that she should twice interrupt me at precisely the same place.
I looked down at the retyped page. It was in every way identical to the one it had replaced.
Slowly, I wound it out of the typewriter carriage, and put it in its place at the bottom of the manuscript.
I sat silently while Felicity moved about the kitchen. She had bought an apron in the village. She washed the dirty dishes, put sonic chops on to cook.
When we had eaten I sat quietly at the table, retreating from Felicity with her plans and opinions and concern. Her normality was an infusion of madness into my life.
I would be fed and bathed and brought back to health. It was Father's death that had done it. I had flipped. Not much, according to Felicity, but I had nevertheless flipped. I was not able to care for myself, so she would take over. I would see by her example what I was denying myself. We would make weekend forays to Edwin's cottage, she and I and James, and the children too, and we would bustle about with brooms and paint brushes, and James and I would clear the overgrown garden, and in no time at all we would make the house habitable, and then Edwin and Marge would come and see it. When I was better we would all visit London, she and I and James, but perhaps not the children this time, and we would see Gracia, and the two of us would be left together to do whatever the two of us needed to do. I would not be allowed to flip again. I would visit Sheffield every two or three weeks, and we would go for long walks on the moors, and perhaps I should even travel abroad. I liked Greece, didn't I? James could get me a job in Sheffield, or in London if I really wanted it, and Gracia and I would he happy together and get married and have--
I said: 'What are you talking about, Felicity?'
'Were you listening to what I said?'
'Look, it's stopped raining.'
'Oh God! You're impossible!'
She was smoking a cigarette. I imagined the smoke drifting about my white room, settling on the new paintwork, yellowing it. It would reach the pages of my manuscript, discolouring those too, setting down a layer of Felicity's influence.
The manuscript was like an unfinished piece of music. The fact of its incompleteness was bigger than its existence. Like a dominant seventh chord it sought resolution, a final tonic harmony.
Felicity started to clear away the plates, clattering them in the kitchen sink, so I picked up my manuscript and headed for the stairs.
'Are you going to pack?'
'I'm not coming with you,' I said. 'I want to finish what I'm doing.'
She appeared from the kitchen, suds of washing-up liquid dripping from her hands.
'Peter, it's all been decided. You're coming back with me.'
'I've got work to do.'
'What _is_ it you've been writing?'
'I told you once.'
'Let me see.' Her soapy hand extended, and I clutched the manuscript tightly.
'No one is ever to see this.'
Then she reacted the way I had expected before. She clicked her tongue, tilted her head quickly back; whatever it was I had done had not been worth doing.
I sat alone on the shambles of my sleeping-bag, holding the manuscript to me. I was near to tears. Downstairs, Felicity had discovered my empty whisky bottles, and was shouting up at me, accusing me of something.
No one would ever read my manuscript. It was the most private thing in the world, a definition of myself. I had told a story, and had crafted it to make it readable, but my intended audience was myself alone.
At last I went downstairs, to discover that Felicity had lined up my empty bottles in the small hallway at the bottom of the stairs. There were so many I had to step over them to get into my white room. Felicity was waiting there.
'Why did you bring in the bottles?' I said.
'You can't leave them in the garden. What have you been trying to do, Peter, drink yourself to death?'
'I've been here for several months.'
'We'll have to get someone to take them away. Next time we come here.'
'I'm not leaving with you,' I said.
'You can have the spare room. The children are out all day, and I'll leave you alone.'
'You never have yet. Why should you start now?'
She had already taken some of my stuff and put it in the back of her car. Now she was closing windows, turning off taps, checking the plugs. I watched her mutely, holding the manuscript to my chest. It was spoiled now forever. The words would have to stay unwritten, the thought remain unfinished. I heard imaginary music in my head: the dominant seventh rang out, forever seeking its cadence. It began to fade, like the run-off track on a gramophone record, music replaced by unplanned crackle. Soon the stylus in my mind would settle in the final, central groove, indefinitely stuck but clicking with apparent meaning, thirty-three times a minute. Eventually someone would have to lift the pick-up arm away, and silence would fall.
5
Suddenly the ship came into sunlight, and it was as if I had broken with what lay behind me.
I narrowed my eyes against the brilliant sky, and saw that the cloud was some effect of the land, for it ran in a
