‘That house,’ he said detachedly. ‘The instant I saw it I knew I’d been there before. I was there just before I got arrested. I didn’t have any money then. I remember. I knocked on the door and I was dirty and crazy and they told me to go around the back if I wanted something to eat. I didn’t have any money; I remember that so well. All I had was…’
Out of his pocket came the woven metal tube. He caught lamplight on its side, flicked it off again, squeezed it, then pointed with it at the night table. ‘Now, ever since I came here, I have money. In my left jacket pocket every day. I never wondered about it. It’s your money, isn’t it; Janie?’
‘It’s yours. Forget about it, Hip. It’s not important.’
‘What do you mean it’s mine?’ he barked.’ Mine because you give it to me?’ He probed her silence with a bright beam of anger and nodded. ‘Thought so.’
‘Hip!’
He shook his head, suddenly, violently, the only expression he could find at the moment for the great tearing wind which swept through him. It was anger, it was humiliation, it was a deep futility and a raging attack on the curtains which shrouded his self-knowledge. He slumped down into the easychair and put his hands over his face.
He sensed her nearness, then her hand was on his shoulder. ‘Hip…’ she whispered. He shrugged the shoulder and the hand was gone. He heard the faint sound of springs as she sat down again on the bed.
He brought his hands down slowly. His face was twisted, hurt. ‘You’ve got to understand, I’m not mad at you, I haven’t forgotten what you’ve done, it isn’t that,’ he blurted. ‘I’m all mixed up again,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Doing things, don’t know why. Things I got to do, I don’t know what. Like…’ He stopped to think, to sort the thousand scraps that whirled and danced in the wind which blew through him. ‘Like knowing this is wrong, I shouldn’t be here, getting fed, spending money, but I don’t know who ever said I shouldn’t, where I learned it. And… and like what I told you, this thing about finding somebody and I don’t know who it is and I don’t know why. I said tonight…’ He paused and for a long moment filled the room with the hiss of breath between his teeth, his tense-curled lips. ‘ I said tonight, my world… the place I live, it’s getting bigger all the time. It just now got big enough to take in that house where we stopped. We passed that corner and I knew the house was there and I had to look at it. I knew I’d been there before, dirty and all excited… knocked… they told me to go around back… I yelled at them… somebody else came. I asked them, I wanted to know about some—’
The silence, again the hissing breath.
‘—children who lived there, and no children lived there. And I shouted again, everybody was afraid, I straightened out a little. I told them just tell me what I wanted to know, I’d go away, I didn’t want to frighten anybody. I said all right, no children, then tell me where is Alicia Kew, just let me talk to Alicia Kew.’