knew.'
Alan felt he was hearing all this in a dream. He gave Hetherington his address and phone number automatically, then he let the receiver drop into its cradle. Perhaps there was a story in all this, if only he could stand back far enough to see it. Just now he felt too close. Liz would be glad that they could keep the claw for a while. There was no need to trouble her with Marlowe's suicide.
He put the Armstrong record aside unplayed. The conversation had drained him of all his creative energy – it was easy enough to lose. Now he felt as he always did after returning home from a journey: irritable, exhausted, unable to reach above the walls of his mental state. For a while he listened to the wind snuffling about the house, then he dumped the phone book on his desk and called the library in Norwich. No, they couldn't trace any film by the name of Out of the Past, which meant he at least had a title; all he needed now was a book to go with it. He leaned back in his seat, groaning and stretching his arms with a click that seemed to resonate through his bones; then he twisted around to look behind him. Anna was in the doorway.
Surprise made his voice sharp. 'What's wrong?' he demanded, and felt ashamed at once when he saw her flinch. 'It's all right, darling,' he said, holding out his hands. 'Come here.' But still she lingered nervously at the door. 'What did you want?' he said gently. She was twisting her hands together as if she hardly dared to speak.
Good God, he couldn't have spoken that sharply. 'Come on, Anna. I'm trying to work.'
'I thought I heard something. I only came up to see.'
'What sort of thing?'
'I don't know.' His abruptness had made her defiant. 'I wanted to see if you were all right.'
'Well, you can see I am. Let me do some work now, and then maybe we'll go down to the beach. Ask mummy to find you something to do, all right?'
When she'd gone, dragging her heels over the carpet to let him know she was unhappy, Alan closed his eyes; if only he could pretend to himself that he didn't care whether or not he wrote the chapter. But it was no good. An indefinable weight lay on his mind, as if there was something he had to do before he felt right again.
After a few minutes he strode angrily onto the landing. Was Anna loitering on the stairs? Maybe she was starting a summer cold; perhaps that was why she seemed so restless today. But the stairs were deserted. It couldn't have been her; it must have been the wind – yet he could have sworn that the snuffling sound came from inside the house.
Five
Anna chewed the end of her pencil and stared at the rain. She still felt wet from helping mummy rescue the garden chairs. She'd only been outside for a few seconds, but it had felt as if she'd turned the bathroom shower full on herself by mistake. The rain had pasted her dress to her and tugged at her hair, making it trail down her back like wet old rope. It made her feel squirmy and grubby just to think about it. She couldn't go out, and today was going to last forever. There was nowhere to go, nobody to play with, nothing to do.
She knew what she wanted to do. She wanted to write a story for daddy's publisher to publish. Daddy kept telling her to finish her stories, kept saying they were almost as good as his. Did it matter that they weren't as long? She didn't think so, because once she'd heard him say that the fewer words a writer used the better. He'd said so that first time he was on television. She couldn't imagine writing a story as long as one of his; it would be like walking all round the world. But it didn't matter how long it was, so long as she finished it properly. She wanted daddy to see that she could finish a story, just like him.
'Once upon a time there were goats who lived in a feild by the sea, a Billy goat and a nanny goat and their kids Mitten and Hitten, they all lived happily in a feild by the sea except Mitten and Hitten who wanted to sale on a ship to a far away land…'
She chewed her pencil, which tasted a bit like a stick of liquorice, and tried to think what came next. How did daddy always know? He must do, to be able to write so much.
She stared out of her playroom and tried to think. Out on the road a car sped by, looking like one of the paintings she'd done when she was little and couldn't keep the paint inside the drawing. Rain wriggled on the window. If she stared at it long enough she felt she was underwater, especially when she let her eyes go out of focus. Or perhaps it looked more like transparent spaghetti. She shook herself impatiently – daddy wouldn't be wasting his time like this, he would be getting on with his writing. She decided to give the nanny goat a capital N. That didn't look right either, none of it did. She wished she could ask daddy to help.
Why couldn't she? She knew she mustn't interrupt him when he was working, but surely this was special? This was for him. Besides, he'd once told her that she'd helped him with a story before she could even talk, when he'd had to write about a baby. Surely he wouldn't mind if she asked him to help now? She wanted to finish this story, she wanted him to be proud of her. His editor – that was the man at the publishers who helped him write – said they might publish her one day: Knight Junior, he called her. Maybe she'd be on television for all her schoolfriends to see, and all the friends she'd had in London. Daddy would be prcjd of her then, mummy would be too – they'd record her programme for her to watch whenever she wanted to.
She had written 'and', and was staring at her exercise book, when all at once it was too dark to see. The sky was suddenly almost as dark as a cinema when you went in after the film had started. She got up at once: now she had an excuse. Besides, she had another reason to go upstairs to see him. She couldn't help it, she was still worried about him.
She didn't know why. She would have told mummy if she'd been able to put it into words. As she went into the hall she could hear mummy in the kitchen, the mixer growling as it buried its nose in whatever she was making. Anna would have to look after him all by herself. She used to think she could, but by now she had some idea how unpredictable and mysterious grown-ups could be. Some things about them were too big for her to grasp. It made her feel small and lost sometimes, like a mouse in someone else's house. She ran up the stairs two at a time, to see that daddy was all right.
On the stairs to the top floor she hesitated. Perhaps she did know why she was worried. She remembered now that she'd had the same feeling yesterday – that someone had got into the house, into daddy's room. How could she tell mummy that? It would sound silly, the kind of thing grown-ups only pretended to listen to. She couldn't hear daddy's typewriter. She hurried up the last flight and across the landing to his room.
He was sitting at his desk in front of the window. He was hunched over the electric typewriter, which was humming loudly. Rain danced on the sill of the open window. Never touch anything electric while your hands are wet, never let water anywhere near anything electric. She was afraid to speak in case he didn't answer.
No, he was all right, for he'd hunched closer to the window. She went forward to see what he was looking at. She heard the waves rumbling like an earthquake; on the horizon the grey sky looked as if it was pouring into the sea. There seemed to be nothing else to watch, except the bedraggled goats that were huddling in the shelter of the pillbox. Or was he watching her reflection? She could see his face on the glass against the sea, but not his eyes, which were out there in the foaming waves.
All at once he growled, 'Well, what is it now?'
'Are you busy?'
'What does it look like?'
'No.'
He turned to glare at her. 'Well then, I can't be, can I?'
He was being so fierce that she couldn't help laughing. He was always like this when he was working, even if she brought him a cup of coffee that mummy made. He tried to look more fierce, then he smiled ruefully. 'I can't pretend I was thinking anything worth thinking. What's up?'
'I wanted you to help me with my story.'
'That's a laugh,' he said, not laughing. T can't even manage my own.'
'Shall I help you?'
He hugged her, tousling her hair. 'I wish you could, little one, believe me.'
'You said I did once.'
