conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know a description for a book titled Zennor In Darkness about Prize, Orange, Penguin with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Contemporary?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: the author has published nine novels with Penguin: Zennor in Darkness, which won the McKitterick Prize; Burning Bright; A Spell of Winter, which won the Orange Prize; Talking to the Dead; Your Blue-Eyed Boy; With Your Crooked Heart; The Siege, which was shortlisted for the 2001 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award and for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2002; Mourning Ruby and House of Orphans. She is also a poet, childrens novelist and short-story writer.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the first five paragraphs for this book?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Zennor in Darkness
  One faint shriek. Then another. Three girls fling themselves over the top of the last dune and skid down warm flanks of sand. Marram grass slashes their ankles and sand kicks up behind Clare and Peggy, into Hannah's eyes. She's the heaviest and the last. Dazzled, laughing, out of breath, prickling with sweat under their dress-shields, they flounder through the knee-deep shifting white sand, and then down and down in a heap on the hard, flat beach. Clare and Hannah collapse together, their mouths full of each other's hair. Their ankle boots are heavy with sand. Their hair has come down, and their straw hats flop against their shoulder-blades. They clasp each other. They smell of sweat and sunburned hair, and there's a faint smell of violet perfume from Hannah, who has lavished the last precious drops of Wood Violet on her wrists and under her ears. She doesn't know where she will get another bottle, but today she has something to celebrate. There is her half-day's holiday from the shop, there is this perfection of early summer, and, above all, kept until last for fear of the ill-luck which always trudges in the wake of complete happiness:
  Beady Peggy knows, because she'd happened to call in at the draper's when she was taking little Georgie for a walk that morning, and there was Hannah slashing radiantly at puce ribbon for Hetty Date, cutting off a piece a good twelve inches longer than the two yards Hetty paid for. I ought to get a length of cream ribbon for my panama, calculated Peggy, hoisting stout Georgie on to the counter stool.
  It's true that Sarah Treveal's a poor thing, unsteady in her nerves, but who can blame her when telegrams have only one meaning these days. The sight of a post office boy coming up the street is enough to stop anybody's heart. When Mrs Hore had the telegram about William she chanced to have fetched out a kitchen chair to sit in the sun on her step, and so she was forced to watch the telegraph boy on his bicycle as he rode down the street, whistling in the sun, and then slowed down and stopped his whistling when he saw her, out of respect for what he guessed he had in his hand. He got off his bike and wheeled it towards her, and he held out the envelope in his left hand. A boy of fourteen. What did he know about the weight of what was in that weightless bit of paper? He handed the telegram to Mrs Hore, and then he seemed to be waiting for something, so she went in to fetch a penny for him. She did this before opening the envelope. There was no need to make haste. She knew what was in it, she told Nan, because her eyes had burned in her head as she watched the bicycle come down the street, just as if she'd been foolish enough to stare into the sun.
  The girls' hair flaps across their eyes. They struggle to catch up the ends and pin them tight, but it's no good. Oh, well, what does it matter.
  Clare's fingers flicker down the hooked side-fastening of her dress. She's done it. She hauls up a double handful of the dark blue cotton stuff and pulls it over her head. Her close-fitting bodice sticks, and she wriggles herself free of it. The last of her hairpins comes out and her plait swings loose, then begins to unrope itself, strand over strand. In her plain white chemise and petticoat she bends to unlace her boots, then kicks them off. Hannah and Peggy watch her. A slow smile curls at the corners of Hannah's mouth.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know five more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: And she wakes. The whistling goes on like bad luck. What had Nan told her? 'It's ill-luck to whistle, for you never know what you're calling to come to you. Don't let the men hear you.' The boys knew they must never whistle at night. The seven whistlers mean death when you hear them. But the night is still and there's someone out in it, whistling for Clare.
  She slithers out of her bed. Her night-gown sticks to her, damp with nightmare. She lifts aside an inch of the curtain, and looks down. Dark shadows and a skim of moonlight show on the sea, and she still hears that thin whistling, insistent, on one note, then fluking up, then down to its home note again. Ah, but she knows that whistle, the one he was whipped for. And there's his dark shape too, and she's looking down on a strange new map of him in the moonlight, all face and dwindling legs. He is staring whitely up at her window. Cautiously, she pushes up the sash, and the whistling stops. They look at one another, neither knowing how much the other can see. Clare scrapes the window up a little farther and leans out and whispers, pointing down the road.
