that by the time that he reached the table most of his tea had spilt adding sticky wet stains to his suit. Once seated, he guiltily produced a flask of whiskey from an inner pocket and poured enough into his cup to fill it to the brim. At that moment his glazed blue eyes caught Robert’s brown ones, so leaning over, he offered Robert a “wee dram” for himself. Robert willingly accepted.

Angus Macgregor badly needed a confident and introduced himself. He quickly launched into the saga of his misery, “I posted it to her today,” he said, “I wrote a letter to her telling her ‘never to come home again’. My daughter, my own flesh and blood, my own first baby, I wrote that she is ‘never to come home again.’” His voice trailed away in his misery and he took another drink of laced tea to renew his strength. “She is such a bonnie lassie, always so good. How could she have done this? My wee lassie, my wee Christine” He paused again to contemplate Christine. He had so wished her be perfect, indeed she had been so perfect, until this. Perhaps he ought never to have let her leave Edinburgh to live in Glasgow.

“Err, yes, you said ‘Christine’,” prompted Robert, his hands swirling his tea cup, his interest stirred by the name of his beloved.

“Ah, my Christine, my Christine‘s pregnant,” he gasped. The dreadful news almost choked him. The words hit Robert like a pistol shot, could this man’s Christine be his Christine? And, if so would this child be his child? He felt a sudden surge of pride, but checked himself. He couldn’t support himself, how could he possibly support anyone else?

Meanwhile Angus rambled on enumerating his sorrows. “She is going to have a child of her own. There’s no father.” Here Robert smiled at the mere thought of his possible paternity. “Earlier I couldn’t bear the thought of the humiliation. I argued with my wife. But what does it matter what people say? I don’t care about them. I care about my Christine she is far more important. But all I did was send fifty quid and wrote that she is never to come home again, never to come home again.” His moist eyes searched Robert’s face for help. “What should I do?”

“Telephone,” suggested Robert.

“I can’t. She hasn’t got a phone. Besides, I know that when she gets that letter she will never come home she so proud, so proud, just like her father. Once she has received that letter and read those words to never come home again nothing would make her come.”

Robert’s powers of sympathy were somewhat limited at the best of times and now, as Angus repeated his story, he let his mind race to the extraordinary possibility that this Christine might be his Christine and her child, his child. He wanted to be alone, but stayed, feigning concentration hoping to get another tot of whiskey and more information as a reward. As he sat there he mentally reviewed what he had put in his Pools coupon earlier in the day. It had taken time to work it out weighing up probabilities and matching his knowledge of the different teams against an intangible element of chance. He had felt satisfied when he given it to his mother to post. Now, he felt that meeting this drunken man was a good omen. Surely he was destined, not only win the Pools, but also to rush to Christine’s aid. He counted the days on his fingers, today was Wednesday, he would know on Saturday, and then it should only be a day before he found Christine. He had to win; it all depended on his wining. Surely, he had won.

They finished the whiskey, each immersed in his own world and then Robert left for his long cold walk home. First he called in at the Gents, then, comfortably at home with his body; he walked through the station to the Bridge exit thereby avoiding the cold Waverley steps, up across Princes Street, down past Woolworths past the General Post Office. He paused to look up at its Renaissance façade. He felt good as he thought of the morning collection, wondering what would be left on George Street for the bureaucratic system to sort out. He felt good that at least someone would feel the effect of his actions. He walked on towards home with a puffed up feeling of his own importance as a father, Pool winner and destroyer of letterboxes.

Christine lay in bed luxuriating in the pleasing thought that on Saturday she could lie there as long as she wished. She lay on her back letting her hand drift gently over her stomach which already seemed to be a little swollen. She wondered, as she cupped her palms over it, whether the baby was already large enough to be recognizably human. She mused, regretfully, over the father, Robert, whom she had only known that short idyllic time in Edinburgh. She knew that his circumstances were bad and so she had never tried to contact with him. After all, what could he do? Alone, or perhaps with her family, if only they would write, she thought that she could cope. Indeed, she almost looked forward to the challenge of coping. Robert, she remembered, seemed to be depressive and moody so, she concluded, he would never be able to face the strain of a baby. He would always be trying to win a million pounds on the Pools, or gamble thousands on the hounds. She bore him no resentment. She didn’t even want to see him again. It seemed as though the baby were completely hers and that by not being there he had surrendered his paternity.

Her drifting thoughts passed on to what to do today. While she was musing she heard the familiar thud of a letter falling on the hard floor at the front door. Perhaps, the letter from home had arrived. She feared the worst. She knew her father to be a proud man and would consider her illegitimate pregnancy a dishonor and disgrace. She fully expected him to allow his concern about his partner’s reactions to override his, and her mother’s parental love. Now, her earlier feelings of independence vanished and her heart beat overtime as she hurried to the hall with a remote feeling of nausea.

A strange letter lay on the floor; it was wrapped in an official envelope on which a clerk had written in a painstakingly-legible hand with neat forward-sloping letters:

The G.P.O. apologizes for the state

of this letter. It was burnt by vandals

in a letterbox in Edinburgh on the

evening of Wednesday March 10th 1971

Her hands trembled. She carried the strange envelope back to her bedroom. She smelt its aroma of ashes and tore it open. Inside she found such a mutilated mess that she was surprised that the post office had been able to piece together sufficient information to be able get it to her. The entire left hand side was obliterated either burnt or charred out of recognition. The words on the right hand side, written in her father’s unmistakable-tidy hand, danced on the page in a jumbled incoherent succession of disconnected phrases. She went over to the window and held the damaged page to the light to read as follows:

were horrified to
r some time have been
ere unable to write to
your situation as
, praying a good deal
hat as you have been
For some time now
o do so.
olutely out of the
t add another wrong to
, we do not wish
Our daughter would
are to have her
ttle something
come home again.

She tried to patch in the missing parts, but was unable to make out any meaning, except for the last words come home again. Suddenly, she knew just how much she had wished to go home, just how much she needed her parents’ love and support. Her previously swelling pride crumbled away in a rush of love. She hurriedly began to pack for going home. The words rang in her head like the lyric of a popular song, come home again, come home again.

Robert loved Saturdays, the day that he checked his Pools entry. Each time he was convinced that this time he had won. Today, the facts bore out his optimism. He attentively listened to the results and glued himself to the television commentary of the game in Glasgow. He spent the whole afternoon in their tiny front room glued to the screen, and although it was a dark room at the best of times, he had the curtains drawn to make the image seem brighter. He practically chain smoked increasing the stagnant stuffiness of the room. As time went on his excitement increased. All his predictions were correct, except this game in Glasgow which had all appearance of being a draw. He could kick himself in anger, hadn’t he thought that it might be a draw? His eyes followed the ball with the camera. Half time, no score, full time no score, penalty time, a goal, a goal.

“They’ve won; they’ve won” He yelled to his mother “A goal, a goal. I’m rich, I’m rich” He could hardly breathe in his excitement.

He neatly checked the results again. There was no doubt about it he had won. He rushed out of the house to the nearest post office to send a telegram. He had rehearsed this moment so often in his dreams that he hardly needed to read the winner’s instructions on the back of his entry copy. A win! A win!

