Barbara Vine - The Minotaur

‘Visitors do. Don't you think it would be nice to have a beautiful sign lettered The Rectory? Or even All Saints Rectory?’

Felix laughed. ‘You don't know it would be beautiful. You've never seen anything I've done.’

‘If I come and call,’ Winifred said, ‘will you show me?’

All this was unexpected. If it had been Ella who had asked for a sign for Lydstep Old Hall I wouldn't have been surprised. She was the one marked out for his attention that evening. She was the unattached one – Ida hardly counted, she never did, evidently never had with Eric – the single ‘girl’ available to be courted. Zorah was a curious law unto herself. Winifred was spoken for.

But now Ella intervened. There was a winsome note in her voice which she perhaps thought attractive to men. ‘May I come too? I'd love to see your real paintings.’

‘I'm not used to all this popularity.’ But Felix sounded as if he was very used to it, as if it was his way of life.

‘Shall we make a date then?’ Winifred's smile and sparkling eyes suggested she thought this was contemporary slang, as perhaps it was. ‘One afternoon next week? Say Tuesday at half-past two?’

Ella's wail was a little too piteous. ‘Then I can't come! I'll be at school. Some of us have to work, you know.’

‘Oh, just drop in, why don't you?’ Felix was getting bored with this and Eric was looking at his watch. ‘I'm always there and if I'm not you'll find me in the pub.’

Zorah said, ‘Good night, darlings,’ and floated away.

Now or never, I thought, and careless of whether my abrupt departure was rude, I followed her. Truthfulness seemed the only course to take and when Zorah came out of the dining room, where the key must be kept, I told her I would like to see the library when she went in to fetch the geode.

‘For the books,’ she said, ‘or the maze?’

‘For both.’

My answer seemed to please her for she nodded. ‘I hope my sisters aren't going to make fools of themselves over that man.’

I would have preferred to say nothing but she was looking as if she expected a reply. ‘Winifred is engaged,’ I said.

That made her laugh. She switched on the rather dim light that lit the passage, we walked to the end of it and she unlocked the door.

The walls were lined with bookshelves, unglazed, and at first sight the books in them, jacketless and all bound in sombre colours, looked mostly dark red, but there were green as well and blue and brown. Those that I could see, that is, the ones that filled the shelves on the right-hand side, for ahead of me, facing them, was a free-standing bookcase of the same height, forming a passage so narrow that a fat person couldn't have squeezed along it. At the corners, on the end of each bookcase, stood a bust in marble of some luminary of the past, statesman, philosopher or scientist. The lighting, like everywhere else in Lydstep Old Hall, was dim, inadequate to read much by, and the stone faces seemed to hover in the half-dark, frowning or deep in thought.

Zorah stood watching me as I made my way along this passage, my feet leaving shiny marks in the dust on the floorboards, turning to the left at the end of it, the only possible route. She followed me. Having made this right angle, I was confronted with a choice, either to turn left again into a parallel passage or to proceed straight ahead, where the space between the wall and the free-standing case was a little wider. The easily recognizable faces of Balzac and Frederick the Great eyed me with distaste. The books which surrounded me gave off that curious, rather sour smell old paper has, especially dusty old paper that is shut up for long periods in an airless space.

It seemed natural here to go on tiptoe. I took the left turn, found the wall of books on my right was broken halfway along, offering me another choice, to go on or turn right. At first I had rather resented Zorah's accompanying me but then I felt glad of her presence. This place was so bizarre, the old, somehow Victorian, stench of paper and ink and leather so overpowering, that I felt intimidated. If I had been claustrophobic I should have had to turn back. As it was, with her behind me and the delicate, very modern scent of her perfume so at odds with the stronger smell, I went on, taking turn after turn and short passage after short passage without any thought of a plan or making any attempt to memorize the course I had taken. I may have noticed the titles of volumes as I passed them but I could remember none of them later that night. Only the faces stayed in my memory and I was afraid they might visit me in dreams.

Why is it that sculpted or carved faces, when seen by night in a half-lit place, have a frightening effect, while effigies of animals or artefacts do not? No one expects the lion on a tomb to raise its head or stretch out its paws but everyone of an imaginative turn of mind fears that the human head in stone may turn, the lips part or twist into a snarl. Those heads never did come back to me in nightmares but nor did they ever cease to make me uneasy, though I went into the library several times after that, and always the faces seemed to follow me with their sightless, pupil-less eyes.

‘Next time you come, darling,’ said Zorah with a soft laugh, ‘you must be like Theseus in the Minotaur's lair and play out a thread behind you. A ball of Ida's wool will do.’

As she spoke I stepped into a wider space, a square formed of bookcases. In the middle of it stood a lectern of bronze, made in the shape of a young man holding a book spread out on his outstretched hands. At his sandalled feet, also in bronze, lay two discarded volumes, one with Homer engraved on it, the other with Plato. The book in his hands, however, was real, paper and ink and leather, and when I approached I saw it was the Bible, open at the Book of Wisdom in the Apocrypha.

‘Great-grandfather Cosway made the maze and put that monstrosity there,’ said Zorah. ‘God knows why but the young chap is supposed to be Longinus, the one who wrote about the sublime, not the one who put his spear into Christ's side. He's rejecting Homer and Plato in favour of Holy Writ. He was no relation of mine, I'm glad to say.’

I thought she must mean she was no relation of Longinus's. Looking at the page at which the book was open, I read, ‘The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God and there shall no torment touch them.’

The bronze hand felt cold to my touch. Longinus wore the tunic and breastplate of a Roman soldier and his hair fell in long curls to his shoulders. With his delicate profile, rather like that of Michelangelo's David, his short skirt and long bare legs, he looked in the dimness more like a girl than a man-at-arms. The lights in this place were low and his shadow long, falling across the entrance to two more passages.

‘Shall I get you out?’ said Zorah. ‘You could wander round for hours. Some have.’

I wanted to ask her if the only reason the labyrinth library was kept locked was to keep John out and if so why? What would he do? I didn't ask. Ella would be more approachable if less intelligent. Turning round corners, taking passages I was sure I had not been along before, I saw the picture Isabel had mentioned hanging on a bookcase end, a mezzotint of a house I took on trust was Lydstep Old Hall, for I would never have guessed it. Zorah found the geode on a shelf full of Victorian geography books. She lifted it down, holding the heavy thing in both hands.

‘I'd like to come in here again,’ I said.

She hesitated, then said, ‘No reason why not. Most of the keys live in a drawer in the dining room but not this one. I'll show you where you can find it.’

I went with her and watched her open the door to a cavity in the wall. The door was the picture of the couple in the amphitheatre. ‘There was once a safe behind here,’ she said. ‘No use any longer. They've nothing to keep in it.’ She laughed, said, ‘Better not,’ and stopped.