was no
Mummy and no Daddy; but there was Grannie and there was Grandpapa. Now
there was no Grandpapa. But he couldn't think back far enough to get to
the time when there was no Grannie.

Michael thought that being Grannie must feel like being God.

Before he came to the black window pane and the elder bush he had to run
down the slopes and jump the gullies on his side of the Heath, and cross
the West Road, and climb the other slope to Grannie's side. And it was
not till you got to the row of elms on Judge's Walk that you had to go
carefully because of the funeral.

He stood there on the ridge of the Walk and looked back to his own side.
There were other houses there; but he knew his father's house by the
tree of Heaven in the garden.

* * * * *

The garden stood on a high, flat promontory jutting out into the Heath.
A brown brick wall with buttresses, strong like fortifications on a
breastwork, enclosed it on three sides. From the flagged terrace at the
bottom of the garden you looked down, through the tops of the
birch-trees that rose against the rampart, over the wild places of the
Heath. There was another flagged terrace at the other end of the garden.
The house rose sheer from its pavement, brown brick like the wall, and
flat-fronted, with the white wings of its storm shutters spread open,
row on row. It barred the promontory from the mainland. And at the back
of it, beyond its kitchen garden and its courtyard, a fringe of Heath
still parted it from the hill road that went from "Jack Straw's Castle"
to "The Bull and Bush." You reached it by a lane that led from the road
to the Heath.

The house belonged to the Heath and the open country. It was aware of
nothing but the Heath and the open country between it and Harrow on the
Hill. It had the air of all the old houses of Hampstead, the wonderful
air of not acknowledging the existence of Bank Holidays. It was lifted
up high above the town; shut in; utterly secluded.

* * * * *

Anthony Harrison considered that he had done well when he acquired West
End House for his wife Frances, and for his children, Dorothea, Michael,
Nicholas and John.

Frances had said that, if he was thinking of her, he needn't buy a big
place, because she didn't want one. But he might buy it for the children
if he liked. Anthony had said that she had no idea of what she mightn't
want, once she began to give her mind to it, a