Back home he dragged his mother in from her kitchen to tell her the good news. “I’ve won, ‘should be about one hundred and fifty grand,” he shouted. “Oh, Mum, I’ll buy gifts for all. I’ll get married; I’ll have a bairn of my own.” He hugged his mother. “How long do you think that it’ll take them to contact me? Today? It must be today!” Already he could see them arrive in a slick Daimler to talk to him. He wondered whether they brought the Champagne with them, or whether they saved that for the publicity of the handing over ceremony. Yes and the publicity would be an ideal way for him to find Christine who would, by now, be miserable having received her father’s letter.

The reply to his telegram didn’t arrive until late. He rushed to the door, tripping over the carpet in his excitement. The telegram was brief and to the point:

T—-‘S POOLS AKNOWLEDGES MR.R. MCNAB’S
TELEGRAM STOP REGRET HAVE NO RECORD
OF RECEIPT OF ENTRY AS MENTIONED STOP

He couldn’t believe his eyes, it just wasn’t possible. His mother couldn’t have forgotten to post it, not this week. “Mum,” he yelled “You did post the entry as usual didn’t you?”

“Oh course I did,” she affirmed soothingly as she stepped into the hall to watch him. “I posted on Wednesday night, as usual, when I went to my cleaning job. You know the George Street box.”

At twenty-five Kent was alone and unmarried, so when his mother died he faced the task of disposing of her things alone; alone, except for her cat, Mack, who he had reluctantly inherited along with everything else. He worked methodically and soon came upon her photograph albums. Although he had seen them before, he couldn’t resist looking through them again. He made a space on the dining table and arranged them in chronological piles. Mack jumped up on the table as though anxious to assist. He settled himself into a neat curl and sent cat hair wafting over the books. Kent sneezed twice and began to thumb through beginning with his baby pictures. He flipped the familiar pages quickly but, when he came to a faded photograph of two children in a bath full of bubbles, he paused. The pallid little boy was himself at six and the smiling little girl was Helen, his four-year-old niece. Even now, almost two decades later, he recollected his embarrassment. He recalled her laughter and his sullen pout as he tried to hide himself in the bubbles. He vaguely remembered her game in which she offered him a mug full of suds telling him, with a straight face, that it was hot cocoa. In the game he was supposed to take the mug and pretend to drink registering surprise when it turned out to be foam. He had been unable to comply and her father, his older step-brother, Kevin, had stepped in to make the appropriate moves. Then she had laughed her tinkling happy laughter which echoed off the bathroom walls. He had attempted to join in but his ongoing angst prevented him from any semblance of joy.

He found later photographs from 1995, the year that his father died. The family group pictures showed a somber gathering with full representation from his father’s two marriages and families. His mother, his younger second wife, wore an ugly black hat and his twelve year-old self stood stiff and erect next to her. He remembered the sadness of the day and how uncomfortable it was to wear long pants and jacket in Austin in August. Now, fifteen years later, with the pain of that day dulled, he looked intently at each photograph, but he didn’t look for his mother or himself he looked for Helen. She wore a pretty summer dress and smiled her radiant smile into the camera. Already you could tell that this ten-year-old girl was destined to the looks which turn heads. She had poise and vivacity. After the funeral Kent, Helen and two other children had played Monopoly together. Helen had won finishing the game with a ballerina’s spin and peals of sweet laughter. Her pleasure was so intense that Kent remembered how glad he had been that she had won.

The third album contained photographs from his mother’s 2005, fiftieth birthday celebration. She had invited the whole family, even her dead husband’s children from his first marriage. Her step-children, who were children to her in name only, stood in the photographs showing their age as all were already over fifty. Her step-son Kevin had come bringing his wife and daughter who, now a twenty-year-old college student was on Spring Break. During this visit the twenty-two-year-old Kent had realized the extent of Helen’s beauty. Her skin was perfect, her eyes deep dark pools, her eyelashes long and full, and her dark hair lustrous. She moved with grace and uninhibited spontaneity. Kent enjoyed watching her as he admired her flat belly, slender legs and nicely shaped breasts. What made her additionally attractive was her fun loving gaiety. Kent found her unlike any of the girls whom he had dated. She talked to him as an equal discussing literature and movies with intensity. He relaxed in her presence merely because she was so vibrant and seemingly carefree. How he wished that she were not related, that she was someone other than his niece. But then he would have been embarrassed and inhibited by his attraction to her. Might not the constant worrying about how he could invite her out, date her, become her boyfriend and even her lover, have detracted from his enjoyment of their time together?

All these memories went through Kent’s mind as he scoured the pages for images of her. He was not disappointed and found several taken the day after the big birthday party. It was the day that they had gone to Pedernales Falls State Park. The photograph which he liked best was the one of him and Helen standing beside the Park notice about swimming. The Park had several such notices posted; each admonished the public that bathing was strictly prohibited and would be prosecuted with fines. In the photograph the two stood with wet hair and damp clothing smiling sheepishly at the notice. As Kent looked at the photograph he closed his eyes and relived the afternoon preceding the photograph.

Every precious moment came back to him vividly. It began when they ate a picnic on a bluff overlooking the falls. After they had eaten they spilled out onto the rocks leaping, gazelle-like, from boulder to boulder. Kent followed Helen as she moved quickly exploring the many crevices and sparkling water. Eventually they came to a secluded pool snugly surrounded by smooth rocks. The water was deep, clear and inviting. Quickly Helen took her shoes off and dangled her painted toes in the water. Kent sat beside her and did likewise.

She turned to face him, her eyes as deep as the waters and asked, “Do you think that they are serious about bathing? The water invites us in. I am not sure that I can resist.”

“The signs are unavoidable so I have to believe that they are very serious.”

“Yes, but they have to catch you to prosecute. I don’t see any park rangers, do you?”

“I see none, unless there is one behind that rock over there.” Kent held his hand up over his eyes as through searching diligently and smiled as he pointed to a rock upstream.

She looked him in the face and joined in his mirth. “You are a big tease. No, I can’t see any rangers. I can’t even see my parents or your mum. So, – do you think that we should?”

“Should what?”

“Swim, silly.”

“But we don’t have towels or swimming things.”

“You don’t have to have towels and swimming suits to swim you know. Swimming in the buff is much better. It’s exhilarating.”

Kent looked at the wonderful girl beside him. Was she going to strip off in front of him without inhibition? Would he have to reciprocate and undress also? “Aren’t you embarrassed to undress in front of me?” he whispered in a voice husky with emotion.

“Nope, I have the right. Remember that when I was four and you six we bathed together, your mother has the photograph in an album. We are family. It has to be OK.”

“Well, I am not sure.”

“But I am. My mind is made up. I’m going to go behind that rock over there and undress and get into the water. If you want to join me you can make that rock over there your dressing room.” She pointed to a rock in the opposite direction.

Kent was not about to be upstaged by a girl and especially not Helen and so he nodded and walked to his designated rock. He undressed.

She slipped soundlessly into the pool and he followed her. It was crisp and fresh and for a moment his whole body tingled from the cold. The pure waters of the Pedernales caressed and stimulated all his secret extremities and he liked it. Immediately he knew that this precious moment, the startling sensation of the cold water and vision of the nymph before him would stay with him always. She was already swimming toward the opposite side. He followed her lead, glad that he swam well and pleased that he looked as at home in the water as she did. They swam quietly parting the water with gentle strokes letting it ripple without splashing. It glided over their naked bodies shining and glistening in the afternoon sun. When they reached the far side they trod water facing each other.

