and let her stick with them.
It was evening now. The sky was striated, precise overlays of color working from regal purple to the palest blush. Amy Glasse woke and sat up in bed, stretching her arms and fingers, rippling her fingers through the liquid light like a stage pianist preparing to play. Ralph turned and reached for her as she slid from the bed; sleeping, he followed the heat trail of her body across the sheets. His arm, empty, cupped the space from which she had moved.
From below, there was a monotonous thumping, a solid hammering, like the copulation of giants in a myth.
“Oh, God,” Amy said. “We’re back in the old routine.”
Ralph woke to see her shape against the window. Her long back, white in the dusk: “Sweetheart, come back to bed.” He put out a hand for her, drowsy; didn’t see why his peace should be disturbed.
“Sorry,” Amy said. “I don’t know, shall I go down, or shall I pretend I’m not here? Ralph, you’re not awake, are you?” She cast around, snatched up the T-shirt she had taken off, and swabbed the area between her thighs. She looked around the room for something else to wear, then with a little laugh pulled the T-shirt over her head. She reached for her skirt. “What shall I do? If I don’t go down now they’ll only come back later.”
“Who?” He had focused now, on that sound of fist on wood. “Who is it?”
“Purvis and his mate,” she said. “The constabulary, my dear. Sometimes I wish I lived in the city, then you’d get a choice of bastards. Not always the same old pair.”
He pushed back the covers. “Ralph,” she said, “don’t go down. No, listen to me.” She was at the window, the curtain parted minutely. “There’s two cars here. Just get dressed, but stay up here and be quiet. If they come up say nothing—don’t antagonize them.”
Buttoning her skirt, she flitted from the room. No one could crouch and hide, and listen to that destructive thump-thump-thumping; Amy couldn’t do it, and neither’ could he. Panicking, he began to pull himself into his clothes. He must get there before her; feared violence. Once before he had imagined hitting Purvis. Once, a long time ago … his hand, clenched to pull in and fasten his belt, felt itself sink into belly flesh: propel a bully toward ridicule and the stoep door, one foot in a wastepaper basket. The body has its own memories; muscle and bone, marching its own ghost trail.
He put his shoes on, straightened up: randomly buttoned his shirt, skittered down the stairs after Amy. The front door was open: he went out into a September evening, a confrontation, the air a golden rose; the past summer a memory, bloom of sea lavender, scent of tourist tires on narrow burning roads. Purvis said, “Mr. Eldred, isn’t it?” Yes, it is, he said, yes, I do: what’s happened, how is she?
Anna’s car drew up behind the police car. It rattled to a halt. After a moment, Anna stepped out. She did not move away from the car, held the vehicle’s door before her like a shield; but she took the time to let her eyes rest on everything. She raised one foot, tucked an ankle behind her, balancing it on the car’s rusting door-sill. The policemen’s eyes slid like snakes over Amy Glasse, her creased homemade cotton skirt and her breasts bouncing beneath the stained white cloth. “Fuck off out of here, Purvis,” she said. “You were here last week and into everything, so what the fuck do you want now?”
Ralph put his hand out, to take Amy’s wrist. “Calm down. It’s nothing. They want me, not you.”
Amy’s eyes traveled: to Purvis, to Ralph’s face, to Anna still as a statue in the fading light.
I have lost track of the time, Ralph thought; I should have been home an hour ago. Anna, without a word, climbed back into the car and drove away.
When the police had given their news, and driven away in their turn—their eyes roaming around the farmyard and outbuildings— Ralph said to Amy, “I must go right now. You understand, don’t you? I have to go to Norwich and sort this out.”
“Of course you must go.” Her smile was twisted, bleak. “Then you’ve your wife to face.”
“Yes. That will be later.”
“I’ll not be seeing you, then?”
He didn’t reply. “We’ve seen it on the television,” she said. “Me and Sandra. Men always go back to their wives.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow.” He felt shaky, weak; was not sure whether he was lying or not. “Unless I’m at the hospital, that is. There’ll be all sorts of people I have to talk to—social workers, and her parents if she’s really ill, and my own people, the Trust committee, because if there’s any possible legal problem I like them to know about it. I’ll be on the phone all day.”
“Anna, she’s beautiful,” Amy said. “Sandra didn’t tell me. I had no idea. I thought she was some biddy in a print frock.”
“I can’t talk about it. I haven’t time. I’ll be back as soon as I can.
“I’ll not count on it,” Amy said. Her voice was light and bright. She was fighting back tears. Ralph felt inside him a great rolling mass of nausea and cold, of apprehension and self-hatred.
At a phone box on the outskirts of Fakenham, he stopped the car and rang his home. He calculated that Anna would just have arrived; if she were walking in, he thought, that would be best, that would be the best time to get her.
He let the phone ring for a long time. He checked his watch again. She should be home by now. Where would she go, except the Red House?
As he was about to replace the receiver, he heard it picked up. “Anna? Anna, are you there?” Silence. “Please speak to me.” Silence. “I’m going to Norwich,” he said. “I have to. To the hospital. I’ll call again from there. Anna, please …”
She had put the phone down. He got back in the car and drove away.
I would have spoken, she thought: I would have spoken, except that I could not think of a single thing, not one thing to say. She went into the kitchen and made herself some instant coffee. She drank it standing up, by the sink. Then she washed her cup. There was a long night ahead, and she would be alone. Robin was playing in a school match, he would not be back, he was staying over in King’s Lynn. Julian, she supposed, was at the farm; and she had sent her daughters away. She dried her hands, folded the towel, laid it over the back of a chair.
