Fiction: A rising novelist travels to a remote island at the invitation of his reclusive mentor

The Furnivall mansion was in the stomach of the island. It rose from the bottom of a deep glen, gurning against the wind which assaulted its crenellated walls. Through the windscreen, I watched the mansion rise before us – turrets, arches, cornices, arranged in a recursive order. Every time I visited, it arrested my attention and so, my conversation with Lewis subsided while the mansion interrupted us with its language of angles. The longer I looked, the more I had to wrestle with its dimensions, giving up, starting again. It seemed to have been forged from a series of disparate elements, balancing each other in a grotesque symbiosis.

Many years before, Malcolm had moved with his family to this Hebridean island, so that he might better concentrate on his writing. It had taken three years to build the mansion, using sandstone from a neighbouring island and a few dozen craftsmen to whom Malcolm had passed his intricate design. Yet, the mansion also could very well have been created over time by deposits of living stone, forming pockets which became rooms, crystals that became windows. The essence of the place held the chaotic beauty of something grown.

The western face of the mansion...

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