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could find work as a research assistant in the college, or at Hamilton’s observatory, but my income would be paltry. Helen’s father would not consider me an option.
    Miss Joyce knocked on my chamber door and said, ‘John, may I speak with you a moment?’
    ‘Just a minute.’
    I looked at the damp brown patch in the corner of the ceiling. It had seeped into the stucco work and over the cheek of a plaster cherub, like a birthmark, or a bloodstain. The mosaic tiles in the hearth were cracked and their colours faded. The wallpaper by the window box had begun to peel away, revealing an old pattern which had not been put up in my lifetime. Mr Stokes would not permit his daughter to live here.
    Miss Joyce knocked again. ‘I really must speak with you.’
    I walked past the door to place Lloyd’s volume on my shelf, then thought again, and clasped it beneath my elbow.
    When I opened the door, Miss Joyce glanced down at the book. ‘I’m sorry to disturb your studies.’
    ‘Not at all.’
    ‘I wanted to tell you that I have dispensed with the services of your father’s physician.’ When I said nothing she added, ‘He isn’t making him any better.’
    Dr Moore had been a mainstay of our house for much of my life, attending when anyone in the family suffered from poor health or infection. He had nursed my mother through her final illness. I remembered overhearing a conversation he had held with my father on the landing outside their room, telling him there was no longer any hope. I was only ten, and sat perched on a step out of sight beyond the return. I recall holding my breath so as not to betray my presence.
    I could have argued against Moore’s dismissal, but I didn’t wish to become embroiled in my father’s care. ‘Whatever you think best.’
    Miss Joyce had already hired two new doctors – Blythe and Warren – who, she claimed, had managed to cure her sister’s rheumatism after years of suffering. They were both homeopaths, and immediately put my father on a course of infinitesimal prescriptions. I occasionally bumped into them as they prepared tonics in the kitchen. Their meticulous measurements, with phials, tinctures and droppers, reminded me of the experimental workbenches in college.
    Arthur Stokes was a medical student, and I spoke to him about the treatments one evening in the Eagle. He looked at me with concern. ‘I fear if your father has stopped receiving care from allopathic doctors then it’s inevitable he will suffer a decline.’
    I wasn’t sure what to make of that. That the current ministrations might hasten my father from the world wasn’t all that troubling. Rather, I feared the new doctors would prove adept at keeping him alive until his money ran out.
    Soon enough, every spare penny in the house was going towards the new medical bills. A meagre allowance that I received each month was halted, and for the first time in my life I was penniless. Of course I wasn’t destitute – my college fees were paid up, I had several rooms in the house in which I lived undisturbed and could survive on the provisions brought in. However, I could no longer buy new books, or a bottle of wine, or a bouquet of flowers.
    Seeing Helen again became a preoccupation. I skipped afternoon lectures to walk home by Merrion Square, aware that she took a stroll in the enclosed park each day with her elderly governess, Mrs Bruce. The red-brick terraces of the square hem in a large and rambling pleasure garden, with tall trees, manicured lawns and serpentine paths. I had no key, so could only skirt the iron rail, but occasionally I caught Helen’s eye as she walked within.
    One afternoon, a woman with an infant in a baby carriage approached the gate from the inside. She withdrew a key from her apron and attempted to back out, but the sprung hinges of the gate closed against her. I took hold of the railing and said, ‘Allow me, madam.’ She thanked me, called me a gentleman, and didn’t mind that I walked past