Free Report on Probability A by Brian W. Aldiss

below the level of the knee, down, and curled round the neck of the milk bottle just above the sloping shoulders. The hand tightened its grip, lifted the bottle, raised it beyond the level of the bended knee, which unbent as the bottle was withdrawn from sight of the watcher. The delicately shod foot was withdrawn from the step. It disappeared behind the door. The door closed. A vertical line remained between door and door jamb, pointing down to an empty greyish white step.

2
    The right hand with its five soiled nails came up and pinched S’s nose at the bridge between his eyes. He screwed up his face and blinked.
    He sat down on the planking of the floor of the old brick building with his legs partly under him, resting his right shoulder against the part of the wall adjacent to the round window. Gradually, his head sank back until it also rested against the brickwork. The brickwork here was whitewashed; some grains of the whitewash came down and spread in a fine powder over the hair. The right hand remained over the face, now resting over the eyes and the eyebrows.
    After a lapse of time, the legs moved, taking up a fresh pattern on the floor. The right hand remained over the eyes and eyebrows and partially covered the nose. The left hand pressed against the rough wood of the floor, its arm supporting some of the weight of the torso. Gradually the torso leaned further over this left hand, until its position had to be changed, whereupon the left arm bent, moving upwards until the lower section of it slipped up onto the ledge under the round window. The elbow now touched the wood of the window casement, while the hand dangled in air. The right hand remained covering the eyes.
    When a measure of time had gone by, this right hand came down from its sheltering gesture on the face to rest lightly on the right thigh.
    S now opened his eyes and stared ahead.
    Outside the old brick building, a fluttering and scraping noise could be heard. This noise communicated itself to the small section of planking directly over S’s head, turning into a more persistent scratching sound as a pigeon entered the small loft provided behind the pigeon holes in the brickwork. S remained staring ahead, giving no sign that he heard these noises. Once he raised his right hand to rub his cheek with his palm.
    Slowly his gaze began to move over the room. It fastened on a picture framed and hung on the cross-beam nearest to him.
    â€œOh Jeanette.… If only I could make you understand.…”
    The picture was a representation in black and white of a man and woman in a rural setting. In the background might be seen a flock of sheep and a cornfield bathed in sun, the two divided by a grassy lane shaded by willows growing on either side of it. In the foreground, on a bank covered with flowers, were two people, depicted at a moment which left their motives for ever in some ambiguity. One of these figures was a country girl. On her knee rested a lamb and two apples; two more apples lay beside her. It could be presumed that the girl was feeding or attempting to feed the lamb with the apples.
    The girl had been interrupted in her task by the second figure, a young shepherd dressed in the fustian of a bygone age. He leant confidentially over the girl’s shoulder after having scrambled up the bank; his left cheek appeared to rest against the girl’s hair which, being long and unconfined, lay over each shoulder.
    After regarding these two representations of people for some while, S rose to his feet and moved closer to the picture; he began to examine it at eye level. He breathed on the glass so that the two representations were obscured, lifted his left arm, and rubbed the glass with the cuff of the left sleeve of his shirt.
    The picture was now clearly visible through the glass. In the foreground, the two persons sprawled on a flower-covered bank, their bodies forming a sort of inverted V, with their heads together at the top of the V, for