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40

Julian spent the night on Prof Rawlinson's sofa and went home through a drizzly dawn to clean up as best he could. Even the water supply had failed, though. Exploring his own house in a way he never had before, he discovered that the taps were supplied from a tank in the attic, which was charged by hand-pumping from an underground cistern—how it arrived there was not clear, but he managed to fill a bucket from it without falling in. There was no firewood cut, and he could not handle an ax.

Clean but shivering, he had just conquered the last shirt button when he heard the doorbell jangle. On the veranda stood William McKay, unshaven and rumpled as a wet cat, beaming in his usual witless fashion and holding out a covered basket.

"Heard you were home, old man. Brought you some brekker."

Julian was nonplussed. "That's extremely kind of you."

"Oh, don't thank me, old son. Thank the Reformed Methodist Ladies' Good Deed and Morris Dancing Society, Olympus Branch. They distribute gin to the needy. I'm just the messenger boy. You can tip me a tanner if you're feeling generous. Need the basket back."

"Come in a moment."

McKay stepped over the threshhold and stopped. He was a tall, vapid man and the best linguist in the station, able to speak at least twelve of the Valian dialects without saying anything of substance in any of them. His only interest was fishing and he was of interest to Julian only because he was Euphemia's husband. She swore they had not shared a bed in years, but how did one cross-examine a man about his own wife?

Lifting a corner of the cover, Julian found fruit, bread that smelled newly baked, and a stoppered bottle hot enough to contain tea. His mouth began watering enthusiastically. He thought of Prof. "You do this gin-distributing to all us worthy poor?"

"Well, it makes sense to have a central mess. Got to ration the supplies, what? All hang together. Polly organized it." McKay's gaze wandered past Julian and back again. "You—you're alone?"

"Yes. Come and sit a moment. I need to talk to you."

"Oh. Should be getting back. Just wondered if you had news of Euphemia. We're a bit concerned, you know."

"What? Why? Come in here," Julian said firmly. Taking the basket, he led the way into his drawing room. It was small and rather sparse, for he had no skill at homemaking and rarely entertained, but he noted that it was at least tidy. He waved his guest to a chair and took one himself. He began emptying the basket. "Tell me."

McKay folded himself down into the chair and stared at the floor uncomfortably. "Well, she went back Home briefly to fetch Exeter's cousin. . . ."

"And brought the Spanish flu back. Yes, I heard. Where is she now?"

"Don't know. Just got back from Thovale myself yesterday. Haven't caught it yet, but I expect I will. She'd gone already. Thought you . . . Well, you know. Thought you might know."

Julian gripped the bottle between his knees and pulled out the stopper. An intriguing wisp of steam emerged. "No." He took a swig of tea and burned his throat satisfactorily.

"Ah. Seems she managed to sweet-talk the Carrots into supplying us with some grub a couple of days ago, when we ran out. Then she did a bunk. Didn't tell anyone where she was going. Left no note." McKay was looking everywhere except at Julian. "Unless you . . . ?"

"None here, I'm afraid. Look, McKay. . . . You know we're lovers."

The tall man shrugged at the fireplace. "No moss. We've gone our own ways a long time. You made her very happy, old man. More than—er, well, you know."

More than half the other men in the station in their respective times? How old was she? Pride would never let him ask.

"We had words. I'm deucedly sorry and I want to make up. You have no idea where she's gone?"

"Not a bally notion. She works Lemodvale, you know. She'll have contacts there. Or—" He bit his lip. "The Carrots may know, I suppose. She gets on better with them than most of us do."

"She told me about Timothy."

Suddenly it was eye-contact time, man to man stuff, stiff upper lips. McKay colored, then clasped his hands together so tightly that the knuckles showed white. "Long time ago. Look, I should be getting back. . . ."

"It makes no difference to me, what she did. Like to hear your side of it, though."

"Dang it all, old man . . . !"

"Please?" Julian said, feeling his own face burning but utterly determined to see this through. "For her sake? I love her, but I hurt her feelings without meaning to. Want to make up. I want to understand her."

"Don't we all! Men can't understand women, laddie. Women are a mystery in all worlds. Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em." McKay stared at the empty fireplace, chewing his lip. "It may not have been entirely all her fault, actually. I suppose. One of those things . . . She didn't fit in, really. The women were pretty bad to her."

Idiot! What had he expected? How long ago? Twenty years? Fifty? Even now it was easy to imagine the ladies of Olympus snubbing the fishmonger's daughter from rural Ireland, a pride of cats sharing a mouse. It was also easy to see that such stupid class prejudice should mean a lot less to Julian Smedley, who had been through the Great War, than it did to all those Victorian fossils. If the war had decided anything, it had brought England together. Things would be different from now on. But even if Euphemia might still be a misfit back in Cheltenham, here on Nextdoor she was his woman and that was all that mattered.

"I may not have been as much help as I should have been," McKay said gruffly. "She went native. Moved in with a Carrot woodcutter."

Where else could she have gone? "She—they—they had just the one child?"

"Well, yes. Then her big buck Carrot got eaten by a jugular. A year or two later she came back to me, brat and all." He shrugged. "Took her in. Separate rooms, you know? We got along better like that. And Tim. Jolly good kid, actually. Brought him up as a gentleman. Taught him fishing. He went off Home a few years ago. Last we heard he was with Head Office. He's a stranger over there, of course. Well, mustn't point fingers, old man! I'm pretty sure I've fathered a few by-blows around the Station myself." McKay lumbered to his feet.

Obviously it still rankled that his wife had gone native, left him for a Carrot. He probably didn't even appreciate the courage it must have taken for her to come back to him and his precious friends. Well, what she had done or not done did not matter now to Julian. He'd rather think of the young Euphemia having a love affair with a young Carrot than of her being blackmailed into bed by slimy Pinky Pinkney. Nothing wrong with Carrots except that they were mortal. Domini, for one, was a hell of a lot better man than Pinkney or even this bat-brained William McKay.

"What news of Exeter?" McKay asked, shambling toward the door.

"All bad." Julian told him the tale. "It's Alice Prescott I'm worried about. Pearson, I mean."

McKay nodded vaguely. "What are you going to do?"

Julian took a moment to digest what he had learned. If Euphemia was not in Olympus, then there was no reason for him to stay. With only one hand, he was limited even in the help he could give to the sick. "I think I'm going to head back to Exeter's crusade again. Alice is an old friend, and Exeter may be dead. I sort of feel responsible for her. If Zath bewitched her, then she may be dead, too, or crazy by now. Or Jumbo is, if he was the poisoned pill. The flu must be all over the Vales already. She doesn't know the language, she has no money." That bitch Ursula might not help her.

"Better you than me, old man. I must get back to Kingdom Hall. Good luck." McKay held out a limp hand. "Don't count on finding much here when you come back, what?"

"No. I won't."

Götterdämmerung!

 

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