The Turning World

The quack doctor was loud enough to be heard over the buzz of voices that surrounded him - from children sitting at his feet on the green at Earls Court; from grown up people gathered, half interested, waiting for something to happen.

Howard had come out of the cottage when he’d heard the voices. He and Mrs Van Dijk had finished eating. They were going to sit in the yard while the sun went down, but the sound of the showman and the rumble of voices made them curious.

‘Fraser’s medicine– active against all kinds of back pain. Specially made for all workers on the land’ shouted the man, his chest puffed out, his coloured jacket sparkling in the sun. He was short and fat and quite old. The way the man rubbed his back made Howard think that he was in need of his own medicine. The children of Earls Court watched his every move, sitting cross legged on the grass.

Poor kids, thought Howard, they think he’s going to tell a story, but he’s just here to sell things. Mostly stupid things that no one needs.

But the arrival of salesmen like him was a feature of the Vale summer when people came from all over, mostly men in small painted carts with a single horse. Some told stories or played tricks with cards; some sold things – potions and medicines - that didn’t work. But this didn’t really bother people. It was the spectacle that people liked – the way that everyone gathered. Sometimes the salesmen were showmen as well.

Howard stood at the back watching. The showman strode around on the small patch of grass gesturing grandly, his voice proclaiming the efficacy of his potion. There was an intake of breath from the audience as he said this, because most people didn’t know what the word meant. The audience was prepared to be impressed by a man of learning. But – thought Howard – why was a man of learning travelling in a cart across the Vale in the summer?

But Howard tried to be less cynical. The speaker was a showman. People would buy a few things and then go home pleased with their little bottle of medicine or their jar of cream. The things were cheap after all.

Behind the salesman was his cart from which he extracted, now and then, a new product to flourish before the people. Usually the cart would have the name of the traveller in big letters on the side - Howard remembered the wonderful drawing of a laughing face that was on the cart of the famous laughing man. But the cloth cover of this cart had a design that Howard hadn’t seen before - of coloured globes that were painted to suggest that they were circling around each other. It was a really beautiful drawing – or a painting – on the coarse canvas of the cart cover, and it intrigued Howard. Would this showman talk about the strange globes? What were they? Some kind of crystal? Their cloudy rich colour suggested globes of green malachite or amethyst.

Suddenly Mrs Van Dijk was at his shoulder. She looked up at him. She was munching on an apple and a bit of juice had splashed on her chin.

‘You came to look!’

‘I heard him shouting. Perhaps I’ll get some medicine for my back…’

‘Do you need any?’

She shook her head and stood on her toes and looked over at the man. He had stopped striding around and was now holding a metal contraption in his hands, something made of shiny brass. He turned it in his hands and the bright surfaces of the machine caught the light and reflected patterns of bright spots around on the grass.

‘What is it?’ asked Howard.

‘I’ve never seen such a thing’

There was a handle underneath the machine and the objects it was made of seemed to rotate when the showman turned the handle. But it was hard to see.

‘And the drawing – the painting – on the canvas,’ whispered Howard close to Mrs Van Dijk’s ear, ‘what are those things?’

‘It’s a drawing of the planets Howard. The green one is Jupiter, the red one’s Mars’

**********************************

The showman’s name was Professor Fraser. Howard noticed it written along the fringe of the canvas cover below the picture of the planets. He tried to hear what the professor was saying.

‘This device…’

Fraser held up the shiny object, tilting it and showing it to the audience.

‘This device exactly imitates the movement of the planets’

The Professor coughed and turned the handle underneath. The spheres that seemed to be attached to some kind of clockwork mechanism moved and rotated as well. But the children in the front row sitting on the grass were unmoved. The older people – mostly farmers and field workers - had begun to whisper. They wanted to buy things, not be shown the planets.

Perhaps Fraser noticed this because he began to speak louder. He put the brass object back into the cart and began to stride around the village green looking at certain people. He waved his arms extravagantly and his voice became theatrical.

‘The planets govern every part of our lives. Their positions with respect to each other, their rotations – but particularly their movements with respect to our planet’

He looked down at the children, his face red. He had a big misshapen nose that looked like the professor liked to drink. His eyes were watery and red, but there was no doubt that there was a strange passion in his voice.

He spoke slowly addressing the children.

‘…and what is the name of our planet?’

He looked across the lines of shiny faces. None of them knew. Some of them smiled stupidly up, not even realising they were being asked a question.

‘…does no one know the name of the planet on which we live? The planet on which all the countries are situated: England, France, Holland – even the Americas…’

Howard couldn’t stand this. He overcame his nervousness and shouted: ‘The Earth’

Mrs Van Dijk turned in surprise. Howard was usually so quiet in these situations. But Howard’s face was red with embarrassment, having spoken.

‘Well done that gentleman’, said Professor Fraser. ‘The Earth. And the Earth  - its rotation, its passage through space is the most important influence on our wellbeing and health – even our happiness’

There was a hush again in the village green. The showman had regained their attention. Wellbeing and health were important things and people wanted to know how to keep them, how to find them.

Fraser went back to the cart and brought out a bottle and a small jar. He held them out at arm’s length showing first the bottle then the jar. Both had a crude label showing planets, like the planets depicted on the cart cover.

‘Both of these potions will connect you with planets – with Mars, for example. The bottle contains a juice that is distilled from rare plants of the desert that flower in rhythm with the movement of Mars. When the planet is close  - and we see its red disc in the sky – the plant flowers. I and my assistants take these flowers and transform them into a special drink. To be drunk twice a day before meals. It will guarantee your wellbeing, long life and good health’

‘…and the cream…’ he held up the jar ‘…this cream is another distillation. It is sweet juice – from a secret source which I can never reveal – that connects the human soul with the mother of all life’

Professor Fraser stopped again, looking across the line of children’s faces and then at the adults.

He looked at Howard too. The only answerer of questions.

‘..and what is the mother of all life?’ he said theatrically.

‘The sun’ shouted Howard.

‘… and the Earth, our planet, circles around the Sun once every year, in the process enriching this cream. For ladies the cream does wonders for your skin – making it look fresh and young’

Fraser looked over the heads of the seated children at Howard, He was pleased with this audience member. This man listened and helped in his own telling of the story – of drawing the people in. Fraser thought he might offer the cream and the potion cheap to the tall man who answered his questions.

But what Howard said next, didn’t please the professor so much.

Howard had been thinking as Fraser waved the bottle and jar about. Since the Professor was an expert on the planets he would ask him a question.

He coughed first so that the professor stopped and listened, holding his hand behind his ear.

Howard said: ‘How do you know that the Earth goes around the sun, and that the sun doesn’t go around the Earth? After all both movements could make a year’

Some of the people turned around and Mrs Van Dijk brushed Howard’s hand. Howard thought that the professor would surely know the answer.

Professor Fraser coughed as well. He turned theatrically raking his gaze across the gathered crowd.

‘Does any of the audience know the answer to this question’ he said. He coughed again. His face looked a little bit redder than before. Mrs Van Dijk was smiling faintly now squeezing Howard’s hand.

‘Your name sir?’ said Fraser looking pointedly at Howard.

‘My name is Howard’.

‘Howard’ said Fraser, ‘My good friend Professor Galileo would be able to tell you the answer to that question, but for now it is too long and complicated a story. May I offer you - Howard and your wife – a free and complimentary bottle of Mars Juice and Cream of the Sun’

He strode forward, parting the crowd, and placed the bottle in Howard’s hand and the jar in Mrs Van Dijk’s, then turned back to resume his salesmanship.

**********************************

Howard didn’t concentrate on the rest of the talk by Professor Fraser. He had surprised even himself and felt a strange combination of embarrassment for having spoken up (his face was still a little bit red), and pride. But he was sure that Professor Fraser had not really known the answer to his question about the sun going round the Earth. Surely it would be impossible to tell which went round which. And besides, most of the time he thought that they weren’t moving on the Earth. He never felt that the Earth was moving under him. Surely you would be able to feel it moving?

He was pleased with the gifts too, though he realised that they were probably to shut him up. While Fraser continued to talk about his other special potions and creams  - a cream for ladies to make their skin smell nice, a drink for each day to make your heart beat stronger – Howard looked occasionally down at the bottle he’d been given and its label with planets and moons.

Fraser finished selling his things and the crowd began to disperse. Howard watched him put away his table and bottles and jars, and then put away the coins he had gained in his sales in a leather bag. Fraser worked very quickly. Perhaps he had to get to another village before dark. But it was a nice early summer afternoon  and he had plenty of time. Probably he camped out along the lanes at night. There would be room to sleep in the back of the cart.

Mrs Van Dijk was talking to one of the other women from the village who had bought one of Fraser’s jars. They were laughing. Howard realised that no one really took these medicines seriously, but they still bought them. He felt sorry for Fraser.

Howard walked up to the cart. Fraser was packing boxes into the back. He could see into the gloom of the back of the cart. There was a bed along one side with a thin red blanket, and some cooking things: pots and pans. But most of the inside was filled with shelves and boxes of jars and bottles. The strange brass planet model was on a small table. There were also some other brass instruments – one like a short cylinder, the other a complex device of angles and lenses.

Howard must have been staring because Fraser turned and looked at him in the doorway.

‘Can I help you’ he said, not very friendly.

Howard stuttered. ‘I was just wondering, wondering….if you would like to have some tea?’

Fraser’s voice was softer. Perhaps he hadn’t recognised his questioner from the audience.

‘Ah. The scientist! What did you say your name was? Howard?’

Howard felt proud. He’d never been called a scientist before. He held out his hand and shook Fraser’s. The fat man’s hand was soft and white like bread dough. His face close up was very red and his nose was like an old tomato. Howard thought he smelt alcohol on Fraser’s breath.

‘I would be delighted to have tea with you, of course’ said Fraser.

Howard regretted asking the professor to tea, because he hadn’t asked Mrs Van Dijk, and because he wasn’t sure now what they would talk about. But it was done. He remembered when he had brought Black the Balloonist, another showman, back to the cottage and Mrs Van Dijk had been a little apprehensive. But she had found Black interesting after a while and had understood the physics of ballooning better than Black. Maybe she would be interested in meeting a professor? What was he a professor of? He decided he would ask.

Fraser put some of the last of the jars away in boxes. There was a bottle on the floor beside the main door. Fraser stooped to take a deep drink of it and then nimbly stepped out of the back of the cart. With a large key he locked the door.

‘Just some special life-giving potion’ said Fraser wiping his lips. ‘Now I’m all yours. Take me to have tea at your residence!’

This time Howard was sure he smelt alcohol on Fraser’s breath.

**********************************

He walked beside Fraser, and Mrs Van Dijk, who had finished talking to the woman, joined them. The old man stumbled along unevenly - he had a limp – but was cheerful and happy nevertheless. He commented on the attractions of the village and the church - the cottages arranged along the lane. He had taken his glittery jacket off and left it in the cart because it was so warm. His clothes underneath were quite ordinary and dirty – like a farm worker’s.

The cottage was cool and the living room surprisingly dark. But in the summer it was a relief to sit in the cool and be out of the bright light.

Howard made tea and Mrs Van Dijk found some bread she had baked with seeds that she had bought in the market at Nottingham. The professor sat at the table his hands together on the rough surface. He looked bemused at the lines of books on the shelves.

‘I had no idea that you were scholars….Is this where you get your science?’ he said, happily.

‘Some’ said Howard, pouring boiling water into the kettle. ‘But I don’t read so well. Lotte is a better reader. Most of the books are hers’

Mrs Van Dijk came out of the pantry carrying a box. Howard expected her to say something about the work she did – the translations, the healing and the work with the people of the Vale – but she said nothing, only smiled and opened the box.

‘You will be travelling on this afternoon?’ she asked.

‘Oh yes’ said Fraser. ‘I’ll visit most of the Vale villages in the next few weeks’

Howard brought the tea and they sat. Though Fraser probably preferred his special ‘life-giving potion’ (which Howard suspected to be brandy) - he also liked tea. He drank two large cups while they watched and ate the cake-like bread so quickly that crumbs clung to his mouth. He was clearly hungry.

He’s poor for a professor, thought Howard. He regretted thinking of him as a quack doctor and felt both sympathy and envy– because he travelled, and his life was light and simple. He also liked the idea that Fraser had suggested while he had been striding around selling his potions – that the planets affected people in some way - their health and well-being. He had liked the model too.

‘Your model of the moving planets’ said Howard. ‘I couldn’t see it properly. How does it work? What’s it for?’

Fraser shook his head and bread crumbs fell from his moustache. He coughed.

‘I am sorry that I didn’t bring it here to show you. It’s in the cart. In fact the model only shows relative movement of the planets. They all revolve around the sun at different speeds. You can use the model to predict where Mars will be or Jupiter – at certain times of the year. But you need written tables too.’

He finished the bread.

‘I’m not an astronomer, but I know the planets move in cycles. Everything moves in cycles. Everything in the world…’

‘The seasons are cycles, spring, summer, autumn, winter, spring. It’s true’ said Howard. He considered what Fraser said, but then shook his head.

‘I don’t understand. How do the planets influence people – I mean you said that they affect our health’

Fraser looked longingly at the empty plate and Mrs Van Dijk went to get more bread. When she put more on Fraser’s plate, the old man straightened his back as if he were about to make a speech.

‘Forgive me, my back is painful.’ He coughed. ‘The planets pull on us as they move around. They have tiny forces that affect us. Do you know of the tide?’

Mrs Van Dijk said ‘The moon makes the happen. The moon pulls at the sea and makes it flow back and forth’

‘You were born near the sea, madam?’ said Fraser politely.

‘No, Professor Fraser, but I spent time at sea. With my father’

‘And so we are like the sea?’ asked Howard.

‘Yes. A woman is also like the moon, she has the same cycles’

Fraser said this without thinking, and was immediately embarrassed

The living room became silent.

Howard wanted to change the subject to save the embarrassment. He said quickly:

‘Rivers don’t. Rivers go in one direction, endlessly flowing to the sea. They don’t flow in a cycle…’

‘In fact, Howard, rivers do flow in a cycle – or rather water does' said Fraser. 'Water evaporates. When you dry clothes –when a puddle dries up - the water evaporates and goes up into the atmosphere to make clouds and then rains. So water from rivers flows into the sea or lakes and then goes back up.’

‘This is why the sea doesn’t fill up, doesn’t overflow like a bucket with too much water in it. Because water is always evaporating?’

‘I suppose so’ Fraser nodded.

Howard was impressed. The professor looked like a tramp when he took off his shiny jacket, but he knew a lot. The idea that cycles were could follow the moon fascinated him and surely they could affect men if they affected women. But he knew he wouldn’t be able to ask there and then. He thought that he would ask Lotte when Fraser had gone.

**********************************

The professor didn’t stay long. After the tea he became quite restless, pulling on his moustache and looking around the room with his watery eyes. He coughed frequently and stretched upward holding his lower back. He didn’t like to stay in one place for very long – that was certainly true. Howard thought he had extraordinary energy for an old man with a limp.

All at once he stood up and brushed down his trousers of bread crumbs. He thanked Mrs Van Dijk profusely for the cake and rather comically kissed her hand. Howard walked with him down the lane to the cart.

The village was deserted now – hard to believe that so many people had gathered. The horse contentedly munched grass in the green. It was still – the hour before evening meal. From the cottages came the clanging of pots and pans and the loud voices of hungry children.

‘Let me show you the instruments Howard – since you’ve come this far…’

Fraser unlocked the back of the cart. Howard hadn’t noticed him lock it before, but clearly he was nervous about stealing. A set of small wooden steps came down from the hatch and Fraser opened the back door.

His large rear end disappeared into the back and Howard heard him scraping around. He reappeared with some brass instruments. One was the planet model. It was very heavy in Howard’s hands. At the centre was what appeared to be the sun  -  a brass ball about the size of a walnut attached to a plate by a thin vertical bar. Other smaller spheres, pea sized, also attached to the lower brass plate were arranged around. Underneath was a handle. When Howard turned it, the plate moved in a complicated way – it was really a pattern of flat interlocking plates – and the attached planets moved as well. Each moved at a different speed. One moved slowly – the third one from the sun -  another - the one closest to the sun -  moved very quickly so that it caught up with the third planet and then overtook it.

It was quite stiff to turn – perhaps because the mechanism was so heavy, but the planets all moved smoothly. The whole thing was not much bigger than a dinner plate.

‘It’s beautiful’ said Howard. He liked its heavy feel and the feel of the precision of the craftsmanship. ‘Remarkable’.

‘And this. Do you know what this is?’

Fraser handed Howard the brass cylinder that he had seen before. It was about as long as his forearm and polished yellow. At one end was dark glass- like a pool of dark water – at the other a brass ring with a dark spot in the centre.

‘Pull it apart’ said Fraser stretching his two hands apart. ‘It opens up’

Howard pulled. A smaller cylinder came out and then another. Now it was a length of brass tubes about as long as his forearm.

‘Look through it. Through the small end. Hold it still’

Fraser pointed toward the church tower and the tall trees behind. Howard held the brass ring to his eye and looked down the long tube. A blue circle appeared far away down a long tunnel like a black cave. Howard’s eyelashes seemed suddenly in the way.

