Two of the four drawers in the chest were capable of being opened. The third would not open because it had lost its knob, and the fourth because it had lost the will. Above the black iron fireplace with its frill of red crinkled paper brown with age was an engraving of a partially clothed Venus comforting a quite unclothed Cupid. If the cold had not already eaten into his bones Grant thought that this picture would have finished the process.
He looked from the little window down on the small harbour with its collection of fishing-boats, at the grey sea slapping drearily against the breakwater, and the grey rain beating on the cobbles, and thought of the log fire in the sitting-room at Clune. He toyed with the idea of going to bed as the quickest way of getting warm, but a second glance at the bed dissuaded him. Its plate-like thinness was made even more plate-like by the meagre covering of a white honeycomb cotton cover. At the foot, a turkey-red cotton quilt suitable for a doll’s perambulator was folded into an elaborate pattern. Above it brooded the finest collection of unmatching brass knobs that it had ever been Grant’s fortune to meet.
Cladda Hotel. The gateway to Tir nan Og.
He went downstairs and poked the smoky fire in the sitting-room. Someone had banked up the fire with the potato peelings from lunch, so his efforts were not very successful. Rage came to his rescue and he rang the bell with all his might. The wires jangled in a crazy dance somewhere in the walls but no bell rang. He went out into the lobby where the wind was coming soughing in under the front door and shouted. Never, even in his best form on the ‘square’, had he used his voice with so passionate a determination to produce results. A young female creature came from the back regions and stared at him. She had a face like a rather practical Madonna and legs the same length as her body.
‘Wis yu bawling?’ she asked.
‘No, I wasn’t bawling. That sound you heard was my teeth chattering. In my country a sitting-room fire is designed to give out heat not to consume refuse.’
She looked at him a little longer as if translating his speech into a more understandable idiom, and then moved past him to look at the fire.
‘ Oh Dé,’ she said, ‘that will never do. Stop you and I’ll get you a bit of fire.’
She went away and came back with what seemed to be most of the kitchen fire blazing on a shovel. Before he could remove some of the packed dross and vegetable matter from the grate she had dumped the flaming mass on top of all.
‘I’ll be getting some tea to warm you,’ she said. ‘Mr Todd is down at the pier seeing did the things come on the boat. He’ll be back in no time at all.’