"Dame Mizzen will see you now ..."

At once the little princess ducked her head back into the hole in the paneling, perhaps resigned to the fact I was not going to follow her, or maybe merely startled by the sound. At first I thought she had just come out to see who the stranger was, but the intensity of her scrutiny unsettled me, and, even though she had now vanished entirely into the space behind the skirting boards, I still fancied she was beckoning me to follow (although, without the complicity of her eyes, the somewhat muted entreaty seemed to distribute itself across the wall as a whole).

But I cannot go back there, my little princess; the hole may be large enough for you, but not for me. I understood that; she did not, although her expression had suggested it was this understanding on my part - rather than any real material check - that was the root of the problem. Either way, this was not a speculation that merited further thought; nothing could be gained by it. So, all told, it was a relief that Dame Mizzen would see me now. I looked up to see if Dame Mizzen's secretary had seen the little princess, but her bored expression communicated as little to me as the intensity of the princess's scrutiny. Beneath some papers there I saw what looked like the crushed spikes of a tin foil crown, tempting me to conclude that the secretary and princess were acquainted, but, like too-familiar companions, had established mutual boundaries within the same living space, and spoke only when required. The secretary's space spread out smoothly, as one should have hoped, with the shapes of piled papers crossing neatly over the wallpaper and aligning with the bottoms of picture frames, which in turn reflected the judiciously placed lights on the ceiling, which themselves provided an even and methodical coverage of the floor. The tinsel crown, I realised, had been insinuated there as an afterthought, and possibly she was not yet aware of its presence. The princess's realm, in contrast, was clearly the panelling and the spaces behind the walls. I didn't know if there were bookcases with hidden chambers, or doors that would silently revolve to present some other world inscribed on their about-face, but I was sure that, if they did exist, they surely fell within her governance.

The secretary was holding the door. As I entered the passageway she turned in behind me, presumably to make sure I didn't go wandering about the house where I didn't belong. But at that moment a side door suddenly opened ahead of me, and a partially clothed woman pressed blissfully past. As she did so, she cast a token glance into the passageway, but, not expecting to see anyone, I think she might never have noticed anything had the secretary not declared quickly: "Dame Mizzen, this gentleman was waiting to see you ..."

I realised she was striving to take ascendancy over an embarrassing situation which should never have arisen. But somehow her usage of the imperfect tense also succeeded in apportioning a small element of blame to me, as if all would have been well if the gentleman in question had continued to do as he was told, and hadn't so rashly forced himself into the corridor before he had been announced.

But the woman seemed to take it in her stride. "Very well then; sit down," she said briskly. I was certain this was not what she had meant to say. For a start, she had clearly not finished dressing herself; secondly, there were neither chairs nor any other kind of support within the hallway; so, if I were to sit down as she suggested, I would have to content myself with crouching on the floor. To cover her embarrassment, the woman abruptly embarked on a long and legalistic sounding piece of patter I was sure she had rehearsed before, ending with the words: "While I may choose to commiserate your case, and while I may subsequently commit myself to you as a result of it, let it be here noted that the duration and manner of that commitment will be determined solely by me, and by me alone." But as she spoke she kept flicking her eyes from side to side, a little whimsically, as if she hoped relief might come from the tiles along the wainscoting, and I realised her mind was running ahead, and she was already living in the confined space where the two of us would be together as we were now, but she would have run out of words to say.

Sheepishly the secretary came to the rescue. Somewhat stridently, to cover the instinctive note of apology that had entered her voice, she added: "You are aware it is more usual for those seeking business with Dame Mizzen to do so in her office, rather than a public thoroughfare."

"Thank you," said Dame Mizzen, although it seemed to me that if any response was anticipated it was I who should have given it. "Let us adjourn," she added, flashing me a conspiratorial smile. I saw then that Dame Mizzen was a natural tactician, and she had succeeded both in acknowledging her secretary's clumsy attempts to make amends, while simultaneously exonerating me from any blame.

"If you need anything else, please don't hesitate to call," the secretary continued busily - a final, presumptuous snatch at the dignity she was too suspicious to accept that she had already regained. It put me in mind of some eternally earthbound hand flailing clumsily at a bird in flight.

"Yes," said Dame Mizzen simply, her curtness once again for my benefit, or possibly for her own.

At last she turned and opened the door at the end of the passageway, motioning to me to follow her. I saw a red carpet, some bookcases, a desk and some chairs, but I did not want to sit down just yet. Something about the room invigorated me; sunlight was streaming in through a pair of French windows to the left, and I was surprised how low the ground looked outside, how high up this room appeared, until I realised that Dame Mizzen's study stood at the intersection of two streets, one of which descended sharply toward the river. When I looked back I saw Dame Mizzen had seated herself at the desk, but she said nothing. She wasn't even watching me, or making any effort to finish dressing herself. Instead, she was staring back into the passageway, apparently lost in thought.

