The nameless man started his descent of the rough-hewn steps and motioned to Titus to follow. Despite his portly figure he was nimble on his feet, and they went downwards quite speedily. As they neared the end of the steps the house came into view more clearly. It was large and it seemed to have no particular shape. There were three floors, with four deep windows on either side of the front door. It was painted white and there was a courtyard in front, which allowed a breathing space between the last of the steps and the house itself.
The door was open, and the entrance room was painted white, with white-painted floorboards. Titus had imagined it would be gloomy but the atmosphere was translucent. The hall itself went right through to the back of the house, and a great glass window gave on to a large expanse of lawn, which seemed to have been recently cut.
There was a sound of voices and the man turned towards a door, once more indicating that Titus should follow. He entered a long drawing room. Again, there was the shock of whiteness. The floor, walls, ceiling, curtains, furniture, broken only by riotous colour in huge vases of flowers dispersed around the room at different heights. A woman, dressed in white, with abundant dark hair pulled back severely, sat on a sofa, with a child on her knee. They were playing a game with coloured beads, and she made no effort to rise on seeing her visitors.
‘We thought you were coming last night.’
‘My muse would have none of it. Here is a youth who knows not where he is bound, nor will do so until he arrives. Such enigmas are my daily bread. I shall retire to refresh myself, and the reading will begin after dinner. Farewell.’
Titus was left alone with the woman and child. She was too old to be the child’s mother, but had a proprietorial air towards her surroundings.
‘Run along now,’ she said to the child, who jumped off her lap and ran out of the room.
‘You must excuse me,’ said Titus. ‘I am a most unwelcome guest, I am sure. I’ll leave now . . .’
‘Oh, is it as dreadful as all that here?’
‘No, but I feel that perhaps I am?!’
‘You know, or of course you don’t, when he comes, we never know what to expect, or rather, should I say we know enough to know that we do not know what to expect. Do you understand? And if I may say so, I am sure that you are probably more confused than I am.’
‘Well, perhaps my own way of life has adapted me to the surprises that seem to hover wherever I go.’
‘Is that exciting?’
‘It was. But I’ve grown tired of them. When your friend elected me to be a captive ear, I was on my way somewhere else.’
‘He is not exactly a friend. If that sounds disloyal, perhaps it is. He is one of those people that nearly everyone has in his or her life. He comes in and out of it, like summer storms. Everything is passive; then he arrives and devastation follows. He goes nowhere without leaving a trail behind him. However unpleasant the trail, it is at least memorable, and despite the fact that you didn’t want to come, perhaps you would like to stay the night, and I can promise you it won’t be dull. May I show you a room to sleep in?’
As she asked this question, the woman stood up, and Titus saw that she was a good deal older than he had thought. She was very tall and had slim legs. There were dark rings under her eyes, but there was a quizzical intelligence in them.
They left the white room and, passing across the hall, went through a door on the other side to a wide uncarpeted staircase painted white. As they went up three flights of stairs, Titus heard children’s voices, laughing and querulous and being exercised with all the lack of inhibitions known to children.
‘I expect they’re dressing up. We’ve got a little theatre in the garden, you know,’ the woman said. ‘I hope you won’t mind this room. The others are all occupied. It was a nursery – and they still use it.’
She spoke, as many people do, as though everything that happened in her house was common knowledge.
‘We’ll have dinner about eight.’
‘I have no change of clothes – only what I came in. Perhaps you would rather . . .’
‘Oh, we are very informal here, you know.’
It was a household, certainly, where the hostess (or so Titus assumed her to be) took everything in her stride.
‘With a family like mine, I have long since learned to be surprised at nothing. Well, do make yourself at home.’ And with that she left Titus in a much lived-in room, full of discarded toys and books – and all the paraphernalia of childhood, and in one corner an iron bedstead with bedclothes that had obviously seen other guests.
Titus found himself angry at having been so easy a pawn in what he thought of as his last accidental encounter, and he decided to leave, realising that his departure would make as little difference, in this haphazard house, as his arrival.
He was travelling light, so he left the nursery and started on his way downstairs. But his departure was not to be so easily accomplished.
‘Oh, hello,’ he heard, as a door opened to reveal laughter and music and singing.
‘Hello,’ he said, peering at two young faces that bore a resemblance to the dark woman he thought of as the ‘lady of the house’.
‘I expect you’ve come for tonight. We’ve more or less finished everything now. Shall we go down to the lake?’
‘Well, I was just about to go,’ began Titus, but was interrupted by a young girl, who said, ‘But you’ve only just come. You can’t go when you’ve just arrived. We’d think you didn’t like us.’
It was too difficult for Titus to explain his arrival, so he decided that for tonight he would drift into whatever lay in store and erase his own wishes until the morning.
He found himself in a group of people much younger than himself, and he felt so far away in time and experience from them that he could not join with their light-hearted chatter; yet they tried to draw him into their activities with an easy friendliness. He thought he must appear dour to them, but his mind reverted continually to the man who had left his life so empty on two occasions. He did not wish to banish the memory of those eyes from his thoughts.
‘You are far away,’ said the same young girl to him. They were sitting by a lake, and Titus did not believe that this open garden could belong to the Hidden House. The back was entirely different from the front, but that seemed almost logical, with this likeable family.
‘Would you like to see our theatre?’
‘Yes, that would be nice.’
They walked across to the outbuildings, and the girl opened one of the stable doors and switched on a light. Inside was a stage at one end, and rows of assorted chairs. The walls were white-painted brick, and just beneath the raised stage was a decorated piano.
‘I think we’d better go in. Some of the people may be coming soon. Did you come with ‘‘I am’’?’
‘If that’s who I think it is, yes, I did.’
‘Poor you. I expect you had the ordeal?’
‘If that’s what I think it is, yes, I did.’
‘We’ve got it again tonight, you know. I wonder if anything will happen? It usually does. We’d better go now.’
They returned towards the back of the house, across the lawn, and into the white drawing room through one of the long windows that looked on to the garden. There were people of all ages, in every kind of dress. There was nothing new in what Titus saw. He was loath to enter and, although his physical presence did so, his thoughts did not follow him. There was no need of speech – he merely appeared to listen to anyone who chose to speak at rather than to him. After an hour or so he realised that there was a common move from the white room towards a room across the hall.