mantelpiece to the ledge of beam which was too narrow to hold his photographs. When the fire was first lit, he did not complain of the smoke, but opened all the windows and sat in a draught, hoping that it would escape before it disappointed Hattie. Eventually, a lead cowl was fixed inside and the fire now burned well, consuming great quantities of logs from the osier basket, the refilling of which gave Cowlin an opportunity to see Oliver. One of the times when Oliver longed most to get out of bed was when the fire needed poking and he wanted to kick the logs and send a fountain of sparks up the chimney.
On the left of the fireplace was the door into the hall, which had heavy iron hinges and an old wooden thumb-latch. On a little shelf above it rested two Quimper peasant plates which were only taken down at spring-cleaning and never failed to surprise Mrs. Cowlin with the amount of dust they had accumulated in twelve months. On the other side of the fireplace, the room ran back into a shadowy little corner with cupboards built into the panelling and shelves for Mr. Northâs sober textbooks which nobody opened now. Oliverâs books stood between the Dolphin book-ends he had had at Oxford along the back of the solid refectory table under the east window.
All the features of this room combined to make it dark. Oliverâs bed itself held the light until the end of the day, but his pillows and the hump of the bedclothes cut off some of the daylight from the room; the small-paned east window was low and shadowed by the roof, which came, right down at this end of the house like an overhanging eyebrow. The ceiling was low and, for no apparent reason, on two levels, which corresponded to the fact that you had to go down two steps from the corridor above into the south bedrooms.
But there was nothing gloomy about the darkness of the room, nothing sinister about the shadows which gathered there. It was a darkness like the cosiness of a cottage parlour, with a little window made even littler by lace curtains and potted plants. Oliver loved the sun, but he almost resented the freak summer of this October, which was postponing the time when his room would be lit every evening by his lamp and the fire,
and he would go to sleep to the jigging pattern on the ceiling of the old nursery guard which Mrs. North insisted on putting there at night.
Oliver liked his room. He had always liked this room, long before it became the cocoon inside which, like a grub, he must stay until his body was ready to try its wings in the outside world. As a boy of ten, when they first moved to Hinkley from London, his bedroom had been the odd little room up itâs own short flight of stairs, halfway between the first floor and the attics. It had the only west window in the house above the ground floor, a miniature oriel, supported outside by sloping timbers. House-martins used to nest in the angle between the joist and the wall on one side. They would never build in the other side, although he used to climb up the pruning ladder to bait it with bits of wool and felt. Back to this little room he had come from school and from Oxford and, not quite so regularly, when he was feeling his feet in London and Paris as the cocksure young representative of a firm who made wireless sets that looked like clocks, bookcases, cigar boxesâlike anything, in fact, but wireless sets.
This ground-floor room that was now his bedroom had been his fatherâs library and study then. Mr. North had been a house agent. He had always been a house agent; he was a man who stuck like glue to anything on which he once embarked. Someone had told him that nobody could be a success who had not studied Real Estate in America, so, as he was a modest man who was always ready to believe that other people knew better than he did, he had gone to America. There he had met the plump and smiling Hattie Linnegar, best waffle maker for her age in Philadelphia, who had known quite soon
On the left of the fireplace was the door into the hall, which had heavy iron hinges and an old wooden thumb-latch. On a little shelf above it rested two Quimper peasant plates which were only taken down at spring-cleaning and never failed to surprise Mrs. Cowlin with the amount of dust they had accumulated in twelve months. On the other side of the fireplace, the room ran back into a shadowy little corner with cupboards built into the panelling and shelves for Mr. Northâs sober textbooks which nobody opened now. Oliverâs books stood between the Dolphin book-ends he had had at Oxford along the back of the solid refectory table under the east window.
All the features of this room combined to make it dark. Oliverâs bed itself held the light until the end of the day, but his pillows and the hump of the bedclothes cut off some of the daylight from the room; the small-paned east window was low and shadowed by the roof, which came, right down at this end of the house like an overhanging eyebrow. The ceiling was low and, for no apparent reason, on two levels, which corresponded to the fact that you had to go down two steps from the corridor above into the south bedrooms.
But there was nothing gloomy about the darkness of the room, nothing sinister about the shadows which gathered there. It was a darkness like the cosiness of a cottage parlour, with a little window made even littler by lace curtains and potted plants. Oliver loved the sun, but he almost resented the freak summer of this October, which was postponing the time when his room would be lit every evening by his lamp and the fire,
and he would go to sleep to the jigging pattern on the ceiling of the old nursery guard which Mrs. North insisted on putting there at night.
Oliver liked his room. He had always liked this room, long before it became the cocoon inside which, like a grub, he must stay until his body was ready to try its wings in the outside world. As a boy of ten, when they first moved to Hinkley from London, his bedroom had been the odd little room up itâs own short flight of stairs, halfway between the first floor and the attics. It had the only west window in the house above the ground floor, a miniature oriel, supported outside by sloping timbers. House-martins used to nest in the angle between the joist and the wall on one side. They would never build in the other side, although he used to climb up the pruning ladder to bait it with bits of wool and felt. Back to this little room he had come from school and from Oxford and, not quite so regularly, when he was feeling his feet in London and Paris as the cocksure young representative of a firm who made wireless sets that looked like clocks, bookcases, cigar boxesâlike anything, in fact, but wireless sets.
This ground-floor room that was now his bedroom had been his fatherâs library and study then. Mr. North had been a house agent. He had always been a house agent; he was a man who stuck like glue to anything on which he once embarked. Someone had told him that nobody could be a success who had not studied Real Estate in America, so, as he was a modest man who was always ready to believe that other people knew better than he did, he had gone to America. There he had met the plump and smiling Hattie Linnegar, best waffle maker for her age in Philadelphia, who had known quite soon
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