Loitering With Intent [antikvár]

Uncommonly nippy is it in this old house where you find me loitering at the base of the stairway in the hall, glum and with iced trotters unhappy in their station on the cold slabs of black and white chequered floor. Here, though, where the wooden banister curves to loop round and end in a carved coil, is a handy spot on which to lean, where a man muffled as I in wool and fur and felt may for a moment take his shuddering ease and lean back a little to gaze at the rails rising up the stairwell, roaming in rounded oblongs through the chill deserted floors of this forsaken house. Dismal. Look away. Look towards the front door, to the left of the door, to the traces on the wall where the painting of the Tinkerman had hung. Bold the tall dark Tinker had stood, glorious, grinning, hands stuffed into the pockets of a great long rosy red and billowing overcoat he was wearing. To the right of the door, now. Only a stain remains where once was the gentle watercolour with its warm tints picking out the pinks in the granite of the cottage where it stood long and low on the hazy saffron hill dappled green and blue and lovely to look on. Peep under the fanned-out glass above the slender metal arch in the hall. High on the wall the violence of the huge and primitive thorn tree had alarmed up there, oils and colours raving in its frame. Once one had got used to it, though, its old threat became quite dottily warm and even welcoming. To some. Through the arch, that's the way, to your left imagine, mounted on her green marble pedestal, my dainty white stone sea maiden, sculpted so bravely, feminine and fanciful. Gone, alas, as are her companion oils; the pure faint gold deceit of a false morning's promise, the warm darks and reds of the tidy docker's hearth, and the blue spume and white clamour where the waterfall had 1