“I'm not sure, Philippa, that we should be talking of Geoff behind his back like this.”

The medical man leaned back in his chair. He looked out the window. The sweet spring shower sprinkled gently across the fields beyond. Now the days were becoming warmer he could make out the fresh green plants and the crops beyond. It’s time for holidays, he thought, I need to restore myself. Books and implements lay on the table before him. But they’d proved useless in this case. This business with Geoffrey had really been getting to him.

“What can I do? He just won't stop.”

“I know. And he knows it too, but just can't admit it. Only when he does admit it can he be cured. We’ve talked. He sits there, Philippa, where you sit now, denying the problem. “It’s what I do. It’s what I have to do,” he tells me. “I’m not harming others, am I?”  But he won’t admit it’s an addiction. He claims he can stop at any time.”

“He tells me that too. Why won't he see reason?”

“Reason? He loves reason. I see it when I try to take his mind off his addiction in our chat sessions. I get him talking about, you know, subjects close to his heart. He sees all the ugliness of society - makes jokes about it - and he loves people. We talk and talk and talk. But he just ends up saying, ‘Great, that’ll help, it really will.’ But it only makes him worse, I feel.

“Yes, he goes straight back to it after seeing you, more fired up, if anything.” 

“But Phil, he must know he can’t go on like this. Have you removed his supplies?"

"Don't think I haven't tried. I've sold or eaten the geese. But now he uses crows. I've stopped the deliveries, but that Jake Tanner, he still finds ways. I can't stop it getting through. 

The physician looked sadly at Philippa and thought ... There is a treatment that I've heard of. It is radical. No authority condones it. There's no empirical evidence to support it, either. Finally, he said, “Look, there is one … possibility … It’s still only a theory, discredited by many, I know, that says you can use the power of an addictive personality to help itself. Transference it's called. By engaging him in another, a different, erm habit, it may move his cravings elsewhere, to one that's easier to stop. You might start with the wine he is given each year by Richard King. Keep him well soused all the time and he won't be in a fit state to engage in the other. 

Philippa pictured that awful day her husband came rolling home singing bawdy songs with that Dave Miller, the hairy-faced ne'er-do-well down the road. She shivered. No, I can't cope with that again.

The physician wondered (but didn't tell Philippa) if Geoffrey's young neighbour, Alison, might help. She was certainly one you could obsess over, take your mind off everything else. And she didn’t mind older men. But Geoff hadn’t mentioned her recently, his thoughts had moved on.

Walking slowly homeward, Philippa wondered what else to try. Gambling. What about dicing with his friends? He loves the company of others. Tom Cook would help. Then there's drugs - the old woman down the road, the one from the West country who talks about all her husbands. She's been around. She'll know where to get some ... erm ... herbal stuff.

But as fate (or was it fortune?) would have it, when Philippa returned home, Geoff was there to greet her, eyes wide and wild, sweat glistening on his forehead.

In the corner was the latest delivery from Jake Tanner - a supply that could last for months.

“It's not as if it makes me happy,” cried Geoffrey, in despair, "I finish one and I'm thinking of the next. I need help." He looked at her, his black crow's-feather quill dripping ink, held loosely in his hand and kicked at the pile of vellum from Jake the Tanner. 

“Yes. Yes. I admit it, Philippa, I'll stop, I will. I promise," said  Geoffrey Chaucer to his wife. "I've become a short story writing addict."

 The wolfhound lying in front of the fireplace raised his head, stretched and yawned.