He took his eye away.

‘What should I see?’

‘Things far away seem close. Look again. It’s a telescope – used at sea’

It was true – holding his eye steady Howard saw the fronds of one of the conifers, then a section of the stonework of the church tower. The image was clear and then cloudy, close by – but strangely stained blue – like he was looking at things under water, under the sea.

‘You can see the planets with the telescope. On a clear night…’ said Fraser, encouragingly. ‘And this…’

He held the last thing to Howard. It was an impossibly complicated object, all angles and points. There was a curved surface inside with lines marked on it - and a narrow lens like part of a telescope. It was dirty and in poorer condition than the other instruments. It needed polishing.

‘What is it?’ said Howard.

He turned it in his hands feeling its considerable weight. It was difficult to know even how to hold it.

‘I don’t know!’ said Fraser. ‘Had it for years and I still don’t know what it’s for!’

Fraser smiled and his small watery eyes seemed very humorous. He liked the idea of having something complicated and beautiful – but also not knowing what it was for.

Howard decided he would be sad to see Professor Fraser go.

**********************************

But the Professor seemed in a hurry. Howard shook his hand and thanked him for the potion and the cream. The old man untied his horse and pulled out the wooden pegs that fixed the cart. As Howard walked up the lane he heard the scrape of the horse’s hooves on the cobbles near the gate and then the rattle of the cart as it went over the uneven ground at the threshold.

Mrs Van Dijk was sitting in the living room by the table, holding a book. It was late afternoon and after all the bread and tea that they’d had, they didn’t feel like eating. The next day Howard would have to work, and he thought of walking along the stream near the village to see whether there were some good willow branches to cut. If he had a look in the evening he’d be able to start cutting early in the morning. He thought the weather was going to change the next day so it would be good to get started early.

‘Do you want to come along the stream looking for willow branches? It’s nice outside… We could sit by the water a bit.’

‘Aren’t you going to try a drink of the Mars Juice?’ she said laughing. On the table next to the book was her jar of cream and the small bottle of liquid. She had obviously been looking at it.

‘Have you tried the cream?’

‘You know it’s some kind of oil - lanolin or something similar. Then there’s something else - I couldn’t recognise it at first….’

She held the jar out for him to see. There was a smell of cream or oil like the oil on sheep’s wool - but there was a sweet smell as well.

‘It’s honey!’ she said, not waiting for him to guess.

‘What did Fraser say? It’s concentrated sunlight. I don’t understand…’

‘If I spread this on my skin, it’ll be awful!’ she laughed again.

Howard pulled off the tight cork on the bottle of Mars Juice. There was a hiss from the top and then a smell of caramel. He held the narrow neck to his nose. Not an unpleasant smell. He poured a tiny bit in a cup and tasted it. It was foul – sweet at first then unimaginably bitter. He coughed with a distorted look on his face.

‘Let’s go to the river’ said Howard, laughing and coughing at the same time.

They took a path across the ancient wheat fields and around the west side of the village and then into the birch woods. The trees were filled with birdsong and the yellowish grass around the base of the trees rustled at they walked by. The stream, which a few miles to the north joined the main Vale river, meandered across a very large field a little way ahead. This field was famous in the village because it was where the balloonist had crash-landed. If you looked carefully you could still see the damage that the balloon had done.

The stream was marked by a line of mature willow trees. These were not coppiced, perhaps because they were so dense and difficult to get to. But Howard sometimes went to collect fallen branches. Willow wood was very strong but also flexible – good for the structural parts of the roofs of houses. The willows were amongst the earliest of the trees to come into leaf, and their leaves were lighter, and long and slender, like feathers. Howard liked this part of the stream because it was slow flowing and gathered into deep pools between the trunks of the willows. Their leaves were reflected in the darkness of the water and small fish circled under the surface. Over one pool a branch arched and sometimes you could see a big brightly coloured kingfisher looking down into the water. There were turfy banks of green moss where you could sit and watch the fish and the reflections of the leaves in the water.

Howard surveyed the trees for breaking or dying branches. Under their feet was already a carpet of dried willow leaves. It was strange that these trees seemed to shed leaves all summer. He satisfied himself that it was worth coming early to cut at least two branches. One was quite high and he’d have to climb to cut it. The other was close to the ground and would be easy.

Now they sat and watched the water. Mrs Van Dijk pressed into the moss with her outstretched hand to see if it would be wet to sit on, but it was dry. Its mass of tiny stems and branches was like a huge expensive cushion in thick green velvet. Below the moss cushion was a pool and they sat and watched the sleepy fish. There was no kingfisher and it was still and quiet. Next to the moss amongst a pile of sticks was a shell broken open like an open book.

Mrs Van Dijk held it out to Howard.

‘See – a river mussel. They sometimes have pearls. The birds have had this one. Clever how they’re able to wedge the shell open. See the lines on the shell?’

She pointed. The surface of the damp shell was scored with lines all making a shape like the shape of the shell itself but smaller.

‘What are the lines?’

‘They show how it grew. This inner line here shows when the mussel was young and small. This one when it was a bit bigger.’

‘Imagine if people showed their shape as they grew!’

They laughed. Howard scratched his fingernail over the ridges of the shell.

‘It must grow in little spurts and then stop in between. It grows in the summer.’

‘Like tree rings’

‘The seasons leave their mark on living things…’ he said slowly. ‘But I don’t believe that the planets can affect people. They’re too far away. But what was it about cycles that Fraser said?’

Mrs Van Dijk looked into the water past her feet. A fish hung still in the green water.

‘It’s related for some reason to the moon. I don’t know why. The word menstruation is related to the word moon. I think it comes from the Latin mensis, and this comes from the Greek mene which means moon. I believe that in some places women have their menstruation with the new moon’

‘Tuned to the moon?’ Howard said thinking. He watched the fish. He thought about the seasons all around him, and the cycles. Fraser was right, there were cycles everywhere.

*********************************

There was a blue flash of the kingfisher. There was always one here at this time of year. He didn’t know if it was the same one or different, or if it was male or female. In the winter it disappeared but he never saw kingfishers fly together. In fact when he saw them they were always alone. It was not their outline that you could see – more the flash of blue - like a coloured light flashing on and off in the foliage. He thought it was strange that it always alone. A bit like Professor Fraser.

‘Can you see the kingfisher?’ he said quietly pointing to the far bank.

Mrs Van Dijk nodded.

They watched it for a while.

‘I don’t really understand why we can’t feel the Earth moving. If it moves around the sun then we should feel it’ said Howard.

‘I wondered what you were thinking about! I think the earth also moves around itself. It rotates once a day. That’s why there’s day and night’

‘Each day the Vale rotates into the sun’s light then rotates out so that the sun is hidden’

‘…and the reason you can’t feel the movement.. Have you ever ridden on a merry-go-round at the fair?’

‘No’. Howard didn’t know what a merry-go-round was.

‘They are round. They turn. You can sit on a wooden horse while the merry-go-round turns. You have to imagine sitting on one’

‘On a wooden horse – going round and round? I suppose so.’ He remembered being swung round by his father, fast, just held by his hands. It felt awful – disorientating.

‘Don’t you feel dizzy?’

‘Not if it goes slowly and steadily. It can be fun. But you have to imagine. If you look at the horse’s head in front – the wooden horse’s head - and don’t look at anything else. Can you see that you wouldn’t know that you’re turning? You would only know you’re turning if you look at the world that’s not turning…’

‘I suppose that’s true. If you don’t feel dizzy…’

‘Probably we simply get used to the feeling of always turning. If you lived your life on the merry-go-round, you’d not feel any dizziness’

His mind idly considered this. They swung their feet over the water.

**********************************

The kingfisher came closer and sat on the arched branch. It was looking into the pool below at the circulating fish. The water was dark. To Howard and Mrs Van Dijk the fish were faint objects that you could only catch with a hook and a line. But the bird could plunge down suddenly and scoop up a fish in its beak when one came too close to the surface.

They waited and watched hoping that it would swoop, but the bird lost interest in the pool and looked over at them. Its tiny eyes in a black band across its head blinked often, flashing grey.

They lay back on the moss and looked up between the branches at the sky. It was bleached, almost white, because the sun was close to setting. The willow branches made dark complicated patterns like webs across the light. Howard wondered if the kingfisher needed to hunt all the time, or whether it had time to just sit and contemplate. He listened for the sound of running water but there was almost no sound. The leaves that hung from the trees all around rustled and rattled.

Presently he heard Mrs Van Dijk’s steady breathing. She was always good at falling asleep. He didn’t want to wake her but now he was feeling hungry. Perhaps they should walk home. Tomorrow he would have to cut a lot of wood. Like the kingfisher, he could only contemplate sometimes.

He stood carefully so as not to wake her and crossed over the stream on a moss covered boulder. The kingfisher flew off. The willows gave way to a field on the west side which was also fallow, but it was drier. At the far end was a small lane that lead north to the river. Howard looked around for mushrooms and then noticed a thin thread of smoke curling and then broadening high up against the washed out sky.

There was no house there. The smoke must be coming from the lane. Howard was curious. It was possible that someone was burning farm rubbish but it was unusual at that time of year. He abandoned the idea of looking for mushrooms and strode across the field amongst the wild flowers. He smelt the wood smoke.

He recognised the professor’s cart from the pattern of painted planets on the side. The top part of it showed above the hedge and a small thin chimney that he’d not noticed before was responsible for the smoke. Fraser was cooking his dinner. Howard was quite pleased to see the cart but there was no place to cross the low hedge. He thought he would say hello.

But then he thought that perhaps Fraser didn’t want to talk to anyone, after all he had chosen not to camp in the Village but outside. He’d not gone far but he had clearly chosen to be alone. Howard knew that the lane on the other side of the hedge had wide verges of thick grass. Gypsies often stopped there and fed their horses and camped.

Howard stood and watched the smoke curling up. He thought he smelt meat.

But he should go back. Mrs Van Dijk would worry waking up alone. Perhaps he’d go and see Professor Fraser in the morning.

**********************************

She had woken. She was sitting up on the green cushion of moss stroking her hair, and hadn’t been awake long.

‘Has the kingfisher gone?’ she said sleepily.

‘Yes. It flew off when I crossed the stream. I didn’t want to wake you. I went looking for mushrooms but then I saw our friend, the professor’s, cart’

‘Where?’ She looked around.

‘Behind, past the trees on that small lane. He’s camped and I smelt cooking! Now I’m hungry!’

‘You didn’t say hello?’

‘I thought he didn’t want to be disturbed’

‘Strange. We should go’ she said nodding in the direction of Earls Court.

They took the path back through the field. The colours were fading with the sun and there were long shadows. There was cool air close to the ground so Howard knew that there would be a strong dew in the night.

They had ham and potatoes, so they heated them up with bread. While he ate, Howard had an idea for an experiment. He was thinking about the earth’s rotation again. He liked this idea that you might not notice movement or rotation if everything rotated with you – but he also thought there would be some sense of movement. His idea was that this could not be felt when you were moving around – being busy with things –because your mind was occupied. He thought it would only be possible to sense movement when you were completely still and relaxed. He would try to do it tonight, before he slept.

The fire crackled and the window showed dark grey, then black. Howard saw the full moon rise over the trees in the churchyard.

Mrs Van Dijk had opened a book from the shelf and was flicking through the pages. Howard noticed that on the table beside her was the opened shell of the river mussel.

‘What are you reading?’

‘About nacre. It’s the name for the shiny surface on the inside of the shell’

She picked up the shell and held it to the candle. It was very white and smooth, and colours shone from the inner surface, first one colour then another. If you moved the colours changed.

‘Colours’

‘Like a pearl or mother of pearl, but another name is nacre. The pearl’s made when a grain of sand gets into the shell and the mussel covers it with nacre and it gets bigger and bigger and makes a pearl’

‘But the colours?’

‘I don’t know. This book doesn’t say anything. Maybe no one knows’

**********************************

‘Howard’ said Mrs Van Dijk, getting up. She put the book back in the shelf and was holding the shell again, looking at the smooth white nacre. ‘I won’t be able to come tomorrow with you. I forgot: after Professor Fraser’s talk I talked to a woman from Stathern. Her daughter wants to see me. I said she could come tomorrow morning’

‘Was it the woman you were talking to, after the show? I’ll be cutting wood anyway. What does the daughter want?’

‘Some kind of healing.’

‘She is coming to you then – not the quack doctor!’ said Howard smiling.

‘I don’t know if I’ll be able to do anything for her’

Howard lay in bed waiting for sleep to come. The stillness made his mind wander and a series of images began to appear behind his eyes. First a flower he had seen in the afternoon, in the fallow land walking with Mrs Van Dijk. He hadn’t remembered the flower – or at least he had thought not. But it was there in his memory. Then a wall in sunlight, ivy hanging down. Something he had never seen. Then a cloud passing a gentle green hill. A black horse running in tall grass. Rain on a window. They came and went quickly and he instinctively knew that they were the roots of dreams. Not dreams themselves but their starting points. The signposts to dreams. But they seemed random – one after another – with no connection. Like being shown a random collection of pictures. His conscious mind was falling now and he was taking one of the routes to a dream. His consciousness was leaving. Then a flash of lucidity. He thought he would ask Mrs Van Dijk about the random images in the morning. Then his consciousness was gone.

**********************************

Howard always woke before Mrs Van Dijk in the morning. She had got used to his heavy footsteps in the bedroom as he looked for his shoes or his trousers, then the clang of the kettle in the living room as he made tea. A few minutes later he would come back into the bedroom with a cup of tea.

‘I can’t come with you today, Howard’ she said at last.

‘I know– you said. It’s all right. Besides look outside the weather doesn’t look good. It’s much cooler than yesterday. There’s a black cloud over the river. It’s better to stay inside’

She sat up. It was true. It was bright in the bedroom - always much brighter than the living room – but through the window she could see angry black clouds to the west behind the tall trees. A cold draught flapped the curtains.

‘Who’s coming?’ he asked

‘That woman and her daughter. I don’t know what’s wrong with her.’

She heard him collecting his tools in the living room, then the scrape as the front door was opened. His boots splashed outside in the lane.

She couldn’t stay in bed for long because the visitors would come soon. She would have to get her herbs ready and clean the living room. But it was nice to drink tea. She sat up properly with the pillow behind her lower back. The wind increased outside and the curtains fluttered, then rain came quite hard against the glass. He should have shut the window before he went! The rain was coming in!

But it wasn’t rain. It was hail. The particles of ice bounced against the window and she saw them lodge in the hedge outside. The air beyond was full of them and for a moment she couldn’t see the trees on the far side of the graveyard. Within a few seconds the hail stopped. The sky was suddenly bright in the west. It would be one of those days where the weather changed every five minutes.

She finished her tea and dressed in a thick skirt and socks. She wore a pullover and a shawl on top of that. Then she put the kettle again on the stove to make more hot water for tea. She tidied a little, putting the two stools under the table and some wood on the fire. She took the shell and put it in a jar on the shelf and straightened the books. The light had gone dark again outside so she lit a candle. It lightened the dark living room a little, but more important the flickering yellow light made the room seem warmer and more homely.

She heard the sounds of boots in puddles outside again, and thought that Howard might be coming back because he’d forgotten one of his tools. But no –women’s voices. They were here already - the woman from Redmile that had joked about buying some cream from Professor Fraser - and her daughter.

She was as she had been the day before. She stood on the doorstep her blonde hair quite untidy blowing out in wisps with the boisterous wind. She was red-faced but happy and lively. She was pretty too. Her daughter was different though, white faced and downcast. Her shoulders hunched as though she was cold.

**********************************

As Mrs Van Dijk invited the women in, a powerful blast of hail came from the west over the trees and slammed the door shut. The candles that Mrs Van Dijk had lit were blown out instantly. The room suddenly seemed cold and hail beat against the small window.

‘Terrible’ said the older woman brushing long stray hairs from her eyes. ‘The weather was so nice yesterday. How can it change so quickly?’

‘I don’t know’ said Mrs Van Dijk cheerfully. ‘But at least it’s dry in here. I’ll put more wood on. Would you like some tea?’

‘Oh yes please. May - would you like something?’ she spoke to the younger woman who was still silent.

The girl sighed heavily and nodded, but said nothing.

‘I’m sorry for the weather’ said Mrs Van Dijk kindly to May. ‘Some tea will warm you up’

She turned to the stove and put more water in the kettle. She thought that the girl – May – was really disturbed. She had not looked up yet, and seemed unable to meet Mrs Van Dijk’s eyes. But there was something unusual about her – she seemed fragile, delicate, distracted.

Mrs Van Dijk realised she couldn’t remember the name of May’s mother. She thoughtfully watched the water boil and wondered how to ask. Because she had put a lot of new wood on the fire, the room rapidly became warmer. Ironically the light was suddenly bright outside. There was brilliant sunshine and she saw deep blue sky behind the church tower.

After a minute, she set the tea on the table.

‘Look - now!’ she said indicating the window.

‘The sun’s shining’ said the blond woman. ‘Look May!’

Mrs Van Dijk noticed that the mother was kind with her daughter but also talked to her like she was a small girl. But she looked about twenty.

