After a while they ate the food in the mesh basket and smacked their respective lips and said there's nothing like eating in the country. And George ate five sandwiches and belched to the north.

Then, when filled up to the chin line, he groaned an immense groan, loosened his belt and rolled on his back. He yawned and, through his gaping gold-toothed mouth, announced his intentions of sleeping the ensuing two years.

Alice said, let's take a walk and admire the scenery. She said we need it to digest all that food we ate. She said it's a crime to waste all this beauty, this is such a gorgeous, gorgeous spot. She said George are you asleep and he said yes.

She got up clucking accusingly.

She left him snoring and walked out of the glade and down a wood-rimmed path.

It was a warm day. Sunlight patted the earth with warm hands. Overhead the breeze whispered in the leaves and the rustle of the woodlands was a song. Birds chirped and twittered and gave forth, and Alice was consumed with a pa.s.sion for Nature. She skipped. And she sang.

She reached a hill and walked up with a mountaineer's crouch. At the summit she pushed lean fists into her hips and looked down possessively at the dark forest floor ahead.

Down there it looked like a murky auditorium with all the trees like patient customers waiting for the show to start. Hardly any light penetrated the thick canopy of their leafy coiffures.

Alice clapped her hands in wordless delight and went down a path which seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, and had. Leaves mumbled crackling incantations beneath her descending feet.

At the foot of the path, she found a little bridge arching its mouldy back over a brook that gurgled and bubbled over smooth stones.

Alice stood on the bridge and peered into the crystal torrent. She saw herself as in a melting gla.s.s. Her reflection ran, burst, and jumped together again. It made her giggle.

I am lost in the woods, she said to herself. I am li'l Goldilocks and I am lost in the na.s.sy ole woods.

She t.i.ttered, wrinkling her thin-cheeked face.

Then she wondered what on earth had made her think of Goldilocks after all those years. She put her eyebrows together. They huddled in a conference. Brain cells tried harder.

She let it go.

That was a mistake.

I am Goldilocks, she insisted in song as she turned from the rail and skipped off the squeaking bridge.

Alice stopped short and gaped.

My G.o.d, she said.

There was a little house in the deepest shadow of the glade, sitting at the feet of the forest. That's odd, Alice said to no one. I didn't see that house before. Did the shadows hide it then? I didn't see it at all from the top of the hill.

And, of course, she hadn't.

Alice crunched over the leafy woods rug toward the little house.

Half of her tugged back, sensing a strangeness. Here she had just finished saying she was Goldilocks. And the next second there was a little house and if it wasn't the house of the three bears, then what was it?

She advanced with timid, half-cowed steps. Then she stopped.

It was a cute house. Just like a fairytale house with carved eaves and sills and frames. Alice got a kick out of it. She skipped up to the house feeling young.

She decided to talk in infantile gibberish as she peered through a dusty pane.

Ooh me ooh my, she cooed, isn't this a pwitty little housey wousey.

She couldn't see the inside very clearly. The windows were blurry. I shall go to the door; the. thought arranged itself from the ma.s.s of incohesions in her brain. She believed it to be her own thought and went to the door.

She touched it. She pushed it open. Wow bwidge, she said, and peered in.

It was just like the room in the ill.u.s.tration from her Goldilocks book, which she hadn't looked in for twenty years.

Twenty? The ghastly realization weakened her delight. She pouted over the brutality of time.

Then she said, I won't even think about that. I'll be gay.

So, little Goldilocks went into the little house and there in the middle of the room were three chairs.

Well, I'll be G.o.dd.a.m.ned, said Alice, not preserving the spirit of the moment very well.

She looked at the chairs incredulously.

There was the big one. There was the mama-size one. There was the baby one.

Ulp, said Alice.

She looked around. Everything fitted. She was astounded. No kidding. This was it. Insane. But as true as she was standing there.

Alice went over to the big chair. She wondered what this all added up to. Of course, she couldn't guess.

Her lips toyed with the idea of smiling as she perched herself gingerly on the edge of the papa chair. A tentative giggle erased gravity from her plain features. She felt young again. I'm li'l Goldlicks and I'll kill the first love-child that says I ain't.

She looked around with lips fumbling to repress a smile of wicked delight. I don't like this chair, she thought. I don't like it because I'm Goldilocks and I'm not supposed to like it.

She sat bolt upright.

I really am Goldilocks, she thought. I'm living it out fair and square.

This was a giddy thought for Mrs. Alice Grady, wed a decade, childless, with greying strands of hair and a dreamworld that life had stepped on.

I don't like this chair, she declared.

And, oddly enough, she didn't like it. So she stood up. The momentary thought struck her that George would have got a charge out of this little place. Well, it was his own fault, sleeping away his life. She couldn't be blamed for thinking that.

Alice grew up for a moment in wondering who owned this charming little house. Was it an exhibit for some fur-coat company, some chair manufacturer? Eh? she said, but the walls answered not.

She went to the window and peered out.

She couldn't see very well. But she did notice that it was getting darker.

However, there were still poles of sunlight leaning against the treetops and poking into the earth. Alice stared at the golden ribbons angling through the gloom. She sighed. It was a fairy tale, no fooling. It was unreality becoming real.

This frightened her.

Because people don't care for unreality becoming real. It p.r.i.c.ks their well-fed minds, you see, with something like a hunger pang. They prefer the logical stuffiness of expectancy. It is only at certain times that they weaken, letting imagination in.

That's the time to get them.

So, frightened by shapeless apprehension, Alice clacked heels to the door. It opened without trouble. And that made the difference.

