Soon it’ll be your turn to take on the talking. I’ll listen like I was paid for it.’
I was aware of considerable pique when Elizabeth reported all this to me. I protested that I was not given to forcing my opinions on others, and Elizabeth said I wasn’t either. ‘Clearly, he’s queer in the head,’ I said. I paused, thinking about that, then said: ‘Could he be someone like a window-cleaner to whom you once perhaps talked of your childhood? Although I can’t see you doing it.’
Elizabeth shook her head; she said she didn’t remember talking to a window-cleaner about her childhood, or about anything very much. We’d had the same window-cleaners for almost seven years, she reminded me: two honest, respectable men who arrived at the house every six weeks in a Ford motor-car. ‘Well, he must be someone,’ I said. ‘Someone you’ve talked to. I mean, it’s not guesswork.’
‘Maybe he’s wicked,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Maybe he’s a small wicked man with very white skin, driven by some force he doesn’t understand. Perhaps he’s one of those painters who came last year to paint the hall. There was a little man –’
‘That little man’s name was Mr Gipe. I remember that well. “Gipe,” he said, walking into the hall and saying it would be a long job. “Gipe, sir; an unusual name.’ ”
‘He could be calling himself Higgs. He could have read through my letters. And my old diaries. Perhaps Mr Gipe expected a tip.’
‘The hall cost ninety pounds.’
‘I know, but it didn’t all go to Mr Gipe. Perhaps nobody tips poor Mr Gipe and perhaps now he’s telephoning all the wives, having read through their letters and their private diaries. He telephones to taunt them and to cause trouble, being an evil man. Perhaps Mr Gipe is possessed of a devil.’
I frowned and shook my head. ‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘It’s a voice from the past. It’s someone who really did know you when you were ten, and knows all that’s happened since.’
‘More likely Mr Gipe,’ said Elizabeth, ‘guided from Hell.’
‘Daddy, am I asleep?’
I looked at her wide eyes, big and blue and clear, perfect replicas of her mother’s. I loved Anna best of all of them; I suppose because she reminded me so much of Elizabeth.
‘No, darling, you’re not asleep. If you were asleep you couldn’t be talking to me, now could you?’
‘I could be dreaming, Daddy. Couldn’t I be dreaming?’
‘Yes, I suppose you could.’
‘But I’m not, am I?’
I shook my head. ‘No, Anna, you’re not dreaming.’
She sighed. ‘I’m glad. I wouldn’t like to be dreaming. I wouldn’t like to suddenly wake up.’
It was Sunday afternoon and we had driven into the country. We did it almost every Sunday when the weather was fine and warm. The children enjoyed it and so in a way did we, even though the woods we went to were rather tatty, too near London to seem real, too untidy with sweet-papers to be attractive. Still, it was a way of entertaining them.
‘Elizabeth.’
She was sitting on a tree-stump, her eyes half-closed. On a rug at her feet Lisa was playing with some wooden beads. I sat beside her and put my arm about her shoulders.
‘Elizabeth.’
She jumped a little. ‘Hullo, darling. I was almost asleep.’
‘You were thinking about Mr Higgs.’
‘Oh, I wasn’t. My mind was a blank; I was about to drop off. I can do it now, sitting upright like this.’
‘Anna asked me if she was dreaming.’
‘Where is she?’
‘Playing with Christopher.’
‘They’ll begin to fight. They don’t play any more. Why do they perpetually fight?’
I said it was just a phase, but Elizabeth said she thought they would always fight now. The scratching and snarling would turn to argument as they grew older and when they became adults they wouldn’t ever see one another. They would say that they had nothing in common, and would admit to others that they really rather disliked one another and always had. Elizabeth said she could see them: Christopher married to an unsuitable woman, and Anna as a girl who lived promiscuously and did not marry at all. Anna would become a heavy drinker of whisky and would smoke slim cigars at forty.
‘Heavens,’ I said, staring at her, and then looking at the small figure of Anna. ‘Why on earth are you saying all that?’
‘Well, it’s true. I mean, it’s what I imagine. I can see Anna in a harsh red suit, getting drunk at a cocktail party. I can see Christopher being miserable –’
‘This is your Mr Higgs again. Look, the police can arrange to have the telephone tapped. It’s sheer nonsense that some raving lunatic should be allowed to go on like that.’
‘Mr Higgs! Mr Higgs! What’s Mr Higgs got to do with it? You’ve got him on the brain.’
Elizabeth walked away. She left me sitting there with her frightening images of our children. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that Lisa was eating a piece of wood. I took it from her. Anna was saying: ‘Daddy, Christopher hurt me.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. He just hurt me.’