  No time for anything. She throws on her dressing-gown and shakes her hair back, and runs on her bare feet down the stairs, through kitchen and scullery, to fumble with the bolts. The top one's rusty – everything rusts if you don't keep oiling it. And there he is already, close and sudden, making her catch her breath and shrink back. Even now, knowing who it is, she's afraid of him. It is blind dark in the kitchen, and she feels for the matches, but: 'Don't light the candle, Clarey! Come on out.'
  He sounds as young and eager as Kitchie. She thrusts out a bare white foot and says, 'Wait a moment.'
  Her old boots are in the cupboard under the stairs. She knows them well enough to lace them in the dark. There. She draws her dressing-gown sash tight and runs back to him. They listen, but the house is quite silent.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: And she wakes. The whistling goes on like bad luck. What had Nan told her? 'It's ill-luck to whistle, for you never know what you're calling to come to you. Don't let the men hear you.' The boys knew they must never whistle at night. The seven whistlers mean death when you hear them. But the night is still and there's someone out in it, whistling for Clare.
  She slithers out of her bed. Her night-gown sticks to her, damp with nightmare. She lifts aside an inch of the curtain, and looks down. Dark shadows and a skim of moonlight show on the sea, and she still hears that thin whistling, insistent, on one note, then fluking up, then down to its home note again. Ah, but she knows that whistle, the one he was whipped for. And there's his dark shape too, and she's looking down on a strange new map of him in the moonlight, all face and dwindling legs. He is staring whitely up at her window. Cautiously, she pushes up the sash, and the whistling stops. They look at one another, neither knowing how much the other can see. Clare scrapes the window up a little farther and leans out and whispers, pointing down the road.
  No time for anything. She throws on her dressing-gown and shakes her hair back, and runs on her bare feet down the stairs, through kitchen and scullery, to fumble with the bolts. The top one's rusty – everything rusts if you don't keep oiling it. And there he is already, close and sudden, making her catch her breath and shrink back. Even now, knowing who it is, she's afraid of him. It is blind dark in the kitchen, and she feels for the matches, but: 'Don't light the candle, Clarey! Come on out.'
  He sounds as young and eager as Kitchie. She thrusts out a bare white foot and says, 'Wait a moment.'
  Her old boots are in the cupboard under the stairs. She knows them well enough to lace them in the dark. There. She draws her dressing-gown sash tight and runs back to him.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the last four paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Now he and Frieda must go. Another cart full of furniture, another couple of bedraggled wanderers balancing perilously on top of their possessions. Back up the spine of Cornwall towards the seething madness of London with its newsboys in the streets, its Zeppelin raids, its crowds of feverish soldiers on leave spilling out of the pubs and theatres. If only they would all kneel down on the London pavements as John William had knelt on the white Zennor road, and cry out for the dead men who were walking at their shoulders.
  She has gone into the scullery and is wrapping cups in newspaper. He glances at her face quickly, suspiciously. Is she thinking of her own children again? But no, that look of mingled grief and inwardness is absent.
  He must not think, he must keep still and let it all happen to him without resisting it. Clare is going to have a child. He thinks of her, ruffled and sweaty with wind and sun, drawing his portrait on the edge of the cliff. How she frowned as she concentrated. Her tense little fox-face was not pretty at all, and she did not care. She thought of nothing but her drawing. He smiles.
  They look at one another, then she stoops and packs on, indefatigable. Her crown of rich rough hair glistens, though the day is sunless. She has rolled up her sleeves for work and there are shadows in the creamy hollows inside her elbows. She has stripped off her rings, and her bare fingers move confidently, filling up space in the boxes. He watches her for a while, his face smoothing, relaxing. Suddenly it sharpens, attentive as the muzzle of a fox scenting down the wind. The scent blows sharp, then thins to nothing, leaving an itch against his senses. The packing-cases vanish; Frieda blurs to gold. He goes to the table, shoves the muddle of their things aside, pulls paper and pen towards him, and begins to write.