The River of No Return

different accents, the cant, the half-loving insults flying from everyone’s lips; Nick found himself listening intently to the snatches of conversation that passed him by, his brain spinning with all the old information he had forcefully buried after his jump.
    It wasn’t that there weren’t things to worry about. Kirklaw’s insinuations and the marchioness’s unhappiness and how to find a way to be with Julia and who was Mr. Mibbs and whether to betray the Guild and the looming horror of the Pale—still hundreds of years away but coming closer, according to the Guild, every day. But London was big and brassy and noisome and rude—it was full of suffering and vice and folly—and Nick loved it. This—here and now—this was his city. It was going to be hard to leave and go back to cars and high-rise buildings and underground sewers. He cast an ironic glance at Charles II, who was holding his tummy and sneering down at it all from under his monstrous wig. “You loved it, too,” Nick told the statue. “Mr. Twelve Illegitimate Children.”
    Here was a sight. Walking toward him along Frith Street, a countrified maiden in an old-fashioned homespun skirt and stiff bodice was carrying a huge basket over her arm. It was bulging with beets. She switched between bending uncomfortably forward to carry it and listing comically off to the right or the left. Beside her, an enormous mongrel dog the size of a Dartmoor pony kept pace with her quick, short steps, but it was whining and hopping along on three feet. As they turned the corner onto the square, Nick could see that the dog was harnessed to a cart; clearly this was the intended beet hauler, but the dog had sustained an injury somewhere along the way. The girl was chattering angrily at it, and it hung its heavy, jowly head in sorrow. Together, girl and dog looked like something out of a fairy tale. Nick was about to step forward and offer his help when she looked up, and he saw that she was Alva. He half raised his hand, but she shook her head ever so slightly. He carried his hand on up to his hair and tried to look as if it were the most natural thing in the world to stand in the street scratching one’s head.
    Alva and her dog continued on their mutually uncomfortable journey on around the square, eventually coming to a stop on the corner of Carlisle Street, outside a dapper yellow house with white pilasters. Alva shook her finger at the dog, and it dropped onto its belly and put its head down on its paws. She put the basket of beets into the cart, then went up the steps. The door was opened, before she reached the top, by an old woman dressed in black, and Nick watched in some amusement as Alva harangued her with the tale of the dog’s failings. Every time she pointed down the steps at the dog, it lifted its head, only to drop it again as she continued her tirade. Finally Alva went in, and the old woman came creakily down the steps. She hoisted the basket of beets and led the dog and cart around into Carlisle Street, and presumably thence into the mews.
    Nick stood considering the yellow house for a few minutes. Did Alva want him to go away and come back later? Go away and never come back? Or maybe she did not wish to be accosted by a fine gentleman while she was playing at being a beet-toting rustic. He was about to turn around and take himself to a coffee shop to consider the problem in more comfort when he saw a window on the third floor of the yellow house raise, and a white arm emerge and beckon him. He set out across the square to his first assignation with his Guild-proscribed mistress.
    * * *
    Alva received him in a green and silver salon on the ground floor of the house. He had no idea how she had managed to change so quickly from her strange street clothes into a fashionable pale pink muslin dress. The Norwich shawl draped over her elbows must have cost a fortune. Her hair was dressed elegantly but without flair; she looked like someone’s respectable wife or sister. The dog was with her but clearly still in disgrace, for it sat like a statue gazing at her, and she was refusing to meet its eye. It was a bitch, part mastiff and part Cerberus.
    After initial greetings were over, Nick petitioned on behalf of the animal. “She can’t help being in pain,” he said. “Did she pick up a splinter on your walk?”
    Alva put her nose in the air and glanced sidelong at her pet. The animal caught the glance and perked her ears, but Alva withdrew her