'You wouldn't say these things to me if Alan were here,' Isobel said.
'A lot of things might be different if he were here.'
'And whose fault is it that he's gone away, I wonder?' She held up one hand before Liz could respond. 'You can't tell me that nothing's wrong. He didn't tell me he was going – he hasn't called me since he went away, not a single call. Have you told him not to?'
'Why on earth should I want to do that?'
'Oh, I can think of some very good reasons why you wouldn't like me to talk to him. Maybe they're the reasons why you don't want me to have access to your house.'
'I don't know what you're talking about, Isobel.' The skirmish had moved to the lounge, where Liz sank onto the rich leather settee. She was growing tired of the argument; she wanted the key to her house, that was all -she felt insecure enough at home as it was. 'I haven't been saying anything to Alan about you. Believe me, I've very little control over what he does.'
'Oh? I should have said it was the other way round.'
'What are you getting at, Isobel?' Liz felt Anna growing tense beside her on the settee, but she was too furious to stop. 'If you've something to say, spit it out.'
'I shall. It's my duty.' Isobel took a deep breath. 'To begin with, just look at the state of that child. Half the time she looks scared to death. You're deliberately keeping me away from her – and if you ask me, that tells a story in itself. Not only do you let her go into bars, you let her be on familiar terms with that barman, who certainly uses drugs if his woman friend does. God knows what else he gets up to.'
Liz decided that was more than enough for Anna to hear, but Isobel held up one hand when she tried to interrupt. 'Ah, I thought you'd rather not talk about him. He's the reason why you spend so much time at the hotel, isn't he? I gather that you don't do much to help at the nursery any more.'
'I get on very well with Jimmy.' Liz was choking back her anger in case it made her weep. Thank God for him; thank God for someone who could take Anna off her hands for a while. 'Who's been gossiping to you about me?' she demanded.
'You know perfectly well that I can't tell you that. Someone has to keep an eye on things.'
'For whom?' Her fingernails were scratching at the swollen leather; Anna drew away from her to the far end of the settee. 'For you?'
'For Alan, I should think.'
'And just what are they going to tell him?' Liz barely restrained herself from adding, 'If he comes back.' Then she wondered why she'd left it unsaid.
'If he could see his child at this moment, nobody would need to tell him anything. Look at her. She's scared out of her wits.'
'I hardly think so, Isobel,' Liz said, and was unable to look. 'If she's upset it's no wonder, considering what she's heard from you.'
'Oh, you're very skilled at blaming other people. It's never Elizabeth's fault.'
'Do you know, Isobel, I still haven't the faintest idea what is supposed to be my fault. All I've heard are a lonely woman's prejudices and fantasies. No two things you've said fit together.'
'Well, let me fit them together in words even you will understand. I think you're maltreating the child because you feel guilty about carrying on with your gentleman friend at the hotel. You're taking it out on her.'
'All right, Isobel, that's the finish.' Liz stood up, feeling less enraged than exhausted. 'We're going home, but first I want that key.'
'I don't know where it is.'
'Then I'll help you find it. I'll tear your house apart if I have to.'
'Yes, I believe you would. And you want me to think you're fit to look after a child.' Isobel glanced sadly at Anna, and Liz had to look. The child's face was pale and stiff, her eyes bright and blank. She looked ready to cry or to run away.
Isobel snapped open her ornate handbag, which glittered like a chandelier. 'There you are,' she said, and dropped the key into Liz's hand. The movement was so quick that Liz was instantly suspicious. Perhaps she'd had it copied. 'Is this the only one you have?'
Isobel stared stonily at her. After a while she spoke. 'Well, you've achieved what you set out to achieve. You've made sure there's a reason not to let the child come to visit me.'
'Do you know, Isobel, I think you're right.' Liz took Anna by the elbow, making her flinch, and hurried her to the front door. The wind had dropped; the air felt plushy, suffocating. The slam of the car door was the only sound in the night. Liz drove away without a backward glance.
Hedges swung back and forth in the light of her headlamps, beyond the unchanging patch of lit road. It was like being on a ghost train, except that there was no crouching figure behind the hedges, nothing that would spring out and frighten her. All at once Anna said wistfully, 'Can't I go to see Granny Knight any more?'
