After this part of the story, the version Remus heard was condensed, folded like an accordion to fit neatly into a child's narrative. It was a song altered as my audience changed: the little boy under the big afghan, the boy in the blood-stained pajamas, the boy who still listened on my lap, the boy who could almost fit.

He was always patient when I showed him pictures from our wedding album again, a gift wrapped in blue linen and stamped with the words "Mr. and Mrs. Lyall Lupin." We had some extra pages, which we filled with baby pictures, and there it ended on Remus's face, gleefully chewing on a toy rabbit on his first birthday. Remus was very gracious about his being the culmination of both his parents' lives, the zenith of our accomplishments and gravitational centre of our universe. As he grew older, his humility increased to the extent that Remus could sometimes pretend for up to three full days that his father and I shared equal billing on the marquee of our collective soul. It is a child's privilege to live this way; and Remus deserves this privilege more than most, for he has none outside of our shared kingdom. But I think you know that this picture album is really the abridged version of a novel, and something tells me that you have read a book, or two, or seven; so I will tell you now about my story. Think of it as an addendum to your Professor Lupin's biography—how a teacher was taught. How awfully long I've waited to share this with someone new—someone who wasn't there, who won't interrupt me with their own version. How relieving it is to share a burden with a friend.


My formal position at the insurance office was as an assistant typist, under the lead of our head secretary, a stout woman called Mrs. Morris. She had fingers like bullets and could batter away at two keyboards at once, as well as take notes in shorthand at the rate of a barrister's speech. Trained as a court stenographer, Mrs. Morris had had to retire from her old job when she had her children, back in the '30s, only to be called to the Home Office to take dictation from Rab Butler Himself when the war broke out and all the top secretaries were 'gobbled up' (her words, not mine) by the War Cabinet. Her effectiveness and efficiency were somewhat frightening and left me and my fellow assistant typists with only the most medial of tasks to perform. I brewed a lot of coffee, made carbon copies, telephoned secretaries at other offices and took messages between actuaries and lawyers and more stiff-collared professionals. The job was obscenely dull, but it left ample room in my mind for more colourful adventures. I was working on a novel entirely in my head, one with about thirty characters and a labyrinthine plot which solidified gradually over a period of months spent putting rejection-of-claims letters into envelopes. Mr. Talbot, an older man who worked as a claims adjuster in a cluttered office, called me Caer, after the Irish goddess of dreams. I didn't mind; it was a nickname that suited me, especially since it sounded like my middle name, Caron. What didn't suit me was the actual work—it was of no interest to me, no challenge and I possessed no aptitude for it. After I met Lyall, I found myself envying him for his job, which sounded exciting and whimsical compared to my own.

Lyall spared few details about his work after our first meeting, except to apologize for seeming stressed about upcoming 'conferences,' or to complain about his unstructured schedule, which sounded just ideal to me (his research was completed independently; he was both always and never 'on the job.') My imagination filled in the details, elaborating on exactly what sort of animals he worked with, and all the far-away places he travelled to. Of course, nothing I dreamed up ever came close to his actual work, but at the time, it didn't occur to me to question Lyall's reticence about his job. He was a private person; that much was clear from our first meeting. I knew few details about his education, his ambitions, his passions and aversions. The mystery appealed to me—at least, it did back then. When he did offer an unsolicited tidbit of biographical information—a snapshot of a childhood memory or admission of some guilty pleasure—I felt as though I'd found a crumb of gold in the sand. I kept each gold crumb close to me, as though if I collected enough, I might be able to build a glittering castle in the sand.

Some of my more senior colleagues were well-paid, but I was young and only half-competent and drew a very modest income from my job. It was enough to cover my room and board at Saint Dwnwyn's House (I got a real laugh out of Lyall's pitiable attempts to sound out the name phonetically), bus fare and basic expenses, but there was little left over after that for recreation. I wish I could say that I lived modestly within my means, but I was twenty-two and often spent my last few shillings on a new lipstick or lace gloves, opting instead to forgo some necessity or other—like proper laundry detergent. My father delighted in telling all our relatives about how independent I was, financially and otherwise, yet I still found unsolicited cheques in the mail slipped under my door. I didn't feel too badly about the cheques—my father was soft, and to deny these gifts would injure his pride, of which he had far more than me.

