It was the package that Marlowe had given him. How could he have forgotten? He must still be half asleep. 'It's a parcel for these people,' he said, pointing to the address. 'They need it urgently, and so I said I'd bring it over.'
'That's against regulations.' The Customs man's face was blanker than ever. 'Please open it,' he said.
As Alan fumbled with the wrapping, almost breaking one of his nails, sweat stung his palms, as if the package were covered with cinders. Christ, why hadn't he refused to hide it in his luggage, to bring it at all? He hardly even knew Marlowe…
At last the heavy tape came away, tearing the wrapper. Inside was a cardboard box which proved, when he parted the halves of the lid, to be stuffed with cotton wool. The packing squeaked beneath his nails as he began to push it apart – but the Customs officer took the box from him and lifted out the top layer of packing. He stared into the box, then he lowered it slowly so that Alan could see within. 'I think you've got some explaining to do,' he said.
Three
Liz and Anna were waiting at Norwich. Liz was at the barrier as the train rolled in. When she saw Alan, picking his way through the Saturday shoppers back from London and the families of holidaymakers searching for luggage trolleys, she waved, and Anna came running over from the station bookstall. 'Look, daddy,' Anna cried, as he fumbled with his ticket and his luggage at the barrier, 'they've got some of your books.'
'Have they? Well, good for them.' He hugged Liz and Anna until he realized he was holding up the queue at the barrier. A man with a briefcase glanced at them as he squeezed by, and Alan could see he thought they were as beautiful as he did himself. Anna looked more and more like her mother: the same red hair and blue eyes, oval face, small pert nose, and long slim limbs. She was tall and lithe for her age – there again she took after Liz – and the pair of them had grown as tanned in Norfolk as Alan had in Nigeria. No wonder the man with the briefcase looked envious.
The car was parked on the station forecourt. They emerged beneath a bright July sky patched with dazzling clouds, into a light shower. The warm rain was refreshing, just what he needed right now. Anna danced along beside him 5 clutching his hand. 'Was Africa lovely? Did you see any native dancers? Did you meet a tiger? I'd love to meet one
…'
'Now, Anna, leave daddy alone for a few minutes. You know he likes to unwind after he's been away.'
'It's all right,' Alan said. 'I don't mind.' He put an arm round each of them as they reached the car, and felt secure.
He hadn't realized how much he needed this – to feel that some things could be trusted not to change.
As they drove out of Norwich toward the coast, the clouds drew back to the edge of the sky, an iris as wide as the horizon. The rain had stopped, leaving the gentle landscape even greener. They passed villages among the sparkling fields, a few streets of houses white as sugar cubes, gone almost as soon as they appeared. Waterways glittered beside the roads, leading cruisers into the network of the Broads. Once Alan glimpsed the towers of Liquid Gases, where he'd researched The Cold Cold War.
For a while Anna chatted to him while Liz concentrated on driving. As she turned off the main road onto the first of the winding lanes that led to their part of the coast, Liz said, 'Was your trip a success, then?' 'I think so. Until I got to Heathrow, anyway.' His tone made her glance at him. 'Why, did something go wrong?'
'I don't know if I'd put it quite like that.' Again he felt queasy with nervousness. 'It was my own fault. I should have known better,' he said. 'Only in a reckless moment I agreed to bring over a parcel for some anthropological foundation in London. You won't believe it, but I didn't think to ask what was in the parcel, even though I hardly knew the man who wanted me to take it. Well, of course this had to be the only time I've ever had my luggage searched at Customs, and you should have seen this character's eyes light up when he found the parcel.'
Liz grimaced sympathetically. 'One of those, was he?'
'One of the best. Mr Hitler Youth of 1980.'
Anna was growing impatient. 'What was in the parcel?'
He thought it best to tone down the truth for her. 'It was what anthropologists call an artefact,' he said, hoping she would be more easily satisfied than the Customs youth had been. Alan would have been happy to leave the parcel for the Foundation to collect, but the uniformed youth hadn't allowed that – a regulation had been contravened, nothing and nobody was going anywhere until the situation had been resolved according to the book. Eventually the argument had attracted the attention of a Customs officer old and wise enough to know when to bend the rules.
Anna wasn't satisfied. 'What's an artefact?'
He leaned menacingly over her in the back seat. 'The opposite of an artichoke,' he said, and tickled her until she begged him to stop. The danger was past; she'd forgotten her question. Nevertheless he said quickly to Liz, 'What's new with you?'
'Well, let's see. I looked in at the hotel nursery today. They've got a little boy called Hilary who's so polite he doesn't like to ask where the toilet is. Leaves little piles about the place when nobody's looking. The Phantom Crapper Strikes Again.' She grew more serious. 'No improvement between Derek and Jane. Tell you later,' she said, meaning after Anna had gone to bed.
The lane was winding downhill toward the coast now. Before long they saw the sea above the hedges, the steely water trembling with white fire all the way to the horizon. Beside the coast road, trees downtrodden by the constant wind stooped close to the ground. Liz drove along the coast road, past huddles of caravans in fields at the top of the cliffs, tents set out like wedges of cheese on a board, a village with a lighthouse. As the car sped through the village, two jet planes tore overhead from the RAF station nearby.
Soon they were home. Alan always felt a shock of pleasure at the sight of the tall white house overlooking the sea. Sea breezes rippled the lawns, flowers nodded in the flowerbeds. Liz eased the car into the left-hand garage and switched off the engine, and suddenly the only sound was the soughing of the waves.
While Alan lugged his case upstairs and dumped it in the master bedroom, Anna went out to talk to the goats that were grazing on the cliff-top, waiting to be milked by Pam from the dairy. The bedrooms were on the middle floor, below Alan's workroom and a room full of books. Not only the rooms but the landings had large windows.
Daylight was everywhere in the house, and views of the sea.
Alan was opening the suitcase when Anna came running upstairs. 'I started writing a book while you were away. Do you want to read it?'
'Well, not right now.' She looked so crestfallen that he said, 'All right, darling, I'll read it now.'
The first page of the exercise book was painstakingly inscribed The Castle People. The next few pages were covered with careful straight lines of handwriting, which looked determined to be neat, to please him. The title had made him expect a historical story, but she had written about little people who came onto a beach at night after the children had gone and who lived in the sandcastles, shoring them up with bits of driftwood, until the sea washed the castles away. He especially liked a description of the little people wearing shells for hats and daring one another to stand at the edge of the waves. 'It's good. You ought to see if you can carry it on,' he said, as Liz called them down to dinner.
Wine and Liz's lamb kebabs made him more talkative. Before long he'd convinced Anna that Africa was as mysterious as she wanted it to be: secret paths through giant forests, echoing with the shrieks of parrots that repeated your every call, the great eyes of tigers glowing green from the bush… Could he use some of this in his novel? He was beginning to wonder if bis trip had given him enough of a sense of West Africa as it really was.