Free Voices in an Empty Room by Francis King

changed hands.
    â€˜I’m sure the boys will be most grateful. It’s not every day that they come to a house like this and meet gentlemen like yourselves and earn some money to give their poor mother.’
    Hugo now spent few weekends in Oxfordshire.
‘Sorry to have to abandon you and the girls yet again,’ he told
Audrey one Friday. ‘But these developments are so important. We’re
getting interest not only from people already in the field but from
others drawn into it by all the press publicity. There’s talk of a
television programme and tomorrow I have to show off the boys
to a member of the American Society for Psychical Research.’ As
soon as he had spoken, he wished that he had not used that phrase
‘show off’. He was morbidly conscious that, despite all the payments
of ten, fifteen or even twenty pounds at a time, he might be guilty
of exploitation.
    â€˜I had hoped you’d take Minnie to the bull for me. She’s just come into season. I’d take her myself but I think that Mr Burton, old-fashioned dear that he is, would be rather shocked. I’ll have to ask one of his boys to come and fetch her, even if it does mean a tip of a quid or two.’ Audrey knew nothing of the far larger tips that were being handed out to the other boys in Brighton.
    â€˜You’re sure you don’t mind?’
    Audrey nodded, biting on her lower lip. Then she said wistfully, ‘But it would be nice to have you home for just one weekend – particularly when the weather is so lovely. The girls see so little of you. They’re usually about to go to bed when you get home from College.’
    â€˜Yes, I know, I know. What is one to do?’
    Hugo also had to make guilty apologies to Sybil. Her school was a mere half-hour’s run from the farm and, over weekends, one of them had always made the journey to the other, in order that they could confer about the letters. ‘You’ve become so evasive,’ Sybil chided Hugo, when he had once again telephoned to tell her that he had posted to her ‘a whole stack of material’, since he would not be seeing her. ‘What are you up to?’
    â€˜You know very well what I’m up to.’
    â€˜Those Creane boys.’
    â€˜Yes. Those Creane boys.’
    â€˜When am I going to be allowed to see them perform?’
    â€˜You can come to their demonstration next month at the Institute.’
    Sybil was not satisfied. She felt, obscurely, that Hugo was keeping the boys from her. ‘Couldn’t I come with you to Brighton?’ she had asked early on in the experiments, to receive the answer, ‘Oh, you know what Henry’s like.’
    â€˜I’ve always got on very well with Henry.’
    â€˜Well, yes … But he’s getting increasingly misanthropic.’ He had all but said ‘increasingly misogynistic’. Lamely he went on, ‘ It’s become a business for him to have even one guest.’
    â€˜I thought he had a housekeeper. I seem to remember a baleful woman in a large hat.’
    â€˜Yes, Mrs Lockit. Aunt of the boys. It’s not a question of providing for a visitor. He just seems not to want to have them.’
    â€˜He has you.’
    â€˜Well, yes, but that’s different, isn’t it? I mean we’re such old friends and, in a sense, we’re in this investigation together as partners.’ Partners? Hugo recalled, bitterly, that to date Henry had made no contribution to the mounting expenses.
    â€˜I scarcely see you now.’ Sybil’s voice became suddenly mournful and resigned. Not at all her usual self, she might have been Audrey.
    â€˜This won’t go on forever.’
    â€˜Won’t it?’
    Putting down the receiver, Hugo felt an acute pang of guilt, a spasm of the bowels. It was almost as bad as when he has first broken the news to Sybil that he was going to get married; and what, on this occasion, intensified the