Free The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress by Beryl Bainbridge

had just left her for a younger woman and their son was taking it badly. He was called Milton, the boy that is, after the town in which he’d been born, not the poet.
    Harold was quiet after that, mute as the van advanced to wards a smudge of mountains. Looking sideways at him, at the tuft of his beard, the brown spots sprinkling his podgy hands, the constant jiggling of his left knee, Rose was convinced he was a soul immersed in darkness. Perhaps that was why, like herself, he was anxious to find Dr. Wheeler. Many years before, when she’d thought nothing could save her, Dr. Wheeler had shown her the way. He’d never spelt anything out, never mentioned God, only nudged her towards the belief that redemption was necessary.
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    Wanakena was not far from Canada, if you were a bird. It was Red Indian country and originally settlers had come here to cut down trees and work in Benson’s mine. Harold didn’t know for sure what the mine had produced, although he thought it might have been iron ore. Rose had heard of that at school, along with oxbow bends. There was a small village, a forest, a graveyard, a lake and a river. Some of the gardens blazed with sunflowers and there was a shop selling Indian relics. Harold said there was nothing of interest to be bought save pretend scalps and arrowheads.
    His friend Mirabella lived in a one-storied timber house on stilts, wooden steps leading down to a patch of earth entirely surrounded by trees. She had to keep the lights on because the sun never got through the windows. She was middle-aged, handsome, and wore jodhpurs though she hadn’t got a horse. When she spoke she sounded very confident, bossy, rather like Mrs Shaefer. Rose thought it was because American women weren’t shy of appearing superior to men.
    The rooms in the house were spacious, with vast fireplaces and a lot of oak furniture, yet Mirabella kept apologising for the lack of amenities. She explained she always came here at the beginning of June to escape the heat of her apartment in New York. ‘You wouldn’t believe,’ she told Rose, ‘how often I’ve been in danger of frying.’
    Dr. Wheeler wasn’t there. Mirabella said that she hadn’t set eyes on him for two years, but a letter had arrived a couple of days ago mentioning that he believed his friend Rose was in the States and that he could be contacted at an address in California.
    Harold didn’t seem surprised, didn’t even ask to see the letter. He told Mirabella that Shaefer sent his love, then collapsed onto one of the many sofas. ‘Oh yes,’ he remembered, ‘Jesse wanted me to remind you that you still have his poster of Lyndon Johnson dressed as a cowboy.’
    Mirabella was very chatty. She talked about a Miss Durant and a Miss Jenks who had come from New York in 1910 and bought up ten houses, including the one they now sat in. Possibly, although in those days it had never been brought into the open, they had been more than just friends. There was a photograph of Miss Jenks above the main fireplace. She was very old, mouth a grim pencil line, and wore a man’s cap on her head. Before her, a Madame Tweedy, a music teacher, had lived here scandalously with a lumberjack. When he died, mysteriously, from a gash in his throat, a girl had replaced him, one who looked so like a leopard, all spots and snarling teeth, that the villagers had run away screaming. ‘I’ve a drawing somewhere,’ Mirabella said and, jumping up, began rummaging in drawers.
    â€˜Could I see Dr. Wheeler’s letter?’ Rose asked.
    â€˜Later, later,’ Mirabella promised. Unable to find the drawing of the leopard girl she embarked on a story about a desolate family, the McDills, who had lived across the Oswegatchie River. ‘They had four children,’ she said, ‘two girls and twin boys, one with red hair.’
    â€˜Did he say why he keeps moving?’ said Rose.
    â€˜He