‘I’m sorry but I’ve forgotten your name’, said Mrs Van Dijk looking at the mother, trying to be polite.

‘Mrs Cooper. This is my daughter May’

Mrs Van Dijk sat opposite the two women and sipped her tea. She wondered who would be the first to mention the problem. There was something about Mrs Cooper that suggested forced happiness and there was a definite sense of resentment in May. The girl had not wanted to come to meet Mrs Van Dijk.

The light was very bright outside, and the melting hale stones in the hedge that Mrs Van Dijk could just see through the window were shining like scattered crystals. Steam began to rise from the hedge and the puddles of the lane outside. Mrs Van Dijk wished that she had gone with Howard. This visit was awkward and difficult. Already she doubted that she would be able to help the girl.

But the light outside gave her courage.

‘What can I help you with Mrs Cooper?’ she said. ‘I can do some healing and I can make small charms to help with bad luck’

‘It’s not me but my daughter that needs help. I’ve tried to help her. She suffers – I’ve no doubt of that - but I can’t help. In truth - and this is not a pleasant thing to say – her distraction - her sadness - does nothing for her. She’s getting older - and I and my husband were hoping that she would marry this year. But May still suffers from her distractions’

The last word was said with a particular emphasis like a word often used, but not understood.

Mrs Van Dijk watched May while her mother spoke. The words troubled her – they were like little blows, and her body seemed almost to shake. But this wasn’t surprising - her mother spoke about her as if she wasn’t there. Perhaps the girl was simple, backward.

Mrs Van Dijk waited for May to say something. The girl stopped shaking and looked at her hands which were clasped together tightly.

At last May raised her head. Her eyes were wet with tears and red-rimmed, but of the most extraordinary China blue. Mrs Van Dijk was not expecting the quality of her voice either -  it was clear and assured and she spoke with great emphasis.

‘I see things, hear voices’ she said.

As she uttered the few words there was a wave of emotion in the room that passed outward from the girl –like a physical shockwave or sound wave. Mrs Van Dijk rocked back on her chair. She stared at the girl. Her mother looked blank and Mrs Van Dijk realised that Mrs Cooper had not felt it. Such a concentrated wave was something Mrs Van Dijk had felt only a few times in her life before - and only from women with a powerful spiritual presence.

**********************************

Mrs Van Dijk was startled. The wave had gone but still May radiated a sort of energy – like light - but invisible. She had lowered her head again and the energy was dropping. Her face - white with care and preoccupation - showed an expression of pain and worry combined.

‘What do you see, what do you hear, May?’

She didn’t appear to be listening. Her face was turned down; her white forehead was shiny with sweat.

‘She’s always like this’ said Mrs Cooper, annoyed. ‘She doesn’t answer’

Mrs Van Dijk could see that May’s mother had no idea of the extraordinary energy that May radiated. She was simply annoyed, uncomprehending. Mrs Van Dijk tried to ignore the annoyance. She looked intently at May, speaking slowly with emotion, but in a controlled way, trying to express empathy.

‘You see images, hear voices all the time. Since you were a girl? Are the images and voices ones that you recognise?’

‘Since I was a girl – and most I don’t recognise. They are from others’. A muffled answer. Still she didn’t look up.

‘Is it happening now?’

‘It always happens’ she said loudly, almost shouting.

May looked up again. Mrs Van Dijk tried to make eye contact to reassure the distraught girl - she already had a good idea what May was, what she suffered from.

‘The images are unconnected with your life? Do these things stop?’

‘When I’m asleep, when I am very relaxed. But most of the time they come constantly’

Mrs Cooper nodded vigorously.

‘Her distractions’ she said looking at Mrs Van Dijk knowingly.

‘Tell me what you have now’ said Mrs Van Dijk, trying to avoid Mrs Cooper’s eyes.

‘Noises all the time, around me. Like I’m in a room full of people. Also images that come, like memories, but not my own’

‘You have your own memories?’

‘Of course. But I’ve always been troubled by others. I’ve learnt to control things’

‘What is your first genuine memory?’

She looked up locking eyes with Mrs Van Dijk. She was thinking, blinking her watery blue eyes.

‘Playing under a tree at home. Sitting in the grass’

‘Do you remember it well? All the details – the sky colour, the sound of birds, the wind’

‘Not so well…’

‘But it is your own memory?’

‘Yes’

‘And just now – while you were thinking of the memory. What happened to the other voices – the distractions?’

‘They went down. When I think of things - try to remember, try to read – the noise in my mind is quieter’

‘And you can read?’ asked Mrs Van Dijk gently.

‘Oh yes!’ butted in Mrs Cooper, enthusiastically. ‘She taught herself to read. May is very clever, very clever’

‘But you have voices?’ said Mrs Van Dijk.

‘Yes’ Her head went down again. There was pain in her expression again.

Mrs Van Dijk sat back in her chair. It would be difficult to help her, but perhaps she could.

‘Mrs Cooper, have you ever had anyone else try to help May?’

Mrs Cooper let out a sigh. ‘Everything - we’ve tried everything. Doctors, teachers. I talked to the Professor as well yesterday. But this is the first time we have come to woman like yourself, pardon me…’

Van Dijk said: ‘I think your daughter is something very unusual’

**********************************

Howard was walking along the path near the stream looking at the willows. The sun had come out but on the short walk he had been beaten by hail and freezing wind. The weather was so changeable. Raining one minute then sunshine the next. When the sun came out, the rain that had fallen was transformed to thousands of shining points like crystals in rock, and the wet mud in the lanes began to steam. The paradoxical thing was that the sun was very warm! He had sheltered under a large willow when the hail was at its worst. He had watched in darkness like late evening, as the white ice particles bounced on the soil and beat against the delicate leaves.

He came to the place where he and Lotte had sat a few days before. The sun had gone in and water dripped from branches into the still pools. The fish were still there, circling. He looked down at them – the long black indistinct shapes. They knew nothing of weather – if it poured or if the sun shone. But did they have a kind of weather under water? The water must change temperature with the seasons. What did fish do when the water froze?

He looked over the stream and to the far hedge for the smoke of Professor Fraser’s cart. The sky was wild and busy with shifting clouds, but he saw nothing. He had been looking forward to talking to him.

Crossing the stream he looked again, expecting to see something, after all it was very early. He would surely not have moved on so soon. But there was no cart. He thought, anyway, that he would go and see, and so set forth across the fallow field, trying to keep his boots out of the long wet grass.

The hedge was tall but there was a gate a little way along. He climbed it and walked in the lane back towards where Fraser would have been. The verge of the lane was very wide and grassy. This was the perfect place for camping. The gypsies often stopped on lanes like this because their horses could graze and there was space for children to play. And the land was common too – owned by no one – so you couldn’t be asked to move on.

In the grass was a flat area and by the hedge was a pile of hot ashes. It must be the remains of the professor’s cooking fire. He could not have left long ago. The grass was wet so probably he’d started out before the hail. Howard thought this was a shame. He had been fascinated by the old man. He was clearly no scientist – probably not a professor – but he knew things. His instruments were very interesting too. Though he had said nothing to Mrs Van Dijk, Howard had secretly got the idea of buying the telescope or the other unknown device. One of the reasons he had wanted to see the professor that morning was to make an offer for an instrument, particularly the telescope. He had no idea how much it would cost.

But Fraser was gone. Where to? To another village, toward the sea, to Nottingham? It was a terrible day to travel.

Howard looked up. In the west the sky was clearer and the wind would bring more settled weather in the next hours. It would be nice to cut wood. Looking back down to the verdant grass around his wet boots, he saw something. It was a dark object. Something like a small bag, perhaps of brown paper.

He picked it up. No -  a leather bag. It jingled with coins, a lot of coins. It was quite heavy.

The professor’s money bag! He had lost it. Howard remembered the old man dropping coins into it. This would be a problem! But if he’d just left, perhaps Howard could catch him, if he walked quickly. The willow wood could wait and he knew Mrs Van Dijk would understand.

He set himself against the wind and walked onto the lane between the twin tracks of the cart which were distinct in the new mud.

**********************************

‘What is thing that May can see, her distractions?’ asked Mrs Cooper. She had sat quietly for a few seconds after Mrs Van Dijk had uttered the word.

‘Perhaps May can answer the question?’ Mrs Van Dijk turned to the girl. She tried to be encouraging.

‘I don’t know’

‘Well’ said Mrs Van Dijk, ‘who are these others you talk about?’

‘I don’t know. I feel like there are people there, or ghosts’

‘What do you see?’

May was uncomfortable describing what she saw. The voices or whatever they were had eaten into her over many years. She didn’t want to dwell on them.

‘Can you give me examples?’ said Mrs Van Dijk again.

‘It’s impossible to say. The images are always unconnected…’

‘Where do you see them – in front of your eyes?’

The girl almost laughed.

‘No! I wouldn’t be able to see where I’m going’

‘Then where?’

‘I don’t know. Somewhere inside - not my eyes, but not far away from my eyes’

‘And now?’

‘I see a river from above, water swirling, now a bucket filled with water, now a bearded man’s face, now a worm wriggling in soil, now…’

Her voice began to rise louder and she spoke faster, she was suddenly nearly hysterical.

Mrs Van Dijk stood up and came around the table. She held May’s shoulders which were palpitating. May began to shout; her hands gripped the table and her knuckles were white.

‘Think of your first memory – playing under the tree at home…’ said Mrs Van Dijk forcefully, almost shouting herself. She gripped May’s shoulders and felt the shuddering subside.

‘That’s good. Keep thinking of that. Think of it when you get too many distractions’

‘I’ve tried’ wailed May. ‘Don’t you think I have tried this before? I know that it’s possible to control things, but I can’t always be dreaming of playing under a tree can I?’

Her voice was very clear. She looked angry. For the first time Mrs Van Dijk realised how difficult it must be.

Mrs Van Dijk went to the pantry and got some bread and cheese. It was pointless to put pressure on May. She had probably tried lots of things in the past, but nothing had worked.

**********************************

Howard followed the cart tracks. They were very clear in the muddy lane – parallel depressions with the disordered pattern of the horse’s hoofs in between. There were no tracks of a man so Howard assumed that the professor was sitting behind the horse.

The hail had already melted and the sun came and went. When it came it was very bright, perhaps because the sky was washed clean by the violence of the hail and vigour of the wind. The sky was a wild mixture of different kinds of clouds and wide tracts of blue.

Fraser was going west probably to one of the small villages along the river. He was probably going slower than Howard so it would not be long before he caught up.

The lane left the soft wooded country of the central Vale, and as it turned toward the river, the woods became fewer and less dense. The fields were larger. Though this was really part of the Vale geographically Howard always thought of this area to be more a part of Nottingham. The villages were larger, more like towns and less close together. But it was still a long way to the river.

After an hour’s walking he came to a cross roads and there was a problem following the track because it looked like other carts had been by, certainly crossing the west-bound lane. Howard stood thinking. It was very quiet. The lanes were all deserted and there were no farmers even in the fields, so he couldn’t ask anyone.

As he tried to understand the complex of tracks – trying to work out if the professor had turned left, right or gone straight on - it began to rain again. It was less vigorous rain, and not hail. But it was persistent and dense.

Howard stepped back and stood under a tall hawthorn watching the mud in the lane get wetter and the tracks disappear. Probably he’d wasted his time. Just to give the money bag back! He wondered if it would be better to return to Earls Court. Fraser would soon know that something was missing and perhaps call in the village looking for his money.

He looked up into the thorn branches above him and saw rain coming down from a cloud straight above. He remembered seeing the images of the night before, wondering what they meant. Perhaps they were just images stored away from the day. Things that you remembered that you thought you hadn’t. He realised that these things happened quite often when sleep was coming, unless you fell asleep immediately. He had meant to talk to Mrs Van Dijk about it, but had forgotten.

The rain made a soft hissing noise as it fell through the branches. He would have to go out into it eventually. But then he noticed a plume of smoke a little past the cross roads coming from a low hedge.

He stepped from the hawthorn and into the lane swiftly walking along the hedge. There was a gate to a small field just past the crossroads and it was open. Fraser’s cart had been driven through into the long grass. It was parked and smoke issued from its small chimney. The painting of the planets on the canvas awning was as colourful as it had been the day before, even though it was dark with rain.

‘Hello’ shouted Howard. He didn’t want to startle the occupant who was probably cooking his lunch.

A muffled voice came from inside and then the door was flung open. Professor Fraser’s red face appeared. It looked like he had been crying – his eyes were watery and red. The smell of cooking bacon came past his ruddy cheeks.

‘Hello – Howard is it? Don’t worry – I’m not weeping it’s just the cooking – in such a confined space. It gets very smoky. You can stay to eat? I’ll pull the awning over. Wait a moment!’

The face disappeared and then a large rear appeared and Professor Fraser reversed out of the cart. He was very jovial despite his watery eyes. Howard smelt the special potion that Fraser liked to drink. Perhaps it was the source of his joviality.

Fraser had two thin wooden poles with him as he emerged.

‘I like putting the awning out – when I have a visitor.’

He was suddenly very busy. He took the poles and stuck their sharp ends lightly into the thick grass. The grass was so wet that the old man’s boots were already soaking. But probably he didn’t mind. He peeled the canvas cover from one side of the cart and stretched it out toward the poles then tied the poles with string so that a sort of half-tent was created. Two chairs were then pulled from the cart and placed side by side under the awning. Even with the dull sky Howard could see the planets through the cloth when he sat under. The sound of falling rain was quite loud on the canvas.

Howard was startled at how quickly the professor had got into action. He was a nice man. Howard was glad that he’d brought the professor’s money bag. He wanted to give the bag to him, but the old man had already disappeared again into the cart, perhaps to finish off the cooking.

So Howard waited and watched the rain fall into the long grass just in front of his outstretched boots, and enjoyed the comforting patter on the awning above his head.

**********************************

Fraser came out holding two tin plates in one hand piled with bacon and bread. In his other hand he held two cups by the rims. The liquid slopped out as he struggled from the narrow opening at the back of the cart.

The liquid was brandy. Howard rarely drank alcohol, and certainly rarely drank at lunchtime. But there seemed something special about this. It had been a strange day. It was raining hard now and water drummed on the canvas over his head. The grass was soaked. He could not stand upright under the awning but held the two plates while Fraser seated himself.

Howard took the leather money bag from his large pocket.

‘Here – Professor Fraser – I saw this on the verge of the lane this morning. I was coming to say hello and noticed you had moved on. I assumed you must have dropped it’

Fraser didn’t recognise the bag at first but then his face brightened. He had not even known that he’d left it.

‘It must have fallen out. I was changing from my coloured jacket. The one I use for my talks. The jacket’s too small  - I always take it off as soon as I can. I’m also not comfortable in it. The bag must have fallen out!’

Howard put the bag in the grass next to the professor who took a big gulp of his drink. He gasped with satisfaction and put the cup down next to the bag. Then he began to eat. Howard thought he didn’t seem greatly bothered by losing the money. But then he remembered he was also hungry and started on the bread and the thick slice of bacon he’d been given.

The drink had an almost immediate effect on Howard. Its warmth passed from his stomach through his chest to his face. He started to feel rather nice and the pouring rain didn’t bother him, after all he was warm and dry. He watched the trees at the far end of the small meadow – their leaves were being beaten down by the heavy rain. The smell was of wet grass, and then occasionally of smoke from the stove inside.

‘Where are you going next Professor?’ he asked expansively. ‘Toward the river?’

‘I haven’t decided. It’s not the best day to try to interest people in medicines and science! I might just stay here all day – wait ‘til tomorrow to move’

‘How was your visit to Earls Court – did you sell as much as you wanted?’

‘It was to be expected. I thought that there would be more customers’

‘Some were out in the fields. Yesterday was a planting day. Some of the men were out in the fields. It’s the same every year at this time’

‘Ah’ said Fraser putting his plate on the grass and picking up his cup again. ‘…the seasons and their influence on the rural population. It’s wonderful to be in tune with the seasons. In fact so am I – a summer traveller and winter resident of the north’

‘You only travel in the summer?’

‘Yes. You can only make a living like this in the summer. In the winter I study. I have lodgings in Whitby on the north coast.’

Fraser had already finished his drink. He stood a bit unsteadily and went to get the bottle. Howard heard him scraping inside the cart.

He re-emerged holding the bottle in one hand and the planet model in the other. Howard was reminded of his desire to buy one of the instruments. But he wanted to hear what Fraser said, before he made his offer.

Fraser sat gazing at the object. He had forgotten his half-finished food. Water dropped from the edge of the awning onto the plate.

‘I clean this regularly. A fascinating device. All kinds of movements are here - all the tensions that the planets bring through the year. Have you ever thought that modern man is civilised because of the seasons?’

Fraser turned and looked at Howard. His eyes were red again. His question was something of a challenge.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Without seasons the people of England would be primitive.’

‘I don’t understand’

Fraser looked out at the grey rain. The trees were quite indistinct now. The rain was vapourising into mist that hung over the grass.

