Martha Williams lives in a small house overlooking the sea. 'The Slightest Huff' is a tribute to her children's wonderful grandparents. Martha has had short stories published online and in Writers' Forum magazine, and her first novel has been read by a London agent. Martha's website is www.marthawilliams.org

The Slightest Huff

Aggie snorted and clanked the mug down on the kitchen counter, hard enough to make her point, but not so hard that anything broke. She huffed her disgust. That was the thing, she found, about moderation. One struggled for years to master self‑control, to cease to be extreme, only for people to assume your edges have dulled. One of age’s ironies, to be hobbled by one’s own mastery.

They hadn’t wanted to leave him with her, and it hurt. She knew it even without hearing the muted discussions. What if she falls? What if she sleeps? What if she picks him up and loses her grip? As if she wasn’t aware of her growing limitations, as if she couldn’t adjust. She wanted to scream, ‘I held your husband aloft, I twirled him around, I carried him for miles, I taught him the language he uses to describe my slow disintegration, as if discovering it for himself. As if I haven’t noticed.’

But when Melissa’s labour pains came quicker than her own mother could catch a train, Aggie had arrived, and they’d had to leave him with her. Him: Connor. Two and a half years of age. Not quite surefooted, not quite past talking in scribble.

“Will you be OK?” Can you keep him safe?

“Yes, thank you. You go.”

“His nappies are under the table.”

“I know.”

“He naps at one.”

“He does.” A smile at the pause, a kindly nod during the spasm that crossed the younger woman’s face. Their eyes met, acknowledging the grip of early labour, and Melissa knew that Aggie, for all her age and immobility, still understood. She’d birthed eight.

“He drinks water all day, and milk after lunch and before bed,” Melissa leaned forward with distracted eyes.

“Fine.”

“He isn’t allowed in the kitchen.”

“Not unsupervised, no.”

“Not…” Melissa gasped and clutched her pendulous belly.

“Go.”

“He…”

“GO.”

Aggie grabbed Andy, “Take her. I can look after Connor. No hot drinks on the coffee table, no playing on the stairs, no leaving the front door open. Honestly, I do remember.”

The truth was, she thought ruefully as their car retreated down the hill, she didn’t remember much. Not from her own children’s early years. Her eldest was fifty‑five now, and even Andy was forty‑three; a latecomer to parenthood and the more cautious for it.

But she did know. Didn’t she? She turned to her small, blond charge. “Connor, would you like to make a mess?”

He beamed and held his arms out to be swung aloft, but she recalled her own shaky balance. Instead she bent to his level, smiled into his beaming face, and took him by the hand, “Come on, then!”

She led him into the kitchen. She wouldn’t have him in here with the oven on, and she wouldn’t make a hot drink until he had a nap. She did know how to entertain a child safely in the kitchen, she thought, as she raided the airing cupboard.

She placed two large bath towels on the slippery tiles, then rested three dining chairs upon them. It was exactly the right height for a toddler table, she smiled. Upon one, she rested a lightweight, plastic bowl. On another, ingredients and scales. The butter she balanced on the radiator, to soften. As she sat on the third chair, she quickly checked Connor’s nappy, before offering a bowlful of tepid, soapy water and a clean towel.

“When one is a master chef, it is very important to have completely clean hands.”

Connor beamed as she washed their hands. She laid the washing utensils to one side, and drew Connor to her knees.

“Now, which of these do you really, really like?”

He surveyed the foods in her hands. “Naaahnah. An ap. An rais.”

“So we should have banana and apple and raisin cakes?”

“Yeh! Yeh! Oooh!” He held his hands up and they jiggled with excitement, and Aggie could have cried when a flash of memory flickered in the darkness of distant past: the fleeting image of his father doing the same.

“Now, which of these is flour? Do you know?” He stared blankly, so she showed him, and held his hands as he poured a pile onto the scales. “One, two, three, four.” She counted the ounces, and allowed him to tip it into the bowl. When half of it fell to the floor, she supplemented it with a handful more.