“You are right, it is wonderful,” he whispered. He was almost afraid of speaking and hoped that the sound of his words would not break the magic of the place.

She murmured back, “It is idyllic. It is so cool, so clear, and so peaceful.”

He looked down through the crystal deeps to the scoured rocky bottom and nodded. “I can see to the bottom.”

“This is the best that it gets. This is Eden.”

The chased each other across the pool several times before each discretely swam to their designated rock and climbed out. They came back together when they were dressed their hair still wet and clothes damp. They didn’t allude to their dip but silently took hands and walked back across the rocks. Her hand was almost as cold as the water. By the time that they were under the steep bank on the far side it had begun to warm up. He wanted to prolong the entrancement but she suddenly let go and began to race. “Last one up is a rotten egg!” He followed her up the steep cliff happy to let her win so that he could watch her climb from behind.

Mack got up and unexpectedly rubbed his body against Kent’s hand. The surprise of the warm fur roused Kent from his reverie. He sighed. All that had happened five years ago. That evening Helen and her parents had flown home and Kent had spent hours on the Internet trying to unravel the legalities of uncle and niece marriages. He read blogs written by people who were disgusted by the idea and eventually tunneled down to find that in Texas, along with Massachusetts, Maryland, South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama and Rhode Island such marriages are legal. He thought it strange to find that Leviticus 18 bans nephews and aunts but not uncles and nieces. He deduced that the Leviticus admonition has something about the probable age differential and an ancient culture in which the bride is always required to be the groom’s junior. He obtrusively discussed his longing with his mother. She encouraged him to forget Helen and he had tried. For the last five years he had tied. Every day he had tried but the trying had only served to intensify his longing for her.

Now, as he gathered up the albums he noticed a small snippet of paper torn from a newspaper lurking under Mack’s paw. On it he read the word Helen accompanied by an e-mail address. It was written in his mother’s unmistakable hand. The newspaper date was a few days before her death. Kent wondered, if this was a subliminal message from his mother that a liaison with Helen was acceptable. The more he thought the more he knew that she was encouraging him from the grave. He decided that he should waste no time and put his computer on the table and began to type.

The first time I saw the Chinaman, he stood in the middle of the Peters’ dining room table. Immediately I sensed something special about him. I don’t mean special in the artistic sense, although even someone as ignorant about ceramics as I am could tell that he was an unusual piece, no, I mean special in another sense. He seemed animate. His entire eighteen inches radiated life and a spell-like beauty, while his face had an arresting look of exalted malevolence. I never saw such an enigmatic countenance; even the Mona Lisa’s mystery is one of goodness, a hinted smile. But this face’s depth lay in its veil of sweetness, so fragile that evil appeared to be lurking, indefinable, in all his features; in the dark piercing eyes, on the hollow yellow cheeks, and around the half-smiling mouth.

The Peters’ home in Durham City is full of valuable ‘objets d’art’. Professor Peters, part of the Durham University Faculty of Arts and Humanities, collects oriental artifacts, and Mrs. Peters, anything old and beautiful. The Chinaman stood, at that moment, on a priceless Chippendale table, so highly polished that his reflection curved away from him almost as perfect as himself, while above, on a pastel green wall, hung an original oil painting of a young girl who gazed down, questioningly, upon him. He stood aloof from all this as though alive. His vitality was not exclusive to his face; it began at the top of his close-fitting skullcap and extended to the tip of his tiny feet in their black pointed shoes, peeping roguishly out from under his robe. He stood with his back slightly bent, wearing a yellow and green robe covered in rich oriental designs; an exotic fish slung over one shoulder. The fish looked wet and scaly as though freshly caught, and yet seemed oddly in keeping with his expensive garb, which I am sure, could never have smelt fishy. At a first casual glance, he momentarily reminded me of the old Chinaman in Cannery Row as he daily shuffled up from the beach, making a characteristic flap-flapping sound with his feet. Steinbeck wrote: People sleeping heard his flapping shoe go by and they awakened for a moment. It had been happening for years but no one ever got used to him. Some people thought that he was God, and very old people thought he was Death ……. for he carried a little cloud of fear about with him.

This Chinaman on the table brought back the memory of the soft flap-flapping sound of feet shuffling between street and shore. Even his hair hanging in a black pigtail to his waist and his long droopy Chinese moustache and beard seemed to fall from his head like symbols of feigned repentant sadness, weirdly serving to emphasize his malice.

It was the spring of 1965 and I, an aspiring young architect, traveled on my way from London to the firm’s Edinburgh office to act as the field representative on a new hospital we had designed. The new position challenged and excited me, even though, up until then, I had regarded anywhere north of Watford as part of the “Black Industrial North,” stretching in a state of uncultured wilderness to the Outer Hebrides. I had already been up a couple of times to visit the site and get things ready for my move. On both occasions I had enjoyed a magnificent view of Durham City from the train and saw it as a medieval town that looked neither black nor industrial. This view aroused my architectural curiosity and tempted me to break my journey to have a closer look at the famous cathedral. On an impulse, I telephoned the Peters, who are remote cousins of my mother’s. They greeted my call with such warmth that I accepted their invitation to come to dinner. As I needed to make an early start the next day, I turned down their offer to spend the night and booked myself into the County Hotel.

They met me at the station, and my visit started with a tour of Durham. If the cathedral is beautiful from the railway, it is many times lovelier at close quarters. On this day its sandstone glowed a pinkish yellow in the late afternoon sun, while its majestic Norman interior impressed me with its proportions and detailing. My tour of the Peters’ home was no less interesting. It began in Professor Peters’ library. Here the grey-haired professor with his bushy beard and sparking blue-grey eyes started by opening his drink’s cabinet and made me one of his special concoctions, the “Gin and It”. This drink consisted of a liberal mix of gin and Italian vermouths, lovingly stirred with lemon rind and ice. While we drank, he fondled his glass in his long well manicured fingers and told me about his lifelong passion for oriental artifacts. His collection included a stalwart pair of T’ang Dynasty tomb figures which stood in a lighted silk lined corner cabinet. He told me that the dynasty ran from 680-907 making the figures older than the Norman cathedral which we had just visited. As I admired his museum-like treasures I shared his special regard for an exquisite white china Quan Yen with delicate fingers and flowing china robes. He had her standing on an open display table in a corner opposite the door so that she would be the first thing to be seen on entering the room.

It was fortified by alcohol and imbibed with culture that I first saw the Chinaman. Looking back, I cannot be sure whether it was his face which initially disconcerted me or whether it was his strange presence in the middle of the table, presiding uncannily over the meal and directly obstructing my view of the Peters’ pretty teenage daughter, Vivien. The food itself was a disaster: the prawns in the cocktail were still slightly frozen, the chicken burnt, and the strawberry mousse had separated into a thick pink jelly floating on a sloppy red sauce.

Mrs. Peters kept nervously catching a stray lock and pushing it behind her ears to get closer to her brown bun, as she interrupted the conversation to interject her profuse apologies, “I’m terribly sorry, Michael. I just can’t imagine what could have happened. It is simply dreadful! Please don’t let this put you off, will you? You must visit us again! Viv, my dear, are you sure that you waited until the gelatin was almost set?”

To keep the faltering conversation going, I asked about the Chinaman. Mrs. Peters’ face lit up as she launched into the conversation like a galleon with a sudden trade wind, her eyes aglow with pleasure. The Chinaman was hers.

