Mythago Wood - 1 Read Free Page B

I imagined he was still unsure whether to be glad or angry
that I had come home like this. For a moment I felt like an intruder. He said,
'Why don't you unpack and freshen up. You can use your
    old room. It's a bit stuffy, I expect, but it'll soon air. Then come down and
we'll have some late lunch. We've got all the time in the world to chat, as long
as we're finished by tea.' He smiled, and I thought this was some slight attempt
at humour. But he went on quickly, staring at me in a cold, hard way, 'Because
if you're going to stay at home for a while, then you'd better know what's going
on here. I don't want you interfering with it, Steve, or with what I'm doing.'
    'I wouldn't interfere with your life, Chris - ' 'Wouldn't you? We'll see. I'm
not going to deny that I'm nervous of you being here. But since you are . . .'
He trailed off, and for a second looked almost embarrassed. 'Well, we'll have a
chat later on.'
     
Two
     
    Intrigued by what Christian had said, and worried by his apprehension of me,
I nonetheless restrained my curiosity and spent an hour exploring the house
again from top to bottom, inside and out, everywhere save father's study, the
contemplation of which chilled me more than Christian's behaviour had done.
Nothing had changed, except that it was untidy, and untenanted. Christian had
employed a part-time cleaner and cook, a woman from a nearby village who cycled
to the Lodge every week and prepared a pie or stew that would last him three
days. Christian did not go short of farm produce, so much so that he rarely
bothered to use his ration book. He seemed to get all he needed, including sugar
and tea, from the Ryhope estate, which had always been good to my family.
    My old room was almost exactly as I remembered it. I opened the window wide
and lay down on the bed for a few minutes, staring out and up into the hazy,
late summer sky, past the waving branches of the gigantic beech that grew so
close to the Lodge. Several times, in the years before my teens, I had climbed
from window to tree, and made a secret camp among the thick branches; I had
shivered by moonlight in my underpants, crouched in that private place,
imagining the dark activities of night creatures below.
    Lunch, in mid-afternoon, was a substantial feast of cold pork, chicken and
hard-boiled eggs, in quantities that, after two years in France on strict
rations, I had never thought to see again. We were, of course, eating his food
supply for several days, but the fact seemed irrelevant to Christian, who in any
case only picked at his meal.
    Afterwards we talked for a couple of hours, and Christian relaxed quite
noticeably, although he never referred to Guiwenneth, or to father's work, and I
never broached either subject.
    We sprawled in the uncomfortable armchairs that had belonged to my
grandparents, surrounded by the time-faded mementoes of our family . . .
photographs, a noisy rosewood clock, horrible pictures of exotic Spain, all
framed in cracked mock-gilded wood, and all pressed hard against the same floral
wallpaper that had hugged the walls of the sitting-room since a time before my
birth. But it was home, and Christian was home, and the smell, and the faded
surrounds, all were home to me. I knew, within two hours of arriving, that I
would have to stay. It was not so much that I belonged here (although I
certainly felt that) but simply that the place belonged to me - not in any
mercenary sense of ownership, more in the way that the house and the land around
the house shared a common life with me; we were part of the same evolution. Even
in France, even in the village in the south, I had not been separated from that
evolution, merely stretched to an extreme.
    As the heavy old clock began to whirr and click, preceding its laboured
chiming of the hour of five, Christian abruptly rose from his chair and tossed
his half-smoked cigarette into the empty fire grate.
    'Let's go to the study,' he said, and I rose without speaking and followed
him