“Well done! You’re a wonderful cook! Now… which one is the sugar?”

He pointed at the butter, so she steered him first to the sugar, before adding a block of butter, each time counting the ounces aloud. Then she helped him wield a wooden spoon.

When she felt he had stirred enough, she helped him to decant the existing mixture into her ceramic bowl, into which she broke two eggs and stirred the cake mix thoroughly.

“Me! Meee!” As Connor objected to her monopoly, she passed him two small pots, the lids ajar.

“I want you to smell these, hold one in each hand, and sniff them.” She moved first one, then another, before his button nose. When he failed to sniff, she leaned forward and snorted emphatically, closing her eyes, inhaling noisily, then exhaling in a lip‑smacking ‘ahhhh’. Then she placed them before him again, and he sniffed gingerly.

“Ahhhh!” He smacked his lips together, and she laughed.

“Which one is your favourite?”

“Dat!”

“The nutmeg? Ah, a good choice, but one to use sparingly.” She took a tiny pinch, and sprinkled it onto the child’s palm. “Drop that into the mix.”

He shook his hand over the proffered bowl, then when the powder stuck to his sticky paw, she brushed it off for him. “Clever boy.”

She hustled him into the hallway before turning on the oven, wrestling with the dials while he squatted beside the plastic bowl, licking the egg‑free portion of the cake mix. She’d let all of hers eat full cake mix, she realised, but apparently that wasn’t the done thing these days. Raw eggs can contain bugs. Fine, she didn’t care. As long as he got a bowl to lick; the memory would be no worse for the change. She bowed to progress and, unlike some of her peers, usually ran to keep up.

As the cakes cooked, she wrestled with the stair‑gate before surveying her grandson. Wreathed in smiles, he was lagged from head to foot in buttery flour. She led him to the bathroom and helped him clamber into the bath. Frightened of bathing him, in case her hips failed as she bent to hold him steady, she flicked on the shower. It was hard, she thought, trying to remember how frail her body was becoming, when her soul was still fresh and strong, as alive as birds in summer rain.  

She shampooed his hair, arms, hands, the curve of his soft belly and down to his rubbery feet, until the pulse behind her eyes told her it was time for a cup of tea and a rest. It took a further twenty minutes, and the emptying of every toy from the white basket into the bath, before she was able to prise the unwilling child out from under the tepid water.

Dressed in the spares left out by his mother, Connor snuggled into the sofa with Pog‑dog and a rag book, whilst Aggie rescued the cakes, and rummaged in the freezer for something solid to feed him. The ham sandwiches lying under cling film in the fridge, she put out for the birds. Every mother, she knew, needed processed foods in an emergency; she was impressed that Melissa had managed anything in labour. But she would not feed it to their child.

They’d said, he didn’t like fish, but she took a chance because the world of Granny should differ from that of mother; neither better nor worse, an intricate blend of fantasy, mischief and old‑fashioned wisdom that ideally spirals in complementary support of practical mother love. 

Shuttling between hot grill and safely distanced child, she prepared lunch. A sumptuous pile of grilled haddock, peas and a baked potato on her plate. A simple piece of bread for Connor. She tucked in avidly.

“Wot dat?!” Outrage.

“That? That’s Granny’s fish. It’s very grown up food, only for Grannies and sharks.” She nearly laughed out loud, when he threw his piece of bread across the table, and his lower lip projected as he lowered his forehead until his chin touched his chest.

She spoke before his objection turned to misery, “Now, Connor. You must never throw food, it’s very naughty.” She strained to appear serious. “But if you’re a good boy, and promise to eat like a shark, you may share my fish.”

It took forty relaxed minutes for him to snap up half of the fish and most of the peas. As she watched him squelch the food around within his bulging cheeks, she pondered the luxury of old age, remembering the gallop of her days as a young mother. She could still hear herself thundering between kitchen and dining room, one eye on the clock and the other on eight heads bowed over honeyed porridge, “Eat up! School starts in fifteen minutes!”

