The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

unrolled his trouser leg, all without speaking. But once he had taken a few paces across the room he looked back at me and said, as if pleased and surprised, ‘You know, that’s not too bad. That’s really not too bad at all.’
    I realised then how much I had wanted the thing to be a success. I said, ‘Walk again, and let me watch you … Yes, you’re definitely moving more freely. Just don’t overdo it. It’s a good start, but we must take things slowly. For now, you must keep that muscle warm. You’ve some liniment, I suppose?’
    He glanced doubtfully around the room. ‘I think they gave me some lotion or other when they sent me home.’
    ‘Never mind. I’ll give you a new prescription.’
    ‘Oh, now, look here. You mustn’t trouble any more than you already have.’
    ‘I told you, didn’t I? You’re doing me the favour.’
    ‘Well—’
    I’d anticipated exactly this, and had brought along a bottle in my bag. He took it from me, then stood gazing at the label while I went back to the machine. As I was tidying away the lint there was a knock on the door, which startled me slightly, for I had heard no footsteps: the room had those two great windows, but the wooden panelling on its walls gave it an insulated feel, as if it were the below-decks cabin of an ocean liner. Roderick called out, and the door was opened. Gyp appeared, thrusting his way into the room and trotting straight to me; and behind him, more tentatively, came Caroline. She was wearing an Aertex blouse today, tucked haphazardly into the waistband of a shapeless cotton skirt.
    She said, ‘Are you cooked, Roddie?’
    ‘Quite fried,’ he answered.
    ‘And is that the machine? Crikey. Like something of Dr Frankenstein’s, isn’t it?’
    She watched me lock the thing back in its case, then noticed her brother, who was absently flexing and bending his leg. She must have seen from his pose and expression the relief the treatment had brought him, for she gave me a serious, grateful look, which somehow pleased me almost more than the success of the therapy itself. But then, as if embarrassed by her own emotion, she turned away from me to pick up a stray piece of paper from the floor, and began complaining light-heartedly about Roderick’s untidiness.
    ‘If only there were some sort of machine for keeping rooms in order!’ she said.
    Roderick had unstoppered the bottle of liniment and was lifting it to his nose.
    ‘I thought we had one of those already. It’s called Betty. Or else why do we pay her?’
    ‘Don’t listen to him, Doctor. He never lets poor Betty in here.’
    ‘I can’t keep her out!’ he said. ‘And she moves things around where I can’t find them, and then pretends she hasn’t touched them.’
    He spoke absently now, already having drifted back to that magnetic desk of his, the bottle put aside and his leg forgotten; and when he had opened up the cover of a dog-eared manila file and was frowning down at it he began, just as automatically, to bring out papers and tobacco in order to roll a cigarette.
    I saw Caroline watching him, her expression growing serious again.
    ‘I wish you’d give those filthy things up,’ she said. She went to one of the oak-panelled walls and ran her hand across the wood. ‘Look at these poor panels. The smoke’s ruining them. They ought to be waxed or oiled or something.’
    ‘Oh, the whole house needs
something
,’ said Roderick, yawning. ‘If you know a way of doing
something
with
nothing
—no money, I mean— then go ahead, be my guest. Besides’—he had raised his head and caught my eye, and made another obvious effort to speak more brightly—‘it’s a fellow’s duty to smoke in this room, wouldn’t you say, Dr Faraday?’
    He gestured to the lattice-work ceiling, which I had taken to be ivory-coloured with age, but which I now realised had been stained an irregular nicotine-yellow by half-a-century’s worth of cigar-puffing billiard players.
    Soon he returned to his