“Yes, Michael, he is a beautiful piece,” she said. “I inherited him from Father when he died a few years ago. But I first saw him in my Mother’s older brother Uncle Charlie’s rooms in Cambridge. It was during the war when I worked as a nurse at St. Thomas’, nursing bomb casualties. One day Mother, incapacitated due to a broken leg, implored me to go to his bedside. I remembered Uncle Charlie as an outgoing, fun-loving person who always had time for me when he visited. So I asked for some leave and hastened to Cambridge. When I got there I found things far worse than we expected. Uncle Charlie, although only fifty, lay alone and clearly dying and had already stopped eating. His high living and profligate lifestyle left him bereft of friends and possessions. His bare rooms gaped in their emptiness. The only thing of beauty was the Chinaman who stood serenely aloof from the squalor around him.

“I did what I could to make him comfortable. He even seemed to rally a little and became more coherent. It was during one of his better spells that he tried to tell me about the Chinaman. I honestly didn’t catch everything that he told me, for he spoke in jumbled, confused snippets. However, he did manage to impress upon me that he wished to bequeath the Chinaman to my Mother as he believed him to be a harbinger of good luck.”

At this point her narration was interrupted while she and the professor served cheese, crackers and port as a much-needed closure to the meal. It gave me a chance to muse to myself that it seemed strange that a dying man who had lost everything to gambling should assert that anything brought him good luck.

As we ate our cheese and sipped port, Mrs. Peters continued. “Well, as I said, Uncle Charlie wished the Chinaman to go to Mother, so after he died and I had finished taking care of his affairs and funeral, I hurried back to London, taking him with me. When I got back I placed him on my bedside table.

“Now here’s where I got proof that he is a harbinger of good luck. Every night the Blitz raged with bombs and sirens. Each day we had more casualties and so I nightly fell into bed exhausted. Generally I slept through the raids and rarely took refuge in the underground. One night it was especially bad, and a bomb hit the adjacent building. The impact was so forceful that the floor above me collapsed, sending a beam into my room. It fell across the floor and narrowly missed both the Chinaman and me. I knew right then that I owed my escape to the Chinaman!”

Mrs. Peters looked flushed as she mused about her narrow escape. I wondered about the significance of both Mrs. Peters and the Chinaman being saved.

After our meal we withdrew into the sitting room and there, while Mrs. Peters busily made coffee and the Professor rushed off to give a student a late tutorial, Vivien told me the rest of the story, “Mummy generally skips this part,” she said. “Grandmother died soon after the end of the war and left all her possessions to Grandfather. He associated the Chinaman with her death and had him wrapped and put away in the attic. Sometime later Grandfather had a stroke and Mother had to rush down to Sussex to visit him. When she got there she was surprised to find the Chinaman had been rescued from the attic and was standing on his bedside table. Sometime later Grandfather had a second stroke and died. Mother inherited all his possessions, including the Chinaman.”

The next day I went on to Edinburgh and took up my assignment with little thought of the Peters in Durham. About a month later a beautiful young woman came to Edinburgh to provide some interior consultation on the hospital. I showed her around the City and took her to dinner. We hit it off immediately, and began a long distance romance. The urgency of our courtship and my work schedule kept me preoccupied, which meant that any trips which I did make to London were by train to maximize my time with Katrina. The closest I got to Durham was the magnificent view from the railway. However, when Katrina invited me to visit her parents in Oxford, I decided to combine a business trip with a long weekend and felt that, for such a trip, a car would be invaluable. I visited the Peters on my return journey.

The first thing that I noticed when I went into the professor’s library was the Chinaman, standing, still bent slightly under his fish load, in the exact spot where the professor’s treasured QuanYen had stood. The professor caught my eye and sighed:

“Yes, we had them both there for some time! But, then, one day, the Quan Yen fell over, and broke to smithereens. I’ve kept the pieces, but I cannot bear the thought of cracks across her. I loved her perfection, her slender white fragility. We all wonder how it happened as nobody was in that day and nobody confesses to have even been near the room.” He shook his grey head and sighed. “We will never know what it was just one of life’s little mysteries.”

“And now, how about the other half?” he asked as he stretched out his hand to replenish my drink.

The rest of the visit was highly successful. We had a delicious meal. I enjoyed their company so much that I stayed longer than I had intended and arrived back in Edinburgh after midnight. I, therefore, decided that the next time I had to go through Durham, I should not stop. Fate had things worked out otherwise, and coming back from a weekend visit when Katrina and I met half way in York, my car broke down about fifteen miles south of Durham City. Marooned, I decided to stay in the area overnight so that I could talk to the garage personally in the morning. I called the Peters, who seemed delighted to hear from me and insisted that I spend the night. We again had a superb meal. This time I did not see the Chinaman and said nothing thinking that they had perhaps banished him to the attic. But he still greeted me on this, my unlucky day. First a broken down car and now, when they ushered me into my room, I found him standing next to my bed.

The attractive room had pale yellow walls, the color of the Chinaman’s robes, and scarlet Titian red velvet curtains with matching bedspread. It had Venetian cut-glass light fittings which gave an oriental cast harmonizing remarkably well with the Chinaman. Being very tired I tried to ignore the Chinaman and fell asleep.

I dreamt that I drove along a red road through a town of pagoda-like houses. The upturned eaves laughed at me as I drove. Then they morphed and stretched themselves out like hands trying to halt my progress. As I drove faster and faster, they became more and more agile, stripping off parts of my car in their attempts to stop me. I pushed my foot so hard on the accelerator that it ached. I began to panic, and then, in my frenzy, I heard an unmistakable noise behind me. Coming towards me I heard a flap-flapping sound accompanied by big thuds as though something large and flat were being struck forcibly on the road. I looked around to see how close the Chinaman could be while still urging the limping car to go faster. But he gained on me, loping as a giraffe runs, with no apparent effort and great speed and, as he approached, he flailed the road with his fish. He grew bigger and bigger. He got so close that his figure filled the sky and it began to get difficult to see. I could still hear him coming and now realized that the car had evaporated and that I stood paralyzed, like a frightened rabbit, waiting to be encompassed by his billowing robe and flattened by the huge fish which I heard swishing through the air toward me. I struggled, frantically waving my arms, and awoke to find that the eiderdown had worked itself up over my face. It was good to be back to reality.

The following morning, over toast and marmalade, I could not resist mentioning that I had dreamt about the Chinaman. The professor gave me a mischievous wink.

“Yes,” he said, “I don’t seem to get on with him either. Hey, Viv, did you hear that? The Chinaman has been upsetting our guest!”

“Only a dream,” I said, but the professor continued unabashed.

“Viv, couldn’t you get your mother to put him somewhere else? He is not the right sort of ornament for a bedroom.”

“But Daddy, you know that we’ve tried everywhere else! There is nowhere suitable for him in the dining room. He is so odd on the table, and you said that you don’t like him in the library, and the drawing room looks like a junk shop when he is in there!”

“I know you are right. I’ll have to have a word with your mother. Perhaps we can sort something out!”

My next visit was not until after Easter. This time I was surprised to find a much-altered household. Mrs. Peters was critically ill. In February she had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Now she lay in her upstairs bedroom, surrounded by books and sweet-smelling flowers, looking serene. I couldn’t help but notice that there, by her bedside, stood the Chinaman. I gasped as I remembered that all her close family members had died with him by their sides. I again privately wondered whether this could be the source of his enigmatic countenance.