Now, even as her remaining sands passed through the hour glass, she had more time for coaxing and wheedling to ensure a well-fed child.

When Connor had finished, he was allowed one of the cakes that he’d made ‘all by himself’, and then, suddenly, his face paled and his eyes glazed.

Passing him the lidded cup of warmish milk, she took a chance and hefted him up to her hip. God, she was old, it was true, she thought as she staggered to the sofa. Where was the power that had raised six boys and two girls? Was it now all in her mind?

Nestled into the couch, sodden with happiness and warm food, Connor abandoned himself to his grandmother’s warmth.

With the sleeping infant safely ensconced on the settee, cushions scattered on the floor in case he should roll off, she clicked the stair‑gate behind her. It took over an hour to clean the kitchen, tidy the bathroom, hand‑wash his sticky clothes and make a shopping list for a family of four with a new baby. She’d barely sipped her tea when he stirred.

The afternoon sun bounced off the raindrops still clinging to the buggy as she reached the local Co‑Op. It had taken a neighbour’s hands to clip him into the buggy properly; her own fingers slipped and slid in their stiffness, but the neighbour would be there on her return, so that was all right.

The walk down had been filled with cedar trees, cats, pretty flowers, a butterfly and raindrops. Connor had repeated every word she spoke, and by the time they reached the shop, she found herself naming everything they passed.

The buggy was a dream. She recalled the heavy pram of her own early motherhood; heavy and awkward. How fortuitous the balance, she thought, that with light, strong legs she’d suffered the heavy pram whilst now, as her legs grew weak and unwieldy, she was granted this lightweight contraption.

As she struggled up the hill, fifteen minutes later, with the buggy laden with frozen fish chunks, fresh meats, batons of bread and full cream milk, she wondered why these clever, modern buggies couldn’t come with a small motor as well. She huffed her way home in breathless silence, and was grateful for the neighbour’s help carrying the groceries up to the house.

By the time they had eaten the macaroni cheese and recited the ‘Three Little Pigs’, her old favourite, and his, ‘The Gruffalo’, they were both tired. By six‑thirty, she was struggling to stay awake, and it was with relief that she realised he had drifted off. She allowed herself one final lingering gaze, her tiny boy in his starry pyjamas, still clutching Pog‑dog. Then she shuffled out, closing the last stair‑gate of the day.

Andy returned an hour later, flying on emotion, brimming with news of their daughter. Of Melissa’s bravery. Of the pain. Of their beauty. When he arrived, he found his mother slumped in her armchair, eyes fast shut, mouth open and small airy noises popping through her lips on every exhalation.

After checking Connor, he returned to her. Clutching a mug of tea, he spoke softly into the sleepy air.

“It’s a girl, Mum. We got a girl.” His eyes filled with tears. “Molly Agatha. They’ll be home tomorrow; you’ll meet your first granddaughter.”

He gently tugged her arm, wanting to urge her into the spare room, where a warm duvet lay under the scent of freshly‑cut roses.

“Mum? Mum, come on. Wake up, Mum. Let’s get you to bed…” She stirred, slightly, but fell back again, sodden with exhaustion.

He gazed down at her, a poignant sorrow fleetingly crossing his face.

Today was probably too much for her. She’s getting old.

He only realised that he’d spoken out loud when, with a sudden spasm of her chest, her mouth half‑smiled, and emitted the slightest huff.

                               ------------------------------------

Liz Martinez

Awaiting bio

Lady Purple

The smell of lavender will always remind me of school. The whitewashed walls, the cool cover of the cloisters in the scorched June exam weeks, the boarding house colours.

Lady Purple we called her, our housemistress. Her name was Virginia, a proper English school teacher’s name, a name with a strong she-writer’s heritage. She wrote novels in the holidays, but we never saw them.

