Living at number 16 Evelyn Mews, Matilda often thought, was like living in a poem. Number 16 was a townhouse of bright whitewashed brick with black shutters and a glossy black roof. The slender chimneys were black too, as was the lamppost that watched over Matilda at night, bending its glowing head through the trees. In the morning the sparrows twittered in the leaves and the sun shone in pools in the shallow gutters.

Matilda had moved into Evelyn Mews when her sublet began three months ago. Since then she had adopted certain habits. She took to wearing gloves to work, taper-fingered black kidskin. At breakfast she poured her milk from a curved china jug instead of the bare carton. At bedtime, she read the poetry of John Keats, occasionally glancing at the sliver of moon through her curtain. She loved these Romantic whisperings from a bygone time-the zephyrs and nightingales and Grecian urns. She delighted in the smell of the splendid leather-bound volume with its slender red ribbon to mark her favorite passages. Matilda copied out each with the utmost care, guiding her marbled fountain pen across a creamy new sheet of stationery. She enjoyed rereading Keats's words in her lovely calligraphic script, and she found it exciting, even uncanny, how well the poet understood her.

Matilda had altered certain mannerisms, too. No longer did she show her teeth when she smiled, bold white teeth that used to gleam atop a flame red underlip. She had mastered a closemouthed smile, which involved pursing her lips, coaxing forth dimples; the smile was accompanied with a light lift of the eyebrows and a mirthful narrowing of the eyes. As for the lipstick she'd worn in Chelsea, she'd done away with it the day she'd moved. Razzle-Dazzle, it was called.

"All the lovely people / who live in Evelyn Mews," she thought to herself as she slid back the lacy grid of the elevator with a black-gloved hand. Slowly she began to descend, as if down a great iron vine. A verse would describe each tenant. On the top two floors, the Lester sisters, tending their greenhouse with the passion of spinsters. Mr. and Mrs. McCauley on the first floor, aging and pensive with their books and clocks. Herself, dark and lively, on the third. On the second, Mr. Barrett with his frank, gentle face, boyish despite the thinning hair.

She often met Mr. Barrett in the elevator on her way to work. He carried an alligator-skin briefcase with a dull brass buckle; he was probably a lawyer or a financier. Matilda looked forward to the meetings. There were women who wouldn't notice how attractive he was, for Mr. Barrett wore no pomade or cologne, no broad, flashy ties. But Matilda was more perceptive, her tastes more refined. She admired Mr. Barrett's suits with their well-cut shoulders and sleeves; he wore them so casually, a mark of good breeding. He had a cleft in his chin and clean, hairless hands, the kind that would caress a woman gently, as if she were made of glass. Matilda loved his mellow voice-it reminded her of syrup-and the soft, light way he pronounced his consonants. They gave her goose bumps sometimes, especially the Ss and Ts.

And Mr. Barrett was so courteous to her. He would be hurrying out too, but he always had a friendly word, asking how she was getting along in her new apartment or commenting on the smell of rain in the air. Matilda would give a soft, rapturous reply and smile her new smile. When Mr. Barrett smiled back, his eyes were very blue, but Matilda noticed the fine lines that gathered beneath them, etched there by some unspoken melancholy. Melancholy about his wife, perhaps-Mrs. Barrett, who would have to be included in the poem.

Mrs. Barrett was what Adelaide, Matilda's Chelsea flatmate, would have called a well-kept woman. She did not work, so Matilda saw her only rarely, stepping swiftly into the elevator before striding off for an appointment with a friend, hairdresser, florist; Matilda could only guess. But these brief brushes of contact always chilled Matilda somehow, made her breasts feel floppy, her hair unkempt. Mrs. Barrett was tall and very thin and she favored a dark angular coat tied at the waist. Her faced was high-boned with consumptive cheeks, apple-red spots on papery white. Lavender veins crept around her eyes. Her long, lean hands were unadorned except for a wedding band and a diamond solitaire together on her fourth finger. Once Matilda saw her at the market, graceful in wool, a string bag hanging from her shoulder. There was a nervous fragility about her as she selected tomatoes and feathery lettuces, scrutinizing the leaves for bruises or browning. She fingered persimmons, saucer-shaped cheeses, a blue and white package of flour. Her wide gray eyes were oddly static amidst the flurry of movement, her expression rigid. Fear-at that moment Matilda recognized it. Fear gnawing at Mrs. Barrett, gently but steadily, from within.