It embarrasses me to admit that, in those days, it was easiest to rely on the interest and resultant kindness of men to fund my trips to the movies, to the museum or to the kind of homey pubs which, only upon exiting to fresh air, did you notice the stench hosted within. I had a few suitors when I began working at the insurance office, but after three or so months I had endured awkward dinners with all the young accountants and actuaries I worked for. My real friends were mostly back in Aberystwyth, and the office girls I ate my bagged lunch with were no better off than me. My sojourn with Lyall to Blevin's Tea was my first restaurant meal in several months—and when I took the cheque away from him, I did genuinely want to pay. Yes, there were plenty of times in the past when I made disingenuous motions to unfold my pocketbook, content in the knowledge that the gesture would interrupted immediately by my generous companions, but that wasn't one of them. As far as I knew, Lyall and I were not on a date; I felt indebted to him and it gnawed at me. Of course, I told myself it was because he had saved my life and just think of if he hadn't stepped in, et cetera, but here is the truth: I liked him and I didn't want him to think poorly of me.


"I don't think so," said Lyall, when I asked him whether I should bring an umbrella on our walk. He was waiting patiently a few metres from my front steps, dressed as usual in a three-piece suit made out of some nubby tweed that looked extremely warm for the mild weather. I joined him on the pavement and we set off for the bay. I thought Lyall might like to see all the boats docked at the waterfront. He told me on our last outing that he was from a landlocked little town in Lancashire and had never lived in a city by the sea before. I had never lived anywhere else.

The clouds were drawn together somewhat ominously, but Lyall seemed unconcerned. It was not the prettiest part of the city, where I lived; what used to be lovely old Edwardian townhouses had been chopped up into a ramshackle mix of shops, flats, dinghy rooming houses and pubs. The bricks were soot-stained, the hanging signs lined with rust.

"Do you want to take the bus?" I offered.

"I thought it was a fifteen minute walk," he said cordially.

"It is. But it's...not as pleasant a walk, this part of he city. Trust me, I live here."

"I trust you." He peered down at me through his spectacles. "But I walked all the way here and it was nice enough on my own."

"And now?"

He looked straight ahead. "It's a nice walk, as I said."

We continued along a winding street that sloped gently downhill. I picked my way carefully around the cracks in the sidewalk, mindful of my kitten heels. Lyall noticed that I had slowed down, and he adjusted his pace to match.

"Sorry about this. It's just these shoes—well," I said to his smirk, "they're very practical indoors. I can't wear plimsolls around everywhere."

"Of course not," he said dryly. In his glasses, I saw only my short, clipped fringe and upturned face.

"You don't own any plimsolls, do you?"

"No."

"You don't own rubber boots either."

"No."

"Sandals."

"I don't see the point, for someone like myself."

The salty-brine scent of the bay was drifting towards us on the breeze. I spotted several men in greying caps arguing outside a sandwich shop. A woman with a plastic scarf around her hair pushed a pram past us with two babies in it.

"What do you wear in the snow, then?" I asked.

"These," he said, nodding at his brown leather dress shoes. The uppers of his shoes were slightly cracked with wear, but both shoes were spotless, and polished to a mirror finish.

"And on the beach?"

He finally allowed himself a chuckle. "Either these shoes, or barefoot. I'd feel very odd in anything else."

"You are odd," I blurted out, without thinking. Immediately, I a bubble of embarrassment well up in my chest. "I mean—that's not how I meant to—it was very rude of me..."

"It's true," he said lightly.

"No, don't take it that way," I stammered.

"No harm done. I'm well-acquainted with my idiosyncrasies."

"Not everyone is," I said. "And most people—well, I don't think they'd admit to having any."

He thought for a few seconds. "I'm not aware of anyone without their own habits. I suppose it's like hearing your own accent, though."

"What accent?" I asked innocently.

He looked at me as though I were an invention he'd never seen before, of which he couldn't discern the purpose.

"You're making fun," Lyall murmured. "You'd made fun of me twice already today. I ought to catch up."

"I thought you'd take advantage of my ridiculous shoes, for a start."

"No, no. I wouldn't choose something like that, it's er, it's...what's the word..."

I waited for him to finish, suspending the grin that wanted to spread across my face.

