The Secret Knowledge

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This work was partly supported by a grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, for research carried out at Newcastle University. Further work was done at St John’s College, Durham, while the author was visiting fellow at Durham Institute of Advanced Study.

Yvette has been told that the big wheel is incredible, but now that she stands before it in the park there is something comfortingly domestic about its appearance. The great metal-spoked circle is like an oversized bicycle wheel, slowly whirring its passengers upwards into amazement as they stand in the blue-painted wooden carriages dangling merrily from the revolving rim. From where she watches, Yvette is unable to make out individual faces through the glass panes of those distant compartments; instead she sees the eagerness of insects.

With the warm July sunshine on her neck, Yvette waits, pricking the shadowed gravel at her feet with the point of her folded parasol. Pierre ought to be here by now; he said noon, but the clock on the tower shows ten minutes past twelve, and among the throng of people in the park, his face remains invisible to her. What could have detained him? He has never been as late as this, his delay only confirming the ominousness she detected already in the note he sent, cryptically referring to a “matter of great significance”. It seemed an implicit proposal of marriage, now it feels more like a warning of disaster. He’s had second thoughts. He loves another.

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