Literary Houses
from A Valley in Italy by Lisa St Aubin de Terán

Beyond the window, bats began to swoop, circling through the streams of early evening air. The temperature dropped suddenly and the cool breeze brought in eddies of woodland scents: the last of the blackthorn and the first of the hawthorn and broom, all filtered through cypress resin. The child and I went back out into the scrubland around the villa and gathered bundles of broom twigs as light as straw. Then we rooted around among the poppies and dandelions for larger twigs, making up bundles to add to the long sticks from a mossy woodpile we had found stacked conveniently behind the house. These oak sticks, each as thick as my arm, were carefully sawn into five-foot lengths, which rendered them singularly unwieldy. We made our first blaze from them (without firelighters) in the fireplace in the big kitchen, with its high ceiling, its eight metres square of stone floor, its old stone sink in one corner, its long windows on two sides, and its door. This chestnut door was one of the five doors in the house. This kitchen, together with two adjoining rooms on the first floor, had been used as a caretaker's flat over the last hundred years. The ceiling and walls were steeped in smoke, but the beautiful carved white marble fireplace that we had seen (and bought), with its grimy crests and pillars, had been stolen some months earlier. A stone placebo had been erected in its place by the penitent vendors. I subsequently discovered that ripping historical fireplaces out of their masonry as almost as popular a sport here as shooting songbirds.

As the sunny afternoon turned into an increasingly chilly evening, I climbed under the new stone mantel and tried to forget my rancour at this theft. There was so little in the villa that it seemed doubly sad to lose this one treasure, gutted in its turn from a Savoyard palace somewhere, as its crests had testified.

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Q1 AF5
How does the writer create a sense of mystery in the first four sentences?

Beyond the window, bats began to swoop, circling through the streams of early evening air.
The temperature dropped suddenly and the cool breeze brought in eddies of woodland scents: the last of the blackthorn and the first of the hawthorn and broom, all filtered through cypress resin.
The child and I went back out into the scrubland around the villa and gathered bundles of broom twigs as light as straw.
Then we rooted around among the poppies and dandelions for larger twigs, making up bundles to add to the long sticks from a mossy woodpile we had found stacked conveniently behind the house.

Q2 AF3
In the middle of the first paragraph the phrase without firelighters appears in brackets. What is the significance of this phrase, and why is it in brackets?

Q3 AF3
Towards the end of the first paragraph, we are told This chestnut door was one of the five doors in the house. What is the significance of this?

Q4 AF2
Identify two details from the first paragraph which suggest that the house is disused. Quote and explain.

Q5 AF2
What are the meanings of the words rancour and testified in the final paragraph?

Q6 AF3
What impressions do you get of the narrator's thoughts as she prepares the fire?

Q7 AF6
Suggest, precisely, two ways in which this opening prepares us for a book about the restoration of an Italian palace.