Ben assumed she was talking to Mark Matthews as well, which made him feel only half acknowledged. "I'd like to have our photographer take you before you leave, Ben," the publicist said.
"What about Ellen?"
"Send us one."
"We can take him now," Alice Carroll said, and glanced at Ben. "If you don't mind, of course."
"I'll live."
She acknowledged his response with a terse smile and raised her faint eyebrows at the publicist until he retreated. "Coffee," she said to Ben as if she was advising him to sober up.
While they awaited the coffee she talked to him about the book she referred to as Snowflakes. She was pleased with the sales of Snowflakes, and sounded surprised as well. There was talk of submitting Snowflakes for a children's book award. Perhaps it was because her phone kept interrupting that he didn't find her comments as heartening as she presumably meant him to. Soon the photographer let himself into her glass and plywood booth. "Hold my calls," Alice Carroll told her secretary who brought the coffee, and nodded to the photographer to start whenever he was ready. To Ben she said "You're waiting to hear what I thought of your latest submission."
"Of course," he said graciously.
"I thought you were trying too hard."
The electronic shutter of the camera emitted a sound like a stifled exclamation. The photographer was shooting. Let him, Ben thought furiously; he wouldn't catch Ben unawares, as Alice Carroll had. He was so anxious not to betray she had that his tongue stumbled. "To do, to do what?"
"To produce what you think the market wants."
"Wasn't that what you asked for?"
"True, but my authors don't normally take me so literally. I have to see the finished product before I can judge it, obviously, and in this case I'd say it shows you aren't as good at carrying out instructions as you think you are."
Repeated swiftly several times, the noise of the camera shutter sounded like imperfectly suppressed mirth. "So what are you saying?" Ben said in a tone intended to seem receptive but aloof.
"What I just said." She sat forwards on her high revolving chair, and Ben imagined spinning it until she vanished beneath the desk-top. "If you're asking me what you should do," she said, "I'd say you ought to wag a few less fingers at your readers. Address their concerns but let your story make your points for you. People don't like to be preached at, children least of all."
"Nor do I," Ben retorted – not out loud, but he wondered if the snicker of the shutter meant that the camera had caught him thinking it.
"And you might try injecting more imagination into the rewrite," Alice Carroll said, "since that's what you're good at and it seems to sell. Enough?"
Her last word was meant for the photographer, but Ben was tempted to respond. As the photographer went out she said to Ben, "I hope you didn't mind him taking you while we were talking. I think it makes for a livelier image. We've enough shots of you trying to look like an author."
"So to return to what you were saying…"
"I meant everything I said, of course."
Had Ben thought or hoped otherwise? "Simple as that," he said, and stood up.
"I'll walk you to the lifts." She held the door of her booth open while he struggled into his coat, which felt like his anger made heavy and hotter and even more frustrating, then she led him along the aisle between the unpartitioned desks. Someone held open a lift for Ben, but she waved it away. "Have your children read this book?" she said.
"Not yet."
"Don't you usually let them?"
"There hasn't been time."
"Maybe you should turn them loose on it and see if they're of my mind." When he didn't speak, she pressed the button between the lifts. "There wasn't any call to rush the book, you know," she said. "I appreciate your doing your best to please me, but I didn't need to see it so soon. If I were vou I'd relax over Christmas and see how the story stands up in the new year."
"Thanks for making yourself clear," Ben said, and watched the doors of the lift close over her face. His rage seemed to have crystallised into a single thought: she was going to wish she hadn't been so smug about the new year. He wasn't quite sure what he meant by it, and its lack of definition aggravated his nervousness. When the lift touched bottom he hurried across the car park, where the chill was some relief, and drove the Volkswagen up the ramp.
Before he was out of the one-way maze he found that his instincts were leading him north. "Not yet," he muttered, and blundered more or less eastwards until he saw a sign for Cambridge. By the time he reached the motorway it was a stream of light and fumes. He carne off it at Stump Cross and headed for Six Mile Bottom, a name which had given Johnny a fit of the giggles. The memory made Ben feel unexpectedly lonely in the midst of the flat landscape where headlamps passed like comets drawn by their tails into the dark. He'd call home once he arrived at Dominic's, he promised himself.
Most of the shops were closed when he drove into Norwich. As he parked beneath the only tree in the narrow side street, a gaunt metallic shape which he remembered bearing cherry blossoms, Dominic's father hopped off the Milligans' front doorstep and trotted over, leaning on a gnarled stick. "Here he is. Put the kettle on," he shouted, and to Ben in the same tone: "Let's have your bag."
Dominic hurried out of the house. "Hello, Ben. I'll take it, Father. We don't want you overexerting yourself."
"It isn't worth arguing over," Ben said, and carried his overnight bag into the hall, where Dominic's mother met him. "That's right, Ben, don't let them boss you about. What can 1 offer you after your travels? There's tea or coffee, and a snack to keep you going until dinnertime."
"I'm not hungry just now," he said, anxious to bypass her disordered cuisine as far as he decently could. "I hope Dominic told you I'm taking you all out to dinner."
The rooms with which the house was crammed were even smaller than he remembered, but brighter. The interior had been repainted – yellow in the hall and up the stairs, blue walls and one green in each of the rooms – until the house seemed almost to be turning into a cartoon of itself. It was no longer scattered with books, though there was a tottering pile of them beside the front-room chair into which Dominic's father subsided; Ben saw that he was doing his best to be tidy in his old age. "I read your new book," the old man told him. "It took me back to that time you told us a story. I said then you ought to see about finding a publisher."
"So you did," Ben said, and retreated to the spare bedroom. He'd forgotten the incident until now; what else might he have forgotten? He dropped his bag on the bed, which was surrounded by bookcases occupying all the space between the furniture against the walls, and went downstairs. "Would it be all right if I were to phone Ellen?"
"I should jolly well think it would," Mrs Milligan declared, drawing the heavy curtain over the front door to keep out draughts, and shut all the doors to the hall as she returned to the kitchen. "You'll want some privacy while you're talking to your lady love."
Margaret answered the phone. "Is that Ramona?"
"Not unless her voice has broken."
"Oh, it's you. Did you sign lots of books?"
"Maybe tomorrow."
"Mummy says did you drink lots of drinks. I'll get her."
He listened for her footsteps hurrying away or her calling to Ellen, but the silence was so total he began to wonder if he'd been cut off. He was suddenly aware of the expanse of night which separated them under the infinite dark. Ellen's voice made him start nervously. "What timing," she said. "I was taking dinner out of the oven."