Gordon Williams (18 page)

The scream filled his head. It called directly to muscle and flesh. As he jumped the stairs, two at a time, everything else was forgotten. His daughter had screamed. There was no thinking. Behind him he heard Louise shouting something, but she didn’t matter. Not then. It was
his
body that was in pain.

At the top of the stairs he saw Karen and Niles, close together in the open lavatory door. Karen was still throwing out that blinding,
physical
noise, her little girl’s body jack-knifing uncontrollably from the waist as though in a demented tantrum.

His eye took in the scene and his body acted. He jumped the two landing steps and hurled himself at Niles.

Coming up the stairs behind him, Louise tripped and rapped her shin on a stair. She didn’t notice any pain. She heard George shouting, his feet pounding on the wooden floor. He wasn’t shouting recognisable words. It was a terrifying, full-pitched, demoniac roar.

Karen didn’t seem to have seen her father. She stood with her body bent forward from the waist, still yelling, her eyes closed, her hands clenched into little fists which she held near her ears.

George towered in the doorway above Niles, whose face was wide-eyed, surprised, frozen in shock. She saw him hit Niles with the poker, his right elbow rising and blocking off the light, a great shadow sliding up the wall. Louise caught Karen round the waist and lifted her up, turning her into the hollow of her neck.

“It’s all right, darling,” she kept saying, pressing the little girl’s contorted face into her own body. She hurried down the corridor to Karen’s bedroom.

George hit Niles twice across the forehead with the thin poker. Niles held his arms above his head, letting out startled yelps. George felt the inadequacy of the poker – there was no weight in it, not enough weight to smash into the man’s skull.

Then he stopped – arm slowing in mid air. Why was he hitting this little, trembling man?

“Did you touch her?”

“It wasn’t my fault,” Niles blubbered, his body going slack, slipping to the floor. “It wasn’t my fault.”

George didn’t bother to think of all the things that could have
happened or why. Niles had to be tied down in some way, locked away, put out of action. He thought of tying him up, but there was no more left of the washing line. The attic!

“Pick up that blanket,” he ordered Niles. At the same time he reached up to the ceiling, where a folding ladder was fastened by a short lever. Shifting the poker to his left hand he pulled the lever and caught the end rung of the ladder his knees, blubbering, helpless. George eased between the ladder and the wall and picked Niles up, right arm round his waist, no more trouble than a baby. Than Karen!

He got round the other side of the ladder again, pushing Niles through the narrow space, not caring whether he got hurt or not. He bent his knees and jerked Niles up on to his right shoulder. He dropped the poker on the floor and climbed the ladder, head twisting to the side so that he could see the bolt which fastened down the attic trapdoor.

He pulled out the bolt and went up another rung, using his head to push up the wooden flap. Up there it was dark and warm and musty. He climbed another step, his shoulders level with the attic floor. He jerked Niles up and half-shoved him, half-unloaded him on to the bare planks of wood.

“Don’t make a move till I come for you,” he said. Niles sat on the floor, legs crossed awkwardly beneath him. George threw up the dangling end of the blanket.

George left him there, closing out the light as he went backwards down the narrow ladder, his head holding the weight of the trapdoor. Then he rammed home the bolt and dropped back on to the landing floor. Bending down he took hold of the bottom rung of the ladder and lifted it up towards the ceiling. He held its weight with his left hand while he closed the lever that held it in place.

That took care of Niles!

There was a nagging thought in his mind. He ran along the corridor.

“You didn’t lock this door, did you?” he shouted to Louise.

She looked up from Karen’s bed. Karen was crying. Louise looked frightened.

“I’m sorry, I must have forgotten –”

“You stupid –”

He thought of locking them both in the room. No, he needed Louise downstairs. If they tried to come in different windows at once he needed her to stay in the sitting-room and shout to him.

Needed
? He didn’t need her, she was his wife, it was her place to help him. She needed him!

It was the first time in his married life that he could say this and know it to be true.

“Come on,” he said. “Karen. You better stop crying now. If you want to help please keep quiet. There’s nothing to be scared of, nobody’s going to hurt you.”

Louise hesitated about leaving Karen but he jerked his head impatiently. When he had locked the door he looked for a place to hide the key.

