The Tryst by Michael Dibdin Page B

never got over was how big it all was. Why, this place would have fitted into it twenty or thirty times over! When I was very young, I thought the Hall was a kind of plant that put out new growth each year, for there always seemed to be rooms I hadn’t seen before, doors I hadn’t opened. It wasn’t till I was ten or eleven that I began to understand how it all fitted together, and even by the end it was still full of surprises.’
    ‘Was your mother a princess?’ Steve asked.
    The boy spoke so rarely, and only then in response to a question, that the old man glanced at him with surprise. Then he laughed out loud.
    ‘Good Lord above, you don’t think it was our house, do you?’ He pointed to the electric light above their heads. ‘You see that? And the stove here? And the water pipes? That’s what we were, my lad, nothing more nor less. For there was no light then, once the sun went down, but what you made yourself. That meant fifteen or twenty oil lamps to be cleaned and filled and brought to every room, scenting the whole place with their sweet, warm smell. As for the water, that had to be fetched from the spring, and if you wanted tea or a bath it had to be warmed on the stove. Wood had to be cut and hauled and stacked and laid for the fires, which had to be cleaned out early each morning and then relit. All of that made work for idle hands to do, believe you me. Cooks and housemaids and kitchen maids and still-room maids and laundry maids and I don’t know what else besides, with a housekeeper to make sure they did it properly. And that was my mother.’
    He broke off again to get his pipe going, sucking the flame down into the bowl in a way that fascinated Steve, who imagined the flame continuing through the pipe and down the old man’s throat, blazing in his stomach like the stove.
    ‘But you’re right, too, in a way,’ Matthews went on. ‘The Hall was ours, for unlike these wires and tubes and pipes that do the necessary nowadays, we were alive and we lived there. There were rules, of course. Doors we weren’t allowed to open, rooms that were out of bounds. But that only counted when the family were there, which was only a few months in the summer. So in a way it was our house even more than it was theirs. Mine above all, perhaps, for as a child I was treated with indulgence, and my mother being the housekeeper was above all the staff except the butler. My father, I should explain, had been one of the gardeners until he fell out of a tree and broke his neck. I don’t really remember him.’
    The muffled muggy silence of the room reformed for a few moments.
    ‘What about your parents?’ Matthews asked, looking round at Steve. ‘Don’t you live with them?’
    The boy jerked his head aside. It was a warning, but the old man paid no heed.
    ‘Ran away, did you?’
    Steve twisted his head to the other side in a convulsive movement which might have been taken for a negation.
    ‘Or are they …?’ the old man began tentatively. But Steve was on his feet and shouting.
    ‘What you asking me all this for? This ain’t got fuck to do with it! You’re supposed to be telling me about what happened, about that man, not asking me a lot of shit like you was the police or something!’
    The old man seemed to wilt visibly under the boy’s furious gaze. His hands dithered aimlessly about in his lap.
    ‘I’m sorry, lad. Sorry. I won’t ask again, I promise.’
    He turned away and poked the fire, clearing his throat apologetically. After a while Steve sat down again.
    ‘You said we got to stick to the story,’ he muttered.
    ‘Quite right, quite right.’
    ‘Well, you better,’ the boy warned. ‘Because I seen him again, that man. When I got here tonight. He was standing right outside, staring at the house like it was made of glass and he could see everything you do!’
    Steve considered this a fair return for the pain the old man had given him. Tit for tat was the rule the world ran on, he knew that much.