Lady Purple arrived new and keen and younger than her counterparts in the other houses. At first we didn’t know what to expect. The cats, sure. The crates of books, obviously. The open door to her study, and the closed door to her living quarters.

Her first house meeting took place around a common room coffee table laden with three-tiered stands of cupcakes, slim crust-less sandwiches, bowls of sugared almonds, and at the centre, a chocolate fondue into which we dipped squares of cake and fruit. She served us Earl Grey tea from fine china teapots, and as we sipped, she encouraged us to share with her our ambitions, passions, desires.

“I want to be a writer,” I said.

“You will be, Marie,” she responded. “Just like me. I shall encourage you.”

From that moment we were friends. 

There were times in those early days when we girls turned a blind eye to her mistakes. The day she walked us the wrong way to the library, taking us past labs and kitchens, until she worked out, finally, where the right path cut through to the old building with the solid oak door. We followed her like bridesmaids up the aisle. It was our pleasure to walk in her wake.  Then there was the day she told a group of new parents on a show-round the traditional story of the school founder’s vision, dates muddled, counties confused, adding her own embellishments to a tale already rich with intrigue. The Headmistress would not have approved, but what she didn’t know would not worry her. We were not slaves to truth, nor were we tell-tales. We had prayed for her, now we, her handmaidens, gave thanks for her presence. We vowed to look after Lady Purple, as she looked after us.

In the classroom she taught us literature, art, beauty, and how to pass exams. That, she said, was a skill we just had to learn. Learn it, do it, forget it. It was the rest that mattered.

“The subtle flavours of life are not to be found in a grade A star, but without the A star, there is little opportunity to experience them,” she explained, at our first lesson of term.

She taught us how to play the game by the dealer’s rules, jump to the ringmaster’s whip, satisfy our parents’ innermost vicarious needs, give them value for their money, but know that it all meant nothing.

“It is a necessary fog which must envelope them, blind them for long enough that you may escape into a world more abundant and exquisite than anything they will ever experience.”

I cherished her words and yearned for my own escape into Lady Purple’s exquisite world.

Thus, we marched through the syllabus, Lady Purple always leading the way, cutting through the pointless and the dross with her flaming sword; Lady Purple always in our midst, rallying and guiding us through the mire with her ropes and harnesses; Lady Purple always at our rear, deflecting our critics’ arrows with her riot shield.

We rode bareback on thoroughbred horses, charged at breakneck speed on golden chariots, floated languorously on Venetian gondolas through the works of the Brontës, Austen, and Woolf, to the wild and strictly extracurricular wonders of Winterson, Piccoult and Nin.

On Saturday nights we cooked in the house for her, our guest of honour. For her favourites, there were special literary dinner parties. I was one of the lucky ones. She would invite us into her rooms whilst she dressed for dinner, allowing us to apply her make-up, zip her dress, fasten her amethyst necklace, brush and style her hair. We ate at her private table, listening by candlelight to CDs by Luciano Pavarotti, Ella Fitzgerald and Maria Callas. We sipped champagne from her crystal flutes.

 There were rules about alcohol, but we were trusted to accept these private indulgences with loyal confidentiality.

Towards the end of term, the evenings became darker and an undercurrent of Christmas excitement filled the house. In amongst my post pile, I found a silver-edged card, handwritten in bold, italic script. Lady Purple had invited me to a private dinner in her rooms. It was no secret that I was her favourite, but for the first time she had singled me out for a special honour, and I felt the tremor of jealousy as it shook the house.

There are those who can celebrate a friend’s good fortune, and there are those for whom the misfortune of others holds a greater attraction. I cannot name the betrayers with certainty, but without doubt treachery was awaiting its opportunity that evening.

As Lady Purple filled my head with visions of a literary future, we finished our bottle of champagne, and she opened a second. The candles burned low, more were unearthed from the back of a bedroom cupboard, set on saucers on the table, windowsills and mantelpiece, and lit with shaking hands. Liqueurs followed. Coffee was forgotten.