The Fox-in-the-Hole Opera Company, with its contemporary adaptations of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, was quite the rage. Their Mikado was presented entirely in blue and gold-both the costumes and the minimal geometric sets-with choreography suggestive of No drama. Iolanthe was staged in the seventies, a satire on feminism with the chorus of liberated fairies challenging the chorus of sexist lords. Deirdre Barrett was well aware that her husband had pulled more than a few strings to obtain tickets to tonight's opening of Patience, advertised to "bring Gilbert and Sullivan out of the closet."

She had her suit dry-cleaned for the occasion, a long skirt of olive silk with a cropped jacket, worn with pearls. She sprayed her short hair into a stiff roll at the back of her head and touched her lips with gloss. She looked in the mirror and felt elated, romantic. The night was clear, with a full moon and even a few stars visible, unusual for the city. Deirdre missed the stars she used to see back in Staffordshire. She wanted to walk to the theater, despite the cold weather. Maybe Roland would be game to bundle up and breathe out streams of frost along the way.

But when Deirdre saw him pacing in the vestibule, she was struck silent. For a moment she hadn't quite recognized him, as if he'd changed during some absence. His build, maybe-had he grown slighter? And when had his skin acquired the sheen of a middle-aged man-over the nostrils, the bumps of the forehead? It wasn't until Deirdre had fastened her seat belt that she remembered about the walking. Not that she would bring it up now.

Throughout Patience, she watched his feet. They too seemed different. Each time a song was performed they started a light tapping. They appeared detached from his body, foolish and mechanical. Tap tap tap as Bunthorne gallivanted about the stage with a lily. Tap tap tap as Patience and Grovesnor moaned "willow waly, O!" into each other's eyes.

"Quite daring, I thought," Roland commented as he drove home. "Bunthorne openly gay, yet with his harem of girls. Quite an acrobat, too. Not much of a singing voice, but it hardly mattered." He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. "Weren't you in some G and S company in college?" he asked when his wife remained silent.

Deirdre was listening to the cars on the road. There was something calming about the eddies of traffic, all spilling in the same direction. She and Roland were safe for now, surrounded on all sides by cars that flowed together at the same pace. Back at home, things would be less settled. Their return would occur as an abrupt series of halts. The chill of inevitability as Roland's key probed the lock, jagged metal ridges sliding into place. A slam of the door after they walked in, her heels clicking, his soles shuffling their casual rhythm. The silence of expectation, or was it dread? But he had asked her a question.

"No," she said after a moment. "Strindberg."

She turned to smile at him, hoping she hadn't sounded curt. He stared ahead, his gaze drifting through the tinted glass of the windshield. On the steering wheel his hands were still.

It wasn't worth it, after all-the new stockings with the seams down the back, the ringlets taut from the curling iron. Fermin Blore wasn't the type to notice. His gaze was broad and bleary, moving from Matilda's thighs when she sat, the barstool drawing up her pleated skirt, to her breasts when she leaned in for her second sherry. Matilda disliked the way his palm rested on the back of her stool, impeding her movements, while his other hand clutched a strongsmelling ginny drink. As he drank he breathed wheezily through his nose, which was covered with large pores.

For a while she tried to do her best, asking him questions about telemarketing, complimenting him on his raise. He answered slowly, his tongue sloshing a little in his mouth. Finally she left him talking loudly to another fellow at the pub, also beefy and oafish, with hair like the bristles of a lint brush.

Outside the fresh night air flooded Matilda's face. She breathed deeply. She shook out her hair, which smelled of cigar smoke, and ran her fingers through the voluptuous curls. Why had she agreed to go out with Fermin Blore? He had good prospects, Deena had told her at work; he was a real gentleman with nice manners, not just a boy. Deena was always on the phone. Her giddiness was catching as she stage-whispered across the office, her hand cupped over the mouthpiece, gum cracking between bright teeth. Matilda should see his clothes, she had exclaimed: a tweed jacket, a gold cigarette case! But in the bar the jacket was tight over his fat arms, revealing hairy wrists. He hadn't even offered to see her home.

Not that Matilda had wanted him to. She was a good walker, she decided; her stride felt lithe and free. Soon she would be in her apartment. She would wash her hair and comb it shining and wet over her shoulders. Wrapped in her black and white kimono, she would take out her book of poetry and brew a cup of Ceylon tea. It would be pleasant to reread "To Autumn," munching perhaps on a yellow pear.

