Gibbous House 20

As Maccabi brought our carriage to the halt, I withdrew my recently acquired timepiece from my waistcoat and was quite surprised that it was merely the first hour of the afternoon. My travelling companion's prattle had performed some alchemy and made the journey seem as long as Moses’ own to Canaan. King Street, though enjoying the benefit of several streets between itself and the sea front, was in the grip of a North Sea fret, which had soaked my outer garments instantaneously. Whenever I breathed in, I could taste the sea on the back of my tongue and felt as chilled as only the North Sea Spring can make one.

Number 11 looked to have been built about the turn of the century. The window's glass panes were small and dark with dirt, the bow of the window itself of uncertain geometry. Maccabi alighted without a word and I followed him. The door appeared far too ornate for the simplicity of the building: a house of two storeys. Two leaved, the escutcheon around the lock was brass, in the shape of a lion’s head. There was something exotic in the lines as though it had been fashioned in Persia or beyond. The wood was painted in an unnecessarily vibrant green, quite out of place in the Northumbrian seaside town. The knocker on the door was a miniature, tarnished version of the benighted Lion from Adam’s bridge. I presumed it was a later addition to the door furniture. Maccabi grasped the rigid tail, lifted the knocker high and let it fall, making the solid sound of a beadle’s staff on a sack, or indeed the back of a boy.

Both leaves swung wide to reveal a figure as wide as it was tall, or rather, short. Atop the rotund torso was a head fully as round. Cherubic features boasted the red cheeks of the happy or a devotee of fortified wines. Bold, greying whiskers seemed an extension of the fringe of hair circling his pate. The man’s waistcoat was stained and misbuttoned and one of his lapels hung by a thread. A ragged shirt sleeve emerged from the cuff of his frock coat. Maccabi chose to perform the obsequies on the threshold, whether intent on insult or no, I was unsure:

`Mr Brown, sir, may I present Mr Alasdair Moffat, late of…’ He eyed me for a moment.

‘London.’ I said.

‘Quite so. London.’

John Brown’s voice seemed to come from a deep pit. Rough and harsh as the voice of a man half-strangled, or hanged, it seemed no more likely to emerge from his cherub mouth as from that of a woman or a child. He gestured, bidding the two of us enter. Inside the hallway stood more furnishings than in an auction house. Eclectic pieces of eclectic purpose, tallboys, commodes, secretaries, dining chairs, and one long table on its end with the legs offering an embrace as we squeezed our way into Brown’s office.

It was with some relief that I observed that a functional number of chairs, a solitary large bookcase and one desk comprised the furniture in that room. More disconcerting were the walls, if indeed any such lay behind the innumerable framed items. Portraits, landscapes, life painting, sporting scenes, cartoons, sketches, incomplete works, several canvases nailed to whatever lay behind them. Such a riot of images it was as to make the observer feel quite nauseous. I fixed my attention on Brown, behind his desk; and perhaps that was to the purpose.