She said, oh, what the h.e.l.l, why be a worry wart? Once a month maybe, with luck, George takes me out and this is the day for this month so I'm not going to waste it.

She turned and went back into the room with an air of satisfied bravado.

She tried the second chair just for the sake of plot. Uh-uh, she said in piping girlish tones. She stood up with churling disdain on her face.

Sidestepping, she plopped herself down on the smallest chair. Ah, ha, she declared a.s.sertively, this chair is the schmaltz. I will sit here and think.

She thought.

Now this is odd. Where did this house come from? Does it belong to some eccentric millionaire? No, not in a government park. Then what did it mean? Who lived there? Tell me three bears do, she said to herself, and I'll give you a shot in the teeth.

But if it wasn't three bears, who was it? She scratched her head. Or were it? Ora Giving it up, Alice jumped up and ran into the next room.

Well, I'll be double-d.a.m.ned, she proclaimed in astonishment.

There was a table.

Just like the table in her childhood book, The Three Bears. A low, rough-hewn table, stained and aged. And right on this table were three steaming bowls of porridge.

Alice's jaw sagged. This was a kick in the pants and no joke. What was there to make of it?

She stared at the table and the bowls, and a shiver ran down her twenty-eight-plus-year-old spine. She glanced fearfully over her shoulder. Don't know as I care to run into three bears, she said in awed tones.

Her brow pushed together into fleshy rills and ridges. This is too much, she thought. To think of living a fairytale is one thing. To live it is another thing. This is just a little bit bone chilling. I know there's a logical explanation for all this, buta This is their highest and their lowest moment. They always know there's a logical explanation. But their boundaries of logic are always too narrow to include the explanation that does exist.

So Alice sought for solidity.

I just left George, she said. He was snoring on the ground full of logical devilled eggs and natural pickles and tangible coffee. And we are married according to solid tradition and we live at a substantial 184 Sumpter Street. George makes a corporeal $92.80 per week and we play bridge with the flesh and blood Nelsons.

She was still frightened.

Locating a lump in her throat, she swallowed it. She said, I think I'll be going now.

But she didn't move. She said, come on feet; move. But the feet remained idle. She was losing control. Now I am scared she said, scared motionless. Or maybe I'm not as frightened as I think I am. After all, she told herself, this is only a weird coincidence. This is probably the house of three nutty old people who, when they see someone coming, put three different-sized bowls of porridge on the table and hide in a closet.

h.e.l.lo! called Goldilocks, is anyone t'home?

Not a soul answered and the wind chuckled evilly down the chimney.

h.e.l.lo? called Alice, wishing that a crotchety old man would rush in and say a" ho! what are you doing in this government museum, you interloper, it's past closing time; out you go!

No answer. No sound. Just a dead quiet house and three porridge bowls breathing aromatic steam into the air.

Alice sniffed.

Mighty good, she had to admit. But she said, I'll be switched if I eat any because, well, for one reason, I just ate a whole pile of food and I'm not at alla Good G.o.d!

Alice was starving.

Or she believed she was. Same thing. It was getting to her.

Alice got scared for real, and crossed her arms which had gone goose-fleshed. She backed away into the next room. She b.u.mped into the papa chair and cried out -oh!

She stood shivering for a moment.

Then she calmed down. After all, she reasoned, was anyone hooting at her. Had she seen any ghostly faces? Had any invisible fingers clawed at her? No!

And that's the way they figure, of course. If they don't see things that fit into the pattern of what they think of as frightening and evil, they don't worry about anything. A strength. And a weakness.

So Alice was calm again. Were there three bears within twenty miles? In the zoo. Behind thick bars. What was the worry?

It was a little house that belonged to someone. That was all. A papa and a mama and a baby. Or three old ladies of diminishing stature. Or three retired men. They lived there and, at the moment, they were out chopping wood or getting water or gathering nuts in May.

It was all right. Quite all right. Soon she would leave and run back up the hill to George and tell him what he'd missed. And next Thursday, at bridge with the flesh and blood Nelsons, would she have an anecdote or would she have an anecdote?

Alice went back into the other room again. She muttered to her little self, I'll be a cwoss-eyed, knock-kneed, pigeon-toed, lop-eared I don't know what. Here I must have ate at least a gross of basket lunch. And now I'm hungry. Must have been the walk.

She sat at the table in the little chair. It occurred to her that if she fitted the little chair, the person who sat in the big'chair must be about seven feet tall.

Now, do I dare, she thought. Does I have the temerity to eat some of this powwidge?

Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. Could it be that the porridge was poisoned, drugged, an oatmeal mickey?

She sniffed.

Why should it be? her mind inquired. Who in the h.e.l.l is going to leave poisoned porridge in a government park? That would const.i.tute a felony and a misdemeanour and be d.a.m.n nasty in the bargain.

She showed her teeth in a smile.

After all, she argued, it isn't every day that a gal gets a chance to play Goldilocks. Let's take advantage.

She took another giant whiff of the porridge in the big bowl. Mmmmm, she said, this smells scrumptious. She reached for the big spoon.

No, that wasn't cricket.

She reached in her dress pocket and plucked out a wooden spoon which had been a spear for the gherkins. She sniffed it. Not too pickley. Not by any means.

She took a little porridge from the edge of the big bowl, feeling like a perfect criminal when the cereal all mushed together again, forming a smooth, unbroken surface.

She inhaled the warm mealy odour, her nose wrinkling with pleasure. Oh, this is so good and warm and I'll just taste a little now anda Yow!