He began to pace slowly around the clearing. If he walked fast he was too aware of trying to distract himself. It still wasn't dark; the general gloom seemed not to have deepened – perhaps he'd been trying to believe it was later than it was in order to give himself an excuse to flee. In the silence he could hear the pot bubbling. His stomach tightened, his throat writhed. He remembered Isaac's words: By devouring your enemy you gain his power, conquer it – there is no other way to conquer the power of the Leopard Men, of the claw. He'd been eating dead flesh all his life, that was what meat was; he just hadn't butchered it himself before. Butchery was the old man's corpse face down on the grass, the glimpse of reddened bone poking through the raw flat patches where the buttocks had been. Alan had to turn away quickly, choking.
Time was passing. The water in the pot must be boiling now. As the steam drifted toward him, it seemed to bring with it a faint smell of meat. Every moment made his throat tighter, made him shrink further into himself, more and more aware of what he was proposing to do. By God, he'd go through with it; it must be the worst thing you could do to a Leopard Man – that at least would be some revenge for Isaac. All at once, while his fury was uppermost, he strode to the pot.
There wasn't much meat to be seen through the greasy bubbles. The two slices looked greyish and shrunken. At this rate there'd soon be no meat left. He plunged the knife into the boiling water and speared one slice. When he held it up, steaming, he could almost believe it was just meat -dark chicken meat, perhaps. As soon as it seemed cool enough, he sawed off a piece. Holding the rest in his left hand, he lifted the piece to his mouth on the point of the knife.
He'd hoped that it was small enough to swallow without chewing, but his throat had closed tight and his mouth was dry. He had to chew the stringy meat, chew and keep chewing. He was holding his breath, with the vague idea that to do so would prevent him from tasting, but there was a taste like greasy pork in his mouth now – not quite enough like pork. Though he had his back to it, he was intensely, almost feverishly, aware of the mutilated corpse. He swallowed at last, and stood there, eyes closed, stomach writhing, body trembling.
The portion he'd swallowed might not be enough, assuming that mattered. He sawed off another small piece and managed to down that, then he stuffed the rest of the slice into his mouth, chewing desperately, eager to be finished. That was a mistake. His stomach rebelled. He had to keep the meat down, whatever he did; whatever happened, he mustn't open his mouth. He was chewing violently, but his mouth was dry. His thoughts were babbling, trying to take his mind off what he was doing: rump steak, think of Anna, finish here and then he could go home, do it for Anna and Liz, they need never know, they must never know, one look at his face and they would know, if they recognized him at all, the butcher, the baker, the cannibal maker, my husband the cannibal…
All at once his whole body convulsed and he vomited uncontrollably, straight into the pot. He felt as if he was trying to vomit the depths of himself, give back the part of himself he couldn't bear.
He groped his way blindly to the trees and leaned against them. He was shivering as if he would never stop. He felt purged, empty, hardly there at all. Sounds of the jungle, faint but clear, surrounded him. Soon it would be dark. He felt that the moment he left the support of the trees he'd fall and never be able to move. Yet he had to move: suppose the old man's companions came back while he was here? He had to go into the darkening jungle. There was only one thing he could think of to do.
Forty-one
Liz stood in her darkening bedroom and gazed down at Anna. Beyond the curtains, night had already swallowed the sea. Darkness was softening the shape of the bedroom furniture, settling on Anna's face, smoothing out the frown that was like a deep scratch between her eyebrows. Incredibly, the house was silent except for the rushing of the sea. It seemed impossible that Anna was quiet at last.
Since the day before yesterday she'd been intolerable, worse than a baby, far worse. 'You said I could go to the Lakes. When can I go?' Liz had begun to feel as if these were the only words the child knew, that she'd learned them like a parrot – a parrot that could follow Liz from room to room, pestering and whining. No, nothing so intelligent as a parrot: a worn-out mechanical toy that could no longer do what it had been built to do, a toy that could only wander aimlessly about, squawking its two sentences over and over. A toy would have run down eventually, but Anna would undoubtedly start up all over again in the morning. Long before dark, Liz felt she was ready to do anything to get rid of the child.
There was nothing she could do. Even when the car was repaired – the repairman was collecting it tomorrow, they took their time hereabouts – she was damned if she'd put her parents to any further trouble. She didn't blame her father for being disgruntled when she'd cancelled Anna's visit. To have inconvenienced her parents so much for nothing, when her father was convalescing, and all because Anna had made her lose her temper – she couldn't understand why she'd felt the need to send Anna away at all. It wasn't as if she'd said anything to the child that a normal person wouldn't have said under all the circumstances. Anna was lucky that Liz had managed to confine her anger to words.
She turned away from the bed, for the sight of Anna was only making her angry. Besides, she had more important problems than Anna to deal with. As she went downstairs, the sound of her footsteps reminded her how empty the house was, how far away Alan was. She wished desperately that he would come home. Apart from anything else, she'd be able to talk to him about the claw.
She couldn't talk to Jane. She ought to have done so when she'd had the chance; she ought to have gone with Rebecca and Gail, and found an excuse to speak to Jane alone. She would have been able to but for Anna, but for being unable either to leave the child with anyone or to take her with her. Now it was too late; Gail had returned from her visit yesterday almost in tears, saying that now Jane was refusing to be visited. It wasn't only the refusal that had upset her, it was Jane's reason for refusing. Apparently she was claiming that someone she'd trusted had made her kill Georgie.
It couldn't be Alex; even Jane couldn't have trusted her. Could she have meant Anna? There was no doubt in Liz's mind that if it hadn't been for Anna and all she'd done that day, she would have been in time to prevent Jane from harming Georgie. Anna was as responsible for the baby's death as Jane was – more so, for Jane couldn't have been able to help herself.
Liz shook her head dully. It was no use brooding about it, but what else could she do? She couldn't find a pretext to visit Derek at home, because he wasn't there; he couldn't bear to stay alone in the house. Why couldn't she ask him or the police to search the house for the claw? Somehow she didn't want anyone to know how important it was to her, perhaps because it seemed shamefully trivial in the context of Jane's tragedy. Could she break into Jane's house? She couldn't imagine herself doing so. She seemed unable to think clearly on the subject of the claw.
She went downstairs – the glimpse of red in the hall was the phone, of course, though for a moment it made her feel inexplicably nervous – and sat for a while in the long room, her back to the sea. Beyond the dormant television, the last gold in the sky was tarnishing. She watched the sky turn blue, dark yet luminous. It looked infinitely deep and peaceful, but its peace couldn't reach her, even now that Anna was laid to rest. She felt helpless and frustrated, without a thought in her head.