I’ve won! No tree: no drawing-room.
MRS. OTERY. I have heard tell there was once a tree there; and you can see the root if you look down.
HARRY. Yes, yes, I see it in the long grass, and a bit of the seat that used to be round it. This is the drawing-room right enough, Harry, my boy. There were blue curtains to that window, and I used to hide behind them and pounce out upon Robinson Crusoe. There was a sofa at this end, and I had my first lessons in swimming on it. You are a fortunate woman, my petite, to be here drinking in these moving memories. There used to be a peacock, too. Now, what the hell could a peacock be doing in this noble apartment?
MRS. OTERY. I have been told a cloth used to hang on the wall here, tapestries they’re called, and that it had pictures of peacocks on it. I dare say that was your peacock.
HARRY. Gone, even my peacock! And I could have sworn I used to pull the feathers out of its tail. The clock was in this corner, and it had a wheezy little figure of a smith that used to come out and strike the hour on an anvil. My old man used to wind that clock up every night, and I mind his rage when he found out it was an eight-day clock. The padre had to reprove him for swearing. Padre? What’s the English for padre? Damme, I’m forgetting my own language. Oh yes, parson. Is he in the land of the living still? I can see him clear, a long thin man with a hard sharp face. He was always quarrelling about pictures he collected.
MRS. OTERY. The parson here is a very old man, but he is not tall and thin, he is little and roundish with a soft face and white whiskers.
HARRY. Whiskers? I can’t think he had whiskers. (Ruminating.) Had he whiskers? Stop a bit, I believe it is his wife I’m thinking about. I doubt I don’t give satisfaction as a sentimental character. Is there any objection, your ladyship, to smoking in the drawing-room?
MRS. OTERY (ungraciously). Smoke if you want.
(He hacks into a cake of tobacco with a large clasp knife.)
That’s a fearsome-looking knife.