Free Shadows & Tall Trees by Michael Kelly Page A

were told, after the anger, shame and embarrassment subsided, that the children of such close unions are frequently, and quite naturally, stillborn.

    At dusk there is a hint of pink in the red brick of the Victorian villas. The trees in the front garden darken and hover, as if about to float towards nightfall. There is no traffic and the auteur is conscious of how his every step rings clearly in the street. Yellow-gold light drenches the lace curtains in front windows. A small wooden summer house is mysterious as a shrine. Then, sooner than expected, he is there. At twilight, the white building looks almost nautical. He would not be surprised to see a funnel appear on the flat roof. Although the florist has closed, the shutters have not been drawn. The auteur can see white flowers pressing against the window pane as if they are the trapped ghosts of seabirds longing for flight.
    His appointment with the optician is inconvenient, but tomorrow he is due to fly back to Paris for a meeting on
La
Rive Gauche
after he has had lunch with his son. Now that he is no longer rich he can’t afford to turn down the optician’s offer to replace the lenses without further charge. Contacting him to make this arrangement has not been easy. He’d phoned repeatedly from the Acme Hotel and had no answer. It was late afternoon (past 5 o’clock) before he finally managed to speak to the optician’s assistant (her voice distant, muffled, possibly foreign) and he’d had to ask her to repeat what she said several times. But when at last he’d explained his predicament in sufficient detail, she told him that since the optician was working late she would find him an appointment, provided he was prepared to come after eight o’clock.
    He is one minute early. Although the front of the shop is in darkness, a cord of light is visible, shining from under the door of the treatment room. He presses a button and waits, but there’s no sign anyone is prepared to come out to greet him, although he can hear a ringing. He turns the handle and slips inside: the sound of the bell (a memory of kneeling to pray). At once the door of the treatment room swings open, as if its release has been triggered by his action.
    An empty chair held in a cone of light.
    “Please go in and take a seat. I’ll join you in a minute.”
    The voice comes from right behind him. Yet this is hardly possible since the auteur has taken no more than a couple of steps into the room. Either the man must have been pressing himself against the inside wall or he has followed him in soundlessly. The auteur begins to turns round and then stops. What if there is no one there? The front door shuts with a sharp click.
    “Thank you for agreeing to see me at this late hour,” says the auteur, making his way towards the chair.’
    “Not at all, not at all.” The voice is soft, difficult to place.
    And now he’s in the chair, hands from behind him move the head and chin rests into place. Something is being attached to the top of his skull. He can’t remember this happening before.
    “What’s that?”
    “Just a metal cap. Something of my own devising. I use it when I want to make absolutely sure that the head stays completely still. Look upwards and left. And now you’ll just feel a puff of air . . .”
    “Are we going to go through the whole thing again? Surely you must have most of the information already.”
    “Unfortunately my colleague did not keep the notes from your last appointment. No doubt he thought that because you live abroad they would not be needed again.”
    “And so you’re not the optician I saw last time?”
    The man laughs lightly, as if acknowledging a whimsical remark made by a small child.
    “I assure you I will accept no fee for this appointment.”
    A test card appears in the mirror; the letters are twigs blurred beneath ice. Lenses change in quick succession until the top two rows sharpen. And then quite plainly, on the third line from the