In the corridors the main lights went off as the girls above us took themselves to bed, and we talked on. When the room began to spin I begged Lady Purple to let me go to bed, afraid that I would throw up, ruining her carpet and our precious evening. With heartfelt kisses on both cheeks, she said goodnight to me at my bedroom door, returning down the corridor to her candlelit quarters. My roommate woke as I crashed clumsily into our bedroom and helped me to undress and climb into bed.

I cannot say how long I slept before the alarm bell woke us. Carpets, curtains and upholstery were on fire in the common rooms downstairs, and the smoke made the hallways impassable. We ran, screaming, in our pyjamas, to the fire escapes and trampled the gardens, barefoot, in the light of torches and fire engine headlights. They counted us in the dark, as we huddled under blankets, and led us through the woodland walk to the shelter of the dining hall, where mugs of tea and hot chocolate were prepared for us.  I sat with the other girls in the cold silence at the refectory table, waiting. If fear has a smell, at that moment it was earthy, smoky with undertones of crushed lavender on muddy feet.

In my cowardice I had hurried away from the blaze, as the firemen broke down her door. An axe was hurled, windows shattered, hoses and heroes in flame-resistant suits had entered her burning sanctuary and were searching for her.

Meanwhile, local parents began to arrive at the school to take girls home. Others, like mine, who lived abroad were reassured that we could be accommodated in other houses until the end of term.

The door to the dining room swung open, crashing its heavy ironwork handle against the whitewashed wall.

“She’s alive!” 

A roar of triumph erupted through the room, chairs scraped as the girls threw off blankets and dropped mugs and spoons, cheering, yelling, clapping, dancing with arms around each others’ shoulders in celebration. I could only cry with relief.

When she entered the room, in a fireman’s arms, her naked legs, arms and shoulders barely covered by her lilac quilt, they chanted; “Lady Purple! Lady Purple! Lady Purple!”  As Matron wrapped her in blankets, I saw her say something, her eyes searching the room. Matron pointed to me, and Lady Purple smiled at me, warmly, compassionately, then collapsed back into the chair as I cried into my room-mate’s shoulder.

She was allowed to convalesce in a sanatorium room which we filled with flowers: gladioli, hollyhocks and foxgloves. No carnations and gypsophila for our Lady Purple. 

We took it in turns to read to her from her favourite writers. Our artwork adorned her walls, our calligraphy in hand-crafted cards sustained her with our messages and prayers. We fed and groomed her cats, and brought them to her room at night to sleep on her bed. If Matron noticed the cat hairs on the bed linen each morning, she said nothing.

We returned to class, in smaller numbers, and tried to attend to our studies. I awaited my call to account for the night of the fire, but nobody asked for my opinion. It was not needed. The traitors had already gone to work.

“DRUNKEN HOUSEMISTRESS SETS BOARDING SCHOOL HOUSE ON FIRE!” screamed the local newspaper headlines. “UNDER-AGE DRINKING: A PRIVILEGE AT EXCLUSIVE GIRLS’ SCHOOL.”

By the time the police and fire service investigators came to interview Lady Purple she had already been tried, sentenced and hung. 

She continued to welcome us into her sanatorium room with joyful smiles, and listened to our readings and gossip with obvious pleasure. The insurance would cover the loss of her belongings, she assured us. She had lost little of real value. She would spend the Christmas holiday in Tuscany with a friend, and would return to us refreshed in the New Year. I wanted to believe her. I needed to believe in her ability to make it all better with a coat of lavender paint and some new lilac curtains.

When we returned after the break to the newly decorated boarding house, we were met by an angular woman with grey hair tightly drawn up into a chignon. The house smelt of disinfectant. The walls had been painted magnolia. 

In my post that first week, I received an anonymous parcel, a leather bound writer’s notebook. Pressed between the middle pages was a single stem of lavender. 