"Prosaic," he decided. "Hackneyed. And so forth. No, I am going to wait until you aren't expecting it."

"I'll expect it, then."

"You'll forget."

"I won't," I insisted playfully.

He lowered his voice as we passed under a banner hung that over the street, announcing our arrival at Cardiff Bay.

"I'm very patient." And he was.


Autumn slowly deflated into winter. In the backyard of the Hound and Crown, the leaves didn't fall off the birch tree that had long-ago been cleaved into a V by a lightning strike; they just sort of disappeared one morning, to be replaced by flurries the same colour as its bark. I was writing an awful lot in my journal, and crossing out much of it. Returning to my journal several days after an outing with Lyall was an exercise in humility; when we parted, I was filled with a fluid energy, happy and agitated in equal measure. It wasn't mere interest in our budding friendship, but a kind of dissatisfaction with my life as it was, in general. Lyall lived on his own; his mysterious career was evidently very fulfilling to him and had some type of trajectory. At that time, I didn't know what exactly about me interested him, but part of his appeal to me was something I only understood years later; a complicated envy. His appearance and general demeanour were mundane to a nearly exaggerated degree, yet it only served to remind me of my first glimpse of him; stepping out calmly from behind a tree and into the sunlight, briefcase in hand, half a second after vanquishing my stalker.

Then things would settle down and I would return to normal, having gone some time without speaking to him, and all the thoughts I had spilled messily into my journal would seem simpering and ridiculous. It is one thing to be humiliated in the presence of another person, but even more pathetic to be humiliated only with one's self. My job was perfectly reasonable for someone of my education level; I was lucky enough to be able to afford a room in a very decent, respectable boarding house, and if I couldn't put a name to the strange fits of longing I experienced, then they obviously weren't very important.

I was trying to save enough money to go to night classes; I wanted to study music. It wasn't that I thought I could make a career of it, but I had long since loved my music lessons back in school. In Aberystwyth, I had played oboe in my school's band. As a child, during the war, my sister and I received piano lessons from a young woman who had been a student in a conservatory in Antwerp, but had fled to England, and then Wales right before the occupation. I didn't know it then, but the piano lessons were her method of payment for my maternal grandparents' kindness in letting her board with them. She moved on from their home when I was eight years old, in '44 and I never saw her again.

I recounted the story to Lyall one evening, when we had gone to see a jazz quartet play at a pub he liked. He told me he'd been to Antwerp, on a work trip. Apparently his work involved studying "migration patterns" in animals. What sort of animals? "European" ones. Remus never got tired of hearing stories about how naive I was, to believe Lyall's cover stories. He grew up with magic; its prevalence was as obvious to him as plumbing and electricity (though he enjoyed it a great deal more as a young child.) But Lyall had an enigmatic personality and he was very reserved; I liked that about him. He never evaded a question or seemed offended by my curiosity; in fact, my occasional inquisitiveness would elicit a wry smile.

"Do you drink?" I asked that night at the pub, as he ordered a plain soda.

"Sometimes," he said. We were sitting in one of the darkest corners of the room, the closest niche we could find to the musicians without being entirely unable to hear ourselves converse.

"I only ask because I thought—well, I thought you'd order a beer, or something."

He toyed with a paper coaster. "I didn't think it...polite."

"How so?"

He took a long breath and glanced over at the saxophonist, his gaze travelling over my head completely. "I was taught," he said, "it isn't right to do that if your companion is not going to drink. Particularly if it's, er, with a girl. That's what I was told, anyway," he added quickly. "Is that not the custom here?"

"I don't know." I blushed without embarrassment, for it was too dim in the pub for anyone else to tell. "I don't mind if you want to have a drink."

"It's quite alright," he said, "I'm not, well, I'm not very familiar with this place."

"What do you mean?"

Two little Tiffany chandeliers floated before me, reflected once on each lens of his glasses.

"I don't know what they've got here to drink," he said. "No menu."

"Doesn't every pub have the same thing?" I laughed. "I mean, I've never been to one with a menu..."

"No—of course not," he said curtly. The chandeliers waved back and forth as he shook his head. "But it's an, er, a regional thing, and I'm not from here..."

