The Claw

Four

Alan sat at his desk and gazed out of the window. A steamy whitish sky pressed down on the sea, trapping the heat in his room. From up here the sea appeared to start at the very edge of the cliff, a sea like a semicircle of mercury miles in diameter, rippling sleepily. Half a mile away he could see a strip of beach, and on it what was either a reddish piece of driftwood or someone badly sunburnt. The stereo speakers on either side of his desk were playing the Goldberg Variations, but despite the glittering stream of music, he felt restless. He couldn't write.

Perhaps it was the heat. Usually music and the seascape kept him at his desk while he was searching for words, but now the distant object on the beach was distracting him. It looked like a reclining figure whose raw face was turned to him, but why should that make him feel watched? It couldn't be anyone, for although it was redder than sunburn, it was certainly wearing no clothes. Nevertheless he was waiting for it to move, and when he had stared at it for long enough, of course it seemed to stir. Eventually the smell of coffee lured him downstairs.

Anna's playroom and the living-room were on opposite sides of the ground-floor hall. Since her door was open, he tiptoed in to see what she was doing, but the room was empty except for the multitude of her things: soft toys, games, fairy-tale records in other records' sleeves, wheeled animals she had outgrown but refused to pan with. Comics were scattered across her little table, a teddy-bear slumped on her bicycle by the open window as though faint for the lack of a breeze. Small dolls peered out of a Lego house beneath wall-shelves heaped with books. For all its crowding, the large room felt lonely with the sound of the sea.

Anna was in the dining-room, reading Enid Blyton and kicking the legs of her chair. He gave her a hug as Liz came in from the adjoining kitchen with mugs of coffee.

'How's it coming?' Liz said.

He gazed at the whirligig of bubbles in his coffee. It looked like a hypnotist's aid: your eyelids are growing heavy, you cannot move.. . 'Not too well,' he said. 'I was trying to write a Nigerian chapter to get the feel of it, but it won't come alive. I feel as if I haven't got enough material.'

'You don't think you'll have to go back there, do you?'

'You won't go away again, will you?' Anna set down her mug with a thump that spilled coffee over the table. 'Please don't. Please say you won't.'

'I shouldn't think so, darling. Hurry up now, get a cloth.'

But Anna wasn't satisfied. As she mopped the table she pleaded, 'Promise you won't go away again.'

'Now, Anna, daddy's said that he probably won't. Why don't you go out and play while it isn't raining? Let mummy and daddy have a bit of peace.'

'Can't I just stay and listen to you?' But they didn't answer. 'I suppose I'll have to go and see the goats.'

'I expect she'll tell the goats we've thrown her out,' Liz sighed, when Anna had gone at last, pouting. 'I must find her a few more activities before we all go mad. I think I'll continue in the nursery while she's off school. She likes helping there.'

'All right, fine,' he said, trying to assemble the chapter in his mind.

She patted his hand. 'It'll come right. You'll see.'

No doubt that was true, but her assurance annoyed him a little; he'd reached the stage of writing where nobody could help – the stage where you fumble for the shape of the material and feel you'll never grasp it. Upstairs the Bach had ended, and the sea sounded like a trapped needle hissing in the central groove. 'I think I'll give it one more try,' he said.

He went into the living-room, the longest room in the house. Windows overlooked the coast road; patio doors opened onto the back garden. Two of Liz's beachscapes hung above the mantelpiece: one by moonlight, one at midsummer noon, the sea like crinkled tinfoil. It always struck him as strange to hear the restless sea while he could see it frozen up there on the wall. From the shelves by the downstairs hi-fi he selected a recording of Louis Armstrong with the Hot Five – hoping it would liven him up, and was almost out of the room again before he saw the claw.

It was standing on the mantelpiece, resting on its points. Since he'd had to keep it for the weekend, he hadn't been able to resist putting it on show. Sunlight through the patio doors turned it into a claw of silver fire, hovering above the polished wooden top of the stone mantelpiece. He'd meant to phone about it first thing this morning, but his struggles to write must have driven it out of his mind.

He hurried upstairs and stared from his window while he waited for Directory Enquiries to respond. Anna had left the goats and was performing headstands in the back garden, her long brown legs waving above the drooping flower of her skirt. The goats were cropping grass on the cliff top near the pillbox, a whitish concrete structure built for defence during the last war and guarded now by a few bushes. The glimpse of beach half a mile away was bare. Perhaps someone had carried away the red piece of driftwood.

'Directory Enquiries, which town?'

He gave the brisk female voice the details, and was glad he wasn't in Lagos; on this last trip he'd once spent more than an hour trying to place a call to Liz. The voice read him the number almost at once, and he scribbled it down. He had an odd irritable suspicion that he might forget again to phone if he didn't dial immediately.

The phone didn't ring for long at the other end before a soft, efficient voice said, 'Foundation for African Studies?'

'I'm calling on behalf of David Marlowe?'

There was a short pause. 'Putting you through to someone who can help you.' He heard a single loud buzz, more like the noise of a football rattle than the ringing of a phone, and then the switchboard girl was replaced by a quick precise asexual voice. 'Hetherington here.'

'Good morning,' Alan said – it still was, just about – and repeated his original approach. 'I'm calling on behalf of David Marlowe.'

'Where are you speaking from?'

'Norfolk.'

'What is your name?'

The voice was beginning to sound like a policeman. 'Alan Knight. I'm a writer,' Alan said.

Now the voice was audibly suspicious. 'And what's your connection with David Marlowe?'

'I met him last week in Lagos,' Alan said. He now wished more than ever that he hadn't got involved: he could feel his Nigerian chapter slipping further out of reach. 'He had something which he said you needed urgently, and I said I'd deliver it to you. By the time I reached London on Saturday your offices were closed. I'm calling to find out how you want me to get it to you,' he said, and described the claw.

'I see.' In silence that followed, Alan couldn't resist picturing Hetherington: a tall stooped professor, white-haired and fussy. 'You'll forgive me if I sounded… wary when I first spoke to you,' Hetherington said. 'I thought you might be a reporter. You see, David died over the weekend, very tragically.'

'I'm sorry to hear that.' Had the crash he'd dreaded on the expressway happened after all? 'How did it happen?' he said.

'One doesn't like to presume,' Hetherington said eventually, 'but to judge from his wife's statement, there seems no doubt that he killed himself.'

Suddenly Alan felt very cold. He had been right, after all: he'd let himself be driven by a madman. He could have been killed – he might never have seen Liz and Anna again. He wanted to ask how Marlowe had died, but Hetherington obviously regretted having said so much. 'Now we must decide what is to be done about the artefact,' Hetherington said, and it sounded like a reproof. 'Do you often come to town?'

'Pretty often.'

'Excellent. May I ask you to bring the item here rather than risking the post? Please don't come down specially. There's no urgency, in spite of what David may have said. I fear he must already have been mentally disturbed when he gave it to you. Normally he would never have entrusted an item of value to someone he hardly 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.