Auto Da Fe
I was lying on my sun lounger on the Costa De La Luz thinking about home.
Winston and I had got out of the car and looked up at the rebuilt Croft Mansion.
"Good as new, Ma'am," he said.
"Hmm," I said. "Where's the ivy? Where are all the bullet holes in the brickwork?"
"All brand new, Ma'am. They used modern materials but effectively it's exactly the same as the building started in Tudor times."
"It looks fake," I said. "A movie version of England."
"But .." said Winston, but I'd pulled on my jacket and started marching up to the front door.
Inside the main hall was perfectly symmetrical. The furniture was precisely replicated, the picture of my parents had been repainted to look like an old master. There was no sag in any of the steps of the main staircase, no rough bits in the paint, no loose banisters, no chips out of the mantlepiece. The whole place smelt of solvent.
I lit a cigar. The old Croft Mansion had smelt of smoke.
I vaulted up the stairs to my room. The four poster bed had been recreated, but the tassles were brand new instead of a slight mouse-eaten. The mattress was perfectly even and unsqueaky, not an uneven spring anywhere. The toilet in the bathroom may have been the same, but gone were the network of tiny crazing and cracks in the rim.
I examined the piano in the music room. It was perfectly in tune and all the ivories were perfectly white.
I found Winston in the perfect kitchen.
"I'm off," I announced. "This place has lost everything that made it home."
"I wish you'd give it a chance," he said.
"I will," I said. "But first I want you to let in some of the farm animals, burn some wood in a dust bin, and batter the outside of the house with a sledgehammer. Drive the car over the lawns, allow some unruly kids into the swimming pool, rip out the phones and replace that brand new piano with an out-of-tune one from a second hand shop."
"Madam! The refit cost a fortune."
"Look up 'organic growth' on Wikipedia, old chap," I said. "You can't just rip an old tree up by its roots and replace it with an almost identical new tree."
I got out one of my battered old Nortons that had survived the fire and headed for the airport.
