Shared Beds FOR THAT ONE HOUR between Walter Howells’s ‘You’re not much use to me’ and the arrival of the sailors from the Belle, Aymer viewed his task in Wherrytown with less timidity. The obligations of Duty and Conscience were unchanged, of course. He could not take pleasure in the lecture-with-regrets that he would have to deliver on ‘The Local Implications of Monsieur Leblanc’s Liberties with Salt’. But Walter Howells’s ill-manners in the parlour with Katie Norris there to witness had made the prospect of the lecture sweeter. Aymer stood at the window of his room. In the courtyard Mr Howells was leading his unshoed horse to the smith that, for the moment, he might imagine more consequential than a Smith. Aymer could be patient. He would let Mr Howells absorb the wincing implications of the letter to him and its signature. How could Aymer know that George still had the letter – both letters – in his pocket and in the fever of ‘There’s been a wreck!’ had forgotten it?
