The Beacon by Susan Hill Page B

subject with Elsa, who was quite uncomprehending.
    ‘I lived in the country,’ he would say. ‘I lived on a farm. I lived among open spaces.’
    So with Elsa’s money they bought a small flat by the sea. Meanwhile, in London, instead of pacing up and down a garden path somewhere, Frank paced up and down the long rooms of her mansion flatwhere the lamps had to be lit almost all day and the bedroom often smelled of roast lamb or frying eggs.
    Frank communicated rarely with his family at the Beacon. He did not so much think as brood about them. Elsa no longer asked anything but never ceased to find it strange that anyone should not wish to keep in touch with parents and siblings, not speak to them on the telephone, not write or visit, not want to have news. She was not a possessive woman and would have been happy to share Frank with whichever members of his family he chose as she had wanted him to be part of hers. Indeed, what followed might never have happened if she had not read out loud at breakfast a couple of lines from one of the weekly Munich letters. She usually did this and Frank usually listened in silence and without comment.
    They had been married for fourteen years. Frank was now head of the news desk and no longer went out to the courts or away reporting crime. He was too senior. He ran the most important part of one of the most important national newspapers. He wrote leaders from time to time. It had taken a while for Elsa to understand that leaders, written anonymously, were more prestigious than news pieces with a byline.
    ‘Listen,’ Elsa said, ‘my brother is writing a book!’
    She went on, translating as she read the letter fromher mother who still lived, alone now, in the same old apartment.
    ‘“Peter came to see me as usual on Tuesday and made me very pleased and proud. He has been asked to write a book about some aspect of the law, which I do not fully understand, I confess, for a publisher in Bonn who I know is very highly regarded. So, we will have an author in print in the family!”’
    Frank looked at his wife. Her long face was proud. It was then that it came to him, the whole thing at once so that he was taken aback and had to leave the room and walk round the flat. ‘So, we will have an author in print in the family.’ Well, so they would have two. The book was there in his head, whole, as if someone had planted it, a shrub in the earth. He had no idea where it had come from or why, but he took it and he would make use of it. It excited him.
    He got off the bus halfway as usual and walked the rest of the way to Fleet Street and noticed nothing around him and, when he got into his office, he stood looking out of the window high up, looking down on the street and knowing, knowing, hugging his secret to himself. It had changed him.
    He went to a stationer’s at lunchtime and bought two large writing pads, ruled, feint with margin, and a new pen. He had always used a typewriter and now a wordprocessor, but he knew instinctively that he would be writing this by hand.
    He would take time off work and write in their flat by the sea in Suffolk. They were due there the following weekend and he would begin then, while Elsa went shopping and visited friends in the town, took part in coffee mornings and bridge afternoons. Her social life there was far richer than in London. Frank never joined in such things, nor was it expected.
    He walked the first half of the way home more quickly than usual.
    Three days later they drove to the coast. They arrived just after two and fell into their routine, Frank going out to buy fresh fish for their evening meal and to walk back along the shingle beach, Elsa remaining in the flat to make up the bed and air the rooms. It was a bright early-spring day with a bitterly cold east wind off the sea, the tide rushing in.
    He got back to find Elsa lying in the doorway of the bedroom, a pillowcase in her hand. She was dead, he knew it the moment he touched her, her face