‘We have been forced to plan for the winter every summer. The early inhabitants of this countryside knew every summer that a harder time was coming. If they did not have shelter, if they did not have food through the winter, they would perish. Millennia ago, men planned how to survive through the winter. They had to think and see ahead – use their imaginations… And most of all they had to keep their knowledge so that it wouldn’t be lost… and how did they do that?’

Another challenge.

Fraser continued: ‘…they wrote things down. They invented written language so that knowledge could be passed on. They could write and then read what they had written’

Howard thought. He supposed that it was true. Seasons perhaps made people civilised. Were there places where there were no seasons? Were the people of these places uncivilised?

But he also wondered what people did before they could speak. Had human beings learned to speak? If they had learned to write and read they must even earlier have learned to speak. How did they survive before they could speak?

It was a strange question - the kind of question he would never have thought of if he had not been drinking Professor Fraser’s potion. He sat back in the chair stretching his legs out wondering if he should mention it to the old man.

**********************************

It began to rain heavily outside, but this time without hail. They ate the bread and cheese in silence. Mrs Van Dijk wondered whether she should make some more tea. Though May seemed to have resented coming to the cottage, she now showed no sign of wanting to leave. Mrs Van Dijk watched her as she ate the bread chewing every piece for a long time and then picking up each crumb and putting it in her mouth.

She seemed calmer.

‘Are the visions always persistent? I know that you said that they are weaker when you are occupied with something else – but is there any natural variation?’

May blinked - perhaps she was seeing something at that very moment – but she seemed to understand. She nodded.

‘There is a cycle. It is at its most intense at the moment but there are periods when it’s weaker. There are times when I don’t see very much. They last for a few days’

‘And these are monthly?’

May blushed, embarrassed, and her mother looked into her teacup. Neither was used to talking about such things. But May recovered quickly realising that this was a reasonable question.

‘I have thought about that but the cycle is not the same as a woman’s - as mine’

‘Perhaps we ought to be going?’ said Mrs Cooper anxious now to end the conversation.

‘I will try to help’, said Mrs Van Dijk sensing the end of the consultation. She still wanted to ask May about whether the cycles of the images corresponded with anything she knew. But the two women were already standing and going toward the door. Outside the rain had stopped and bright sky was almost overhead. It was odd weather - like spring and autumn rapidly alternating. Mrs Van Dijk watched them walk down the muddy lane to the village gate, silently - Mrs Cooper walking slightly ahead of her daughter.

But it was interesting – what May had said. And there was no doubting the strength of her spirit. She had really been startled at first by the way that the girl had projected emotion. If she was not preoccupied all the time she might have been a good healer or apothecary – she would be good at making charms. And she could read as well.

Mrs Van Dijk turned to the bookshelf. There was a small leather-bound volume by Plato. It was one of the oldest books of Mrs Van Dijk’s collection - she remembered reading something in the book a few months before – about illusion and the mind. This was the only book she had that was remotely related to the processes of the mind, all the rest were books about the countryside and the world outside the mind.

**********************************

The book was a translation into Latin of an original Greek manuscript, and so Mrs Van Dijk could read it, though it was difficult. She had to stop sometimes to puzzle over words or sentences. It was written in a strange style as well - like an imaginary conversation between two people, but neither of the people was identified. They were curiously disembodied –perhaps just created by the writer to go through an argument, an analysis.

But she’d been looking at the book a few months before and she had remembered sentences about illusion and reality, and the life of the mind. She thought it was the closest she could get to May’s problem. She sat at the table and flattened the book down. The book must have been translated quickly - and certainly without any ceremony - because it had no title page and no sections. It was – more or less – a single discussion of some strange philosophy about reality and illusion.

Mrs Van Dijk’s father had given her the book decades ago in Amsterdam. She remembered he had said that the book was a ‘lost text of Plato’ and that there were very few copies left. He had liked it, but she always found it difficult to read – it seemed aimless and unreadable, cold and analytical. But perhaps there was something in there to help her understand May’s plight. She had known powerful spiritual women before but not one that was so subjugated by her own sensitivity.

She flicked through the heavy thick pages all written densely. In places there were marks in the margin in a language that she didn’t understand at all – markings in Persian or Arabic. She remembered that Arab scholars had translated some great Greek literature into Latin. But the handwriting here was of a single translator – perhaps an Arab. Perhaps like her he sometimes puzzled over words.

There was a part of the book that was about the ‘inner mind’. There were several pages where the same enigmatic phrase appeared. She thought the inner mind might be another way of saying consciousness. Plato seemed to dislike consciousness or what consciousness did to the ‘free mind’. She didn’t understand this at all.

She stretched her legs under the table and looked out of the window – bright sunshine again. She could forget the book and sit outside in the sun – wait for Howard to get home. But it was interesting. If this book didn’t hold the key, perhaps there would be something else, some other writer that Plato knew, that would help. She watched the trees in the churchyard sway a little. It was so different from when the hail had been falling. She wished the weather would stabilise.

She looked back down at the dark pages. There were sentences that seemed tantalisingly close to the problem. There was something about the ‘inner mind’s battle with the outer world, so that all perception was an illusion’. Then there was a sentence about ‘the mind of the outer world’. Then another sentence:

Consciousness is a kind of denial of communality  - when intelligence develops, consciousness and free will are stronger and the communal consciousness is forgotten.

What was this communal consciousness? She thought she would have to translate all the pages of the section rather than trying to understand single sentences. She went to get paper and a pencil.

**********************************

The first sentences were difficult. The first speaker – who seemed to be a man - was describing consciousness. The language was strange though - formal and not like real human speech - and there was no character conveyed. The speaker was simply a vehicle for the argument. Probably Plato hadn’t even imagined a man when he wrote. But Mrs Van Dijk found this difficult, if Plato hadn’t imagined a man how could he put opposing arguments in his discussion?

But the text went on. The first speaker talked of experience and perception and how these blended to make consciousness – how a human being might make sense of the world around him. This she understood completely. It was true – your consciousness was a blend of what was experienced now, and what was experienced before. One modifies the other. She was gratified to understand something at last and warmed slightly to the first character.

But the second was odd. He or she (it was impossible to tell the sex) rejected this idea of consciousness saying that it was a lie. She wasn’t sure if this was the right word – it seemed very strong. But this was close to the meaning. Consciousness was a lie, an illusion. Only through slow and rigorous analysis would the truth be revealed. The second speaker carried on for a long time – there were pages of his words. She understood very little. How could perception be a lie, an illusion? She supposed that if it was, then consciousness could also be an illusion. But she didn’t accept the first proposition. She didn’t think perception was a lie. After several assertions, the second speaker gave an example: that the sun travelled around the earth. This, maintained the second speaker, was an illusion, because the Earth actually travelled around the Sun. That was true! Howard and the professor had talked about the very same thing! But surely the Greeks had not known this so long ago? Perhaps it was possible that things that seemed obvious might be an illusion. Perhaps things that were complicated were really simple, and things that were simple, were complicated. It was interesting!

But it was tiring to read. She had given up writing the translation on the paper and was simply running the pencil through her hair. She looked out of the window. It was late in the afternoon. Howard would be home soon.

The first speaker was back again. From the description it seemed that the two protagonists were sitting in a town square. At last she could picture them. Perhaps two men were in long Greek cloaks leaning forward in concentration talking intently. The first speaker was unmoved by the second’s criticism. There was no emotion at all. They just carried on as if nothing had been said.

This first man now talked of the communal consciousness. This was the first mention of the strange phrase.

Mrs Van Dijk looked carefully at the following sentences. She thought the key was in them - but they were particularly dense Latin. Some of the words she had no translation for and she looked forlornly at the lines of text. She placed the pencil along a crucial line that started with the words… consciousness is a remnant, a modified form of a previous state of the human mind…then there were other words, completely incomprehensible, then a final word in Latin  - flumen – river?

The words seemed to say that the first true state of the human mind - of consciousness itself -  was part of a river!

**********************************

But she didn’t have time to think any more because she heard Howard coming up the lane. There was something about the rhythm of his footfalls that was characteristic of him. He was quite a quick walker. There was water in the lane and he splashed in a puddle. He spoke before he even opened the door, but he had no wood with him, and there was no wood piled in the front garden.

‘Didn’t you collect anything?’ she said, standing up and stretching. She turned the book on its face to keep the page.

‘I didn’t collect. I went to where the professor was - yesterday – by the lane – and I found his bag of money’

‘What bag?’

‘Do you remember – at the show – he put money in a bag? Well I found it. It was in the grass. He dropped it when he took off his jacket…’

‘Was there much in it?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t look. It was heavy though’

‘So you spent all day with him?’

‘He had gone. I followed the tracks of the cart for miles – until lunchtime. Then I found him in a field. He just stops when he’s tired. He just stops and makes his camp!’

‘You like that! Like a nomad!’

‘Yes. Like a nomad’. He smiled to himself.

Mrs Van Dijk noticed he had a bag over his shoulder of deep red cloth. Two heavy objects weighed it down.

‘What have you got there? Did the professor give you something?’

Howard remembered why he was so excited. He swung the bag under his arm and put it carefully on the table. It made a clunk.

Howard remembered that she had stayed at home and seen the two women.

‘How were the ladies? What have you been reading?’

‘I’ll tell you in a minute. I want to see what’s in the bag.’

He put his hand in.

‘He’s not given me these things – just loaned them to me - to us. See’

He pulled out the planet device. It was shiny in the dark room and too heavy to hold easily in one hand. He knew already that you held the underside and turned the handle, then the planets moved. He laid the device on the table face up.

‘Oh’ said Mrs Van Dijk. ‘You didn’t buy it?’

‘No. Look at this though’ He pulled out the other device. It was not the telescope but the strange brass object that seemed to be composed of curved and triangular plates. The plates were all graduated with small markings and symbols.

‘What is it?’

‘A device that Professor Fraser showed me – after his show. You know’. Howard laughed: ‘the professor doesn’t know what it’s for – what it measures. He has no idea!’

He held the object up to the candle. It was smaller than the planet device and difficult to actually hold. There was no handle. It was hard even to know which was the correct way up.

‘It’s great that he doesn’t know what it is’ murmured Howard peering into the mechanism.

Mrs Van Dijk looked. Shadows moved amongst the brass parts. It seemed impenetrable.

‘Lotte -  do you know what he says? He says that he’ll come back to Earls Court in a week to sell more things. He says that if we can work out what this thing does he’ll give it to me, to us!’

‘…and the other planet device?’

‘He said we could look at it. He was grateful I think – that I found his money’

Mrs Van Dijk went to heat some turnip soup and put apples on a plate while Howard looked at the planet device. He was really fascinated. He seemed to like the way the brass plates moved smoothly against each other. He turned the handle underneath slowly.

She brought the soup to the table and cut some more bread. Howard couldn’t keep his eyes off the two objects.

Mrs Van Dijk said: ‘The ladies have a strange problem – the ladies of this morning’ she said, slightly annoyed. He seemed more interested in the brass objects than in her – and he hadn’t collected wood.

‘Oh’ he said, as if he was waking from a dream.

‘The mother – Mrs Cooper – is alright. But the daughter – May - suffers from something odd’

He put a spoon in his mouth and looked at her over the steam of the soup.

‘What?’

‘She sees things all the time – constantly sees images that she doesn’t understand. Images that are not part of her experience. She’s driven half mad by this’

Howard put his spoon back in the soup.

‘A series of images?’

‘…and voices. She swears that they go on all the time. Her mother – who is not really sympathetic – calls this her distraction’

Howard let the hot soup trickle down his throat. Strange that Lotte had mentioned this! The images. He remembered the night before relaxing, conducting his ‘experiment’. That was before the excitement of today - and drinking brandy with the professor. While lying in bed he had seen a succession of images – a wall with ivy, a green hill, a black horse – they had come and gone with no prompting from him. He had felt like a spectator watching something go by.

He blinked and smiled. She was watching him intently.

‘Sorry. I was thinking’

‘It seemed like it!’ she laughed.

‘It’s really extraordinary. Last night I was thinking…I wanted to ask you’

‘Ask me what?’

‘About something similar – to the woman – May. I tried to stay still last night and I wanted to feel if the earth was moving underneath me’

‘And did it?’ she laughed again.

‘No’ he said embarrassed. He picked up his spoon and stirred his soup. It was quite thick. There were pieces of yellow turnip sticking up. He wondered what else there was in the soup.

‘But I was very relaxed. I think you were asleep. The more I tried to feel the earth moving, the more I seemed to see the images. Or rather it was like I was being given the images – to look at. Then they passed on. Random – with no pattern. I felt I was watching something go past me. Like I was inside it but things were passing me. It was like I was a rock in a stream’

‘A stream?’ Now it was Mrs Van Dijk’s turn to look surprised. Her eyebrows lifted.

‘They were random?’

‘I think so’

He stirred the soup again and lifted some more to his mouth. Mrs Van Dijk continued to smile. She took hold of the book by her side on the table and pushed her bowl of soup away.

**********************************

Later they looked into the fire. Mrs Van Dijk propped the book on her stretched-out legs. Outside the night sky was clear and Howard was hoping for good weather. He knew he would really have to work in the morning, but it was always nicer when the weather was good.

‘So you think that I see the same things as the girl?’

‘But she sees them more’. Mrs Van Dijk laid the book flat on her legs. ‘Maybe she’s more sensitive?’

‘What does the book say? After the part where it describes the river?’

She had read him this part, translating directly from the Latin as well as she could. Through the whole reading, his face had looked completely blank, devoid of understanding. She felt sorry for him. The discussion was so dense!

‘It’s very difficult to read. It becomes very philosophical’ she said.

She lifted the book again and scanned through the pages looking for the word flumen.

In the text, the two men were discussing something about illusion again. She tried to imagine them sitting in a sunny square in Greece because it helped her to follow the discussion, but she found it difficult. She saw out of the corner of her eye that Howard had picked up the brass object, the strange one without a function. He turned it in his hands and the fire light glinted in its internal plains and curves.

**********************************

Mrs Van Dijk tried to see the stream of images, but her mind was too occupied. Unusually, she lay awake and she heard Howard’s deep steady breathing while she recalled some of the phrases from the book.

She couldn’t help seeing the two protagonists discussing in a courtyard or an open area. She saw them sitting side by side and the honey coloured stone of houses around. She remembered times when she had visited Greece, the bright light and the limestone buildings. It had been a long time ago.

She remembered the phrases communal consciousness and consciousness is a remnant, a modified form of a previous state of the human mind…She would try to work it out.

Howard snorted in his sleep and turned, then was quiet. His arm stretched out and his hand touched her pillow.

She thought that perhaps human beings had once had a communal consciousness – something like all being aware at the same time. Perhaps before human beings had learned to speak? Yes! She tensed thinking of this. Could it be true? When human beings were not able to speak, how did they communicate? Perhaps there was something like a common consciousness?

She lifted his heavy hand and put it gently on the sheet beside her. She didn’t want to lie on her back. She turned towards him, his sleeping face close to hers.

She thought of fish swimming. She had once watched fish in a harbour in deep green water – there had been an old walled city -somewhere in the Mediterranean. There had been the same honey-coloured walls around. It had been a warm evening. She had looked down the harbour wall and seen dark fish moving together. They moved as one but there was no sign that one moved first and the others copied. The fish had moved together, as if they all thought the same thought. As if they all thought the same thought.

And birds – here in the Vale. In the dark autumn when life was deserting the fields, there would be flying birds spreading out over the cold bright sky. She’d seen it many times, hundreds of times – the birds moving as if they were one living thing, stretched out over the air. They couldn’t communicate a change of direction so quickly. They were like fish in water – the birds – just dark shapes against the sky. It was as if they thought the same thought.

What an idea! She was suddenly wide awake with it. She smiled in the darkness.

But she didn’t know how she would help May, the troubled woman.

**********************************

Mrs Van Dijk woke late with the bed covers disordered. The air was cold on her shoulders. Howard was already up. The curtains were drawn and the trees on the far side of the churchyard were bright in the east-shining sun. She heard him moving in the kitchen clanking cups and plates. He would bring her tea soon.

He shouted from the kitchen.

‘Lotte wake up. I have to go to work early because I didn’t do much yesterday’

He came into the room. He was already dressed. She must have been fast asleep when he dressed – she had been tired after all her thinking of the night before.

He sat on the bed with his own tea. He wasn’t sitting facing her but was looking down. He had the strange brass instrument in his hands. She forgot – he wanted to find out what it did, what it was for.

She watched him turn it in his hands. It was shinier than it had been.

She sat up with her tea.

‘Have you cleaned it Howard?’

‘I polished it a bit yesterday. I thought I might be able to work something out…’

‘And did you?’

‘No!’

Strange that he was so interested in these cold instruments.

‘Have you looked at the parts of the instrument that might connect to other instruments?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean - I think the instrument was not meant to work on its own. I think it connects to another. If you go to work early, you could come home at lunchtime. I’ll look at it while you’re away’

But she didn’t look at the instrument. She only picked it up from the bed and laid it carefully on the small table under the mirror. She wanted to look at the book again. Her idea of the night had returned and she wanted to read more, and see if there was anything in the dense text that would confirm what she thought. The idea of moving animals – of their movement almost as one organism - seemed the most convincing evidence of ‘communal consciousness’. Such a strange phrase – it had seemed impossible to understand at first, but now she thought she knew what it meant. It was a curiously good phrase.