“So, you finally moved him in here,” I said, indicating the figure with a nod of my head.

“Yes,” she said, her face lighting up attractively in spite of her illness. “He didn’t fit anywhere else, so I decided to have him in here beside me.” She glanced over to the table where he stood. “Flowers always seem to wilt on that table. Anyway, he looks better on his own. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind putting the flowers on the other table?”

After that I avoided visiting them again, as clearly the dying Mrs. Peters needed to be left in the hands of her close friends and family. I felt that it would have been presumptuous of me to barge in on their privacy. My personal life had also taken a wonderful turn when Katina had accepted my proposal of marriage and we began to make plans for my move back to London and our wedding.

In July, I heard of Mrs. Peters’ death and private funeral, and shared my condolences with the grieving family. Things were moving fast between Katrina and me, and we decided that we should get married as soon as my Edinburgh assignment was completed. By September I returned to London. Katrina and I spent our weekends getting to know the city, visiting museums and walking. On one of our long, meandering walks we ended up going to Sands in New Bond Street for coffee and cake and then, walking up Piccadilly, happened to pass Sotheby’s auction house. I had never been in the saleroom before, although I had often seen the catalogues which my mother collected, so we grabbed the opportunity and went inside.

I saw him the moment we entered the China and Ceramics department. I gazed at him for some time, mesmerized by his countenance, and then went and got a catalogue. There was little about him in the catalogue, just a short description and a listing of an anonymous vendor. I looked at him again; surely there could be only one such figure. He stood alone, as usual, on a display shelf with his body still bent slightly under his fish. He still maliciously, enigmatically, half smiled, half frowned, his wicked eyes still flashed strangely in tune with his black moustache, which still hung, almost sadly, from his mouth. I knew that I recognized him and that Professor Peters and Vivien disliked him, so I suspected that they were selling him to ostracize his malice from their home. Katrina seemed to enjoy my fascination and watched me with a happy, almost smug, smile as I gazed, questioningly, at him.

Soon afterward the headaches began. At first, infrequent, but then they gathered in momentum. Katrina and I surmised that they must be stress-induced due to the move and the wedding preparations. I am unconvinced, as I have never suffered from headaches and weathered the stress of architecture school unscathed. Christmas approached and Katrina and I had neatly wrapped gifts for each other nestled under our Christmas tree. The excited Katrina claimed to have found the ‘perfect’ gift for me. On Christmas Eve, I opened her present, as I watched her eyes dance with excitement.

“Michael, my darling, it took some doing to get him without your knowledge, but when I saw how much you like him. I knew that you’d love him. He is perfect, isn’t he?”

My hands tremble, my head aches, and I wonder what I should do next.

Faiyaz gently shook his 0.3 rapidiograph pen over blotting paper. He listened as he shook, and felt a flutter of satisfaction when he heard a faint rattle. It was the pen’s heartbeat telling him that the ink was moist and should flow. He dampened the tip of the long thin pen point with his tongue. He tested it on a piece of mylar taped to the side of his drawing. No ink flowed. He shook again, and a small blot of ink appeared on his blotting paper. He tested the pen again on the mylar where he drew a perfect black line. It was seven-thirty a.m. and his day had begun. Normally Faiyaz arrived late, after ten, but today he was early because he had had to accompany his mother to Victoria Station to put her on a train to the airport to begin her trip back to India. He worried about her departure for they had argued on the platform; she anxious to find him a suitable wife; and he, determined to become British and find his own life companion.

He was immaculately dressed and had already donned his architect’s smock to protect his clothes. His thick dark hair was slicked back and the gleaming white of his shirt contrasted handsomely with his dark skin. His posture was good, and he sat with a perfectly straight back on a high stool. Before him was a ponderous table on which he had his drawing board. He had taped a sheet of pale green linoleum onto the board to create a smooth surface for his mylar drawing. His T-square traveled up the left-hand side of the board. He had taped the underside of it so that it was slightly raised above the mylar. His right angle set-square rested on the T-square. His drawing, a floor plan for a new bakery, was securely attached to the drawing board with removable tape. He held the pen at ninety degrees to the board and started to draft. He began at the top of the sheet so that he could work down without smudging his work. Soon he decided that he needed to indicate brick in section by rendering the walls. He carefully wiped his 0.3 on the blotting paper and put on its cap with its identifying green halo. He put it in his drawing box which he brought with him to work every day and took out his 00 rapidiograph. The 00, with its fine line, was trouble because the ink shaft was so thin that it frequently became clogged. Faiyaz had cleaned it the previous day, washing it in cold water. He had been careful not to fully remove the fine wire which passed down the delivery nib as the wire was so fragile that it tended to get bent, causing the pen to malfunction and necessitating a costly replacement. On this day Faiyaz was lucky, for the 00 began to work after a few shakes. He drew in the brick with pairs of parallel lines at forty-five degrees to the wall. He liked the resultant clarity which his work gave the drawing.

The office in which Faiyaz worked was a converted Georgian row house on a street leading into Russell Square in London. The main façade, including the office which Faiyaz shared with two other architects, looked out to similar Georgian houses across the street. The house opposite was owned by London University and was scheduled for demolition but the University had converted it into a student rooming house while they developed plans for the new building. Faiyaz’s desk was in front of a tall window which looked like a twin to the one in the building opposite. When the yellow curtains were open and lights were on he could see into the student’s room. See her colorful bedspread and red throw rug; even see her small drawing board and desk. He vaguely felt an affiliation and wondered if she might be an interior design or architectural student.

This morning he watched idly out of the window each time that he tested his pen over the blotting paper. He enjoyed the solitude of the office and the gathering daylight outside. At eight a.m. he watched the room opposite come to life. The yellow curtains opened and a light illuminated the room like a stage set. The student began to undress. She was slender and, to Faiyaz’s peeping eye, very beautiful. He watched her cross her arms and lift her nightie over her head. As the garment passed upwards, he saw her skimpy knickers and her thin, otherwise naked, white body. He watched, mesmerized as she put on her day clothes. His drawing was forgotten, his full attention was on her room. He continued his stare when she left the room. He stood up so that he could to watch her leave, and caught a glimpse of her as she walked up the street toward the University.

By the time that Faiyaz’s colleagues arrived with their coffees and cheery ‘good mornings,’ Faiyaz had regained his composure and was calmly drawing a brick detail in the border of his floor plan. He grunted something about the mornings being the best time of the day, and continued to draw. Now Faiyaz, the previously pathologically late worker, always made it to the office by eight. He was glad that no one else came in so early so that he could sit and watch undisturbed. He invested in a small pair of opera glasses which he carried in his briefcase along with his rapidiograph pens. His boss, who occupied the room above, saw Faiyaz’s change in routine and resultant increased productivity and promoted him with a salary increase. He offered Faiyaz a private office on the top floor, but Faiyaz refused, saying that he preferred to work with the team.

Life might have continued in this manner, except life is not static and Faiyaz became increasingly obsessed by the girl in the room opposite. Each morning his first act was to look at the yellow curtains; if they were closed he knew that she was inside and that soon they would open to display the daily routine which he watched with increased agitation. He knew that he had to talk to her, to touch her, perhaps to join her on the stage behind the yellow curtains. When he received his mother’s letter in which she laid out her plans for his nuptial, he knew what he had to do.

