They are there, standing by his hall door, their backs to him at first, then turning to face him when they hear the car on the gravel. Their two faces are caught in the headlights, the one black and gleaming, thick lips drawn back, the other timidly peering at the glare. He has a few times wondered about their threatened return, resolving not to answer the doorbell without first ascertaining who was there. Slowly, tiredly, he switches off the engine of the car and extinguishes the lights. ‘Sir, we are happy to see you.’ The black woman speaks as soon as he steps on to the gravel. He locks the car door, then turns to shake his head at her smiling face. He doesn’t smile himself. He’s not in the mood for this: he lets that be seen. ‘Ten minutes out of your day, sir –’ ‘My day has been a long one. I must wish you good-night. I must request you not to come bothering me again.’ ‘Have you taken the opportunity to meditate on the story of Miss Marcia Tibbitts? As we agreed, sir?’ ‘I didn’t agree to anything.’ ‘A while back we called to see you, sir —’ ‘Yes, I know, I know.’ ‘We have been anxious to hear how my young friend’s tale has affected your troubled heart, sir.’ Mr Hilditch is startled by this. His small eyes stare at Miss Calligary until he blinks in an effort to shake out of them the consternation he is unable to disguise. ‘Troubled?’ The word escapes from him without his wishing it to, his lips unconsciously giving voice to his alarm. ‘Sir, the girl you were a helpmeet to was not of our Church. A lodger only in our house, sir. Just passing by.’ ‘You’ve got all this wrong —’ ‘That girl makes a song and dance that she is stolen from, expecting a whip-round in the Gathering House.’ ‘I’m telling you you’ve got your wires crossed.’ ‘If she said different from just passing by it isn’t true. Better to consider my young friend here tonight, sir. Better to consider her joy as she stands before you.’ The girl isn’t much to look at. Her nondescript hair grows in a widow’s peak and is pulled straight back and held with hair-clips. She is a small, rabbity girl. ‘Consider her daily trade, sir, before she came to know the promise of the Father Lord. Consider the grisly acts she sold across the counter, sir. Decapitation and viciousness, harems of animals. Unnatural practices, sir, the excitements of pain.’ Mr Hilditch, hardly hearing what is said, continues to observe the small girl. He wonders if she’ll pass on from the people she has fallen in with and end up roaming. She has the look of that, an empty look that is familiar to him. ‘Soon the folk will come from all over for our Prayer Jubilee. May I ask you, sir, if you have rooms going spare in your house?’ ‘Rooms? What’re you talking about?’ ‘Sir, the folk come to rejoice.’ Mr Hilditch wants to push past them and unlock his hall door and then to bang it in their faces. He wants to say that he will summon the police unless they go away, that they have no right to harass a person on his doorstep, that they are trespassing on private property. But no words come and he does not move forward. ‘For the future is written, sir, in the writing of certainty. There is fruit for all, heavy on the trees. And the green hills stretch to the horizon, and the corn is lifted from the land. See the foxes, sir, tamed in their holes, and the geese happy in the farmyard barn. Hear the cries of the children at play, and the voices raised in song for the Father Lord. That is the promise, sir. That is the future for the one who dies.’ ‘Why are you talking to me like this?’ Hoarsely, and again involuntarily, the question escapes from him, asked before he realizes it. His voice sounds as though it is someone else’s, some angry person shouting. He does not mean to shout. ‘Why do you keep coming here? What do you want with me?’ He pushes past them then, roughly elbowing between them. He drops his car keys and the girl picks them up and hands them to him, her fingers touching his but he doesn’t notice. ‘Do not come back here,’ he brusquely orders. ‘I don’t want to see you here again.’ Unperturbed and undismayed, Miss Calligary advises him to consider what has been said. None of us can flee the one who dies, she asserts, for the one who dies awaits us when we, too, have been cleansed and are ready for the paradise earth. And then, as though there has been no objection to the visit, no turbulence or crossness, Miss Calligary adds: ‘There is solace for the troubled, sir.’ A black hand is laid on Mr Hilditch’s arm. Miss Calligary’s even teeth are again on display. Marcia Tibbitts is writing in a jotter. ‘What’s she doing? What’s she writing down? This is a private house, you know.’ ‘What is written is the address, sir – 3 Duke of Wellington, and the number of folk you have room for when the Jubilee is at hand. Sir, with the folk around you, you would soon discover a heart-ease. Until that time come we will not desert you.’ Mr Hilditch’s hands are shaking, so much so that he cannot fit the keys into the locks of his door. He is obliged to turn his back in order to hide his agitation, and to steady one hand with the other. He does not respond to the request that he should lodge people in his house.