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their trust by letter! What friends are we to hide behind the mail?’
    ‘You would prefer, perhaps, to write a sonnet?’
    ‘I would prefer that you and Mr Howells would sit down face to face …’
    ‘You want me then to take an empty wagon back to Wherrytown to tell a man whose face we do not know that we desire to purchase better, cheaper soda somewhere else? The man will take me for
a fool, as, Aymer, I take you.’
    ‘What of your duty, then? What of your conscience?’
    ‘And what of yours?’
    ‘My conscience remains clean.’
    ‘Then you can take the wagon west. Why don’t you? Or take the coastal boat, for all I care. Our father might have left the running of this works to me, but I do not think he
stipulated how Duty and Conscience should be divided.’
    ‘Well, then, if it cannot be you it must be me. I will travel to see Mr Howells with this bad news.’
    ‘Then do so, sir. And do as little mischief as you can.’ And may you break a leg en route.
    Now Aymer was ensnared. He had no appetite for such a long and testing journey. He wasn’t suited to the countryside. He’d never travelled far from home. But once arrangements had
been made for his departure for Wherrytown he found himself aroused and impatient. Perhaps when he was away from the city and in a place where surely he might count on some respect, he could find
for himself what more than Justice and Reform he had desired for all his adult life, a loving country wife.
    So Aymer Smith had taken the Ha’porth of Tar on the journey west in a fearful and a hopeful mood. He was surprised how travel unleashed him, how he could talk to sailors on the boat
with a freedom absent from his home and city life. He was encountering, also, that other liberation which is the gift of travel and unfamiliar places. He – the virgin and the masturbator
– was poised, engorged and shallow-breathed with expectations and desires. So now, in Wherrytown, his tears short-lived, his letters written, he left his cold room at the inn ostensibly in
search of George, but mostly to sniff round like a dog, to poke his nose in rooms, to seek a friendly face, to find the margins of his new emancipation. He went up two flights of steps to reach the
ground-floor parlour. George was sitting with a pipe.
    ‘Is there a boy to take these letters for me?’ Aymer asked.
    ‘There’s only me.’ George took the letters. ‘What a place! No boys, no boots, no chambermaids! No tips!’ he said, and walked out of the parlour without leave.
    Aymer stood with his back to the grate which Mrs Yapp had cleaned and prepared, and waited for the lighting of the woods. He hadn’t been waiting more than thirty seconds when a young
couple entered from the lane, a thin-haired man with spectacles and a woman without a bonnet but kept warm by a tiered shoulder-cape which fastened at her chin. She would have been a fool to wear a
bonnet. Her hair was held in one loose tress by black ribbons. It was so sandy in colour and so buoyant that Aymer could not prevent himself from staring.
    ‘We were hoping for a bit of fire,’ the young man said, rubbing his hands at the empty grate.
    ‘Indeed, we all were hoping for some fire, but, it seems, our hosts do not subscribe to wasting warmth on guests,’ said Aymer, blushing. He held his hand out for the man to shake.
‘Aymer Smith. I’m rooming here. On business.’
    He put his hand in Aymer’s. ‘And so are we, except it’s not on business that we’re here. We’re taking passage on a boat to Canada. If it ever comes! It was due two
days ago, but there’s no sign of it. My wife and I have been walking on the quay and there are no sails on the sea except for fishermen.’
    ‘Then you are emigrants?’
    ‘We are. God Save Us. I’m Robert Norris. And this is Mrs Norris and has been for a fortnight now. Katie is her name.’
    Aymer put his hand out once again and Katie put her hand in his. It was cold and smooth and dry, as flimsy and as