"Dame Mizzen," I began at last. "I have come from very far away to see you. I confess it; see how easily I move about the room, as if I were still making the long strides toward you which have tested my patience as far back as I can remember. I was the form of freedom, but I lacked direction. Even now, I'm not sure I could stop moving, even if I wanted to. But you - you are tied to a desk, and much as you show it, and it you, off to good effect, nevertheless the fact remains that you are tied. And yet you have more power than you can imagine, for while I could have gone anywhere in the world, it was to you that I chose to come. And yet, if this is to be your source of strength, then by the same token I am stronger still, for it remains within my power to stand between you and that desk to which you are bound. And as I do so," I added gently, insinuating myself in the space I had mentioned, "what is the place in which I now stand?"

Dame Mizzen remained silent, and I breathed the calm, secure, promising air that seemed to hang about us with something like ecstasy. Finally: "It was you who asked the question, not I," she said, realising that I was not going to continue.

"In the instant before you spoke, I had my answer," I retorted. "But now we are just interrupting ourselves, and I've lost my train of thought."

"And I've lost mine," she said, looking at me hopefully, as if I could help her find it again. She laid both hands on the arms of the chair and straightened her back: "I am a philanthropist. That's what the little brass sign says, beneath the fanlights. You have come from far away, and therefore you urge your claim as the stronger for that. Yet you don't want my charity, it seems, and it isn't clear to me what it is you do want."

“Dame Mizzen,” I said, laughing at the confusion which did not come naturally to her, and the naively physical efforts she made to right her world by gripping the sides of her chair. A young girl had successfully hidden herself among fronds of legalese and opaque formalities, but she couldn't resist peeping out and betraying her existence, all the same. “Dame Mizzen," I repeated. "I have come to reclaim you from the place that you have gone. I never sent you there, but now I lay my claim upon you, to draw you back.”

“You lay your claim,” she said, searching for light in the word, even a little glow, perhaps. “Is that like staking a claim, or is it more like something to do with hands?”

“What it means is no more than what the two of us choose it to mean, and therefore if there is doubt or discord between us, it means no more than what we imagine. But insofar as we are united, it is the representation of a common thought, and therefore further explication is pointless. And not just this word, but any and all words, now and forever.”

"I don't know whether your argument is strong or true," she conceded. "What I do know is, I've worked here the past twelve years. I've come into my office every day without complaint. But it's what I've chosen to do, so I blame no one, and frankly, the idea that my life could have been any different ..." Speculatively she lifted up a silk scarf, first coiling it about one wrist, then uncoiling it and recoiling it about the other. Forgetting me for a moment, she held it up to her face, closing her eyes. Then she pulled it taut and suddenly looked at her hands in disbelief, as if they no longer belonged to her.

"I suppose it's never too late, though," she added laconically, putting the scarf back on the desk. Now she had stood up and opened one of the cupboards near the doorway, and I was surprised to find it filled with shirts and coats. In the same half-hearted way her hand strayed along their length and then fell back, as if she had changed her mind after all.

Everything would be revealed if she would only finish getting dressed. But Dame Mizzen would not be hurried; it was cold outside; it was bright; there was plenty to see out the windows, anyway, she said, giving a bemused shrug. And it was true, the stripped wood of the windows was attractive, holding in place a dozen shiny panes along which the frost had just started to creep. With the rectangular sunlight dappling the hearth rug you felt the snugness of the room, and the fact that, even though it was a little cluttered, it retained a kind of efficient simplicity all the same.

She put on a pair of gloves and then a sweater, apparently unperturbed that I was staring at her. Then there was a second dress, an overcoat, a further dress, countless pairs of socks. I struggled to intercede, but it was like fighting with a linen basket, and while at the end of it all Dame Mizzen might happily have crossed the Antarctic without jeopardy, I was not convinced her dignity was as robust.

Then I saw that she was smiling at me, playful and yet direct, the corners of her mouth curling with a humour that belonged to the sparkle of the fire-irons and the sun on hot cushion covers and a hundred other things, all of which I tried to gather up with her, so that we could at last be on our way, or at least cross the threshold together.

"I'm a dead weight; you can't carry me," she said, laughing. "Stop it! You'll break your back!" Now it was like carrying a blanketful of kittens; there were no bones; everything was soft, everywhere, although that also meant it was hard to hold onto. But finally we got to the door, and then I had to put her down, although I had more been dragging than carrying her, and the handle of the door turned, and we were blinking together on the other side of the jamb, dazzled by the banks of snow across the valley. And, very deliberately, she took a mittened hand out her pocket and pressed the tip of my nose. There must have been a veil, since her face had vanished, but I knew it was smiling still, and I felt like lying down as flat as I could and breathing as deep as I could, so that I could put my arms around the whole valley and contain it.