But perhaps—— He retrieved the sketch of the smooth-faced man from the file and pored over it. Had he dreamed that face too? The enigma annoyed him, but there was another feeling which, if defined, might help him complete the picture. Usually he regarded his subjects with detached yet affectionate humour, like a father or a historian—but he was sure that whatever he felt for the smooth face, it wasn’t affection.
The sound of applause, which he thought at first was a flock of birds starting from the trees, roused him. Down by the fish-pond, fishermen appeared to be presenting one another with awards. They were blurred, for Crosby’s window was wet, though it didn’t seem to have been raining overnight: the park was dry, not a twinkle of rain.
The decks of the Liverpool ferry were crowded with shoppers. White stuffing bulged from splits in the blue sky. A pigeon on the mast of a yacht was modelling the metal bird on the tower of the Liver Building. A naked baby was crawling about behind the legs of the crowd. Of course it must have been a dog.
When he’d overseen the mounting of his exhibition in the Bluecoat Gallery, he sat on a bench in Church Street and watched people. A man with a bowler hat and umbrella danced by as though in search of the rest of his troupe. A scrawny man in a pinstripe suit sat opposite Crosby, his limbs like sticks of mint rock. A whitish dog that looked hairless vanished into the crowd.
By the time he reached home he knew what he was going to draw. An hour later it was done: a chorus line of businessmen, all shapes and sizes, trotting to the office. He liked it enough to copy it for the exhibition before sending it for syndication.
And yet he felt he’d overlooked a more important task. He wandered through the house, feeling like a stranger who had strayed into a gallery full of framed drawings while it was closed to the public. ‘This is the Michaelangelo room,’ he muttered wryly. ‘This is the Cruikshank room. And here is the Crosby room—the smallest room, of course.’ Even if he was being unfair to himself, the echoes agreed with him.
A stroll in the park might help clear his mind. Perhaps his problem related to the smooth-faced sketch, but he felt there was more to remember. When he went out the twilight was deepening: the intricate lattices of grass-blades merged into a smouldering impressionistic glow; the pond looked solid and dark as soil. He began to follow the path around the water as the last fragments of light in the sky went out.
Before long he felt uneasy. The path was caged by railings, and hemmed in by trees and bushes on grassy banks. It turned constantly back and forth in a series of blind curves. Suppose he rounded a curve and bumped into someone in the dark?
Why should that bother him? It was nothing that an apology couldn’t make right. Of course it would be unpleasant to touch an unseen face without warning—but how could he do that when his hands were down by his sides? There was no point in brooding, especially since he knew that if he left the path now, even assuming he could, he would be lost.
He hurried onward, stumbling. Tree-roots forced open the cracked lips of the concrete path. A white blotch on the pond grew suddenly larger, flapping. The grey mass the size of his head which came at Crosby’s face was a cloud of midges.
Though the park road was no lighter, he let out a guarded sigh of relief when he emerged from the path. He made his way along the road toward the short cut beside the rugby ground, and had almost reached the dark gap when he faltered, his jaw lolling. A flat white face had peered over next door’s hedge at him.
He glared up at the seven-foot hedge. He’d had the impression of a face like a bulldog’s, but it had only been a glimpse from the corner of his eye; perhaps it hadn’t been a face at all, just a piece of paper fluttering in the grasp of the hedge. But weren’t the chains of the swing squeaking faintly to a halt? Surely his neighbours wouldn’t let their child play out so late; perhaps a strange child had squeezed through the hedge. Their garden was impenetrably dark. Crosby dodged through the short cut, and was blinded by the streetlamps until he reached them.
Next morning he had been dreaming of fire. He’d turned away in dismay, only to find himself surrounded by gloating eyes. More than that he couldn’t recall, and had no time to try. He was already later than he’d meant to leave for the Manchester train.
When he arrived panting at the television studios, he had to wait while an old soldier misheard his name and announced him dolefully over the intercom. For a moment Crosby hoped the show had begun without him, but it wasn’t that kind of a show. Eventually the producer appeared; his smile was more like a twitch. A makeup girl dabbed at Crosby’s face as though cleaning a dusty waxwork before they rushed him into the studio.
The audience applauded, inspired by a placard, as the host strode onstage, a gleaming young man with a disc-jockey’s brittle cheerfulness. Crosby was studying his opponents. The woman who drew feminist cartoons seemed all right, if rather lacking in detachment, but what of her partner on the team, ‘the wicked wit of Welwyn Garden City’? His hair resembled a shaving-brush, his smile was as thin as his voice; his quips made Crosby think of a cruel child probing wounds.
Crosby’s partner was a plump man who made jokes in the tone of a patient describing symptoms. What of Crosby himself? ‘He draws like an artist surveying today’s world from a Victorian time machine,’ the host said, quoting. ‘Kindly but critical, amused but never spiteful.’ It must have been the only quote they could find, but it was true enough: Crosby did feel apart from the time in which he was living, a visiting observer—and never more so than today.
It wasn’t only the game that alienated him, though that, now that he saw it, was repulsive enough: whichever team produced the first cartoon on a theme culled from the audience won a point, as did the team which provoked the loudest applause. The whole thing was as vulgar as its name, Top Draw—a debased circus with cartoonists instead of clowns.
But he was more disturbed by the blank gaze of the cameras—because they almost reminded him of something else. When had he suffered the judgement of expressionless gazes that pricked his skin with dread? Some childhood ordeal he’d forgotten, perhaps? He was still trying to remember when the show ended. The other team had won.
At least examples of his work had been displayed to the cameras, and the host had mentioned his exhibition, though Crosby doubted that the show’s audience would be interested. When he arrived home that night, it was raining on a rugby match; bunches of floodlights glared on bony stalks, lines of rain looked like scratches on glass. Even the roar of the crowd seemed indefinably reminiscent—but why did he feel it wasn’t savage enough? Shaking his head, to sort out his thoughts or dislodge them entirely, he let himself into his house.
He was drawing his bedroom curtains, and ready to enjoy the ineffectual assault of the rain on the house, when he saw the mark on the window. Momentarily the floodlights and his angle of vision made it resemble the impression which a flat drooping noseless face might have left on the glass. It must be a trick of the rain, which was pelting now; in a few minutes he couldn’t even make out where the outline had seemed to be. Then why did he feel that he’d seen such a mark before?
A glimpse of movement in the park distracted him. The trees beyond the hedge were streaming with dim light. When he’d gazed at them so long that they swelled and shifted apart, he caught sight of the man who stood among them, gazing out of the park. It took him longer to distinguish the man’s pale companion, for it was on all fours. How could anyone go out walking the dog in such a downpour? Crosby lay in bed and listened uneasily to the rain. Sometimes it sounded like a scratching at the windows; sometimes echoes made it sound to be inside the house.