Mandrake by Susan Cooper Read Free Book Online Page A

‘Excuse me—’
    It was a broad, perspiring man in a tight tweed suit, with a very new suitcase at his feet. He had sandy hair cut clumsily short, and the deep red-brown skin of the fair man who spends most of his life in the sun and wind. His eyes were very wide and blue, but their gaze shifted uneasily from side to side, holding Queston’s only for a moment, flicking away, flicking back again.
    ‘Sorry to bother you, but can you tell me how to get to Baker Street?’
    Through the rolling sequence of country vowels, it took Queston some seconds to understand what he had said. He tried to place the accent; Devon, perhaps, or Somerset. On the bleak, grubby platform the man looked as out of place as a sheaf of corn.
    ‘Sorry, I’m afraid I don’t—’ he turned, scanning the motley wall for a map. ‘Here. This’ll tell you.’
    The man followed him gratefully, talking in relief. ‘These things don’t mean much to me, I just don’t know London. They told me to change here… I’ve never been here before, you see. Come up for a holiday.’
    Queston pointed. ‘There you are. We’re here, and you get a train to Oxford Circus, then change on to the Bakerloo line.’
    ‘Ah,’ the man said doubtfully. ‘Thank you.’ He put down his case again and eased a finger inside his collar. ‘I don’t know—London—it overpowers you, doesn’t it? My daughter I’m going to, she’s a real town girl now. Married a London lad. But not me, I’m not easy in it. Everything’s so quick. Unwelcoming sort of place.’
    Queston smiled without speaking, feeling the familiar impulse to remain detached, uninvolved. He looked up the platform to see if the train was coming.
    ‘Be glad to get home,’ the man said, half to himself. ‘I don’t like the feel of it.’ The accent seemed stronger, as if it were a refuge.
    ‘Tisn’t the people at all, ’tis the place itself. London really tries to push you out, I do believe.’
    Suddenly it was like looking at a photographic negative. Queston heard an echo in his head of the reverse, the positive: the woman’s voice in the Alton pub saying: ‘The land taking a sort of sacrifice, because we shouldn’t have been there…’ He found himself staring at the man as if he had only just caught sight of him.
    ‘Say that again.’
    The man misunderstood him, and his rosy face grew more flushed still. ‘O, there’s nothing wrong with it, I’m not criticizing. A beautiful city, for them that’s born here. It’s just that—well—London don’t like strangers. Prefers them to go home.’
    To rescue him, Queston forced himself to smile and make a face. ‘O well—but not the people, eh?’
    They exchanged polite smiles again, and looked away from each other. Something was spinning like a newly released top in Queston’s mind; the contents of what had seemed a distant South American nightmare suddenly brought close and ominous. The power of place; the power of the place over the mind of the man who feels he belongs to it—or who feels he does not. How long does it take for that to change to the second stage, the stage that overtook the people of the caves; when by some sea-change of energy does the place develop an independent, awful power of its own?
    For heaven’s sake, no, forget it; you’re going off your head. He stood silent, trying to slow his brain down to normal speed. They waited. More people strolled to the end of the platform. The countryman walked up and down, glancing round in the same dazed, uneasy way. His shoes were very large and loud. Preoccupied, Queston gazed at nothing. When he became aware of the countryman again, the man was moving slowly along the edge of the platform, his suitcase in one enormous hand. Queston felt the air move against his cheek, and heard the train rumble deep and distant.
    He never made up his mind, afterwards, whether the man heard it or not. He remembered only the violent shock of disbelief. The man had put down his case. His