                                 ----------------------------------------

Anne Oatley

The Museum Beetle

A strange profession. It must have started that childhood day he was playing alone (he was always alone) in his parents’ garden. When he had accidentally tipped one of the stones of the rockery and paused, absorbed by the creatures that scuttled, or writhed, or seeped back into the soil, away from the sudden sun.

            Perhaps he too wished he could crawl away, far from the raised voices and slammed doors in the house behind him. He had sublimated that into a love for these earthborn beings. Armed with a net and a toy microscope, he had pored over their black-bloodied bodies, their ugly faces with weird configurations of eyes and mouths.

            And now, many years and many learned monographs later, he sat in his study near the summit of one of the towers that stood at each corner of the museum, guarding its crimson Gothic bulk. It was a burning August day and from his window he could see, far below him, skimpily clad visitors lounging on the yellow lawns, eating crisps and draining cans. Two hefty keys hung from a chain at his belt. These unlocked the great double doors that separated their world from his, the quiet halls where the museum’s scholars laboured.

            ‘Edwin simply lives for his work.’ He had overheard Mrs Oswald, his full-bosomed, flush-cheeked neighbour say this at one of her cheese and wine parties. He knew that soon one of the other guests would approach him and say, ‘So you’re an etymologist, is it?’

            ‘Ent,’ Edwin would reply ‘Ent.’

            He was aware that ever since Mr Oswald had dropped dead of a coronary on the golf course Mrs Oswald had wished Edwin might live for her a little, but all he had to offer was attendance at her parties and a commission to water his plants and feed Ptolemy when he took his annual break to hunt Lepidoptera on the Norfolk Broads.

            His heart was in this modest office, and for nearly a quarter of a century it had been more his home than home. Yet it was becoming estranged to him. He could no longer lean back on his familiar wooden chair for Gloria had taken it away and replaced it with an alien swivelling thing. For health and safety reasons, she said. The constant ache that crept from his shoulders to throb in his temples was nothing to do with his chair. Gloria was now an endless presence in his life. It was she who had posted the notice above his head, ordering him to take his breaks from the computer. He snarled at the sight of the blocked signature. Her memos piled on his desk. Gloria’s voice, raw as the outback, silenced him in the meetings she loved to arrange. ‘This museum is a shark,’ she would say, ‘and sharks can’t move backwards.’ She always finished sentences on a rising inflection, though there was no question mark in her tone.

            Even this office was no refuge, and Edwin kept listening for the click of her court heels coming down the linoed corridor. She had only been his colleague for a year, fresh from a municipal museum in Melbourne, but already she had wormed her way into the head of department’s favour and been given a make-weight title, facilities manager or some such.

            Now she had her eye on a real prize. Edwin had taken it for granted that the deputy headship would fall to him when Mervyn retired, on grounds of seniority alone. Kershaw had published more, some of it quite brilliant, but then there had been that bizarre outburst at the Christmas party, something about the pointlessness of it all, spending your life staring down a microscope at a flea’s genitals. Soon after he had had a complete nervous collapse and been signed off on long-term sick leave. These younger men weren’t up to the life of scholarship, solitary and demanding. And Edwin had been perhaps too ruthless over Kershaw’s attempt to reclassify the botfly as a subspecies of Simuliidae.

            When Gloria had thrown her hat into the ring Edwin had not taken it seriously, for she had no research worth considering to her name. but since that awful interview, foreboding had robbed his nights of sleep and darkened his days. Surely they could not …? He felt the sweat sidle down his back beneath the tweed. On an apparatus on his window sill, the mercury in the thermometer sent a stylus spiking over a paper roll.

            He wedged his door open, searching for a breeze. Only this wall was partitioned off into offices. Outside a great open floor was populated by banks of gunmetal filing cabinets between whitewashed pillars. In each card-sized drawer of the filing cabinets lay row on row of wispy flies, shiny beetles, jewel-like butterflies, splayed on slides with typed labels recording the date and place of their death at the hands of a collector. Every storey of the tower held thousands more, the greatest insect collection in the world.

