“Are you for the top?” enquired the woman in a smooth serene sleepy voice.
“Yes” announced Miriam eagerly coming in and closing the door, her ears straining to catch the placid words spoken by the woman as she disappeared softly into a softly-lit room. She went tremulously up the dark stairs into a thick stale odour of rancid fried grease and on towards a light that glimmered from the topmost short flight of steep uncarpeted winding stairs. “They’re in” said her thoughts with a quick warm leap. “Hullo” she asserted, ascending the stairs.
“Hullo” came in response a quick challenging voice ... a soft clear reed-like happy ring that Miriam felt to her knees while her happy feet stumbled on.
“Is that the Henderson?”
“It’s me” said Miriam emerging on a tiny landing and going through the open door of a low-ceiled lamplit room. “It’s me it’s me” she repeated from the middle of the floor. An eager face was turned towards her from a thicket of soft dull wavy hair. She gazed vaguely. The small slippered feet planted firmly high up against the lintel the sweep of the red dressing-gown, the black patch of the Mudie book with its yellow label, the small ringed hand upon it, the outflung arm and hand the little wreath of smoke about the end of the freshly lit cigarette, the cup of coffee on the little table under the lamp, the dim shapes about the room lit by the flickering blaze....
Miriam smiled into the smiling steel blue of the eyes turned towards her and waited smiling for the silver reed of tone to break again. “I’m so glad you’ve come. I wanted you. Sit down and shut the door my child.... I don’t mind which you do first, but—do—them—both,” she tinkled, stretching luxuriously and bringing her feet to the ground with a swing. Miriam closed the door. “Can I take off my things?”
“Of course child ... take them all off; you know I admire you most draped in a towel.”
“I’ve got such awful feet” said Miriam hugging the compliment as she dropped her things in a distant arm-chair.
“It’s not your feet, it’s your extraordinary shoes.”
“M.”