I ran. I jumped over the holes in the floorboards, leaped dowairs three at a time, lost my footing and lu the handrail for support. I grasped at a handful of ivy, stumbled, saved myself and lurched fain. The library? No. The other way. Through an archway. Branches of elder and buddleia caught at my clothes, and I half fell several times as my feet scrabbled through the detritus of the broken house.
At last, iably, I crashed to the ground, and a wild cry escaped my lips.
‘Oh dear, oh dear. Did I startle you? Oh dear.“
I stared back through the archway.
Leaning over the gallery landing was not the skeleton or monster of my imaginings, but a giant. He moved smoothly dowairs, stepped daintily and unedly through the debris on the floor and came to stand over me with an expression of the utmost on his face.
‘Oh my goodness.“
He must have been six-foot-four or -five, and was broad, so broad that the house seemed to shrink around him.
‘I never meant… You see, I only thought… Because you’d been there some time, and… But that doesn’t matter now, because the thing is, my dear, are you hurt?“
I felt reduced to the size of a child. But for all his great dimensions, this man, too, had something of a child about him. Too plump for wrinkles, he had a round, cherubic face, and a halo of silver-blond curls sat ly around his balding head. His eyes were round like the frames of his spectacles. They were kind and had a blue transparency.
I must have been looking dazed, and pale, too, perhaps. He k by my side and took my wrist.
‘My, my, that was quite a tumble you took. If only I’d… I should never have… Pulse a bit high. Hmm.“
My shin was stinging. I reached to iigate a tear in the knee of my trousers, and my fingers came away bloodied.
‘Dear, oh dear. It’s the leg, is it? Is it broken? you move it?“ I wriggled my foot, and the man’s face icture of relief.
‘Thank goodness. I should never have fiven myself. Now, you stay there while I… I’ll just get the… Ba a minute.“ And off he went. His feet danced delicately in and out of the jagged edges of wood, then skipped swiftly up the stairs, while the upper half of his body sailed serenely above, as if unected to the elaborate fooing on below.
I took a deep breath and waited.
‘I’ve put the kettle on,“ he announced as he returned. It roper first-aid kit he had with him, white with a red cross on it, aook out an aic lotion and some gauze.
‘I always said, someone will get hurt in that old plae of these days. I’ve had the kit for years. Better safe than sorry, eh? Oh dear, oh dear!“ He winced with empathy as he pressed the stinging pad against my cut shin. ”Let’s be brave, shall we?“
‘Do you have electricity here?“ I asked. I was feeling bewildered.
‘Electricity? But it’s a ruin.“ He stared at me, astonished by my question, as though I might have suffered a cussion in the fall and lost my reason.
‘It’s just that I thought you said you’d put the kettle on.“
‘Oh, I see! No! I have a camping stove. I used to have a Thermos flask, but“—he turned his nose up—”tea from a Thermos is not very nice, is it? Now, does it sting very badly?“
‘Only a bit.“
‘Good girl. Quite a tumble that was. Now tea—lemon and sugar all right? No milk, I’m afraid. Ne.“
‘Lemon will be lovely.“
‘Right. Well, let’s make you fortable. The rain has stopped, so tea outdoors?“ He went to the grand old double
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