"Ah." I let it go, though I was pretty sure English pubs were exactly the same Welsh ones, at least when it came to the basics. I suppose I thought perhaps he didn't drink, and was embarrassed to admit it, for some reason. There were few young men I knew who didn't claim eminence in holding their liquor.

We stopped speaking to watch the musicians play for a long while. Every so often a couple would walk past them, cutting off our view. Men in unbuttoned overcoats pulled their girlfriends by the hand. Bobby-pinned curls bounced in and out of view as the cymbals trembled an anxious buzz.

I turned back to the table to sip my iced tea and noticed Lyall quickly averting his gaze. He seemed on edge.

"Having a nice time?" I asked.

"Yes, of course."

"Really?"

"Do you not like the music?" he said.

"No, it's lovely," I insisted. "I like to watch them play. The one in the middle—"

"What is he, tuba?"

"No, no," I giggled, "That's a French horn. But I like the drums."

"Hm."

I noticed his fingers fold and unfold over a crumpled piece of paper. He noticed me looking at it and casually put it in his breast pocket. When he spoke, his voice was reedy and clipped.

"It's an address," he said. "Bit north of here I think. Several of my friends are attending a Christmas party. I'm not sure if I should go."

I wasn't sure what to say to that. The keyboardist started up a tinkling refrain. It sounded random to my untrained ears, but what did I know about jazz anyway?

"It's an early Christmas party. Most people have family events and all that, later on in the month."

I nodded patiently.

"It's on the eleventh of December. I don't know the hosts well though, they're friends of friends, that sort of situation. At any rate...I don't know if I should go," repeated Lyall, more solemnly. I couldn't tell if he was looking at me or not; the tiny chandelier reflections hovered right over his eyes, glowing gold.

"Why not?" I asked.

"Well...work things...I ought to get some more done before I go home for the holidays."

It seemed unlikely, given the frequency of our excursions together, that he would be unable to take a single night off to attend a party.

"There's going to be a lot of people," he continued. "People I don't know..."

"But you said you have several friends going," I pointed out. Lyall had taken his handkerchief from his pocket and was now folding it neatly into triangles.

"Yes. Well. But, er, people are bringing people, and there's other things..."

"Other things."

"Mm. Other people. Things get boisterous, in the way they do..." He shifted position in his chair nervously. I tried to make eye contact with him, but it was impossible; he looked down at his handkerchief.

"Lyall."

"Yes?"

I spoke softly but plaintively. "You know that nothing you're saying is making any sense."

"Yes, I know."

"Lyall?"

"Sorry. I have a lot on my mind."

"If you're tired, we could head home..." I offered, though I much preferred to watch the musicians with a distracted and anxious Lyall than to sit in the kitchen of Saint Dwnwyn's House with my house matrons, eating papery-thin biscuits and being questioned on how effective my job at the insurance office had been so far in introducing me to suitable young men with "prospects."

"No, that's alright." He fiddled with his tie clip. Shadows passed over his face and the booth behind him as waiters hurried this way and that with drinks.

"Excuse me," Lyall said, flagging down a waiter. "Sorry. I wanted to ask—have you got a Wormwood Punch?"

I giggled.

"What punch?" said the waiter, furrowing his brow.

"A Wormwood—it's er,it's like a spirit, tastes a bit like liquorice, but it's not too sweet—"

"You mean absinthe...?" interrupted the waiter.

"No, no," said Lyall, "it's got something else in it—Firewhiskey and something, but I'm not sure if you'd have that..."

The waiter looked lost. "I could get you a Sazerac," he offered.

"A what?" asked Lyall. He looked to me questioningly and I smiled and shook my head.

"We make it with bourbon whiskey, bitters, absinthe—"

"Yes, thanks. That sounds right."

"One Sazerac," said the waiter, who seemed relieved to be back on familiar territory. "And anything for the lady?"

"Oh." Lyall shifted in his seat. "Did you want something to drink, Hope?"

"I've still got this," I gestured to the iced tea.

"You don't want anything harder?" he asked, sounding the slightest bit amused.

"No thank you." The waiter nodded to Lyall and then disappeared into the milieu surrounding the band.

Lyall cleared his throat. "I, er...well, I should I have asked you earlier if you wanted a glass of wine, or something..."

