Room 2D

Story from Februs 31.   Colin Weaver’s sequel to  The Institute Girl The stretch of pavement in front of the Birley Institute is about fifty yards long. Lucinda Horton had walked along it twice, and was in the middle of her third preoccupied perambulation when she became aware that someone had fallen into step beside her. She turned her head and looked into the pale, plump, bespectacled face of a fiftyish man with the general appearance of an undertaker’s chief clerk. ‘I was wondering’,’ said the man, with a grimace meant for a smile, ‘if you were — er — looking for business, love?’ After a moment’s stunned surprise, understanding came to her, and the expression on her face was obviously an adequate answer. The man backed away hastily ‘Sorry!’ he said. ‘My mistake! No offence meant!’ He was almost running as he turned away and crossed the road. Staring after him, Lucinda uttered two explicit words which would have...

Story from Februs 25 by Colin Weaver When the Birley Institute was built in 1830, the wealthy businessmen who were financing it out of civic pride and the hope of a mention in the Honours List could not agree about its purpose. Should it be a museum, an art gallery or a library? The local firm of architects and builders who had got the contract under The Old Pals Act tried to please everyone, and the result was a queer, undecided mongrel of a building, like an oversized Nonconformist chapel on the outside, and with an interior which was such a maze of galleries and stairways and rooms and passages that a stranger should not enter without a native guide. At least, that is what Mr Mytton told Lucinda. After a month in Birley, the sardonic, middle-aged curator of the Institute was one of the few people she was on easy conversational terms with. The other teachers at St Jude’s were civil enough, but they were obviously suspendin...