She made the bed. A lively wind moved the curtain and children’s voices came from outside. Howard would already be in the willows along the stream. It was only a twenty minute walk. He’d be cutting and piling wood in the corner of the field. Perhaps he’d come back at lunch – usually he would come back to collect a horse to help carry the heavy pieces.

She caught sight of her face in the mirror. Her hair was a little untidy. She was fascinated that it was impossible to tell what she was thinking from her face – impossible to know that she was thinking about consciousness. But perhaps this represented the breakdown of communal consciousness? When human beings had their own consciousness – one that was not shared - thinking could become more complex. People could think because there was some quiet inside. It was a bit like privacy. Consciousness was private thoughts. That was also a good phrase, she thought. She would write it down.

She found she was too excited to eat very much and she drank her tea quickly – it had become cold because she had been so preoccupied. She would go back to the book as soon as she’d finished putting things away.

When finally she could start reading she thought she would open the front door to let some of the warm air in. She thought she would sit in the door on one of the fireside stools, where she could feel the sun. The sun was climbing high and would soon appear above the roof. The front garden and the hedge got most sun in the afternoon. She rarely sat outside at this time of year, but she thought it would be nice to read in the sun.

But the difficulty of the task soon returned. The book was so hard to read! The two protagonists argued endlessly- but so coldly. One would talk forever – for tens of pages – then stop; and the next man would start. There was no reaction either, except for the intellectual reaction. It was so unlike real life. She supposed it was easier to explain something complicated by writing it as an argument between two people. That was all Plato cared about. But she, herself, thought of the men in the sunny courtyard in the south.

Reading past the text of the day before, she found herself skipping through the long sentences. She was really looking for something about animals – birds and fish – something that showed her idea was held by someone else, by one of the two protagonists. That was important! If someone else thought it was true, then it was more likely to be correct. But there was nothing, in fact the text started to wander into other things about illusion. Saying that all of the world was illusion and that nothing was real. That was ridiculous.

She began to feel downhearted. Maybe it was just her own idea? Maybe she misunderstood Plato completely?

And she wasn’t helping May at all.

**********************************

At lunchtime Howard did return. He had cut a lot of willow but he had had to leave it by the stream. All the big horses were working out in the fields, planting and ploughing, so there was nothing he could do to bring the cut wood back. He’d try later in the afternoon.

He was disappointed though. When he arrived at the cottage he somehow knew that Mrs Van Dijk wasn’t there. There was no candle burning and the door was pulled right up. Inside it was dark - even the fire had gone out so she must have left several hours before.

There was a note on the table next to the book she had been reading. There were notes as well lying around on the table surrounding the book – scribbled words in Latin and English. One piece of paper had drawings of circles, hundreds of them.

The note said:

Howard, I’ve gone to the church library at Harby. I will to be back later but don’t worry if I’m late. There is a coach from the crossroads and one that returns late at night at midnight. If you are awake you can come to meet me. Lotte.

This was very odd. To go so suddenly so far. He knew that the church library was very good, famous for its old books. He knew she must be very excited to go so suddenly. He would have to meet her tonight and walk back with her. She shouldn’t be alone at night.

He ate some bread and apples and put some wood on the fire. He went looking for the brass instrument and found it under the mirror in the bedroom. She had been looking at it, but she hadn’t found out anything. Or perhaps she had? Perhaps that’s why she had gone to Harby.

He took the instrument into the living room and sat in front of the fire weighing the brass object in his hands. It was very heavy. There were graduations on some of the arc-shaped brass plates inside the mechanism. Also words in very ornate writing, perhaps Latin. But some parts of it were very dirty. It looked like the inside part hadn’t been cleaned for years. He thought he’d try to polish some of the more inaccessible parts of the mechanism in the evening while waiting for Lotte. But he was making no progress with working out what the thing was for.

He sighed. He would have to go back out. He could get a horse now that it was mid-afternoon.

In one of the eastern fields Howard collected a horse that had been ploughing all morning. He lead it on the small paths past the village gate and into the western fields. It was developing into a beautiful afternoon. There was a low sun and small but thick clouds. The margins of the clouds were lit golden and the light had a strange golden quality. The big field that stretched almost the length of Earls Court was planted with new barley that was thigh-high and silvery green. The curious fibres that grew from the ears of the barley were at their most dense and massed together like fine hair or down so that the sunlight was diffused and scattered. It was like the field had a surface of golden hair. The wind blew across and a strange pattern that looked like waves in water – of a wave moving out across the field - came again and again. You could see the invisible wind as it flowed across the land.

By the path in the next field he found his stack of willow logs and began to load them onto the horse.

**********************************

Howard found it very hard to wait for Mrs Van Dijk. The evening seemed interminably long. After he had more of the turnip soup, he made the fire and lit two candles. He lit a candle in the bedroom – something he rarely did because it was wasteful of candles – but he wanted the bedroom to seem warmer.

Long after the sun had gone and the darkness came he eventually sat down in front of the fire with a soft rag and the brass instrument. He had only cleaned the outside before but now he wanted to clean the inner mechanism. It would pass the time.

In the light of a candle on the table he pressed his fingers through with the rag wrapped around. He rubbed off years of dark dirt. It wasn’t easy to get the moving parts but he could clean some. He watched with satisfaction as the rag became blacker and dirtier. The dirt smelt of oil. It had probably been put on the mechanism to help it turn. But when Howard pushed one part against another he could make nothing turn. It had completely locked – like an arthritic joint. It seemed as complicated – even more complicated – than a human joint.

Every half hour he went to look at the face of the church clock. He had to leave the cottage and walk over to the wall of the church yard to see it properly because the clock faced to the south. As it got dark he watched a not-quite-complete moon rise in the east over the trees. The pigeons hooted in the trees. As it got later the sounds of the cottages around were quieter until there was almost silence. The candles in the windows along the lane were extinguished.

He often thought that he and Mrs Van Dijk stayed up late, but in truth they rarely stayed up later than nine or ten at night. Eleven seemed impossibly late and Howard began to feel tired and lightheaded. After all he had been up at dawn – probably before six. At about half past ten he could wait no longer. He knew he would be early so see her and have to stand at the crossroads in the dark, but he was habitually early. He was always waiting for things. Besides she might be early.

This thought made him rush to get his coat. He didn’t like to think of her walking alone the two miles from the crossroads – if she had arrived early.

He threw his coat over his shoulders and went to the door. He wondered whether to take a lantern but then thought not. There was a moon. He stood in the open door and regarded it. The white blank face, not quite symmetrical, looked down at him emotionless. He felt a slight ache in his skin, under his skin.

The village gate was closed but the catch – a big wooden bar - was easy to lift, at least from the inside. He lifted it and opened the gate a very small amount. Enough to squeeze through. He pulled the gate up behind him very carefully hoping not to hear the bar fall back down, otherwise they would be stuck outside and would have to get back into the village using the old disused gate behind the churchyard. There was no sound, and it looked like the gate was completely closed. But you could push it open easily.

He walked down the lane from the village going east. The woods soon came up to meet him – very dark – like a wall of darkness. It was curiously quiet. The moon was open, unfettered by the clouds, and he felt its pull on his skin.

The darkness amongst the trees was almost complete. Where the moon shone there were shades of grey, but in the trees it was inky blackness – like black liquid had spilled from the woods out over the lane and the verges, and leaked into the field edges. He remembered that the coach stopped at the crossroads only if passengers especially asked, otherwise it went on straight to Northampton from Harby. It didn’t stop in Nottingham.

It was still a mile to the cross roads. He stopped when he got out of the trees and looked back to see if he could see the church tower. There it was  - grey in the moon. But it was impossible to read the clock at this distance.

It was probably a quarter to midnight.

He arrived at the silent crossroads. The lane from Earls Court came to the bigger road – usually a muddy track. It crossed the bigger road and continued as a small lane toward Stathern. The trees were quite small and there were strawberry and raspberry bushes because in the past people had stopped and ate fruit there, so the bushes grew from the discarded seeds. But it was too dark for Howard to see anything much. The moon had gone behind a deep cloud and the air was still.

He sat in the grey grass with his arms around his knees looking up the road in the direction in which he thought the coach would come. He rocked back and forth but began to feel the cold. Would the coach make any noise? The sound of the horses’ hooves, the cry of the driver? He listened but only heard tiny noises in the trees, perhaps the sounds of birds sleeping.

But presently a light seemed to be born from nothing to the north. It was impossible to discern anything at first except that it was a light. But after five minutes Howard saw that the light was vibrating. There came a high pitched whistle and loud cry, partially muffled by the trees ahead.

Then the coach seemed to burst into the open. It was moving quickly. There was a straight part here to the road – perhaps a clear part too where the mud wasn’t too deep. Perhaps the driver pushed his horses hard. The coach was rattling down the track toward him, the shaky yellow light hung from the front, danced with the vibration. He saw the driver badly lit by the lantern and then heard a cry from within. The coach began to slow.

Howard stood up and waved, and the driver saw him, but the expression of his face in the lantern light was immediately frightened. Perhaps he thought Howard was a robber.

The coach slowed and stopped. The driver shouted over the sound of the restless horses:

‘You ought to show your face  - sitting in the dark like that’

He stood and came to the side on the verge. Mrs Van Dijk, wrapped in a big coat, a bag over her shoulder, alighted. Howard looked inside. The coach was empty. It would go the thirty miles more to Northampton empty.

‘Are you alright Lotte?’

‘I’m fine Howard’, she said. ‘Hold the bag. Thank you.’ She shouted this up at the driver.

‘It’s late’ he said not knowing what to say.

‘It is’ she said, looking up at him. ‘…and I’ve learned a lot!’

**********************************

The coach rattled out of sight. There was no light on the back. Howard wondered if the driver would pick up passengers on the way – later in the night or in the early morning. But no one would wait on these lonely lanes in the middle of the night.

Mrs Van Dijk’s bag was light; he had expected it to be heavy with books.

‘Where are the books?’ he said.

‘They wouldn’t let me take any. I had to write notes. I looked at a lot’

She pulled her coat about her, and yawned.

‘Thanks for coming to meet me’

‘It was a shock to find that you had gone, Lotte’

‘I’m sorry Howard. I was reading and reading and then I realised suddenly that I wasn’t helping May’

‘Who’s May’

‘The girl with the problems. The one who sees the images all the time. I became interested in an idea and then I realised that I was supposed to be helping her. I thought I should find some books – about thought transference’

‘Thought transference?’ he said slowly, examining the phrase.

‘It’s cold’ she said. ‘Let’s walk – I’ll tell you as we walk’

But the darkness awed them - amongst the trees with the moon behind thick clouds there was nothing but black. It flowed over their boots and the darkness between the trunks by the lane was absolute. There was no sound but for the swish of their boots through the grass.

Out of the trees they saw the grey rectangle of the church tower and the darkness relinquished them.

‘Not far’ said Howard. ‘How was the library?’

‘Oh old and drafty. Next to the quadrangle up a steep flight of stairs. Most of the books are religious. But the librarian there is very intelligent. He’s read most of his books. He’s not a particularly religious man’

‘Did you find books?’

‘He helped me. He’s interested in the occult’

‘Strange for a librarian in a church!’

‘…as I said. I found that these people, the ones that could transfer thoughts, were persecuted. In the Dark Ages. For centuries. The art almost died out, maybe has died out’

‘What is the art? The art of thought transference?’

‘I thought I told you Howard? It’s related to the stream that you described. Reading the book helped me to understand. I didn’t really believe in thought transference before today. But now I do’

‘You must be tired!’ he said this because he was very tired himself. He felt his eyes closing as he walked. He knew that if he stopped and lay down, even in the long grass, that the stream would come and he would be following the roots of dreams - in other words, asleep.

She said: ‘I was tired on the coach, rattling around for two hours, but now I feel much better. It must be the air!’

He took a deep breath and looked around at the grey swaying wheat and the backlit clouds with silvery light trying to escape from behind - then the lane going off in front toward the church tower.

‘Yes, perhaps’ he said.

She set off in front walking quicker than him and said over her shoulder without turning to look:

‘Oh… also I think I’ve found out what your device is!’

This woke him a little more and he immediately increased his walking pace to catch up with her.

**********************************

The moon emerged again as they came to the village gate and in its light Howard was a little perturbed to see that it was slightly open -  no more than when he had squeezed out an hour before - but still open. He was sure that he had pulled it up. Perhaps the wind had pushed it back.

In the cottage he lit two candles and stood them away from the window. Howard poured a cup of water for Mrs Van Dijk who sat exhausted at the table. From her bag protruded a sheaf of papers.

She drank the water and carefully pulled the notes from the bag, smoothing them on the table. Howard was tempted to ask about the brass device, but she looked so tired.

‘There was a resurgence in interest in thought transference in the 1300s in Europe, also in witchcraft and magic. There were a lot of books written, but then in the sixteenth century there was a terrible reaction by the church. The church was terrified that…what did they call it….folk religion…was becoming more popular than Christianity. So people were brought to trial for witchcraft. Women were burned in great fires.’

She looked sad as well as tired.

‘Would you like some tea, Lotte? You seem so tired’

She shook her head. ‘No Howard. We should go to bed. We can talk in the morning. But bring your device. Where is it?’

Howard’s heart leapt. Where was it? He went into the bedroom. It was still on the small table under the mirror.

Mrs Van Dijk pushed her bag and papers to the side and he placed the complicated machine in front of her. He took a candle from the bookshelf so they could see.

‘What did you find out?’

‘Nothing much about the thing itself. But I read that in the sixteenth century devices were made that measured the strength of planetary motions.’

‘Were there any pictures of the devices?’

‘No. No pictures in any of the books – all Latin’

She picked the machine up. It was quite heavy for her. She weighed it in her hands. It was all angles and planes. The candle light glinted off its cogs and wheels.

‘There should be something that connects it…’

She laid it down on the hard wood. ‘Where’s the other thing?’

Howard had not looked at the planetary model since he had brought it home. It wasn’t as interesting. He went into the bedroom again and found it on the floor on his side of the bed.

‘Does it have a date, or the name of a maker?’ she called.

The planetary model had a name stamped on the base, and Howard had seen it almost the first time he had looked.

‘G.H. Fritz, Heidelberg’ he said coming back into the living room. The candle fluttered in the draught he created. ‘There’s no date’

‘What about some letters that look like Xs and Ls?’

‘Yes. Next to the name. It looks like a code’

‘It’s the date in Roman numerals’

She was holding the other device, turning it in her hands. She seemed less tired, suddenly.

‘Here’s the name – very small on this lever - G.H. Fritz, Heidelberg. Can you read the date on yours?’

He read the long chain of numerals.

‘The same!’ she said. ‘They were probably made together. They are a pair.’

‘But why is this one so much dirtier?’

‘Because no one knew what it was for, so no one looked after it. Also…perhaps it was forbidden in some way?’

**********************************

‘Why would they be made as a pair?’

‘I don’t know Howard’ she yawned hugely.

The two brass objects were side by side on the table. Howard could see that they were similar in what they were made of, and that they could have been made by the same person.

But they would not make any progress tonight. They were too tired.

‘Come on. Let’s go’ said Howard. He took her arm and lifted her.

In bed they both lay on their backs looking at the ceiling. The moon was out again and it was low enough to shine through the small window onto the tiled floor. In the grey light they looked at the beams that held the ceiling up.

‘It was terrible’, said Mrs Van Dijk, ‘…the repression. Barbaric’

She was thinking of the persecution of witches.

They slept without any thought and it seemed that the next minute, the sun was streaming in through the window and birds were busy making noise outside. The trees were bright green and hazy in the window.

‘It will be warm today Howard. Are you going to work?’

‘I’ve some more willow to bring for beams and wicker. Do you want to come out?’

‘I’d like to come with you’

They listened to the birds. A pair of pigeons was cooing to each other just outside the window.

‘What about the second machine, the unknown one. Why would it be forbidden?’ He asked.

‘I don’t want to think about it today. Let’s just go walking – while it’s sunny. I think the thunder might come this afternoon. When we come back – then we’ll think of the device’

It was hot and hazy but there was some energy in the air – a heaviness that suggested that thunder might come later - when it was really hot in the afternoon. Howard was wary of thunder – or rather of lightening because it so often struck tall trees. He knew of a woodcutter who had been struck dead.

Rather than take the horse again, Howard decided to collect a little more willow and cut some of it to shape in the field or along the stream so that he wouldn’t have to do it in the village.

Mrs Van Dijk sat on the thick moss again in deep shade watching the fish, and she began to explain her idea of the fish and how they moved together. She sat with her back very straight and for a minute she reminded Howard of a schoolteacher he once had.

‘You think they communicate with each other without a visible sign?’

‘Not really – they are not communicating at all. They have only one consciousness’

He thought of migrating birds sprinkled across the sky flying together. He could see what she meant.

‘…and human beings once had this thing, this consciousness?’

‘Maybe, long ago. People moved together across the plains, through the forests’

‘…and now?’

‘Now we have only a remnant of it’

‘Why?’

