If it was, then it seemed he'd changed his mind about helping. The light darted to the left, and they glimpsed a man with a flashlight crossing their aisle; then he disappeared and the intersection was dark again. Isaac strode toward the point where they'd glimpsed him. Alan hurried in pursuit, more afraid than ever of bringing down the rubber walls; he could smell how it would feel to suffocate under them. The jerky light kept making them seem to wobble, an unnerving joke. Had the man at the intersection been white? Surely Ogunbe wasn't a white man's name? Really, whoever it was had crossed too quickly for Alan to see.
When they reached the intersection, there was no sign of the other man's light. Isaac shone his beam along the left-hand aisle, where hundreds of grey segments squirmed with shadows. There were several intersections, and no way of knowing which route the man had taken. Isaac put his finger to his lip for quiet. He looked determined but bewildered.
In a moment they heard two things. Far off in the dark – perhaps it would have seemed closer in the daytime – a door closed. Alan recognized the sound from having heard it a few minutes ago. It was the side door. Had the watchman left the building? No, for to their right, where the man with the flashlight had come from, they heard someone moaning.
Isaac swung his light that way. Tyres came swelling out of the dark, looking fattened. It was an aisle of larger tyres, that was all. Isaac went forward, taking the light away as he searched for the source of the moaning. Why did it sound so muffled? Alan kept pace with him, so as not to be left behind by the light. He wasn't sure by any means that he wanted to find whoever or whatever was giving out those agonized moans.
They had reached the second intersection when he saw light down the left-hand aisle. In a moment he made out an office door. Of course, it was the night-watchman's office; the maze had brought them to the front of the building. 'Mr Ogunbe,' Isaac called^ and started toward the lit door.
He stopped almost at once. Someone was crashing about in the office. They heard a chair fall, and a tin mug; then the light beyond the frosted glass began to sway as someone's hand collided with the shade. They saw the hand, a huge blotch that loomed on the frosted glass of the door. In a moment they saw the silhouette of a man as he stumbled against the door. His face was a dark blur pressed against the glass, which vibrated with his desperate moaning.
Suddenly he fumbled the door open. Had his face left dark stains on the glass? Before Isaac could turn the light full on him, he reeled forward into a pile of tyres. They toppled, blocking the aisle, rolling and swerving. Some rolled toward Isaac, who retreated, bumping into Alan, shoving him against a rack of tyres. For a moment he thought the whole place was about to fall on them.
Isaac had dropped the flashlight. It rolled in a circle, its beam stuttering over tyres, slowing. In the light from the doorway they saw that the man from the office had fallen. He was crawling toward them over the tyres, still moaning. Isaac retrieved the flashlight and shone the beam into the man's face.
At first Alan thought he was wearing a mask and that perhaps that was why his moaning was so muffled. Looking at his face, he found that he was thinking – so incongruously it was horrible even before he understood why – of a rag doll with stitches for mouth and eyes. Then the man crawled, closer to the light, and Alan stumbled backward, retching. The mask was the man's face. He would tell them nothing, even if he could see them. Someone had sewn up his eyes and his mouth.
Twenty-three
Anna was sitting at a table in the room behind the counter at The Stone Shop. She was making a bird, trying to glue the halves of a shell onto the back of a stone for wings. The wings kept falling off, or sticking lopsidedly, and her fingers were sticky and peeling; they unglued themselves every time she moved them. There wasn't much room on the table for her to work, what with Rebecca's half-finished stone creatures, Rebecca's handbag spilling its load of handkerchiefs and lipsticks and make-up, and the 'doctor and nurse' love story that Rebecca was reading, which was folded in half, its pages glued together like a book daddy had once shown her that he'd had to cut open with a knife. She was fed up with gluing, she wanted to paint her bird – that was the part she enjoyed most. She looked longingly at the pots and brushes on the shelf, but it was no good, she had to make the bird first. She mustn't give up. She longed to feel she was some use to someone.
She had managed to line up the shell wings at last and was waiting for the glue to dry when someone at the counter said, 'Isn't that sweet.' An old lady had picked up Anna's caterpillar, several pebbles with a grin painted on the front one. Anna had stuck them on a large stone, which she'd painted green for grass. 'By Anna, aged 6', the cardboard notice said. While Anna watched, the old lady called Rebecca over and bought the caterpillar. 'That little girl in there made it, did she? What a clever child,' the old lady said. 'She'll go far.'
Anna smiled at her, then turned away. She felt like crying. Selling her work didn't matter any more, and nothing else seemed to. All she wanted was to know what she'd done to make daddy hate her so much.
He'd gone away without even saying goodbye to her. That showed how much he hated her, even more than what happened the night mummy had gone to the party. She didn't want to think about that, she wasn't even sure by now what had really happened, but she couldn't forget waking up the next morning to find he'd gone away. He always said goodbye to her, and 'Look after eachother' -and he always gave her a kiss to keep safe for him until he came back. This time he hadn't even spoken to her. That showed how much he blamed her for what had happened.
She went to the shelves for brushes and pots, to give herself something to do: yellow for the bird's body, blue for the wings. She carried them back to the table and sat there, trying to want to paint. But all she could think of was daddy. She was nearly sure that he'd gone away because of her. She had stopped him writing, whatever mummy said. There was only one other thing she could think of that he could blame her for, that would have worried him so much: she'd let the metal claw be stolen, the claw he'd brought home from Africa.
She ought to have seen who'd taken it. She would have done if she'd been in her playroom opposite the long room when the claw had been stolen – only she'd left her playroom because the man had been looking in the window. She was sure the man had been there – baby Georgie had seen him and started crying. She had almost seen him dodging out of sight, even if mummy didn't believe in him. But at the same time, she knew he was no excuse. If she hadn't left her playroom she would have seen who had come into the house.
She tried to remember hearing someone sneak in – she had been trying ever since that afternoon – but try as she might, she couldn't remember anything of the kind. She'd been sitting near the kitchen door. She was almost certain that no stranger had come into the house, but what would that mean? She felt she was trying to excuse herself. She'd let the claw be stolen, daddy had been looking after it for someone, it was far worse if you lost something that belonged to someone else. It was nearly enough of a reason for daddy to hate her, but knowing that still didn't help. Even supposing the claw could be found, she couldn't bear the idea that it might come back.
She didn't know why, she didn't want to think. She was glad it had been stolen; that was why she felt so guilty. She opened the yellow paint and dipped in a brush, to stop herself thinking. The glue should be dry by now. The claw mustn't come back, the idea terrified her, made her feel as if the stuffy room that smelled of glue and paints had turned into a freezer. It was worth being hated by daddy if it meant the claw had gone for good. The bargain shocked and dismayed her. She pulled the bird of shells toward her, and the wings came off again.