At last! A row of lamps, warm and golden. She had reached Evelyn Mews. Behind her was the pub with its grease-stained bar; behind her were flatulent men with broad hips and big gullets. She looked up at her house, rising into the night so pale and quiet, like a shy girl. Except for the second floor, where the lights were still burning. Two windows, bright and square, as if he were waiting for her.

The next morning, Roland Barrett glanced at the folded sheet of paper in his wife's hand. "Something in the morning post?" he suggested, pouring milk.

"No. No, Roland." Deirdre Barrett's voice was strangely hard. "Look at it."

Obediently but with an impatient furrowing of the brow, her husband unfolded the paper. Written in a sloping, spidery hand such as schoolgirls use, were the lines:

I met a lady in the meads,

Full beautiful-a faery's child, Her hair was long, her foot was light,

And her eyes were wild.

Roland Barrett blinked and handed it back. He shook his head. "Some mistake, I suppose." He crushed toast into his mouth, his lips greased with butter. He was in a hurry, his gestures showed: the shuffling in his seat, the swift reaching and chewing. "Maybe an advertisement for makeup. Lipstick or something."

His eyes didn't linger on her in that lazy way they once had; instead they flickered and jumped. He had secrets that he kept as carefully as he now kept his hands, nails flat and clean, wrist cuffed with a flat gold watch. He shook his napkin, rose, and kissed her cheek. "I have to run. See you around eight."

Deirdre reread the lines of poetry. Keats, wasn't it? He had been one of her favorites when she was in her teens. The handwriting on the slip of paper was not unlike her own when she was a second former at Halliwell. Perhaps the note was intended for her, not Roland. Perhaps it was some sort of sign. She had always thought herself sensitive to signs. Gypsy blood, Roland used to say, wrapping her straight black hair around his hand like a skein of silk; it was long then, like the hair of the woman in the poem. He would tease her about her "aura," mentioning the stray cats that flocked to her during their honeymoon in Venice, the butterfly in Lake Como that alighted on her hand. Unable to afford a diamond at the time of their engagement, he'd presented her with a ring set with a piece of misty green glass. For his "gypsy bride," he said.

There were no grounds for any of it, she'd remind him. Her people were English for generations; no babies had been switched along the way. But he clung to his romantic picture. Her father was, after all, a breaker of horses, her family huge and exotic-five girls and two boys, the mother dead but reputedly very beautiful. They lived among Oriental carpets, illustrated books the size of tablets, collections of curiosities mounted in every room-coins, arrowheads, shards of Roman glass. At Christmas the whole family clustered before the huge, fierce fire and drank mulled wine loaded with cloves and orange slices-a secret recipe only the women of the family knew. "Witches' brew," Roland would murmur in Deirdre's ear, his voice thick with desire. The next morning they were still quietly thrilled at what they'd attempted in the close, dark heat. She'd wanted a boy, with Roland's blue eyes. He wanted a girl, with Deirdre's coloring and her long proud neck.

Something had changed since then, something inarticulable. Maybe it was the apartment, Deirdre wasn't sure. But a hush had fallen over them. A dimming of the light. No, that wasn't quite right, the light was brighter than ever, but white and cold, slanting through the high, gaunt windows. It broke like glass fragments across the bed and carpet, jagged across the polished floors. Opposite the windows moved shadows of leaves, a constant, barely perceptible trembling. She and her husband spoke to each other at breakfast and dinner. During the day, thoughts pooled unsaid about the empty kitchen table, the dented armchair in the parlor, the grandfather clock with its silent, swinging pendulum.

It was so different from the house where they had lived after they were married. Comfortable and slovenly, it sprawled its creaky bulk along a soggy hill. Grasses bunched around the porch. In back was an untidy garden full of weeds and fallen petals; you could smell the earth when it rained. Somehow they'd found the furnishings charming-paunchy sofas, heavy, half-rotten curtains, a battered oak table so long they passed the salt by shuttling the shaker back and forth at high speed. There were giant wardrobes and a gramophone and ample room for children.

But as it turned out, there would be no children. Deirdre had to accept the truth when Roland suggested this apartment in London. It was modest but well appointed, he'd told her, it would suit them just fine. And so they moved to this fashionable cul-de-sac and set themselves up on the second floor.

Continues...

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Excerpted from The Winter Without Milk: Stories by Jane Avrich Copyright © 2003 by Jane Avrich
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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