'Anna, if you do one more thing to annoy me…' Whose side was the child on? Liz drove faster, glaring at the speeding patch of road. Would Anna rather be with Isobel than with her? What would the rumour-mongers say about her then? She'd make sure they never had the chance.
The garage door loomed up against the enormous dark beyond the cliff. The headlights seemed to foreshorten perspective, to bring the edge nearer. She could hear the sea thrashing about in the dark; for a moment the darkness looked as if it was shifting too. She parked the car, pulled down the garage door and almost collided with Anna. 'There's someone in the house,' the child whispered.
Could it be Alan? 'Where?' Liz demanded.
'He looked out at me.'
That was all she would say. Liz unlocked the front door and called 'Alan' once, before the child whispered, 'No, it isn't daddy.' The lit hall led to darkness and closed doors. Liz eased the door shut and stood listening, but all she could hear was the sea, the constant undertone of the house. Eventually she made herself go forward, switching on lights as soon as she could reach them. The ground floor was deserted, which meant that she had to go up, and up again. Each empty room made the next door yet more threatening.
The house was empty, silent except for the sea and the wind, snuffling somewhere she couldn't quite locate. Had Anna really thought she'd glimpsed someone, or was she just getting her own back on Liz for refusing to let her visit Isobel? Perhaps she'd pretended to see an intruder because of the argument about the key. Just about everything had been her fault – letting Isobel see the marks on her arm, making Isobel think she was frightened of Liz. She'd played up enough for one night. 'Come on, quickly,' Liz said harshly. 'I want to get to bed.'
'I want to sleep in my own room.'
'No, you don't, and you're not going to.' If the child was frightened of her, she'd better do as she was told. Liz's face must have said so, for Anna undressed in the master bedroom and climbed into bed. She looked meek and submissive now – or was that fear? Just now Liz didn't care. She went through the house, switching off the lights, and was sure as soon as she turned off the bedside lamp that they weren't alone in the dark. The snuffling which she hadn't been able to locate sounded closer now; it made her think of an animal, lying there in the dark beyond the bed. Her nervousness was Anna's fault too. She dragged a sheet over her ear to shut out the moist snuffling, and tried to sleep. It was Anna who was making all this happen. Once again, as she hovered on the edge of sleep, she felt that somehow her dreams would tell her what to do.
Thirty-four
Sunlight woke Liz. It filled the room and glowed in Anna's hair as the child lay asleep, face buried in the pillow. Liz lay and gazed at her, at the small, still face, and wished they could stay like this for ever. Anna's mouth was pouting slightly, her left cheek was flushed by resting against the pillow, her hair was a stream of auburn fire. Liz remembered how she'd felt when she had first held her in her arms, remembered the first time she had seen Anna asleep, all the peace in the world in that tiny face. She was growing hot with sunlight and a kind of protective fury. Anna was still her child, Liz wouldn't let anyone harm her. Nobody was going to take her away.
She gazed until Anna began to stir, as if Liz's gaze was making h
er uneasy. Liz inched herself out of bed so as not to wake the child, and then she noticed that Anna was lying at the very edge of the mattress. Had she moved as far from Liz as she could manage? Liz suppressed her annoyance before it could take hold. She didn't like feeling that way about Anna, she mustn't let herself do so.
But she had to struggle with her feelings as she showered in the bathroom. She was remembering yesterday evening; the argument with Isobel, Anna siding with her against Liz. It was no wonder the child was nervous, after all that had happened, but why should that make her disloyal? She simply had no excuse. Liz towelled herself roughly, without knowing how much of her roughness was meant for herself, then she stared at herself in the mirror until she realized that she had no idea what she was looking for – some sign in her eyes of what she felt about Anna, perhaps? She hurried downstairs to make breakfast, to give herself less time to feel.
The smell of frying bacon must have woken Anna. Liz heard the toilet flushing, the gurgle of the washbowl, and eventually Anna came down. She went straight into her playroom. Couldn't she even say good morning? She was behaving as if she were afraid to come near her. She was making Liz tense, which was the last thing Liz wanted. The situation between them had to be sorted out. Liz called 'Breakfast's ready' before it was.
