Understanding the story

1. Where and when does this story take place?

2. What strikes you about the description of the street at the beginning?

3. Does Mrs Drover feel at home in her own house?

4. What sort of a man is the caretaker?

5. What catches Mrs Drover's attention as she is about to go upstairs?

6. What change in atmosphere has taken place when Mrs Drover looks out of her bedroom window? How does this affect the atmosphere of the story?

7. Why does the letter frighten Mrs Drover?

8. How is this fear reflected in the description of her?

9. How is she affected by the striking of the clock?

10. Describe her relationship towards her fiance.

11. What does the man say that has relevance to Mrs Drover's present situation?

12. Was she really in love with him? Give evidence from the text.

13. How did she behave after the news of her fiance's presumed death?

14. Did she remember her promise?

15. "In this house the years piled up". What does this phrase mean and how does it describe her relations to the past?

16. In what way does the empty house affect her mood and her sense of reality?

17. Can she find a rational explanation for the letter's presence? Can you?

18. Why doesn't Mrs Drover leave the house immediately?

19. What aspect is missing from her memories of August 1916, and why is it important?

20. how does the description of the street increase the sinister atmosphere of the story?

2l. What happens before she gets into the taxi that might have warned her?

22. Who is the taxi-driver?

Style and language

1. How would you describe the style of the story, particularly the vocabulary used? How does it compare, for example, to Sillitoe's style in the preceding story? Give examples from the text.

2. Imagery. In this story, many inanimate objects (furniture etc.) described as if they were living things. Find examples. What effect this have on the atmosphere of the story?

3. Find examples of internal monologue and say how they reveal to Mrs Drover's growing sense of alarm.

Further discussion

1. Could this story really have happened? Can you think of a logical explanation for the ending?

2. Was there anything "demonic" in the relationship between Kathleen and her "lover"? Quote from the text.

3. How does Mrs Drover's character change from the beginning of the story to the end? How does the author convey this change?

4. Do you think it is fair for the "demon lover" to come for Mrs Drover after having kept her waiting for so many years? What symbol of her promise does she still bear? In what other contexts have you come across marks of this kind?

5. "Things done in our youth and now long forgotten have a strange way upsetting our lives when we least expect them to". Discuss this statement in relation to the story and your own experience.

6. This story is not a horror story, but it contains several elements of this genre. Discuss the similarities and differences.

7. Give a full stylistic analysis of the text.