He decided to take action one Friday evening. He went to the florist at the underground station and bought flowers. He waited until his colleagues had gone home and the girl was in her room. It was a dark evening and the yellow curtains were closed. He walked across the street, mounted the steps and rang the doorbell labeled as serving the first floor. Soon he heard someone tripping down the stairs and the door opened. It was she. He stepped back, almost stumbling down the steps up to the door. He clutched his flowers and proffered them.
“You are the girl with the yellow curtains,” he stammered. She nodded, speechless.
“My name is Faiyaz; I work in the building across the street.” He turned and pointed to his office. “My office is that one right there. That’s my window, facing yours.” Again she nodded with a bewildered look on her face.

“So? What do you want?” she asked. Her voice was soft and gentle. Immediately he loved its cadence.
“You see, I watch. I see you rise in the morning…” Faiyaz never finished his sentence, for the girl’s face reddened, her hands trembled, and she quietly shut the door in his face. He could hear her crying as she walked up the stairs, saw the light illuminate the yellow curtains. He waited outside a long time and then propped the flowers on her doorstep and retreated to the underground.

Faiyaz didn’t go home. Next to the underground station was The Imperial Hotel with its twenty-four-hour Turkish Baths. He spent the next twelve hours in the baths. He took the first morning train home and slept all day. On Monday he was back at his drawing board, shaking his rapidiograph and watching. The yellow curtains were drawn but when the light went on at eight they remained closed. Faiyaz shut his eyes and imagined what he couldn’t see. He knew that the show was over. His brief excursion into a forbidden world was ended. He gradually sank back into his old routine, his productivity fell, and the next summer he went back to India to the bride that his mother had selected for him.

In accordance with English custom Doris’s home had a name, but instead of an attractive and loved descriptor such as Rose Cottage, The Orchards or Green Gables it was called The Rookery. All who heard it thought the name sinister, perhaps because rook sounds so like crook. Ironically, the Rookery was as sinister as it name suggested. It was a large brick Victorian house of no particular architectural merit, and during Doris’s lonely tenure it stood in a neglected, overgrown garden masked by a high fence and clothed by a prolific covering of ivy. Its introversion was further accentuated by the presence of dark shutters which remained closed over the majority of the openings. Even when Doris was in residence, inviting lights did not shine from its blank windows, and apart from the noise of the rooks no sounds emanated to signal life on the premises.

The Rookery after which the building was named occupied the copse of trees which overshadowed and filled the garden. To have given their name to the house the rook’s ancestors must have been nesting in those trees for almost a hundred years, a fact which was borne out by the pungent bird odor and the accumulation of sticks and other bird detritus on the ground. It is reported that Rooks are highly intelligent and have been known to use tools as Ravens do in Aesop’s fables. Perhaps this intelligence makes up for their other unattractive characteristics. They are members of the corvid sub-species of birds and are close relatives to jackdaws and ravens. They look evil, with black plumage tinged with a devilish greenish-purple sheen. Their long shaggy feathers on the upper parts of their legs give them an additional unkempt aura which is accentuated by a whitish-grey patch of feathers at the base of their grey bills. Even their song, if called song, is a squawked kaah, kaah. It echoes uncannily across their flocks and among the trees of their rookeries.

A dilapidated sign with black letters hung on the gate and proclaimed “The Rookery,” and even though the English law of 1765 required all houses to have numbers, there was no street number adjacent to the name. The house was located at the end of a long street at the edge of town and so its number might have been in the high double digits. People walking along the street always walked on the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street. It was either an attempt to distance themselves from the sinister ambiance around the site or a practical reaction to avoid bird droppings.

Doris was a recluse who fit well into the ambiance of her home. The superstitious might have thought her to be a witch for she was never seen in full daylight and when she did appear she held her tall, lanky body in a permanent stoop with her limbs protruding at odd angles. She had been raised by her grandmother and now, in her early fifties, still lived in the house of her youth. Her grandmother had bequeathed her the house and sufficient funds for her to live without working. This was a pity for after graduation from University, all Doris had to do was to live and so this is what she did, yearly withdrawing a little more into herself. Her dark expensive clothing hung off her body in ill-fitting drapes, giving the impression that she had recently lost weight – a lot of weight. This was not the case, for Doris’s constant state of nervous worry and lack of interest in food had kept her stick-thin her whole life. Her skin looked yellow and jaundiced which further accentuated her unhealthy aura. Her annuity did not allow for luxuries, so once a year Doris sold a piece of her grandmother’s jewelry and used the proceeds to finance a trip to a spa in Switzerland. She felt that the trip was essential for her to treat her various hypochondriac ailments, and she enjoyed being pampered by strangers.

Amy, an outgoing motherly woman who lived a few houses away from Doris, tried to befriend her. To some extent she succeeded, for, on random occasions when her loneliness became unbearable, Doris would walk to Amy’s house and tentatively ring the doorbell and then, immediately regretting her action, would turn and attempt a quick retreat. Amy was alert and generally opened the door before Doris managed to complete her flight. They would then engage in a bizarre exchange in which Amy urged Doris to come in for a cup of tea or a drink while Doris squirmed and stammered unending apologies for her presence and reaffirmed emphatically that she didn’t want to take up Amy’s time or be a nuisance, while her prolonged apologies did both.

One day Doris arrived in a visible state of dire distress to tell Amy that she had been robbed. On this occasion she accepted an invitation to enter and stood drinking a gin and tonic gazing out of a window without eye contact as she told her story. “My diamond ring, the one with the Sapphires has been stolen.” she moaned. She went on to explain that she had been at home the entire period during which the ring had disappeared and no one else, not even her cleaning girl, had been in the house. She looked vulnerable and assaulted. Amy suggested that the ring had probably been mislaid, fallen behind Doris’ vanity or come off when Doris was washing her hands. To this Doris violently objected, asserting that she never wore the lost ring. In desperation and kindness, Amy volunteered to accompany Doris home and to assist her in a thorough search. She further proposed to have her two daughters come with them to make the search go faster.

When Doris opened the creaking Rookery front door to admit her helpers, they all three gasped. They smelt the stagnant air and saw an interior resembling a Dickens stage setting. It reminded all three of Miss Havisham’s abode in Great Expectations. As they gazed around the dim room filled with ponderous old furniture, it would not have surprised them to see an old wedding dress draped over the torn lace on the sofa. They hastily searched the room, getting on hands and knees to inspect under the heavy furniture. Amy used a flashlight, glad that she had had the foresight to bring it, for the room had only one ineffective light fixture in its center. They went upstairs and searched Doris’ bedroom, spending extra time looking around the vanity where Doris had last seen the ring, with no luck. The room was cold with an open window next to the vanity.
“Brr, it is cold in here. May I close the window?” asked Amy.
“Why, yes. I opened it this morning to air the room,” explained Doris.

The unsuccessful search went on to the bathroom and kitchen. Doris steered them away from the other rooms, which she kept locked and told them that she never used. Amy advised Doris that it seemed unlikely that a thief, if there were a thief, would take only one item and suggested that Doris not call the police; but wait to give the ring time to turn up.

A few days later Doris was back more agitated than ever. A second more valuable ring of emeralds and diamonds had disappeared. Doris explained that she had fired her maid in case she were the thief and that no one, except she herself, been in the house. This time Amy advised Doris to report her losses to the police. She further suggested that Doris keep any other jewelry locked up.