            No draught here, for the air was still, acrid from the packets of silica on every surface. They were put there to keep damp from the specimens, each cherished like a pharaoh in his tomb. For them, white sheets of fly-paper lay in each corner of the hall to trap the living predators that menaced their sleep. For them, Katrina from Conservation made her rounds daily, checking the temperature and humidity were to their liking. Edwin could see her bent over one of the cabinets, her fair plait hanging down the back of her white coat.

            Soon she was at his door, fresh-faced and cheerful. In her hand she clutched one of the sheets of fly-paper, encrusted with what Edwin recognized as some interesting examples of booklice.

            ‘Ah, Katrina. Still keeping Anthrenus verbasci at bay?’

            ‘Anthry— oh, the museum beetle. We haven’t had any problems since Gloria quarantined the Coleoptera cabinets on the second floor.’

            ‘Such a panicker, that woman.’

            ‘Better safe than sorry. If it got into the rest of the collection, it could spread like wildfire.’

            Edwin knew the fearsome reputation of the museum beetle, how it devoured anything organic. It would only eat that which once had life but there it was insatiable. And what it liked to dine on most was its own dead kin. Everyone in the department lived with the nightmare of their life’s work disappearing into its maw, even to the precious volumes in the library, where specimens collected by Linnaeus himself crumbling on vellum.

            Katrina was at the window, reading the zigzag of the stylus across the roll of graph paper. ‘I’m sure they did have it downstairs,’ she said. ‘Ted Mackley said he left a cashmere scarf hanging on his coat hook and when he came back from lunch, half of it had disappeared.’

            Edwin laughed at the tall tale, but Katrina added, ‘Seriously, if it takes hold we’re lost. We talked to the pest control people but all they could suggest was shutting the department down for six months and saturating it with some toxic chemical. I mean, it’s not really feasible, is it?’

            Her work done, she was about to leave. But she turned at the door and said, ‘It’s the big day today, I hear. Best of luck.’

            Edwin mumbled something as the door closed behind her. He had not wanted to discuss the announcement of the new deputy in case it brought on one of his migraines. He still had fleeting hopes, but they were stifled when he relived the interview, as he had done every hour since. How confidently he had gone in, primed with his latest, rather radical, conclusions on the life cycle of Roger’s ant. But they had plied him with questions on “access” and “diversity”, words he barely understood. Slowly the familiar faces across the table had turned into strangers. When asked to improvise a mission statement for the department, he had fallen dumb.

            Betrayal gnawed at his vitals. All he could hope was that the post might go to one of the external candidates, undistinguished as they were, and he be spared the last humiliation. He shook his head to dismiss these thoughts and forced himself to work. He looked longingly at his microscope, on whose slide he had been dissecting out the mouthparts of a mosquito, but he had chores to do before he returned to that. Gloria liked to talk about empowering people and one of the things she had empowered was Edwin to do was answer the e-mails that trickled into the department from the public. This, apparently, was something to do with “access”. Gritting his teeth, he logged on to the PC he had struggled to master. Damian Hargreaves had found a hairy-legged spider in the oranges his wife had brought home from Chingford Tesco.

                        “You being an Expert on insects could you tell me if it is a tarantuler?”

            Edwin attacked the keyboard vigorously.

                        “Dear Sir,

                        The spider is an animal of the order of Arachnidae, not an insect, and I am unable to advise you …”

            He backspaced a few letters and put “not” in capitals and then in bold. Having settled Damian’s hash, he turned to Yvonne Fairbrother (Mrs).

                        “Walking in the woods near my home around dusk, I was startled when a large black beetle ran across my path. It was the biggest I have ever seen, about five inches long. It made a strange squeaking noise as it ran. Could it be some tropical species?”

            A bird, you foolish woman. A bird.

