these descend from the ceiling, like plaster stalactites, some ascend from the screen like wooden stalagmites. The overall effect is rather toothy, wouldn’t you say?’
‘It’s astonishing. And all the carving, painting and plasterwork. It’s all so fresh and vivid.’
‘Yes, well, of course the Rood Room has been extensively restored. As a matter of fact by a team of unemployed architectural graduates working under the direction of our own dear Dr Morrison. Nevertheless it was remarkably preserved to begin with. It is without doubt the foremost example of seventeenth-century vernacular architecture still extant in England.’
‘Actually, Dr Geddes, it does seem odd . . . I mean not that I don’t want to . . . but sleeping in a place of worship – ‘
‘Oh I shouldn’t give it another thought. We’ve been living here for years, since the twins were ten, and they always slept here. And anyway, you have to consider what the Grunters’ probable form of worship was. Like other Manichaeans they believed that, as the Devil was co-eternal with God, forms of behaviour that orthodox Christians regarded as sinful were in fact to be enjoined. Hence all these rude, rather than “rood”, paintings and carvings.’
Giselle fell to examining the panels of the rood screen and Peter, remembering his more material duties as host and employer, went off to fetch her cases from the car.
Standing in front of the house Peter looked up at its facade and shook his head in weary enjoyment. It never fails, he thought, it never fails to surprise them. Had he troubled to analyse his glee at exposing the Rood Room to Giselle, he might have found it to be a more complicated and troublesome emotion. After all, shocking guests with the Rood Room was akin to a sophisticated form of flashing.
Because the exterior of the Geddes–Laughton house was so uncompromisingly Victorian – two shoeboxes of dark-red London brick, topped off with a steeply gabled tiled roof – any visitor was bound to expect its interior to correspond. But it was only a cladding, a long mackintosh that could be twitched aside to reveal a priapic core. For really the house was a collection of seventeenth-century cottages and hovels that had been cemented together over the centuries by a mucilage of plaster, wattle, daub and stonework. The only room of any substance was the Rood Room; all the others were awkward moulded cells, connected by bulging, serpentine corridors.
But Peter didn’t trouble to analyse his emotions – it wasn’t his style. It’s difficult to imagine what the interior scape of a philosopher’s mind might be like. Modern works of analytic philosophy are so arid. How could anyone hold so many fiddly Faberge arguments in his or her mind for so long? Without the drifting motes of decaying brain cells – used-up thoughts and prototypical thoughts never to be employed – beginning to fill the atmosphere and cloud the clarity of introspection with intellectual plaster dust.
To get around the problem, Peter’s mind was akilter to real time. Like a gyroscope spinning slowly, set inside another gyroscope spinning faster, Peter’s mind went on churning through chains, puzzles and tables of ratiocination, while the world zipped by him: a time-lapse film with a soundtrack of piping, irrelevant Pinky and Perky voices. And while not exactly fecund, the similes required to describe his mental processes were sterile rather than decaying. They were like three-dimensional word puzzles: propositions, premises, theses and antitheses, all were manipulated in free fall, coaxed into place with a definite ‘click’. It was if Peter’s will were a robotic claw that lanced into a radioactive interior in order to perform subtle manipulations.
But then the greatest paradox of all is that nothing is farther off from self-knowledge than introspection, and nothing more remote from wisdom than pure intellect.
On re-entering the house, Peter found Giselle in the
‘It’s astonishing. And all the carving, painting and plasterwork. It’s all so fresh and vivid.’
‘Yes, well, of course the Rood Room has been extensively restored. As a matter of fact by a team of unemployed architectural graduates working under the direction of our own dear Dr Morrison. Nevertheless it was remarkably preserved to begin with. It is without doubt the foremost example of seventeenth-century vernacular architecture still extant in England.’
‘Actually, Dr Geddes, it does seem odd . . . I mean not that I don’t want to . . . but sleeping in a place of worship – ‘
‘Oh I shouldn’t give it another thought. We’ve been living here for years, since the twins were ten, and they always slept here. And anyway, you have to consider what the Grunters’ probable form of worship was. Like other Manichaeans they believed that, as the Devil was co-eternal with God, forms of behaviour that orthodox Christians regarded as sinful were in fact to be enjoined. Hence all these rude, rather than “rood”, paintings and carvings.’
Giselle fell to examining the panels of the rood screen and Peter, remembering his more material duties as host and employer, went off to fetch her cases from the car.
Standing in front of the house Peter looked up at its facade and shook his head in weary enjoyment. It never fails, he thought, it never fails to surprise them. Had he troubled to analyse his glee at exposing the Rood Room to Giselle, he might have found it to be a more complicated and troublesome emotion. After all, shocking guests with the Rood Room was akin to a sophisticated form of flashing.
Because the exterior of the Geddes–Laughton house was so uncompromisingly Victorian – two shoeboxes of dark-red London brick, topped off with a steeply gabled tiled roof – any visitor was bound to expect its interior to correspond. But it was only a cladding, a long mackintosh that could be twitched aside to reveal a priapic core. For really the house was a collection of seventeenth-century cottages and hovels that had been cemented together over the centuries by a mucilage of plaster, wattle, daub and stonework. The only room of any substance was the Rood Room; all the others were awkward moulded cells, connected by bulging, serpentine corridors.
But Peter didn’t trouble to analyse his emotions – it wasn’t his style. It’s difficult to imagine what the interior scape of a philosopher’s mind might be like. Modern works of analytic philosophy are so arid. How could anyone hold so many fiddly Faberge arguments in his or her mind for so long? Without the drifting motes of decaying brain cells – used-up thoughts and prototypical thoughts never to be employed – beginning to fill the atmosphere and cloud the clarity of introspection with intellectual plaster dust.
To get around the problem, Peter’s mind was akilter to real time. Like a gyroscope spinning slowly, set inside another gyroscope spinning faster, Peter’s mind went on churning through chains, puzzles and tables of ratiocination, while the world zipped by him: a time-lapse film with a soundtrack of piping, irrelevant Pinky and Perky voices. And while not exactly fecund, the similes required to describe his mental processes were sterile rather than decaying. They were like three-dimensional word puzzles: propositions, premises, theses and antitheses, all were manipulated in free fall, coaxed into place with a definite ‘click’. It was if Peter’s will were a robotic claw that lanced into a radioactive interior in order to perform subtle manipulations.
But then the greatest paradox of all is that nothing is farther off from self-knowledge than introspection, and nothing more remote from wisdom than pure intellect.
On re-entering the house, Peter found Giselle in the
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