The police were responsive and assigned Tony, their best inspector to Doris’s case. Like Amy and her daughters before him he found the Rookery eerily locked in the stasis of Victoriana. He looked at Doris with compassion, for in all his thirty years as a policeman he had never met anyone so trapped in the past. He inspected Doris’s bedroom and her vanity, he leant out of the window and he viewed the ground below. Then he went outside and pushed the bird droppings and twigs aside to look at the hard ground underneath – he found no evidence of any disturbance in the dirt. He inspected all the doors for evidence of forced entry. He asked about tradespersons, the milk-man, the mail carrier, and any other people who might come to the home. But Doris explained that all delivered to a box at her gate without entering the grounds. As he made his tour, Doris trailed behind him, watching his every motion but saying nothing. He found her silence odd because most burglary victims keep nervously repeating their narrations. So, when he had finished his search he suggested that they go back inside to discuss what to do next, although he knew that he had no good recommendations.

He paused in the living room to give his eyes time to adjust to the gloom. He was tempted to give Doris some hope, but something held him back and he decided to be candidly honest. “In cases like this,” he said, “we seldom manage to apprehend the perpetrator. Our best hope is that one of the local pawn shops or fences identifies your rings and makes a report. However, I consider this to be a long shot as all we have is your description without a photograph or jeweler’s appraisal.”

Doris sighed and gave him an appealing glance. She looked fragile and vulnerable. Tony, as a widower of many years, recognized her loneliness with empathy. He quickly deduced that this was a far greater need than her need to retrieve her lost rings. He decided that he should change the subject in an attempt to divert her from brooding. He gave the room another perusal and noticed that there was a half-finished game of chess on one of the tables. He looked at the board more closely and made a quick assessment of the game. “Strange game,” he commented, “seems odd that one would leave a game when white is only three moves away from checkmate.”
Doris paused behind him, “I think that you are wrong. I think that if black castles, things may turn against white.”
“Maybe,” he countered, “but doesn’t that open up a line of attack for the white queen?”
“You have a point, but remember that black has another rook lurking over there on the far side. He could swoop in and take the vulnerable pawn in the front of white’s defense.” Tony heard anticipation and even a twinge of excitement in her voice and quickly deduced that they had something in common, for she obviously liked to play.
“Who is your opponent?”
“Me, I play both colors,” she said as she shook her head.
“Would you like a game against a real opponent, such as me?” He took her look of amazement as encouragement and pressed on. “I could come by next Thursday evening on my night off. I could bring fish and chips and we could finish this game or undertake a new one. What do you think?”

Doris nodded. She found the thought of a game with a real opponent alluring, and although she never bought fish and chips the thought of a meal which she didn’t have to prepare and eat alone also attracted her. She surprised herself when she almost whispered, “That would be nice. What time do you suggest?”

Over the next few weeks Doris and Tony developed a quiet routine of a weekly game accompanied by fish and chips. They were well matched. Sometimes Tony won; sometimes Doris. One day Tony brought a floor lamp as a gift, and another, a new colorful modern cloth to replace the tattered one on the table. Doris even spruced things up a little and added colorful scarves to her otherwise drab clothes. They both enjoyed their games, and over time began to spend as much time talking as they did playing. Then one momentous day Tony invited Doris to go to a film with him. The went to “West Side Story” with Natalie Wood and later followed this date up with “The Roman Summer of Mrs. Stone” with Vivien Leigh, Warren Beatty, and Lotte Lenya.

Tony, who had previously been as lonely as Doris, began to think about marriage to this strange woman and humbly took his savings and bought a ring. It embarrassed him that he could not afford anything flamboyant, certainly nothing which could compare to the descriptions and valuations of Doris’s lost rings; but he rationalized that they were lost and he had never seen Doris wear any jewelry. He concluded that the two lost pieces must have been the extent of her collection. For weeks he carried the ring box in his pocket, fondling it when he was in Doris’s presence but never able to draw it out. For some perverse reason he worried more about the acceptability of his ring than about Doris’s response. He was sure that if his ring filled the void left by her losses that she would acquiesce. But each time that his hopes rose he again worried that his ring would be unacceptable – a poor substitute for the two stolen treasures.

Tony’s visits made Doris feel braver and more outgoing. She began to assert herself and when an intrepid tree trimmer knocked on her door with a proposal to trim the tree limbs which hung dangerously over the roof, she saw the logic in his proposal and agreed to hire him. She made sure that the crew came on Thursday so that they would complete their work when Tony arrived for their chess game. The work took longer than anticipated, and so the men were still raking up the dead branches when Tony arrived. The place was in uproar with angry rooks squawking around the felled branches, some of which carried nests.

Tony found the commotion encouraging. This was more life than he had ever encountered at the Rookery. He took the new ambiance as a good sign and was about to pull out his ring when the tree trimmer foreman knocked on the door. Both Tony and Doris responded. The man stood holding out his hand in which he cradled two shining rings. “Them rooks,” he said “In the nest; they love bright objects. This is the best I’ve ever seen!”

