Five paces ahead. // You enter a small room. You gravitate to the far right corner. Of chairs and its recumbent prospect. Seven further paces. // Turn. In the corner opposite you. The dining room door open. To reveal: the table the window the shifting trees. To its left: the corridor back past the Doric columns to the old entrance the vestibule. To your right. An opening door to the morning room: the trees the river the hills

Above: the small landing. On four sides. Banisters gleam. Under the skylight. Even on a day like today. The floor bathed with light. An amber glow as it rises from polished boards soaked into the red walls

Blank walls blank windows. Time cracks across a landscape so local you could see the same slight hills out of the windows on a clear day. A fossil storm etiolated and brittle. This room. Three doors. No windows. Bristles of dry genre trodden into the boards. Dead seeds. Lavender after the storm

imagine an expert on – say – AW Callcott. Who'd be fascinated by this. Who would look at this and make it brilliant. Varnish vanishes. The trees stretch their tired limbs. Dawn stain a glow that approximates the wall of Italian heat that holds you at arms' length. Lavender alive with bees swaying after the storm

Somebody watches you from the balcony. A flicker of interest in your lack of interest. Your room is a tumbling red cube for his pitching vertigo