Three to See the King

look I had allowed myself to be seduced by its grace and solidity, by its warm stove, and by its shutters that could be closed against the weather. Oh yes, it was a house of tin alright, but instead of being in a canyon, it was situated high up on the plain!
    I opened the door and gazed out across that vast expanse, asking myself if I’d left it too late to resume my search. It was the afternoon of a desolate winter’s day, and as I stood there a savage gust of wind warned of the hardship that such a life would bring. Quickly, I stepped back into the warmth.
    There probably isn’t even a canyon,’ I said, by way of explanation.
    ‘How far did you look?’ she asked.
    ‘Quite far.’
    ‘And you found nothing?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Well, I suppose it hardly matters really,’ she remarked. ‘As long as you’ve got a roof over your head.’
    Maybe so, but I was curious as to why she’d raised the subject in the first place. At no time had she questioned my desire to live in a canyon, and seemed only concerned with my obvious failure to do so. At first I assumed this was simply another criticism to add to the current list. After a while, however, I began to suspect there was more to it than that. Nothing else was said about my unfulfilled plans, nor did she mention them again over the next few days. Instead, she adopted a strategy of silence, during which I couldn’t help thinking that she was waiting for me to do something. Over and over again I felt her eyes on me as I carried out some domestic duty in the house. When I brought some extra pillows to the upper floor, for example, she sat on her bed watching while I struggled to get them into their covers. She didn’t utter a single word, but instead looked at me as if to say, ‘You’re wasting your time doing that: there are much more important things to be getting on with.’
    This unsatisfactory state of affairs continued for almost a week, and at last I could stand it no longer.
    ‘Right,’ I said, one cold, bright morning. ‘I’m going out.’
    ‘Where?’ she asked.
    ‘To look for a canyon to live in. I might be gone a while.’
    ‘But I don’t want to be here on my own,’ she protested.
    ‘Don’t you?’
    ‘Of course not.’
    ‘Very well,’ I said. ‘I’ll sort that out first.’
    I put my boots on and went over to see a neighbour of mine called Simon Painter. He lived a couple of miles away to the west, in a tin house of similar construction to my own. This Simon Painter moved into the vicinity round about the same time as me, and I suppose you could call him a friend. To tell the truth, though, ‘half-friend half-nuisance’ would he a much better description. The trouble with Simon was that he tried too hard to be sociable, frequently turning up at odd hours of the day on so-called surprise visits which generally involved exchanging unnecessary gifts. These calls were fine so long as they were also short-lived, but unfortunately he had a tendency to outstay his welcome and often needed to be shown the door. For limited periods, however, he was a good companion, and for this reason I knew he could be relied on for what I had in mind.
    I should mention that Simon Painter was not my only neighbour, but he was by far the nearest. Living beyond him were Steve Treacle and Philip Sibling, and strewn around the area were two or three others whom I’d never met, all separated by intervals of several miles. The only thing we had in common was that we each lived alone in a house built from tin. We rarely saw one another because we preferred it like that. So went my understanding of the arrangement anyway.
    The last time I’d laid eyes on Simon was when he came over to tell me he was planning to hoist a captive balloon above his house. Did I have any objections, he wanted to know. Well obviously I didn’t, and I realized he’d made the journey simply as an excuse to visit somebody. I had no doubt that he’d also called upon each of the others under the same pretext. The idea of this balloon, apparently, was to make his residence more easily identifiable. I knew for a fact that it was already equipped with a flagpole on the roof and a bell that chimed whenever the wind blew. This proposed new addition confirmed an opinion I’d held for some time, namely, that Simon Painter was trying to attract attention to himself. Why he’d chosen to live in such a remote setting I couldn’t understand, because he seemed to spend his days seeking the