June 21, 2012 was to be a long day in Oxford; it began at 4:46, when few but insomniacs were awake. Old Joe was among the light sleepers who greeted the new day. He had been homeless for years dating back to the death of his ten-year-old son and this June he bivouacked in an abandoned garden shed. It stood in a large detached overgrown plot which faced a residential street on one side and on the other meandered down to a small stream. Since he had been homeless he had lived in many places including some homes for the indigent but he had never lasted long as he was a grumpy old loner unable to conform to rules. He was never known to smile and now his face had taken on wrinkles which resembled a permanent frown which did nothing for his interpersonal relationships. Not that he cared for he liked his independence and had convinced himself that he preferred solitude in which he could revel in his long term grief. Sometimes, particularly in the summer, he would go for days without speech, foraging for food in dumpsters and fighting for scraps with the urban foxes. On this June morning he felt sick and weary and his bones ached from the dampness of the unusually cold and wet summer and the inadequacies of his make shift home. He arose from his bed on the floor and opened the door. He relieved himself without crossing the threshold.
He gazed through the trees of the wild garden in which he was camping and saw that the sunrise was obscured by heavy rain clouds. Its emergence was confirmed by a glorious chorus of birdsong. He stood immobile and listened to the birds and tried to take some comfort from this communion of exuberance at the break of day.
That morning there were three boys sleeping in the house across the street; the house which owned the garden. All three missed the dawn and its accompanying birdsong as they enjoyed the uninterrupted slumber of youth. They had stayed up late the night before playing an interminable game of Monopoly. Mark and Tom liked having their cousin, Peter, to stay; at eleven years old he fit between them and bridged their three year age gap. At times he empathized with Mark the elder of the two brothers and at times with Tom. At midnight, their heads whirling with the excitement of rents and mortgages, they had been lulled to sleep by a gentle patter of rain, just as its later cessation had soothed and pampered them into deeper oblivion. They slept on, but not the house cat, an sleek white feline, who slipped out through her cat door jumped up onto the fence and walked with ease along it before leaping onto the ground and from thence to slip, ghost-like into the shrinking darkness across the road; into the wet wild woods of the garden opposite. She would be back, damp and triumphant, before breakfast, before the boys arose. Then she would sit and purr while she watched them eat.
Her excursion into the woods was not unobserved for Joe saw her as she slipped through the undergrowth. In his semi-somnambulant daze he saw her wispy white form as a morning spirit or an omen appertaining to his life. Perhaps even the ghost of his lost son. He called to her:
“Here, come to me. Daddy is here.” But he got no response as she slipped off into the misty depths of the woods. He sighed wondering whether the white shadow was responsible for the overwhelming fatigue which he felt on this morning. He turned and went back into his makeshift abode for a few more hours of rest.
Almost sixteen hours later, weather permitting, the boys planned to venture out through the woods and across the golf course to watch foxes at sunset. Sunset was to be at 9:27 and the boys, now fully awake, planned their excursion to occur after dinner.
It had rained off and on during the day but the evening was magical with gentle light and misty air. The three friends ate supper together and then bidding Mark and Tom’s mum goodbye struck out through the woods entering at the same point that the cat had used. They walked in single file following a narrow footpath. Mark led the way followed by Peter with Tom, as the youngest, in the rear. Everything was green with the verdant hue only seen after rain. The wet grasses and bushes hung toward the ground laden with moisture while the damp earth exuded an odor of fertility. Their gum boots squelched in the mud and they smiled in joy at this contact with the ground. Their path wove between the trees, past the abandoned shed, to a small stream swollen by the rains but still contained within its banks. The waters gurgled and sang in continuous movement. The boys followed the path over a light wooden bridge and paused to stand in a row to gaze at the stream and to listen to its song. All three wondered if there were fish it its cool depths. Tom spoke, “A fish, there, I see one!” His voice broke the damp air and sent a heron that was standing in a pool further up the stream into flight. They watched it rise ponderously as it beat its large wings to lift itself into the air. They heard its curious call as it sounded an alarm. Soon it was merely a dark shadow soaring over the trees, and then it was gone. As they watched it they heard other strange bird calls including a loud “caw-caw” of a Raven accompanied by the distinct sound of breaking twigs.
“What’s that?” whispered Peter. His blue eyes were filled with alarm and his hands clenched tight on the bridge handrail.
“Nah it’s probably a badger or something.” scoffed Mark. He quickly led them away from the stream to follow the narrow path as it climbed the opposite the bank. The path soon reached the abrupt edge of the woods and struck off along its perimeter towards the north. The boys left it to scramble towards the setting sun up a grassy incline onto a golf course.
Their stalker, Joe, for yes the broken twigs had not been a badger, paused at the edge of the woods reluctant to venture further into the open where he could be seen. He watched the three boys – their silhouettes, still in formation one behind the other, haloed by the setting sun. He identified with Peter and, in his trance-like state imagined the boy to be his lost son. He made no allowance for the intervening years for his son remained frozen in his mind at the age he was when he was lost. Joe told himself that the morning’s apparition and now this boy were omens that he was approaching a longed for reunion. He watched from the shadows of the wood’s undergrowth until his boy with his two companions disappeared over the ridge and then he too climbed the incline until he could see them as they meandered across the links. He could see where they had passed – a trail of disturbed damp grass – one trail as they still walked in single file.
“Surely,” he thought, “surely that one in the middle, the one who they call Peter, the one who heard me is my son. I saw him this morning and now he has come back to me.”
When they reached the west side of the golf course Mark paused and changed course to head for a stand of trees about half way across the west side. He turned to talk to his companions, “This is the place. We will sit under these trees. We must be very quiet.”
They spread a piece of plastic on the ground and sat on it to wait. They luxuriated in the peace of dusk, in the stagnant air, and in the expectation of what they hoped to see. Their nostrils flared at the perfume of damp grass and earth and although they could hear the remote purr of traffic they were more tuned into the bird calls in the trees and shrubbery on the west side of the golf course. An increase in bird calls heralded the emergence of the first red fox. It emerged about fifty feet from the boys and began to move cautiously across the golf course. Peter gasped as he marveled at its form. It looked barely larger than the white cat with sharp nose and long bushy tail and sported a beautiful red brown coat. It was hard to think that this elegant creature that moved with the grace of a cat was actually of the canine family. Peter’s involuntary gasp of delight was heard by the fox who turned to face the boys and then slowly, but decisively, retreated into the bracken from whence it had emerged.
The sun continued to set in the undisturbed procession of the universe and the boys waited and Joe waited hidden in a sand trap. At last their wait was rewarded and a second fox emerged to pass to their south to hurry towards the east woods. Then they heard an announcing bird call and a third appeared close to their clump of trees. It made its way quickly across the open golf course. It veered slightly when it came close to Joe’s sand trap and disappeared into the trees on the far side. The dusk was intensifying but the boys kept their post in the hope of seeing a fourth fox. Suddenly they heard a cacophony of bird calls arising from the woods behind them. They turned to see what they believed to be the third fox making a hasty retreat across the links followed by a pair of squawking wood thrushes. The smaller female kept diving upon the fox and attempting to peck his back. Her rage was apparent to all four observers and they shuddered at this brave display of maternal protection.
Joe accepted the scene as another omen heralding the reunion of children with their parents. To him it validated his obsession with his son for he knew that he had to make contact with the boy. He considered his options with amazing lucidity and eventually decided that he should return to the shed and make himself known as the boys passed by. This way he thought that he might be able to lure the boy he wanted into his abode without undue struggle without his having to expend energy in unnecessary force.
The boys trekked back across the golf course and retraced their path down to the stream. They all felt jumpy for Joe’s presence had invaded their sub-consciousness and filled them with foreboding. It was almost dark in the woods and the moon cast lurid shadows onto the ground. Mark saw Joe’s large footprints superimposed on their trail and thought it odd, but comforting that they led in the same direction in which they were travelling, led in a direction towards houses.
When they got to the shed Joe emerged, he staggered and waved his arms,
“Come here my boy. Come to me.” He attempted to shout but his voice was a whisper. Mark turned to his companions,
“Ignore the old man. He is harmless. But hurry. Let’s get away.” He began to run. But Peter paused and looked at Joe for something made him stop. Tom ran and grabbed his brother’s hand. Joe and Peter were silhouetted in the moonlight. the man and boy looked at each other without speech. Joe staggered and fell.
“Leave him. He is drunk.” said Mark.
“He is ill, not drunk. He needs help.” said Peter. He knelt beside the fallen figure. Mark stopped; he had never heard Peter talk with such authority but for some reason he believed him.
“You and Tom must go for help. I will stay with the old man we cannot leave him alone,” said Peter.
“Will you be all right? Are you sure?” asked Mark
“Yes, I am sure. Now go. Go fast.”
Joe heard the exchange between the boys as in a distant dream but now he looked up into Peter’s face, and marveled at the way in which the moon silhouetted the boy’s head. He felt for Peter’s hand and held it in his.
“You are real, you are alive.” he said.
The boy’s intense blue eyes looked troubled but he spoke in a kindly reassuring voice, “Yes, I am alive, and so are you. Mark and Tom have gone for help. It won’t be long; their parents live right across the street”
Joe sighed, breathed gently with a hollow echo in his chest. He felt no pain, no anguish. He smiled. His smile illuminated his face with seraphic kindness and made his whole body glow, “Beside you I am at peace.” He whispered. “I always knew that we would be reunited. Stay with me.”
“I’m not going anywhere. Mark and Tom will be back soon, and they will bring help.”
Mark and Tom were not long gone but when they returned with their parents Joe was dead. His face was bathed in a frozen peaceful smile differentiating him from the lonely sad old man that he had become.