The Counterplot

Plasencia was a square, medium-sized house of red brick, built some sixty years ago, in those days when ar-chitects knew a great deal about comfort, but cared so lit-tle about line that every house they designed, however spacious, was uncompromisingly a "villa." Viewed from the front, it was substantial and home-like, and suggest-ed, even in the height of summer, a "merry Christmas" and fire-light glinting off the leaves of holly; from the back, however, it had a look of instability, of somehow being not firmly rooted in the earth-a cumbersome Ark, awkwardly perched for a moment on Ararat, before plunging with its painted wooden crew into the flood, and sailing off to some fantastic port.