That was intended to make the other at least glance at the shelves which occupied most of the wall space, but his gaze didn't waver; he seemed not to have blinked since Thirsk had opened the door to his knock. 'Do you know where they get their paper?' he said, more softly than ever.
'I already told you that's immaterial. All I know is it's better and cheaper than that recycled stuff.'
'Perhaps your readers would care if they knew.'
'I doubt it. They're children.' The insinuating softness of the other's speech, together with the dark wistful depths of his eyes, seemed to represent an insubstantial adversary with which Thirsk had to struggle, and he raised his voice. 'They won't care unless they're put up to it. If you ask me there's a movement not to let children be children any more, but plenty of them still want fairy tales or they wouldn't buy the books I publish.'
The ice scraped the glass as he drained his Scotch and stood up, steadying himself with one hand on the desk. 'Anyway, I'm not arguing with you. If you want to send me samples of your work and a breakdown of the costs then maybe we can talk'
His tone was meant to make it clear that would never happen, but the other remained seated, pointing at his own torso with one stiff hand. 'This is for you to consider.'
He wasn't pointing at himself but rather at a book which was propped like a rectangular stone in his lap. He must have been carrying it all the time, its binding camouflaged against his overcoat. He reared up from the chair as if the coat had stiffened and was raising him, and Thirsk couldn't help recoiling from the small gargoyle face immobile as a growth on a tree, the blackened slit of a mouth like a fissure in old bark. When the hands lowered the volume towards him he accepted it, but as soon as he felt the weight he said, 'You're joking.'
'We seldom do that, Mr Thirsk.'
'I couldn't afford this kind of production even if I wanted to. I publish fairy tales, I don't live in them. The public don't care if books fall to bits so long as they're cheap, and that goes double for children.'
'Perhaps you should help them to care.'
'Here, take your book back.'
The other held up his hands, displaying knobbly palms. 'It is our gift to you,' he said in a voice which, soft as it was, seemed to penetrate every corner of the room.
'Then don't look so glum about it.' As Thirsk planted the book on his desk he glimpsed a word embossed on the heavy wooden binding. 'Tapioca, is that some kind of pudding cookbook?'
Whatever filled his visitor's eyes grew deeper. They struck Thirsk as being altogether too large and dark, and for a moment he had the impression of gazing into the gloomy depths of something quite unlike a face. He strode to the door, more quickly than steadily, and threw it open.
The avenue of pines interspersed with rhododendrons stretched a hundred yards to the deserted road into town. For once the sight didn't appeal to him as peaceful. Surely it would when he'd rid himself of his visitor, who he was beginning to suspect was mad; a leaf and maybe other vegetation was tangled in his hair, and wasn't there a mossy tinge to his cracked cheeks? Thirsk stood aside as the other stalked out of the door, overcoat creaking. Too much to drink or not enough, he thought, because as the figure passed along the avenue, beneath clouds which were helping the twilight gather, it appeared to grow taller. A sound behind him - paper rustling - made him glance around the room. The next second he turned back to the avenue, which was as deserted as the road.
Had his visitor dodged into the bushes? They and the trees were as still as fossils. 'Get off my property,' Thirsk warned, and cleared his throat so as to shout, 'or I'll call the police.'
By now it was apparent to him that the man hadn't been a printer. He was tempted to hurl the book after him, except that might bring him back. As he stared at the avenue until the trees seemed to inch in unison towards him, he found he was unwilling to search the grounds when it was growing so rapidly dark. 'Go back where you came from,' he yelled, and slammed the door so hard the floorboards shook.
A chill had accompanied his visitor into the office, and now it felt even colder. Had one of Thirsk's assistants left a window open in the warehouse? Thirsk hurried to the stout door in the back wall of the room. The door opened with an unexpected creak which lingered in his ears as he reached a hand into the dark. The fluorescent tubes stuttered into life, except for one which left the far end of the central aisle unlit. Though all the windows crammed into the space above the shelves were closed tight, the fifty-yard-long room was certainly colder than usual, and there was more of a smell of old paper than he remembered. In the morning he would have to fix the lights: not now, when at least two of the tubes were growing fitful, so that the flickering contents of the shelves kept resembling supine logs multicoloured with lichen, the spines of the dust jackets. He thumbed the light-switch, a block of plastic so cold it felt moist, and as the dark lurched forward, shut it in. For the first time ever he was wishing he could go home from work.
He was already home. The third door of the office led to the rest of his bungalow. When he opened the door, the cold was waiting for him. The heating hadn't failed; he had to snatch his hand away as soon as he touched the nearest radiator. He poured himself an even larger Scotch, and once he'd fired up his throat and his stomach, dumped himself in the chair behind the desk. The unwelcome visit had left him so on edge that all he could do was work.
The late afternoon mail had brought him an armful of packages which he hadn't had time to open. The topmost padded envelope proved to contain the typescript of a children's book by Hundey Dunkley, who sounded familiar. In his present mood, just the tide - The Smog Goblin and the Last Forest - was enough to put him off. 'Send your bloody propaganda somewhere it's wanted,' he snarled, grabbing a copy of the Hamelin Books rejection letter. 'Fit only for recycling,' he pronounced, and scrawled that as a postscript.
Usually one of his assistants would see to the outgoing mail, but he couldn't stand the sight of the typescript a moment longer. Having clipped the letter to it, he stuffed it into a padded envelope and slung it on the desk next to his, and glared at the discarded packing as it tried to climb out of the waste-bin. Presumably the silence of the room emphasized its movements, though he could have imagined it wasn't alone in making a slow deliberate papery sound, an impression sufficiently persuasive that he glanced out of the window.
The light from the office lay on the strip of grass outside but fell short of the trees, which were embedded in a darkness that had sneaked up on him. He knuckled the switch for the security light. The fierce illumination caught hold of the trees and bushes, and he felt an irrational desire to see them shrink back from the blaze which he could summon at the touch of a finger. Instead they stepped almost imperceptibly forward as though urged by their shadows, a mass of secret blackness interrupted by the drive. Just now the bright bare gravel looked as though it was inviting someone or something to emerge on to it, and he turned away so furiously that he almost tripped over an object on the floor.
It was the discarded envelope, writhing slowly on the carpet and extending a torn brown strip of itself like the remains of a finger towards him. He closed one fist on it, squeezing its pulpy innards, and punched it into the bin before grinding it down with his heel. 'That's enough,' he shouted, not knowing what he was addressing until his gaze fell on the book his visitor had brought him. 'Let's see what you are,' he said through his teeth, and flung the book open, wood striking wood. Then he let out a gasp that would have been a word if he'd known how he was feeling.
The thick untrimmed pages weren't composed of paper; each was a single almost rectangular dead leaf. For a moment he thought words were printed on the uppermost, and then he saw the marks were scattered twigs, formed into patterns which he could imagine someone more susceptible than himself assuming to be words in a forgotten language. 'If this is a joke,' he yelled, ignoring how small his voice sounded in the empty room, 'you can take it back,' and hoisting the book off the desk, ran to the door.