Anna trudged in as if she expected to be punished, sat down and stared at the table, hardly glancing at Liz. All right, then – if that was what she expected, that was what she'd get. No, that wasn't the way to sort things out. But Anna seemed determined to annoy her, picking babyishly at her toast and bacon as if she needed Liz to cut up her food for her.
'Don't you want any more?' Liz said at last, and when Anna shook her head, she ate the child's food herself. 'Have some cereal,' she said.
Anna emptied cornflakes out of the packet until her bowl was piled high, sprinkled the pile with sugar and doused it in milk, then sat staring at it while the sugar dissolved and the cornflakes drooped. Wasn't she going to eat at all? Was she going to starve herself so that people could accuse Liz of that as well? Liz forgot her decision to keep calm. 'Anna, what on earth is the matter with you?'
Anna stared at her as if she were a stranger. If anything had destroyed their closeness, it was her and her disloyalty. At last Anna said, 'Why won't you let me go anywhere any more?'
Liz controlled herself. 'Now, Anna, that isn't fair. Why, we went to Yarmouth Just the other day.'
The child stared more blankly than ever at that, but it wasn't Liz's fault that, Anna had gone to Yarmouth determined not to enjoy herself. 'You never let me go anywhere I want to go,' Anna said, poking at her soggy cereal until milk spilled onto the table and a drowned plastic whistle poked up from the mound, a hidden gift.
'I can't go to Granny Knight's or make things at the shop – I can't do anything I want to.'
'I didn't realize you were so fond of your grandmother.' Sarcasm wouldn't help. 'And I've explained why I don't want you to go to the shop. Look, we'll go to the nursery today.'
'I don't want to.'
'Oh, Anna, don't be difficult. I can't go far.' But now she'd said that, she wasn't sure why. Suppose Alan rang? 'If there are any calls for me and they can't get through, they'll probably try the hotel.'
'I don't want to go. I don't like the children there.'
'Will you leave that alone!' Anna was still poking at her cereal, spilling milk out of the bowl. 'I don't think much of them either. But there's Jimmy, you know he'll play with you if he's free. I think it's very nice of him.'
'But I want to go to Rebecca's.'
'Look, we've been through this before.' Tension was dragging at the skin above her eyes, tightening on her forehead. 'I want you to stay where I can see you.'
'But I'm not little any more,' Anna complained.
'Then why are you whining? Anyway, it isn't that. I'm nervous, that's all. I don't want you going off where I can't see you – not for a while at least.' But evidently Anna didn't believe her. All at once she had a disturbing notion that Anna might be right not to trust her – that she was lying to her without realizing it. 'If you must know,' she said in an attempt to retrieve the truth, 'I want to go to the hotel because I won't have people thinking I don't dare show my face there.'
'Oh, mummy, why are you being like this? You sound so horrible. You're behaving as if you don't like anyone. Soon we won't have any friends at all.'
Liz had to close her eyes and clench her fists to control herself. Her head was pounding, her hands wanted to be claws. Inside her eyelids everything was red. If Anna made one more remark like that, she'd be sorry – and Liz didn't care who saw the marks. Was this all the thanks she got for protecting her – suspicion, disloyalty, insults? Her nails were scratching her palms, and that made her even more furious: it wasn't she who should be hurting. Her eyes were burning, she didn't think she would be able to keep them closed much longer, even though if she opened them she would almost certainly let fly. She ground her fists against her temples in an attempt to rub away the tension, the tension that felt like a storm about to break, and then she jerked, eyes wide, bead pounding as if there was a pneumatic drill in her brain. The phone was ringing.
She lurched down the hall and grabbed the receiver. Barbara, Alan, another anonymous call – the possibilities were multiplying. 'Yes?' she cried.
'Liz?' It was a woman's voice that she couldn't identify. 'Is that you?'
'Yes.' Perhaps it was a bad line – long distance? 'Is that Barbara?'
'Barbara who?' There was a long pause, then the voice said, 'Are you sure you're Liz? It doesn't sound like you.'
