'I don't know why I did it,' he began.
'Did what?'
'It was just there, you know, and when I saw it I wanted it.' As he spoke he proffered the object he'd been clutching. 'It's just an old book,' he said.
'You stole it?' He nodded. 'Where from? The Courthouse?' Again, he nodded. He looked so frightened she was afraid he was going to start weeping again. 'It's all right,' she said. 'I'm not cross. I'm just surprised. I didn't see you with it.'
'I put it in my jacket.'
'Where did you find it?'
He told her about the desk, and the inks and the pens, and while he told her she took the book from his hands and went to the window with it. There was a strange perfume coming off it. She raised it to her nose - not too close - and inhaled its scent. It smelt like a cold fire, like embers left in the rain, but sharpened by a spice she knew she would never find on a supermarket shelf. The smell made her think twice about opening the book; but how could she not, given where it had come from? She put her thumb against the edge of the cover and lifted it. On the inside page was a single circle, drawn in black or perhaps dark brown ink. No name. No title. Just this ring, perfectly drawn.
'It's his, isn't it?' she said to Sherwood.
'I think so.'
'Does anyone know you took it?'
'No, I don't think so.'
That at least was something to be grateful for. She turned to the next page. It was as complex as the previous page had been simple: row upon row upon row of writing, tiny words pressed so close to one another it was almost a seamless flow. She flipped the page. It was the same again, on left and right. And on the next two sheets, the same; and on the next two and the next two. She peered at the script more closely, to see if she could make any sense of it, but the words weren't in English. Stranger still, the letters weren't from the alphabet. They were pretty, though, tiny elaborate marks that had been set down with obsessive care.
'What does it mean?' Sherwood said, peering over her shoulder.
'I don't know. I've never seen anything like it before.'
'Do you think it's a story?'
'I don't think so. It isn't printed, like a proper book.' She licked her
forefinger and dabbed it on the words. It came away stained. 'It was written by him,' she said. 'By Jacob?' Sherwood breathed. 'Yes.' She flipped over a few more pages and finally came to a picture. It was an insect - a beetle of some kind, she thought - and like the writing on the preceding pages it had been set down exquisitely, every detail of its head and legs and iridescent wings so meticulously painted it looked uncannily lifelike in the watery light, as though it might have risen whirring from the paper had she touched it. 'I know I shouldn't have taken the book,' Sherwood said, 'but now I don't want to give it back, 'cause I don't want to see him again.' 'You won't have to,' Frannie reassured him. 'You promise?' 'I promise. There's nothing to be afraid of, Sher. We're safe here, with Mum and Dad to look after us.' Sherwood had put his arm through hers. She could feel his thin body quivering against her own. 'But they won't be here always, will they?' he said, his voice eerily flat, as though this most terrible of possibilities could not be expressed unless stripped of all emphasis. 'No,' she said. 'They won't.' 'What will happen to us then?' he said. 'I'll be here to look after you,' Frannie replied. 'You promise?' 'I promise. Now, it's time you were back in bed.' She took her brother by the hand and they both tiptoed out along the landing to his room. There she settled him back in his bed, and told him not to think about the book or the Courthouse or what had happened tonight any more, but to go back to sleep. Her duty done she returned to her own bedroom, closed the door and the curtains, and put the book in the cupboard under her sweaters. There was no lock on the cupboard door, but if there had been she would have certainly turned the key. Then she climbed between the now chilly sheets and put on the bedside light, just in case the beetle in the book came clicking across the floor to find her before dawn; which possibility, after the evening's escapades, she could not entirely consign to the realm of the impossible.
CHAPTER IV
i
Will consumed his soup like a dutiful patient, and then, once Adele had taken his temperature, collected his tray and gone back downstairs, quickly got up and dressed. It was by now early in the evening, and the sleety day . was already losing its light, but he had no intention of putting his journey off until tomorrow.
The television had been turned on in the living-room - he could hear the calm, even tones of a newscaster, and then, as his mother changed channels, applause and laughter. He was glad of the sound. It covered the occasional squeak of a stair as he descended to the hallway. There, as he donned scarf, anorak, gloves and boots, he came within a breath of discovery, as his father called out from his study demanding to know from Adele where his tea had got to. Was she picking the leaves herself, for Christ's sake? Adele did not reply, and his father stormed into the kitchen to get an answer. He did not notice his son in the unlit hallway, however, and while he whittered on to Adele about how slow she was, Will opened the front door and, slipping through the narrowest crack he could make so as not to have a draught alert them to his going, was out on his night-journey.
ii
Rosa didn't conceal the satisfaction she felt at the absence of the book. It had burned up in the fire, and that was all there was to say in the matter. 'So you've lost one of your precious journals,' she said. 'Perhaps you'll be a little more sympathetic in the future when I get weepy about the children.'
'There's no comparison,' Steep said, still searching the ashes in the antechamber. His desk was little more than seared timbers, his pens and brushes gone, his box of watercolours barely recognizable, his inks boiled away. His bag containing the earlier journals had been beyond the scope of the fire, so all was not lost. But the work-in-progress, his account of the last eighteen years of his vast labour, had gone. And Rosa's attempt to equate his loss with what she felt when one of her brats had to be put
out of its misery made him sick to his stomach. 'This is the labour of my life,' he pointed out.
'Then it's pitiful,' she said. 'Making books! It's pitiful.' She leaned towards him. 'Who'd you think you're making them for? Not me. I'm not interested. I'm not remotely interested.'
'You know why I'm making them,' Jacob said sullenly. 'To be a witness. When God comes, and demands we tell Him what we've wrought, chapter and verse, we must have an account. Every detail. Only then will we be ... Jesus! Why do I bother explaining it to you?'
'You can say the word. Go on, say it! Say forgiven. That's what you used to say all the time. We'd be forgiven.' She approached him now. 'But you don't really believe that any more do you?' She gently reached up and put her hands to his face. 'Be honest, my love,' she said, suddenly soft.
'I still ... I still believe there's purpose in our lives,' Jacob replied. 'I have to believe that.'
'Well I don't,' Rosa said plainly. 'I realized after our fumblfngs of yesterday, I have no healthy desires left in me. None. At all. There won't be any more children. There won't be any hearth and home. And there won't be a day of forgiveness, Jacob. That's certain. We're alone, with the power to do whatever we want.' She smiled. 'That boy
' Will?'
'No. The younger one, Sherwood. I had him at my tithes, sucking away, and I thought: it's a sickness to take pleasure in this, but Lord, you know that made it all the more pleasurable? And I began to think, when the child had gone, what else would give me pleasure? What's the worst I could do?'