            He toiled over the letters, missing the lunch for which he had no appetite, until he heard the full-bodied chime of the clock in the lobby. Others stirred in the neighbouring offices but Edwin was first to the lift and he went up in the big steel box with only Ted Mackley, Curator (Coleoptera), for company.

            ‘Rather good, that Bulletin article of Gloria’s on hawk moths.’

            ‘I’m pleased to see that she’s finally taking a healthy interest in adult males,’ said Edwin, as if the matter were of no consequence to him. ‘I’ve always thought that pupa a dead end for the serious researcher.’ His heart was beating so hard he wondered if Mackley could hear it.

            Moments later they had joined their colleagues in a murmuring huddle in the meeting room. The oils of the museum’s founders in their gilded frames, the oval table with the long reflections of carafe and glasses in its veneer, were just as they had been at Edwin’s interview, but what a change had been wrought in him. He grimly noted Gloria sitting at the table, all crisp suit and highlights. The head of the department rose and cleared his throat. The sun glinted on his spectacles as he shuffled the notes of his speech. Very difficult decision … such a distinguished shortlist … one candidate stood out …

            Edwin did not hear the name. he did not need to, for Gloria’s  poise flickered briefly and she broke into a beam full of large white teeth, a blush mantling down to the half inch of cleavage at the V of her blouse. Edwin felt as if a trapdoor had opened beneath his feet, plunging him into darkness.

            Then Gloria rose, head bowed in mock modesty but still beaming, saying something about a great honour. Bottles of wine had been opened but Edwin, making apologetic sounds, slid past the drinkers and left the room, ignoring curious glances. He ran down the steps to the floor below to collect a jiffy bag from his desk, and then took the lift to the two mighty doors at the foot of the tower. He stepped into the grandeur of the museum, with its vaulted ceilings carved with ammonites and ant-eaters in high relief. Here all was noise and colour, but Edwin was numb to the crowds wide-eyed at the Victorian taxidermy and the dinosaur skeletons. He strode past the gift shop full of plush toys and came to a small, overlooked door. Reaching for the great keys swinging at his belt, he unlocked it, to halt in utter darkness while he groped for the light switch.

            It was just a store room where the maintenance staff left overalls and buckets. Edwin twitched a tarpaulin off a window sill and revealed a Perspex tank, of the sort you might buy in any pet shop. Inside, in a bower of moss and twigs, slumbered four plump, mottled beetles. Anthrenus verbasci, the museum beetle. It had not taken him long to find and trap them when he had ducked under the tape on the second floor, at dusk on the day of the interview. He had kept them here since, like a spy hoarding a cyanide pill. Now he took the lid off the vivarium and tipped the beetles one by one into the jiffy bag.

            Back through the museum, as quick as he could, and then the lift up to his deserted floor. He could hear conversation and the clink of glasses from the meeting room and he knew he would not be disturbed. Bracing himself, he pulled open one of the filing cabinets and spilled a beetle from the bag. It fell on its back. Edwin tipped it with a fingernail and it scuttled off down the slides, a living thing among the dead. Then he chivvied its mate to join it. Edwin had been careful to trap two breeding pairs. They were torpid now from the heat but soon they would begin to feed. He shut them in and crossed the room to another cabinet, pulling out a drawer at random. He shook the next beetle out, noting with satisfaction that it was a female heavy with eggs. The last creature was hiding in the deepest fold of the bag and it was a struggle to persuade it into the light.

            Edwin started as he heard a rustle behind him. The sound grew in intensity, matched by his quickening heartbeat, till the room was full of noise. Palpitating movement and moist rhythmic chewing vibrated through the dusty cabinets and roared in his ears. He staggered against one of the whitewashed pillars. As he struggled for his footing, the racket began to fade. Imagination, he told himself, pressing his hand to his chest. He willed the silence back. When the great room was still again, he emptied the last beetle into its home. Breathing deeply, Edwin slammed the drawer shut and commended all he loved to dust.