Free Awakening by William Horwood

the corridor towards the parlour.
    Blind panic overtook Stort at once and he cravenly returned the hat to his head and the slippers to his feet as Cluckett opened the door.
    She stared about the room and then at them, her nostrils flaring as if she had smelt trouble. She spied at once that his dressing gown was loose and advanced upon him to pull it tight once more.
    ‘I hope, sir, that your friend here is not putting wild ideas into your head about these warm clothes which I insist you must wear for a little time yet?’
    He shook his head meekly, as did Barklice.
    ‘Good. Actions have consequences, do not forget that fact,’ she said warningly. ‘Now. More tea, gentlemen?’
    While she was absent making a new brew Barklice asked, ‘Has she interfered with any aspect of your life other than your clothes?’
    ‘She tidies anything she can lay her hands on, and I greatly fear that she threatens my laboratory with order! What am I to do, Barklice?’
    ‘Stand up to her, Stort. Fight for your rights or you will be subsumed by her orderliness and put into a box whence it will be hard to get you out again except as a pale shade of your former self. Take heed, my friend!’
    Stort did not sleep well after this visit, his rest disturbed by nightmare visions of boxes, padlocks and huge females with large hands and commanding voices.
    He knew Barklice was right. Cluckett had many good qualities, but if she was to stay on as his housekeeper after he was better, as he sometimes felt was a good idea, he would need to assert himself. But that, he knew, might be no easy thing where a female of her mettle was concerned.
    The crisis soon came and centred, as he had feared, upon his laboratory.
    This untidy rambling space was at the far end of his home. Stort had cleverly subverted various nearby steam and gas pipes and live electrical supplies of human origin and used these as sources of power and light.
    A day or two after Barklice’s visit he ventured into it and was relieved to see that Cluckett had not yet touched anything.
    What forgotten treasures of his past inquiries and research he found! He spied a mortar in which he had once ground up certain ingredients with a pestle that lay nearby. He had forgotten what it was and, dipping a moistened finger in, gave it a cautious taste.
    ‘Ah! Aargh! Utterly vile!’ he cried, stepping back. ‘But now I remember! This was my last attempt to rediscover Lysurgian’s lost recipe for that powder which he claimed in a footnote to his work was very efficacious in keeping dogs at bay!’
    All wayfarers and pilgrims suffered from the problem of feral and rabid dogs abandoned by humans, which, unlike their former masters, could still see and scent hydden and enjoyed attacking them. He was sure that if he could rediscover that recipe his fortune would be made.
    ‘Hmm,’ he mused, spying some ingredients still waiting to be ground and mixed, ‘how pleasant it is to be here once more, free to try such things out, at liberty to think my own thoughts and do as I please!’
    He idly put more ingredients in the mortar, ground them, and put them in a lettered and numbered envelope that he might know which recipe it was. Such simple physical acts of experimentation, preparation and cataloguing always calmed Stort.
    But he was disturbed in these actions by the clear, firm voice of Goodwife Cluckett from the doorway.
    ‘I see you are up now, sir, and about! I am disappointed to see that you are engaged in some trivial pursuit rather than in tidying this messy place up! Let us do so now!’
    She approached one of his untidy tables and swept its contents into a waste-paper bin.
    Stort’s heart beat faster.
    Sweat broke out upon his brow.
    ‘You shall not do that!’ he said as firmly as he could.
    She stilled and frowned ominously.
    ‘My rule is,’ she said, ‘that if something remains untouched after three weeks it is probably best thrown out of the house. These items look as if they have not