The House at the Edge of the World by Julia Rochester Read Free Book Online Page A

the mingled smells of
     oil paint, white spirit, linseed oil and pipe tobacco. He stood on a set of library
     steps in front of the map, his paintbrush poised beneath the magnifying-glass.
    ‘Ah!
     Morwenna!’ he said. ‘Have you been sent to extricate me?’
    ‘Jane’s here.’
    ‘Yes. I can sense her
     presence!’
    He carried on painting.
    ‘I’ve just come across something
     very interesting,’ he said. ‘A blasphemous pamphleteer! He seems also to
     have had a line in daubing slogans on walls. I found him in that funny little tract
     there – no, not that one. The one on the left.’
    I picked up a dog-eared tract published by
     the Village Sermon Society for the Publication of Village Sermons.
    ‘He’s referred to as “the
     infamous blasphemer of Barnstaple”. So then I went looking for him elsewhere, and
     it occurred to me that I might find him in the memoirs of that old magistrate, Ezra
     Hargreaves – you remember, he had one of those beards that you hate so much, where the
     upper lip and chin are shaved. Unfortunately,’ said Matthew, ‘we don’t
     have the wording of the blasphemies – they were too toxic to record.’
    Matthew’s sketchbook lay open on the
     table, the one I had made him for Christmas: hand-stitched, bound in a soft brown
     leather so that it could easily slide into his jacket pocket, numbered on the spine. It
     lay open at the page where three cartoons of the unfortunate blasphemer were sketched: a
     forlorn Hogarthian figure with the mad gleam of the proselyte in his eye – a working
     man, rumpled and resentful.
    I had stopped seeing the map. When we were
     younger Matthew used to hand us the magnifying-glass and say, ‘Look, children.
     Tell me what you can find.’ That was the game: discover something new on the map
     and be rewarded with a story.
    Now Matthew said, ‘What do you think
     was the very first thing I painted on the map?’
    ‘The house?’ I ventured. I had
     always assumed that he had started with Thornton, but Matthew said, ‘No. Of
     course, everyone tends to make that assumption. But I started here,Morwenna. With the Devil. It is Thornton’s founding myth, as you
     know.’
    On the map, the Devil peered back over his
     shoulder, pointing the apple-red cheeks of his naked backside at the church and farting.
     Above the steeple the gilt-haloed head of St Michael floated on a pair of wings, wearing
     an expression of great decorum.
    I knew Matthew’s devils. They danced
     all around the map. The Devil had left stories all over the county. He liked to leave
     his hoof-prints on our roofs: trip trap, trip trap, over the slates, softly, softly,
     over the thatches.
    I said, ‘Matthew, you have to come out
     for supper.’
    Matthew sighed. ‘That Jane,’ he
     said. He put down his palette. ‘She always wears such noisy shoes!’
    ‘Are you OK?’ I asked.
    ‘Morwenna!’ he said. ‘Must
     you be so lazy with language? And what a silly question!’
    He climbed down from his ladder. ‘You
     know, Morwenna,’ he said, ‘I have always been terrified of
     drowning.’
    ‘I know,’ I said. ‘The
     Crab Man.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Matthew.
    ‘But I doubt that Dad actually
     drowned.’
    He looked at me sharply. ‘I’m
     not sure, my dear, that that thought helps.’
    ‘No,’ I said. ‘I suppose
     not.’
    ‘That Jane,’ said Matthew.
     ‘She has always been so
purposeful
.’
    Jane had insisted that we lay the table in
     the dining room. We never ate in the dining room, but this was not really a meal: it was
     a parley. Matthew sat at the head of the table, Jane and Mum on one side, Corwin and I
     on the other. The polished mahogany of the furniture and the red velvet curtains and
     brown Edwardian wallpaper all made me think of a coffin – a red-velvet-lined mahogany
     coffin, with brass handles. A waveof claustrophobia swept over me. My
     father would not like it in there. Then I remembered that there would be no coffin.
    Matthew smiled