'Yes, I'm sure.' Liz was pressing her forehead against the door of the long room; the glossy paint seemed to soothe her, a little. 'Who is this?'
'It's Jane. I should have thought you could tell. I wanted to talk to you.'
Liz closed her eyes and opened them again; the red was fading. She'd never heard Jane so shrill. She had a sudden unpleasant idea that it was the voice of someone who couldn't hear herself, who was beyond listening. 'Well, go on,' she said.
This time the pause was so long that she wondered if they had been cut off. 'I wanted to talk about… I wanted to talk about what we were talking about,' Jane said.
Her head was starting to throb again. 'What was that, Jane?'
'You know.' It hadn't seemed possible for Jane to speak more shrilly, but she was doing so. 'You know,' she pleaded.
'I've really no idea. Give me a hint,' Liz said, feeling as if she were being forced to play some kind of insane game.
'You must know. You brought it up. You do know. You do:
'Look, Jane, I don't mean to be rude, but I've problems of my own.' Her headache was threatening to blind her. 'What is it? What do you want to say?'
Jane muttered something. Whatever it was, it sounded like a cry of despair. Perhaps Liz wasn't meant to hear, because the next moment Jane had broken the connection, and Liz was left staring at the buzzing receiver. Good God, was this yet another worry? She couldn't take on Jane's problems as well, not now. All the same, as she replaced the receiver, part of her mind hoped that Jane would call her back.
She strode into the kitchen and shot a warning look at Anna. 'It's a good thing for you that Jane called.'
'Why? Can I go and see her?'
'Anna, you really don't know when you've said enough, do you? No, you can't go and see her. I probably ought to go myself – she sounds as if she needs help. Maybe I could have helped her just now if you hadn't made me so angry.'
'I didn't mean you to be angry, but don't you think it's true? Granny Knight said you made a reason so I couldn't go to see her.'
'Anna!' Liz couldn't stop herself, nor did she want to. She darted forward, raising her hand, her nails tingling. Before she could reach Anna, the child flinched back, so violently that she almost fell out of her chair. That was better; Liz had to stop herself from grinning. 'One more word out of you,' she said, 'and by God, you'll be sorry.'
She stood over the c
hild, hand raised. Anna looked terrified, and so she ought to be. When the child began to tremble, first her lower lip and then her body, Liz had the uneasy notion that she wouldn't be able to turn away. Why was Anna staring at her as if she were a monster? The child was just like the rest of them. 'I want daddy to come home,' Anna whimpered.
'You don't think he'd treat you any differently, do you?' It was Anna's fault that he'd felt obliged to go away. She wished she had the claw – that would shut Anna up, once and for all. The thought made her raise her hand again. 'Just you sit there and don't dare move. I'm going to call Jane, and then we're going to the nursery. Any objections? There'd better not be, for your sake.'
She had to make herself turn away before she could lower her hand. Why should that disturb her? There was nothing abnormal about her behaviour; anyone would do the same if they had to deal with a child as maddening as Anna. Maybe Jane might have wanted to discuss her feelings about her own child. She went back down the hall and dialled Jane's number. There was no reply.
Perhaps Jane had found her own solution, or perhaps Jane had guessed it was Liz calling back and was refusing to answer because of the way Liz had spoken before. The bell made Liz think of a small heart pulsing, a parody of a heart. As she stood there, willing Jane to answer, she heard the back door close stealthily. Anna must be afraid that Liz would hear she was going outside. Liz couldn't begrudge her that. She surely couldn't come to any harm out there.
Jane's phone rang, rang. Liz was thumping the wall with her fist, softly but achingly. Damn the child for making her so curt with Jane! Now Liz felt she wouldn't be able to go to the hotel until she knew what was wrong. But why not drive to Jane's and then to the hotel? That made her feel decisive at least. She hung up the receiver and went to the back door to call Anna.
Her head began to throb at once. She stared about, then she ran out beneath the sky that looked faded by the heat. Her head was so painful that she hardly knew what she was seeing, except that there could be no doubt of it. Goats stared indifferently at her from where they lay on the parched broken grass; nothing else moved on the top of the cliff. Anna had gone.
The Claw Page 22