‘Because our minds are dominant. We can think for ourselves. But we’ve lost the ability to be like a herd, or a flock, or a school of fish.’

‘This is your idea?’

She laughed. She was embarrassed. ‘I couldn’t find anything in Plato about fish and birds so that was my idea’ she said quietly.

‘And so May, your friend, has some of this remnant consciousness?’

‘Yes. Maybe we all have a tiny bit. When our dominant self is subsiding. When we fall asleep’

**********************************

Howard began cutting some of the wood by the water - into thin beams and rods. The rods were wicker for baskets and furniture and some of the beams would be for roofs. In the spring and summer, Earls Court people sometimes repaired their roofs or strengthened them for the winter.

Mrs Van Dijk sat quietly looking down into the water. Howard wondered if she was still upset about the repression she’d read about. He wasn’t sure why these people with thought transference had been treated so badly. What damage could they do? He supposed that the church could be against witchcraft – after all it was another way of looking at the world – maybe an older way. Also magic was like the miracles that Jesus did, and village wise women made magic all the time. Perhaps the church was just frightened or jealous.

He stripped the bark from some of the rods. This he liked doing – exposing the milky wood under the thin bark. It was a nice smell too when he cut the bark – a fresh smell of summer and trees. The wood was like bone sometimes – almost white. It would be damp at first and then dry out. Years ago, centuries ago, these rods of willow were made into long bows - huge bows that could shoot an arrow for a mile. Now the flexible character of the wood was used as the coarse wicker in chairs and stools.

There were clouds piling up in the west. Now and then the sun became dimmer as outlying clouds covered it. He came to sit by Mrs Van Dijk.

‘It’s going to thunder. I can tell. There’s so much energy in the air! We should go back. We can have something to eat and watch the rain.’

‘Alright’ she said quietly. She was in a dreamy state. She had said hardly anything all morning – mainly just watched the fish move in the dark pool.

Howard bound some of the willow rods with a strip of leather and threw the bundle over his shoulder. Then they set off along the path by the water.

‘I think that these seers, these thought transference people were repressed because of their talent’ she said after a while. ‘It didn’t say much in the books yesterday, but there was an Italian, an alchemist, who wrote about thought transference. I think he made devices that measured the forces between the planets. He’s forgotten now - almost absent from history. I remember my father mentioning his name’

‘Was he persecuted?’

‘I think so. His work was considered clever and resourceful at one time, but then it fell out of favour. But for ordinary people - the people of the country - it was worse. They were pursued and persecuted’

‘You were very quiet today’

‘I was thinking about how to help May. I have an idea. Would it be too late to go to visit them now?’

‘It’s only lunchtime. But we’ll be caught in the thunderstorm.’

‘It’s not far Howard. A farmhouse not far beyond the cross roads, on the lane to Stathern. I want to try something. Poor May – she’s never seen her ‘distraction’ as an advantage – even a gift’

**********************************

The farm was of a familiar type, at the end of a muddy and overgrown track that led off the lane to Stathern. It was a walled farmhouse surrounded by tall trees and grassy, muddy pastureland. There were a lot like this in the Vale, fortified at one time against human attack – during the wars – and now fortified against wolves at night. Howard knew that the gate would open into a courtyard (usually with a well), that was large enough to hold perhaps ten cattle. It was their sanctuary at night - at least when the wolves were about.

The mud was very deep by the closed gate – where the cattle tramped in and out most days. They had to stand in it while Howard banged on the hard wood. He shouted hello loudly as well, thinking that no one would hear.

There was the sound of a dropped bucket from within and almost immediately the catch was opened. The door moved back a few inches and the red, jolly face of Mrs Cooper appeared. Her untidy hair that made her face seem even bigger. She had a strong personality, though perhaps she was not a woman of intelligence.

‘Mrs Van Dijk!’ she said loudly.

The door opened scraping loudly on the cobbles.

It was a smaller courtyard than Howard had expected and the buildings around were small too, but brightly painted. There were flowers in pots either side of the door to the main cottage. There was a barn and a storehouse as well. Ploughing equipment was laid out on the cobbles.

‘We’ve brought the ploughs in. My husband’s just finished. The rain’s coming!’ said Mrs Cooper excitedly, pointed up at the western sky which now had towering clouds like grey mountains.

‘Perhaps we’ve come at the wrong time’ said Mrs Van Dijk

‘Oh no. May’s here. She always sits inside in the day. She sometimes walks at night. She says its quieter then. You’ll have tea?’

The farm cottage was neat and comfortable - light and brightly painted - with flowers in vases. There was a young girl, much younger than May, sitting by the fire, sewing.

‘This is Anna’, said Mrs Cooper. ‘Make some tea, my girl’

Anna got up immediately and went to the fire to fill the copper kettle.

There was huge sound of thunder suddenly, first a crack – like something was being split open - then an answering boom. It literally shook the house.

They all ducked their heads instinctively.

Howard looked through the window for lightening. It was strange because the window showed a stretch of blue sky, not cloud.

Through the open door they saw a blue flash. Anna shrieked and almost dropped the kettle.

‘It’s close’ said Howard. ‘The rain will come soon’

They didn’t have to wait long. The water started to fall like it was being poured from a huge sieve high up. There was a smell of something like soap – a smell that Howard always associated with thunderstorms -  and water started to sluice off the roof and splatter on the cobbles. They all got up to look, standing in the doorway in awe at the violence of the downfall.

Howard narrowed his eyes to look up into the rain smoke that was the sky. Half was wild storm cloud  -and in the east where the window faced – it was still blue placid sky. So strange. From a door on the far side of the courtyard, not one that they had noticed before, a figure emerged, wearing a shawl and a long dark dress. Trying to cover her head from the rain - in vain - May came running across the cobbles.

**********************************

Mrs Van Dijk was gratified to see that May had come of her own accord; in fact her fragile, sensitive face showed she was happy to see her. Perhaps their first consultation had not been a disaster after all. May stood with them under the eaves where the thatch overlapped the cobbles, and watched the rain pour down and the water flow over the cobbles. Her dark dress was streaked with rain.

‘Are you well?’ said Mrs Van Dijk turning to May.

‘As well as I can be. I was hoping that you would come. In fact this one of the more quiet periods for me. Do you remember I said….’

‘I do – that you have a cycle of strong and weak periods. Perhaps this is the best time to see you… I’ve been thinking about your problem’

May looked happy again. Mrs Van Dijk thought she was probably a nice woman, if she could be helped. There was something open about her.

Her mother said loudly:

‘We should go in for tea. It will be cold’

They followed her in and sat at the table. Presently sensing that Mrs Van Dijk had come to talk to May, Mrs Cooper left saying that she had jobs to do. She gestured Anna to leave the kitchen and looked at Howard questioningly, but he said that he would stay with Mrs Van Dijk and May. Perhaps Mrs Cooper thought that this was some kind of woman’s problem and that he wouldn’t chose to be there. There was something presumptuous about her, Howard thought.

But she left them alone and said nothing more.

Mrs Van Dijk said straightforwardly when Mrs Cooper had gone:

‘May – you have a form of thought transference. Do you know what that is?’

May rocked back in her chair, her brow furrowed.

‘Someone who can read people’s minds! I don’t think so!’ she laughed.

Mrs Van Dijk held her hand up. ‘It’s difficult to be sure. But I think what you are seeing are bits of other people’s thoughts’

She seemed embarrassed about the import of her words. She said carefully: ‘It’s a remnant of an old consciousness, I think. There are other people…’ she looked pointedly at Howard, but May didn’t notice, ‘but you have an intense form of this condition’

May sat silent.

Mrs Van Dijk said: ‘…and you can learn to use it’

‘Use it?’

‘I don’t know how yet. It will take time, but I want you to come and try something’

‘What?’

‘To see if you can use your gift…Tomorrow…’

‘At Earls Court?’

‘No. Come there first but then we’ll walk somewhere…’

**********************************

Mrs Cooper came back into the room carrying a basket with wet washing in it. She fussed in the kitchen complaining about the storm. She had forgotten to bring the drying clothes in and they’d got a soaking in the rain.

But the rain had now stopped. Howard looked out and saw the grey clouds receding. The smell of new rain, and the soapy smell of the thunderstorm was very strong.

It was difficult to talk with Mrs Cooper clanking the saucepans and talking to herself, so Howard and Mrs Van Dijk repeated their request to May - that she should come to Earls Court the next day – and left. Mrs Cooper seemed surprised that they had only come for a short time but nevertheless asked them to take some cake and fruit with them – some Vale pears. She brought a bag from the farmhouse pantry and Howard took it gratefully noticing the great weight. She may be a fussy woman, Howard thought, but she’s generous and she’s glad that we’re helping May.

Howard said the same to Mrs Van Dijk as they walked along the grassy lane.

‘Maybe only so that they can marry her off!’ said Mrs Van Dijk. ‘Farmers don’t like unmarried daughters!’

‘Do you think May will come tomorrow?’

‘I hope so. She seemed glad to see us today’

Along the main lane to the village the fields had been washed clean and long brown puddles like liquid chocolate filled the ruts that countless carts and coaches had made. The sky was flat grey – the blue windows of brightness had all gone. It was as if the atmosphere was exhausted after the cataclysm.

Looking at the water everywhere, the dripping trees, the huge puddles. Howard thought about the great cycles of weather and planets, even the growth lines on the river shell. Then there were the bird migrations, the wheat stalks bowing rhythmically under the invisible wind. He thought he was part of a turning world, but he turned happily within it, and succumbed to its power.

Mrs Van Dijk said, reading his mind: ‘maybe migrating birds feel it too? Maybe they feel happy when they fly together – when they first fly up and join into a great flock’

He wondered how she often knew what he was thinking.

**********************************

In the morning May arrived early. There was still the exhausted grey sky overhead and big puddles in the lane. The thunder had long gone and the atmosphere lay flat on the Earth doing nothing.

Howard offered May some tea and went to tell Mrs Van Dijk who was dressing in the bedroom. He thought it would be wet to sit by the stream – even to walk through the long grass.

‘Lotte, why don’t you do your discussion with May here? It will be wet’

‘No Howard there’s a reason why we need to be away from the village. It’s just an idea’. She whispered, indicating the door. She didn’t want May to hear.

Mrs Van Dijk thought that May looked better than she had the first time she’d come to Earls Court. The quiet period that May had mentioned had lasted another day. May nodded at them and put down her tea cup.

‘Why do you want to go to the stream?’ she asked.

‘I’ve been thinking about your distractions – reading a lot. I read Latin texts at Harby and a book in my collection’ said Mrs Van Dijk.

‘You can read Latin?’

‘Yes. It’s not easy, but I can. I think you have an ability to see things, so the images you see are other people’s thoughts or images. They come to you because for some reason you are receptive. Howard has this a little bit too…’. She looked at Howard seriously.

Howard stood with his arms folded, smiling, embarrassed. He felt he could try to help Mrs Van Dijk by supporting May. Besides May’s mother was very generous with fruit!

Mrs Van Dijk sat at the end of the table and the grey outside light was on her face. Her eyes were steady.

‘A long time ago, perhaps human beings were linked in some way, like a school of fish or a flock of birds. I think that when people became more conscious, more individual, we were better able to concentrate and think about things – think about ourselves – but we couldn’t anymore feel the presence of other minds. But maybe you still can. And other people can. So I want to try it. I think that being away from the village might help. With only two other minds…’

May shook her head and looked distressed suddenly.

‘But I don’t want that. I want to be quiet in my mind…’ She started to cry.

‘I know May’, Mrs Van Dijk touched May’s hand which was gripping the table. ‘But I don’t think I can change you - only help you to control your distractions. In fact it might be useful. Some people might regard it as a gift’

‘Shall we go?’ said Howard. ‘The weather looks better. A bit brighter and some wind’

On the path from the gate west across the field they tried to avoid the long grass and then followed the field boundary rather than walking through the waist-high wheat which would be very wet. The new wind touched the tops of the wheat and the heads bobbed, whispering. He walked behind May as she carefully picked her way through the nettles and then on the muddy path by the stream.

Mrs Van Dijk had brought their two coats. The moss was too wet to sit on so they laid the coats side by side on the nearside of the stream. It waters had risen in the rain. They couldn’t see the fish in the small pool and it had merged with the rest of the stream to make a long brown pond that enveloped the big willow trunks and roots.

They faced the stream and looked out on the fallow field beyond – where the professor had stopped for the night. Howard wondered where he would be now and how long it would be before he returned for his models.

‘Can you sit and try to relax, May?’ said Mrs Van Dijk, smoothing the cloth under her skirt. ‘Can you see anything?’

‘Yes, but not much. I should have thought of this. I don’t come out much on my own. It’s peaceful’

‘What do you see? Can you describe anything?’

‘Things come and go quickly: a stone building, a musical instrument, a square thing with bright lights and colours…’

Mrs Van Dijk was interested: ‘you said those so quickly – did they come – the pictures  - to you at that speed?’

‘Yes. Quite quick. But they go quickly; one thing is replaced by another’

‘Are there more?’

‘Now? There are people dancing seen through a window, a well, a church, opening a cupboard’

Mrs Van Dijk put her hand on May’s knee. ‘You opening a cupboard?’

‘I don’t know’

‘What was it like?’

‘It’s gone. There’s something else now’

Mrs Van Dijk shook her head. She looked at Howard.

‘It’s really difficult’ May said. ‘My mind wanders – should I say wonders!’

‘What are you trying to do?’ Howard asked.

Mrs Van Dijk sighed and tutted ‘Nothing. It’s too difficult’

May who was rocking a little, her eyes closed. He hands were clasped tight over her lap.

Howard looked out over the fallow field.

‘A field…’ said May. Her eyes still firmly shut. ‘Flowers, a hedge…’

‘Anything else?’

‘Wheat moving in the wind, moving up and down slowly. Oh! Now something else!’ May was embarrassed. She opened her eyes. Her hand went to her lips.

‘It’s gone’ she said. She looked relieved.

‘What do you see now?’ asked Mrs Van Dijk.

‘The blowing grass – the wheat’

‘Go back to it. Concentrate on it. I only say this because I imagine what you have to do is like listening to one person in a crowded room of people’

‘There’s a long valley with dry rocky slopes and very green fields in the valley bottom’

Howard sat still. It seemed like a valley in his imagination. He tried to picture the same river going under a bridge. He saw birds circling above.

‘A bridge. A river flowing toward the sea through the desert’, murmured May.

‘Disorganised now…’ she said at last.

Mrs Van Dijk said swiftly. ‘What’s it like when the images change? Do you see anything, feel anything?’

‘No. It’s like a reflection in water. If the water is disturbed everything’s gone. Something like that…’

Howard stood up.

‘I’ll collect some willow wood’

‘Alright Howard’ said Mrs Van Dijk. She smiled, grateful for his help, realising that he was unsettled. ‘We’ll help you carry some of the wood back. We’ll work a bit more – what do you think May?’

Then woman nodded. Her hands were still clasped together tightly.

Howard wandered off up the stream to where he’d cut wood before. He began to pull the larger pieces over to the path so he’d be able to see it when he brought the horse back. The bark was wet from the rain and his hands were gritty with the soil. He realised that while he’d been sitting with May he had been pushing his hands into the soil. He thought it had not been a very pleasant experience being somehow revealed or opened. He wondered if being a little distance away made him less accessible. He began to think, not entirely seriously, how nice it was to have a skull behind which anything could go on – where you free to think what you liked.

He worked for a few minutes, then heard the screeching of a woman - two high pitched cries. He dropped the wood and dashed through the long grass back to the stream bank.

Mrs Van Dijk was sitting holding May’s shoulders, and the girl was doubled up, her head between her legs. It looked like she was being sick. May raised her head as Howard approached. Her face was red and scared. She looked around frantically at the trees and the stream. Her arms were locked around her middle in a protective way.

Mrs Van Dijk turned to look at Howard, half guilty, half alarmed. She was shaking her head.

‘It was so sudden... What did you see?’

‘Hell. Fire and steam in a dark place, people crying, being burned. Hell’

Her whole body shook.

Mrs Van Dijk’s dark eyes looked anxious – fixed on Howard.

**********************************

May could do nothing after her vision of hell. It unsettled her utterly. She cried and sat, refusing to get up. She looked accusingly at Mrs Van Dijk as if to punish her for making her see such a terrible thing.

Howard whispered: ‘what did she see?’

‘I don’t know, Howard’

‘Nothing that you were thinking?’

She made an insulted face. ‘Howard!’

‘Lotte, I didn’t mean that you had some terrible image in your mind. But this thing – reaching between minds - is strange. It feels a bit like a violation’

‘I’ll take her back to the village Howard, talk to her there. I didn’t think this would be easy at all. And it’s not. Why don’t you collect the wood ready for the horse?’

Howard laid a hand on May’s shoulder.

‘I hope you’re alright. Lotte is really just trying to help’

‘I know. She’s kind’, came the muffled reply. ‘I’ll be alright soon. I’m sorry to cry out’

Howard went back to the willow wood and began searching for pieces he’d cut in the days before.

