‘Scoone 1460….Caledonian Hotel? Can you tell me: did a Mr Charles Martin book accommodation with you any time in the last fortnight?…Yes, thank you, I’ll wait….No? No one of that name…Oh…Thank you very much. So sorry to have bothered you.’
And that was that, he thought, slamming the receiver down. That, as far as he was concerned, was definitely the end of B Seven.
He drank his nice soothing bed-time drink, and went to bed, and lay wide awake staring at the ceiling. He put the light out, and resorted to his own cure for insomnia: pretending to himself that he had to stay awake. He had evolved this long ago from the simple premise that human nature wants to do the thing it is forbidden to do. And so far it had never failed him. He had only to begin pretending that he was not allowed to go to sleep for his eyelids to droop. The pretence eliminated in one move the greatest barrier to sleep: the fear that one is not going to; and so left the beach clear for the invading tide.
Tonight his eyelids dropped as usual, but a jingle ran round and round in his head like a rat in a cage:
The beasts that talk,
The streams that stand,
The stones that walk,
The singing sand…
What were the streams that stand? Was there something in the Islands that corresponded to that?
Not frozen streams. There was little snow or frost in the Islands. Then, what? Streams that ran into the sand and stood still? No. Fanciful. Streams that stand. Streams that stand?