"That's alright." My cheeks felt warm. "I wouldn't know what to order," I said shyly. Now, I know that to people your age, it must seem absurd that a twenty-one-year-old girl like myself wouldn't know anything about alcohol. And it's far from true that none of my friends drank—I had emptied enough of my classmates' flowerpots into the snow back in grammar school. But at that time, it wasn't too unusual for a girl of my age to be naive to those aspects of life which seemed impossibly grown up—and to be grown up meant to be married.

Lyall's drink arrived and he tasted it. He seemed to like it enough, though I noticed that he removed the spiral of lemon peel and placed it gingerly on a napkin.

"So," I said. "Is that what you were asking for?"

"Not really," he grinned, "but it's very decent. I wouldn't normally order a cocktail."

"Me neither. I tried a martini once, and I hated it. Why would you put an olive in a drink?"

"I've no idea. But I think there are drinks you'd like."

"What kind?"

"Well, mostly cocktails, I suppose. I thought you might like a glass of champagne." He took a swig of his drink.

"You think I'd like those bright pink drinks with all the sugar and the umbrellas, don't you?" I teased. "The girly drinks?"

(In hindsight, he was correct, though that is beside the point of this anecdote.)

Lyall raised his eyebrows and took an exaggerated appraisal of me. "You are a girl."

"Some girls like beer."

"Should I order you a beer?" In the dim light, I could tell he was smiling by the glint of his teeth.

"Are you being facetious?" I said, only realizing a second later how embarrassingly flirtatious I sounded.

"Perhaps." Lyall looked down and steepled his hands together, resting both elbows on the table in exactly the manner that had been forbidden to me since childhood. He drew a long breath.

"About Christmas," he began.

"Why don't you decide later if you want to go?"

"I would, normally, but if—if you wanted to come with me, then I'd make arrangements in advance."

"Oh," was all I could think to say.

"I mean, I know people are busy that time of the year...but I wouldn't cancel at the last minute is what I mean. If you wanted to come." With a straw, he stirred his drink so violently I could hear the ice cubes clinking over the music.

"Lyall..." I said, drawing out the syllables of his name as though I were trying to learn a foreign word. "Are you inviting me?"

"A lot of people are bringing people," he said. "It's fine with the hosts—I mean, there's no imposition..."

I felt very shy all of a sudden and Lyall noticed my reticence.

"It's people I went to school with, and they're bringing friends, it's very casual. It would be, er...platonic."

What is the word used to describe the sensation of hearing what you entirely expected to hear and yet somehow being surprised by it nonetheless? Is there such a word? Lyall somehow looked to be as affected by this unnamed phenomenon as I was.

"If you'd like me to come," I said modestly, "then...I'd like to."

"If it's no bother. Really," he said into his drink, "if it's no fun, we can go home. I'll take you home, I mean. If it's dull or—or anything..."

I wondered if his friends were even more Lyall than Lyall was—if they wore nubbier tweed, re-set their watches more precisely, used a milder manner to speak with even greater rationality. My friends and classmates back in Aberystwyth would have described people like that as "posh"— which I supposed Lyall was, given his boarding school pedigree—but somehow, his mannerisms came off as more idiosyncratic than learned.

"It sounds kind of like you don't want to go," I said.

"It's alright. I understand. It's a...busy month." Lyall leaned away from a tipsy couple who laughed while passing by us so closely that the woman's hip bumped our table, sending ripples through my iced tea. He looked vaguely annoyed. "There's too many Christmas parties anyway. I don't know why people need to celebrate the same holiday ten times."

"I love holiday parties."

"Do you." It wasn't a question.

"I like parties in general. But it's...well, it's a little off-putting, if you don't want to go—I mean, they are your friends. I don't want to drag you."

He shook his head. "You wouldn't be dragging me.

"So you would like to go?"

He looked up and off to the left, at an unframed painting clouded by the residue of a thousand cigarettes. Softly, he said, "I would like to go with you."

"Then I think you ought to go, then," I said, smiling. "With me."

Lyall gave me a fleeting nod, and then the band segued into another song as Delphic as his demeanor. I watched the musicians perform, and after a waitress wordlessly removed my empty glass, I turned back to see him playing with a small candle that had inexplicably materialized during my inattention; the flames lit up our booth all crimson and bronze, and the chandeliers had disappeared from his eyes.