He worked for an hour or two and then thought it must be near lunchtime because his stomach began to rumble. The pile of willow rods had grown quite high – a bundle big enough for a horse to carry to the village. He decided it was time to walk back. He straightened up and felt dizzy. He was tired as well - lightheaded from the work with his head down all the time, and also with that strange feeling of sitting with May while she tried to control her wayward mind.

He began to walk dreamily down the grassy path by the willows. He felt like lying down and sleeping in the wheat. But walking was nice, the ground underneath very soft. He looked across the fallow field on the far side of the stream and idly admired its varied colours. A thin pillar of smoke rose beyond the hedge on the far side – like it had when Professor Fraser had camped there. Perhaps the Professor was back again already?

May and Mrs Van Dijk were sitting either side of the table when he got back. There was some bread on a plate cut into slices, and cheese and butter. They had the unmarked book out again – the one that Mrs Van Dijk had so liked - by Plato. May seemed happier; her fingers were splayed across the pages. Mrs Van Dijk was explaining the idea of the book, something that Howard hadn’t really grasped: the idea of communal consciousness.

He sat by the stove and took some of the bread. He didn’t want to disturb them, particularly with May seeming happy and settled. The cheese was strong stilton with blue veins like threads. It smelt of old socks.

He went to get the planet model and the other metal machine – which was still by the bed. This was so he could slowly eat and look at the machines and think while he ate. He sat on the stool with his legs stretched out, each instrument on the floor on either side. The fire was low because no one had fed it with wood. But it gave off a little light.

He looked at the underside of the planet model where the handle stuck out. There were three holes in the otherwise flat surface. Each a sort of deep socket. He hadn’t noticed them before. He put the bread and cheese down.

Mrs Van Dijk was explaining her idea about animals and birds – migrating birds - but Howard was intrigued by the three sockets, so he wasn’t listening.

One side of the other device - the strange complicated one – had two protrusions. Two that might fit into the sockets. He picked it up. There wasn’t a third. He looked, trying to gauge the space between the three sockets and where the third protrusion might be. And there it was, but shorter so that it would never reach into a socket. It came from the very centre of the device. He looked at the shorter end. It was rough and uneven. It wasn’t even square with the protrusion itself. It looked like something had been carelessly sawn or hacked off.

He took the planet model and the other instrument. They were very heavy together. By supporting the first on his thigh he was able to bring them close and fit the two points into the sockets. They went in perfectly. The third empty socket lined up with the sawn off piece. So the device seemed suddenly to be whole.

‘Ah!’ said Howard, under his breath, then again: ‘Ah!’

Something about the amazed tone of his voice – even though it was quiet - stopped the women talking immediately. They looked up.

Howard was struggling to stand because he was on such a low stool, but also because he was holding the heavy thing – the new heavy object made of the two instruments - with its considerable combined weight.

But he got up. He held the odd thing out to them – a surprised look on his face. It looked like the guts of a strange mechanical animal. But there was a new wholeness and symmetry to it.

Silently Howard held the weight of the now single device on his forearm and moved the handle underneath. The planets turned slowly, but then with them - under the table of the planetary plane - the cogs and wheels of the other instrument began to turn, perhaps for the first time in a century.

**********************************

The two women watched wordlessly. It was more difficult for Howard to turn the handle because now he was moving a whole new set of cogs. He gasped with the weight of the object and the effort of turning the handle simultaneously.

He laughed and gasped at the same time: ‘Ah – it’s heavy’

It looked like he was going to drop it.

‘Howard – put it on the table!’

Mrs Van Dijk cleared a space between the plates. Howard tried to lay the new machine down.

‘How could it ever have been used?’ he said, out of breath. ‘The handle’s so difficult to turn’

May was interested as well; she peered under the plate that supported the planets - at the cogs and curves of metal below.

‘It probably stood on legs once. Here and here’

She was right – there were three sockets – about an inch in diameter. If three rods were put in and flattened or planed off at their bases then the thing would stand on three legs. If they were long enough there would be plenty of space to turn the handle too.

‘You could cut some willow in the morning Howard – three short pieces’

He lifted it again. He was fascinated by its weight and the way the parts fitted together. He was amazed he hadn’t seen it before. He turned the handle again with his right hand, resting the weight of the device on his left forearm. The planets moved  - the small second one - Venus -  moved faster than the Earth; and the fourth one, Mars, was slow so that it lagged far behind the turning Earth.

‘Beautiful’ murmured Mrs Van Dijk. ‘Put the candle underneath so we can see. The light’s not very strong’

The two seated women looked forward at the turning machinery in the candle light. Howard began to shake and gasp again with the effort. There were deep dimples in his forearm where the metal pressed into his skin.

‘Keep turning Howard’

He gasped and started to laugh again. ‘I’ll try’

‘See May’ said Mrs Van Dijk. She pointed.

Howard couldn’t see what she was pointing at. He gasped again and laid the device down almost knocking the candle over. He held his hurting forearm.

‘What did you see?’

‘Tilt it up Howard…’

She moved the candle near. ‘When you turn it this thing moves here - and this’

There were two levers that moved across a curved graduated plate. There was a word inscribed – but it had been scraped with a knife so it was impossible to read.

‘What does it say?

‘I can’t read it. There’s a word here that I can see – on one of the cogs - prudentia – have you seen it?’ said Mrs Van Dijk.

‘Does that cog move?’

‘No. The word means something like care, or prudence or caution. Or perhaps foresight’

Howard took the machine again. He turned the handle, then it put it down.

‘To make it useful’, said Mrs Van Dijk, thinking. ‘We have to set it for the time of year, or for the season. See on the circular plate we can slide these for the right day and month. Then the planets will be in the right position with respect to the Earth. Do you see?

The plate on which the planets moved was actually a series of concentric ring-shaped plates. On the inner surface were twelve symbols representing the month and marks between.

‘The month is June, and the date….’ Howard had to think here -  he rarely knew the date: ‘17th of June’

‘Count seventeen gradations from the edge of the June line. Then turn the inner ring to line up.

Howard moved the ring. It was stiff and hadn’t been turned for a long time, but it moved.

He said: ‘so now it shows the correct arrangement for the planets for today?’

‘I think so. If we looked out now – at the sky - we’d see the planets as they are arranged on the machine. Right, Howard, turn the handle again’

He tilted it and they watched the turning in the light of the candle. The pointers and levers moved. One went low and high in a kind of oscillation that seemed to be related to a month passing on the dial.

‘Like a month cycle’ said Mrs Van Dijk. ‘Or slightly longer – look it makes a maximum that is separated from the next maximum by a period of slightly more than a month’

‘My cycle of distractions?’ said May.

Howard had had enough. His arm was aching and he wanted to sit down. Tomorrow he would cut some willow rods and make a stand for the object. But for now he put it down.

‘The foresight cog – the one that doesn’t turn’, said Mrs Van Dijk, ‘that probably tells something to do with seeing into the future’

‘You think that was cut deliberately – the rod that connects into the third socket?’

‘I think so’, said Mrs Van Dijk. ‘In one of the books in the Harby library, it said that these machines – some were designed by an Italian inventor – were destroyed or sabotaged’

‘Why?’ asked Howard, still rubbing his forearm.

‘To discourage clairvoyance. In the dark ages, they didn’t like people that could see into the future’

May sat back in her chair. She looked pensive.

**********************************

There came the sound of horse’s hoofs outside, coming up the lane. Some kids were shouting outside. Howard got up to look through the small window. A tall chestnut horse stood in the lane opposite the cottage. There was a man in a red cap and a brown riding cape leading the horse. He looked around, at the church and then at the door of the cottage.

Howard went to the door. May and Mrs Van Dijk seemed to have reached a natural break in their work, and the younger woman was standing, looking for her coat.

Howard called to the man outside.

He turned. He was quite young and had very blond hair, almost white, tucked under his cap. He came up the path.

‘I was told to come here. In the village they said that you might be able to help’

Howard nodded. He watched the horse. It was a really fine animal. Not the kind that was common in the farms. This young man must be rich.

‘What can I do to help you?’

‘Perhaps I could come in?’

Howard stood aside and allowed the man to pass. May was suddenly flustered. She had got her coat. She rushed out squeezing past the man, her face very red.

‘I’m sorry’ he said bewildered.

May was already walking quickly down the lane toward the village gate.

Mrs Van Dijk said from inside: ‘She’ll come again tomorrow, early’

‘Don’t worry – the lady – the lady there…’ Howard pointed down the lane. ‘She’s a little upset. It’s nothing that you’ve done. Sit down. What’s your name sir?’

‘Simpson’. He sat at the table and smiled at Mrs Van Dijk. ‘I’m looking for Alexander Fraser… He sometimes calls himself Professor Fraser. They said that he visited your cottage a few days ago. I thought you might know where he is…’

‘Can I ask what is your profession Mr Simpson?’, asked Mrs Van Dijk a little sharply.

Simpson hardened. It was as if he was used to being challenged. He ignored the question. He looked toward the fire which was now dying down.

‘I would like to find Mr Fraser. I simply would like your help in locating him’

‘What has he done?’ asked Mrs Van Dijk. She looked very directly at the young man.

‘He owes my boss some money, in fact he owes rent on a house in Whitby. He lived there over the winter but didn’t pay. My employer didn’t realise that he had gone on his travels, and therefore was not able to challenge Mr Fraser. I have come looking to retrieve these funds’

Retrieve these funds was a phrase that Simpson had used many times before.

‘So you are a debt collector’

‘You could say that.’ Simpson sat still. The interview had not gone as well as he had wanted.

Howard sat with Mrs Van Dijk. He also felt some animosity toward this man. Perhaps Fraser did owe money but this was an unpleasant way to get the money back. He looked at the blonde man. There was a coldness about him, and he was physically strong. Howard wondered how he got money off his creditors, if talking to them didn’t work.

‘He came to our cottage after his show in the village a few days ago. He had tea with us and we discussed some things’

Howard realised that this sounded a bit pompous, but the man didn’t notice. He was evidently pleased that he now knew where Fraser had been a few days before.

‘…and did you see him after?’

‘I saw him the next day. I went into the fields to work and I saw his caravan.’

‘…and any time after that?’

Howard didn’t want to mention the purse and the money in it, and how he had pursued the professor. He knew it wasn’t honest, but in the short time he had spent with Fraser, he had formed a bond and didn’t want to give him up to a debt collector.

‘I know that he was going west toward the river’

Howard certainly didn’t want to say that he suspected that Fraser was at that moment a mile or so outside the village – if his interpretation of the column of smoke was correct.

‘If you ride south and then get on the main road to Derby you’ll be going in the right direction’

‘How much does he owe?’ asked Mrs Van Dijk.

‘Five pounds –rent arrears’ said Simpson.

‘And what do you know of the professor?’ asked Howard.

‘I know he’s no professor!’ said Simpson with a short ugly laugh. ‘He reads a lot - and he’s clever I’ll grant you that – but he’s never been near a university, maybe not a school!’

‘And he travels each summer? This is what he told us’

‘He travels – selling his rubbish – his medicines… He comes to Whitby each winter. He brings books that he’s collected on his travels and spends the winter reading them’

‘And what is his background. It seems a strange occupation…’

‘My employer knows him better… Fraser was a hero. But he owes money and that’s that’

Howard was intrigued. ‘In what way a hero?’

‘Many years ago –they say in Whitby and along the coast – he was a sailor on one of the first steamers – the first packet steamers that sailed between Yarmouth and Amsterdam, even further - I think even as far as America. They say that Fraser put out a fire in the engine room of one of the steamers. He was an engineer controlling the pressure in the engine. A fire broke out below the deck. Fraser used ballast water from below decks to put the fire out. He saved several men’s lives’

‘Then why do you pursue him?’

‘He hasn’t paid his rent. The man’s a drunk. They say he never recovered from the horror of the fire – seeing men burned alive’

Howard looked bleakly at Simpson. He was glad he hadn’t said anything about Fraser’s whereabouts. He thought that as soon as the man had gone, he would go out and warn him.

**********************************

Simpson didn’t stay long. He turned his big horse down the lane and they heard him canter off south from the village to get to the Derby road.

‘I’ll go and warn Fraser’

‘Where is he?’ asked Mrs Van Dijk in surprise.

‘I think I saw him camping on the way back this afternoon. I think he was in the same place as before. When I found his purse’

‘Perhaps you should have told Simpson’

‘Would you?’

‘No’

‘… besides – we’ve worked out how the second machine works. Remember he wanted me to find out?’

‘Are you going to take it?’

‘No - too heavy! I want to make a stand for it anyway, tomorrow. I’ll show him then’

‘You like him don’t you?’

‘Yes. Maybe he’s not a professor, but he’s interesting. He said that he thought the seasons made us develop language and intelligence. Because we had to , for the cold time and we had to communicate what we had learned so we devised writing’

‘You should eat something first’ she said turning to the stove.

The fields were beautiful in the early evening. There were strong dark shadows creeping east over the green wheat, and the foliage of the willows was glowing yellow-green with the low sun. There was no wind. It would be hot the next day.

Howard crossed the stream near the moss covered boulders and was glad to see the smoke in a narrow grey column over the hedge. He walked quickly among the flowers in the fallow field and climbed the gate. He was right - looking down the lane he saw Fraser’s cart with the familiar design of planets. Just like in the rain storm a few days before, he had extended the awning over a patch of grass. Howard could see the old man sat in a low chair in grass so tall that it almost hid him.

He called hello.

‘Ah hello – Howard the scientist! Come and join me for a drink of life-giving nectar’

Fraser held up a glass, and in his other hand a bottle. Fraser’s nose was very red – either from the sun or the drink. His eyes were watery as usual, but there was a warmth in him that Howard quickly responded to.

They shook hands. Fraser disappeared into the cart and after a clatter a stool was thrown out from the back. Howard was glad he had not been standing by the door because the stool hit the ground heavily.

‘Why do you have the awning out? It’s not raining’

‘I always do it, dear boy! I sleep every night under the stars – or rather under the awning’

‘You don’t sleep in the cart?’

‘No. Hate enclosed spaces. Since my days at sea. I sleep every night under the awning. Because I only travel in the summer I can do this – and listen to the night birds, the creep of foxes and badgers’

Howard put the stool by Fraser who had now settled into his chair and had already poured himself and Howard a glass of what looked like brandy. Howard smelt the vapour on the summer air. The cost of a few bottles of the brandy would probably pay Fraser’s debt – but Howard supposed that the drink was more important to the old man than was the rent.

‘I have very good news’ said Howard. ‘I – we – have solved the mystery of the device – the complex one. It’s part of the planet model. They were designed to be fitted together. Made by the same man’

‘Well I knew that they were made by the same man. But being fitted together - That’s astounding!’

Fraser clapped his hands. He drank a very large draught of the brandy and coughed loudly.

‘You should receive a professorship for that Howard!’

Howard smiled. This appealed to him. But then he remembered that Fraser was not actually a professor. Howard was interested in the old man’s life, though. His career at sea.

‘You’ll come and see the devices put together? Tonight I’ll fix them with a special stand so that they can be used together properly – we’ve worked out how the machines work – what they show’

Howard wasn’t sure whether to mention the debt collector, but he thought this would upset Fraser. It would be better to simply chat and drink and look out on the lane and sit under the awning. He would tell Fraser about the debt collector tomorrow. He would invite him to the cottage.

After a while Howard asked Fraser about his past. Fraser took a good many big drinks from the bottle, coughing loudly, but then began to talk. Perhaps the drink or perhaps the sharpness of his memory made the story quite intense.

Fraser had been brought up in Scotland. His father had been a teacher, and this had been the planned destiny for Fraser, but his mother and father both died shortly after he was sixteen. Fraser went to sea, sailing in boats out of Edinburgh, Yarmouth and London.

The boats had been primitive, small and perilous in big seas. Fraser had started as a cabin boy but then his intelligence had been recognised and he had progressed to more technical jobs. He described the savagery of the sea – its wild moods – the way that waves threw up arcs of seawater to drench the deck; how ice mixed with seawater on the rigging to make the ropes like frozen steel cables. The way the sea was sometimes black between the lacy foam that floated over the surface in a storm.

As they sat, the drink and the strength of Fraser’s narrative seemed to transform the grassy verge into a choppy sea and the distant trees on the far side of the fields into a far green island. Howard felt the brandy warm his cheeks.

Fraser had sailed more than twenty times between Bristol and America and then because he was interested in science, volunteered for the crew of the first steam boat - to work in the engine room. Here coal was fed to a boiler and steam drove a great turbine that thrust the screws through the water. The ships were steel machines, said Fraser. They halved the travel time to America. The engines were so powerful – he said quietly - like the beating heart of a living thing.

Fraser explained how the water was boiled by coal, how the pressure was monitored and how the gears and shafts transferred power to the propellers in the water. But his mood changed as he talked. Howard thought that perhaps the drink was beginning to affect him, to make him tired.

‘There was never a fire?’ asked Howard.

‘There was a fire. And the most terrifying thing you ever saw. Every day of my life I see it – even now thirty years later. It’s an image that will never leave me’

He paused. His eyes were red, looking at the grass between his feet.

