Above the Vaulted Sky - Page 29

                The man has cheered up considerably since I invaded his quiet bookish death, but that wasn’t exactly difficult. His offer of tea seems to be on behalf of politeness rather than a genuine offer of kindness.

                Quickly, we stacked his books back in their pile and he took me through to a modest little kitchen.

                ‘So you just decided to live here?’

                ‘No one else was,’ he answers. ‘The name’s Yates by the way.’

                ‘Easton,’ I reply.

                ‘Strange name,’ he says, ‘means east settlement or island of stones depending on your preference of language.’

                ‘I think my parents just liked the sound of it.’

                He doesn’t reply, just turns back to fill the old fashioned, whistling kettle. I’m desperate to know more about this new world, and most importantly control myself, but the man intrigues me. I don’t know why anyone would want to segregate themselves so totally.

                ‘You’re wondering why I’m here aren’t you,’ he says. He’s perceptive, I can see that much. ‘I can see that it would look strange. The world at my fingertips and I become a hermit.’

                He turns around. He looks uncomfortable, like I’ve intruded on some private ritual, but he still talks to me. As much as he doesn’t seem to want to talk to me, he’s still talking, and making an unfamiliar ghost a cup of tea. Maybe he’s glad of the fleeting company.

                ‘I’m sorry for intruding,’ I say. ‘To tell you the truth, I don’t know how I got here. One second I was thinking how I can find my girlfriend when she could be anywhere…’

                ‘Ah,’ he interrupts, holding up his finger. ‘Rule number one of ghosting, never live near a haystack, or indeed a stack of needles. People have a rather annoying propensity to think in cliché.’

                The kettle’s whistling. I guess that it must be the noise and light in the abandoned place that keeps people away. A ghostly, deserted light on a moor would discourage many a cold, lost traveller. Though it may attract some.

                ‘Doesn’t anyone ever find you?’

                ‘A few,’ he says. ‘I don’t think you quite understand how far in the middle of nowhere you’ve found yourself. It makes the most wonderful place for reading.’  He smiles. It lifts his face and the years melt from him. ‘Reading calms me,’ he says. ‘Stays me from that awful desolation of memories that grips me whenever I try to travel beyond this moor.’