‘I saw that there was something wrong early. The pressure was too low which must mean a leak. Smoke was pouring from a boiler where only steam should have been. There were small flames licking around the base of the boiler where it was seated in a wooden frame. I knew the frame would set alight, in that temperature. Incredible to think of a fire of that intensity when there were fathoms of cold sea beneath and all around. It was an inferno – like hell on Earth. Men were choking in the smoke. In the darkness after the lights had gone out, I punctured the tanks to the right and left of the boiler and the ballast water put the fire out. Destroyed the engine!’

He laughed.

‘The ship had no engine after that. We had to sail back to Bristol. The dead men were tipped overboard  - what was left of them. That was the last paid work I ever did’

As he walked home unsteadily at nightfall Howard thought he would try to fix the stand for the planetary machine straight away, then realised he was too drunk.

**********************************

Next morning visitors came within five minutes of each other, arriving at the cottage quite early. Mrs Van Dijk had risen because she knew that May would arrive not long after dawn. But she had not expected Fraser to appear as well. Howard was in bed complaining of a headache. Mrs Van Dijk had been annoyed the night before because he had come into the house, mumbled about making a frame for the planetary machine, then gone straight to bed leaving a trail of alcohol vapour behind him.

But if Howard had been drinking with Fraser, the older man showed absolutely no sign of it. True - his face was red, his eyes watery - but he was his normal jovial self. He hobbled around the front room looking at the books while May sat uncomfortably at the table. This was not an ideal situation. They were such different people: the old man, a showman, a would-be scholar; and the half-mad woman pursued by strange images and dreams. She would offer them both tea but then perhaps take May back out to the fields. Howard – when he got up – could look after the professor and work with the planetary machine and make the stand he had mumbled about.

‘Would you like to sit down, Professor Fraser?’

The old man had his glittering jacket on – the one he wore when he gave a show. He accepted.

‘You have some wonderful books, Madam’ he said complementing Mrs Van Dijk. ‘I wish I could collect books but my cart is small and my home is far away’

Fraser sat opposite May. She seemed quiet, but he noticed immediately that the woman had the most extraordinary blue eyes. He thought he might have seen her before. But the woman wouldn’t look at him, and turned her eyes to her hands crossed on the table.

In silence they waited for the tea.

‘Have you met May, Professor Fraser?’

‘No – good morning my lady’ he said this with an absurd flourish of the hand that almost made Mrs Van Dijk laugh. But she hid her smile and was surprised to see the effect that Fraser had on May. She looked in wonder at the glittering jacket, and smiled quite girlishly at the red-faced man who beamed at her across the table.

‘Why are you visiting these kind people, May – if I dare ask?’ he said.

She was about to say something. She was twisting her face, as she did before she spoke sometimes, as if it was painful.

‘Mrs Van Dijk is helping me – with a problem I have’

‘Oh. I see’ Fraser’s eyes never left May’s face. ‘You can see things I guess? You can read minds, predict the future?’

May was amazed. Her mouth dropped open.

Mrs Van Dijk brought the tea and Fraser immediately began to slurp noisily at his cup.

‘Where’s Howard, Mrs Van Dijk?’ asked Fraser.

Mrs Van Dijk looked rueful, furrowing her brow.

‘He came home rather drunk last night – he’s still asleep’

‘That is entirely my fault, Madam. It is the demon drink – of which I am a follower. I, alas, can take any amount of drink – while younger healthier men are cut down by it’

‘Well I hope he gets up soon’

Mrs Van Dijk sipped at her tea, sitting on the stool watching her two visitors who were about as different as it was possible to be.

But after a while the two seemed not so different. Mrs Van Dijk noted that Fraser was very attentive to May and asked politely all about her life. He noted early on that she was unmarried. His manner became quite elaborate and even flirtatious. May, bewildered by the old man’s attention, grew light and cheerful - a state Mrs Van Dijk had never seen in her before.

Mrs Van Dijk heard Howard getting up, and the door to the bedroom slowly opened. His face was a bit puffy – his eyes red – but he was smiling. He hadn’t changed into his working clothes and was still barefoot.

‘Good morning professor’ he said from the doorway to the bedroom. He had the planetary machine in his hands. It must have been down by the bed on the floor. ‘We can show you how the machine is reassembled’

He went back into the bedroom perhaps to get his shoes, then reappeared.

‘Hello May…’ he said just noticing her. ‘Is there tea Lotte?’

He went over to the stack of willow poles by the door. There was one that he knew would be right. Howard put the device on the table between May and Fraser. It looked strange and absurd –a tangle of shiny yellow metal.

He was a good judge of the diameter of the willow rod because the three pieces which he swiftly cut to the right length fitted perfectly into the sockets and they were tight enough not to fall out.

‘This is just a temporary solution – I’ll make something better later’ he said, his head on one side as he lifted the machine, and its new legs, onto the table, then let it stand free.

It seemed to come into its own – with its three willow legs. Standing on the rough table it was at once symmetrical and harmonious. The sun shone through the small window onto its glittering surfaces and planes.

‘It was too separate objects until my friend Howard here reconstructed it’ said Fraser to May, excitedly.

He wished he had brought his life-giving nectar with him. He felt the need of the brandy to bolster his mood.

‘Can you give a demonstration, dear boy?’

Howard was only too happy. He held the structure between his hands. It was very strong - and the tremendous weight of the device (he knew from holding it himself) made it very stable.

He turned the handle underneath, and the cogs and circles inside moved.

Howard kept his head low down and watched the movements.

He pointed, looking at May: ‘This, May, is the part that shows the power of cycles. It has a period of more than a month. This is a part which is broken – we think deliberately  - and shows future things, clair- something.

‘Clairvoyance’ completed Mrs Van Dijk.

May looked forward, narrowing her eyes. She felt a gentle happiness rise in her – with the strange machine that might show so much about her – and the red faced jovial man opposite who seemed so interested in her life. She realised she felt less alone than usual.

**********************************

‘Why do you think the clairvoyance part of the machine was damaged? And how do you know it was deliberate?’ asked Fraser.

‘We are not sure’, said Howard, still peering into the mechanism, though he had stopped turning the handle. ‘But there are cut marks on the brass – so the connecting rod won’t turn the mechanism underneath’

Mrs Van Dijk said: ‘I read about clairvoyance in the Middle Ages and before – it was called second sight as well. At first it was celebrated – these machines were built to help astrologers and clairvoyants. But then for some reason these people began to be persecuted – all over Europe, particularly in Prussia. The practices of astrology were not tolerated by the church. Also there was some idea that clairvoyants were particularly dangerous, that they destabilised society – people that could see ahead were dangerous’

They all looked at the machine, thinking.

‘But this clairvoyance doesn’t fit with your ideas, Lotte – about May’ said Howard. ‘If the images come from people around then why would there be images of the future?’

‘I don’t know’

‘Are you able to make thought transference, my dear?’ asked Fraser. He looked quite tenderly at May.

Mrs Van Dijk and Howard stopped their discussion and watched May. The girl smiled and blushed red.

‘Well I think so’

‘…and can you tell the future?’

‘I don’t know. I think not. I can see things. Mrs Van Dijk has been helping me to control my fear of the things I see. If this second sight can be used for good then perhaps I can learn to live with it’

‘It may not be used for good, but I know how it certainly could be used’

But Fraser didn’t finish the sentence. The sound of the hoofs of a large horse echoed in the lane again.

Howard looked out of the window and immediately regretted that he hadn’t mentioned the debt of five pounds to Fraser, because Simpson, the debt collector,  was outside tying his horse to a branch in the hedge. Howard felt a twinge of annoyance seeing the young man’s blond hair and his purposeful stride. Fraser might be in debt, but he resented this young man’s cold relentless, determination and his hard knock on the door.

But Howard opened it. He stood firmly in the door, so that Simpson could not see further in. But he evidently knew that his quarry was there. He called aggressively and loudly, ignoring Howard.

‘Fraser – the game is up – five pounds is owed.’ He pushed hard against Howard but to his surprise found him immovable. Howard glared into the man’s arrogant eyes. To come like this and shout into his house!

Simpson pushed again and Howard summoned his strength and pressed his elbow into Simpsons’ stomach so that the younger man bent over, then losing his balance fell into the front garden rolling back so that his head almost banged his horse’s hoof.

‘Don’t you walk into my house like that’ said Howard speaking through clenched teeth.

Simpson was red in the face. ‘I’ve no argument with you. I don’t want to come into your hovel, your little house. Send Fraser out’

‘He will not be coming out’

Howard looked over his shoulder into the darkness of the front room. Fraser was standing shaking his head looking very flustered. May was almost crying. She had shrunk back and was rocking back and forth.

Where was Lotte?

She came through from the bedroom, carrying her purse.

‘No Madam! No.’ Fraser saw what was happening: ‘I will pay’

‘You can pay me back Professor Fraser…’ she said heading for the door quickly. Howard stepped aside knowing that there was no point in challenging her when she’d made up her mind.

He watched her stride over to the prostrate figure of Simpson and drop a five pound note onto his chest.

‘Don’t come back to this village again’ she said coldly. She turned and walked back into the cottage without looking back.

Howard shut the door behind her. He stood for a moment listening for a noise. He feared that Simpson might come back for a fight. But the man’s spirit seemed to have been broken because the next minute he heard the sound of the horse again. He opened the door a little and watched the horse and rider recede down the lane.

‘Well that was good!’ he said.

After the bright light outside, Howard’s eyes took a while to adjust. But when he looked he saw that May and Fraser were sitting together, on the small chairs at the table. She was still upset and crying but he was trying to comfort her. Rather touchingly he had his hand in hers.

**********************************

Weeks passed after the incident with Simpson. The professor left Earls Court and May stopped coming to see Mrs Van Dijk.

But Fraser was true to his word and gave the machine to Howard. He was so grateful after Simpson had left that he also gave them the planetary model – which Howard learned was called an orrery. He said it could be an exchange for the money that Mrs Van Dijk had paid to release him from his debt.

Howard went back to work, sometimes cutting wood and sometimes helping farmers to cut the long grass in the meadows for hay in the winter. It was a very busy time of year, and Howard often came home very tired. Because it was light he would sometimes work very late in the evening.

But the orrery reminded him of Mrs Van Dijk’s stream idea, of those images that passed through his mind when he was on the edge of sleep. He kept it on the willow legs on the table, and for a while on the floor by the fire. Because he was so tired each night, he rarely saw the stream when he was waiting for sleep because sleep came so quickly.

But Howard thought often about May and Fraser – the quack doctor and the seer - and slowly began to see that they were similar. One was troubled by images of his own past, the horror of a fire at sea; the other by other people’s consciousnesses. Perhaps that was why there was some sympathy between the two. Fraser seemed to instinctively understand May’s problem and she felt some attraction to him. Fraser’s flamboyant manner– his exaggeratedly polite ways - seemed ridiculous to Howard and Mrs Van Dijk, but to May it was attention she’d never had.

But it was not until almost a month later, when the summer began to close that they saw how the relationship had progressed.

A boy called at the door. Howard had come home a little early because there was cool in the air and because the days were beginning to shorten.

He went to answer. The boy was from Earls Court and Howard recognised him. He was a quiet boy with a nervous smile and a strange way of looking sideways at people he was talking to. But on this evening he had very little to say. He simply thrust a small note into Howard’s hand and said, ‘Invitation to a show in Stathern’

The boy looked shyly up at Howard and nodded, then turned to go.

Howard unfolded the note which had been stuffed in the boy’s hand. It was a faded paper with a few words at the top and small scribbled writing below. It was difficult to read the larger words. They were grey and faint –it looked like they had been badly printed. Below was writing in a shaky hand:

We have a show tonight. Forgive me for not calling over to invite you, but we are busy preparing. We would be happy to welcome you. It will start at eight in Stathern, near the church. Monday. F & M.

Mrs Van Dijk was reading again – this time not the book by Plato - but a small book on the Great Fire of London. She was fascinated by the fire.

‘Lotte, I think this is from Fraser and May! There’s a show tonight at Stathern. He’s invited us’

‘What time is it?’

Howard went out and looked at the big clock on the church tower. He thought - not for the first time - that they should get a clock in the cottage. It was a quarter past seven.

‘We can go’ he said as he came back into the cottage. ‘We have time’

‘We should! I’m curious’

She put down her book and stretched her legs. ‘I’m tired of reading about disaster!’ she said.

They knew that they would have to return late so they put on big coats. It was damp and cool and maybe there would even be frost in the night. The village gate was wide open because no one now bothered to close it. The Vale had not seen wolves for more than two years and people had become weary of the big gates. They didn’t like locking the villages up each night. The gate keepers went back to their houses in the evening. The Vale, it seemed, had become like the rest of England – domesticated and tamed. It was what the people of the Vale had always wanted.

But going out into the evening Howard and Mrs Van Dijk found the lane that led from the gate empty and gloomy. Was it just that the summer had gone? Howard thought not. As he walked he felt slightly uneasy – there seemed to be tenseness in the countryside, in the air. They walked along the lane but they often looked to the side into the low birch woods. There was nothing to be seen but there was something in the air. Mrs Van Dijk felt it too.

They forgot about their unease when they arrived in Stathern. The word that Fraser had used - show – was no understatement. By the church a small open area had been converted. There was a barn wall behind and this had been draped with a sheet of canvas, which had designs that Howard immediately recognised. It was the design of colourful planets, and the sheet had been taken from the cart and hung from the wall to form a backdrop. The design made it seem as if the village square was suspended in space with colourful planets circling around it. In the half dark, lanterns had been lit on the grass and on two tables. There was a rope at the front separating the ‘stage’ from the audience. There were even chairs, though as usual a group of children sat cross-legged on the ground just in front of the rope. There was an air of expectancy, a noise of quiet talking. The Vale had never seen such a show, certainly not one outdoors, and with such a beautiful backdrop of planets and shaky lantern light!

Howard and Mrs Van Dijk were too late to get chairs and so had to stand at the back looking over the heads of perhaps a dozen of Stathern’s residents. This was not an ideal time for a show, and Howard wondered why they had chosen a cool night at the end of summer.

But he stopped thinking when Fraser emerged from behind the draped canvas. He was wearing his glittering jacket and a pair of what looked like new bright red trousers. His face was red as usual but his eyes had a sparkle and his grin was wide, showing his crooked teeth.

He spoke loudly and clearly – his head tilted up. His voice carried on the night air and Howard saw vapour hanging in the lantern light when he spoke. It was the same introduction as his other show – of the planets and the wonder of the stars. But there were no potions for sale – at least that Howard could see. And there was new zest in Fraser’s performance. He seemed to believe what he said. He played some magic tricks pulling a dove from a hat and throwing up a ball into the air which miraculously turned into a dove and flew away. These were tricks that Howard had never seen before. The children of Stathern were spellbound – silent, sitting with their mouths open.

Then came the centrepiece. In the silence after a good trick while the audience were taking their breath, he spoke loudly of the power of the human mind  - how it was able to see beyond the prison of the skull into other worlds. He spoke of how the ancient Egyptians knew how to see other worlds, how the Assyrians had magicians who could read the minds of others.

With a flourish he introduced Madam May, the greatest mind reader in England. From behind the canvas May appeared in a form that they would never have believed possible – dressed in a full length red dress that was covered with something like glitter and which flashed in the light of the lanterns. She walked slowly to the front just before the rope, her eyes shut and her head held high. The children were spellbound. She looked like a ghost – like a queen of the night. The audience was absolutely quiet.

Fraser stood silent and put out a lantern beside him so that the light was focussed on May. She raised her hands and the light glittered on the long sleeves of the dress. Howard noticed that her nails were painted silver and they flashed so that her hands seemed long and delicate – like antennae pointing out at the night sky.

She trembled. It seemed like the old May again for an instant. Her head was lowered. Her voice came low and quiet. People around strained to hear what she was saying.

‘There is someone here who longs to sail out from the sea on a boat under chalk cliffs – or who has sailed in England out under the chalk cliffs…and there is someone here who wishes for a child with blue eyes’

She opened her eyes for the first time. Their blueness was like two blue lamps in the half darkness. The audience gasped at her beauty.

Her voice was controlled and mesmeric.

‘Who is it that wishes for a blue-eyed child?’

A woman in the first row, behind the children, raised her hand slowly at first. Children in front looked round to see.

‘…and who has sailed under chalk cliffs…?’

A man in the audience nodded. He said falteringly, ‘I sailed there many years -  from Rye – sometimes to France’

The audience were captive. May spoke quietly. She was composed, even serene. She never spoke of bad things but in a few minutes of calm revealed the images of the human mind – images of longing and faith, but also of freedom and possibility. Somehow it was an uplifting experience.

Howard and Mrs Van Dijk didn’t stay until the end. It was cold and very dark. They were the only people that had come from outside Stathern, and they would still have to walk a long way home.

But walking home, the tension in the land had become worse. Mrs Van Dijk didn’t feel it so much, but Howard felt it all the time. They walked close together in the middle of the lane. Howard stopped looking either side into the grass and the dense birch– but only so that Mrs Van Dijk would not be upset or frightened. The truth was that he wanted to look. Because he knew that they were being watched, every step of the way. No human eye watched them; it was the eye of a predator, many predators. He thought - while they walked in silence - that as soon as they got back to Earls Court he would pull the village gate shut and lock it firmly.