“Those guys were saying something about Soldier’s Field,” he said softly, bending down. They hadn’t carpeted the upstairs corridor because Louise had said the wood was particularly attractive. Between the thick shiny planks were uneven spaces, the general effect being of ancient – but not very skilful – craftmanship. He tested the spaces with the end of the key until he found one that satisfied him. He tapped it out of sight and then levered it out again with his finger-nail. The lock to Karen’s room was one of the strongest in the
house. Without the key they’d have a helluva job to get in.

“What about Soldier’s Field?” she asked.

“I dunno. You tell me what it means. They said, ‘like Soldier’s Field’. Mean anything to you? I remember Gregory Allsopp saying something –”

That was the kitchen!”

He’d heard it, too.

“Come on.”

He ran the length of the corridor. This time he wouldn’t play about.

“Wait here,” he called to Louise. “Shout if they try the other windows.”

Louise stood at the foot of the stairs, looking across the dimly-lit sitting-room. In the ring of light thrown round the outside of the house from the upstairs windows she could see falling snowflakes. She knew they were in some kind of danger but that wasn’t the uppermost thought in her mind. George had hit her! He wasn’t acting like George at all. For once he was telling
her
what to do. It was as though she had been relieved of a burden that she’d been carrying for a long time.
George
was in control...

Norman Scutt had told Phil Riddaway to bash a way through the kitchen window and Phil had found a length of heavy wood in the coal shed. First he smashed in the glass. Then he’d felt round the center-post of the window for the catches, but they were tied up with some kind of flex. His big, blunt fingers could make no impression on the knot. He swung the wood at the horizontal part of the framework, once, twice... it cracked at the third blow. He took hold of it and cracked the wood with his hands. That opened one half of the window.

When George came into the kitchen, Phil had one foot over the sill, his head inside the window, his shoulders heaving through the narrow space.

“GET OUT OF MY HOUSE,” George roared. He struck at the man’s head with the thin poker, flailing blows which stung the palm of his hand as the thin steel rapped on Riddaway’s skull.

“Get off,” Phil snarled, trying to grab hold of the poker. With only one hand inside the window he was at a disadvantage. Each time he loosened his grip on the centre-post to snatch at the poker he felt he was losing balance. The poker hit him on the face. It bit into his skin. He cursed and tried to swipe at George. The light was against him and his arm swung at shadows.

Knowing he couldn’t really hurt the guy, not seriously, George slashed again and again at his head. Then Phil lost his hold and fell backwards, his right boot shooting into the air as he slipped backwards on to the ground. George grasped hold of the foot which stuck up above the window ledge, forcing it against the sill, making it impossible for Phil Riddaway to get to his feet.

“Next time you get boiling water in your face,” he grunted, giving the ankle a twist. Then he shoved it out of the window, sending Riddaway on to his back in the snow.

He waited, moving back a few steps out of the light. The big man scrambled to his feet and went away. George walked quickly back through the dining-room.

“I think I heard them – in the study,” Louise whispered.

“I tied one up. They’re trying to get him loose. Lucky they aren’t too clever. With that gun they could –”

“George! What did you say about Soldier’s Field?”

“I told you, I heard them saying, that young one with the fancy
hair, they said, ‘like Soldier’s Field’. I didn’t –”

“George, that was where they murdered a soldier, before the first war.”

“I know. But –”

“Gregory told me. It’s in books and things. They killed him because he raped a village girl. They never got caught.”

“Well, it couldn’t be these guys, they’re all too young.”

“Don’t you understand! There was a whole lot of them. The police could never get anybody to tell them –”

“I know all that.”

“You don’t understand. Gregory said it was because they were all in it that they never got caught”

“You mean –”

“They shot Bill Knapman, George! They’ve done one murder, they’ll go to gaol anyway!”

He knew then what Soldier’s Field meant. He wasn’t up against a few crazy drunks. They weren’t only after Niles! They wanted to kill him – and Karen and Louise, too. They couldn’t hang anyway. Without witnesses –

“I need something,” he said. This damn poker was like a toy pistol against an elephant. God, he knew now the attraction of guns. What did they have in the house? A chair? No, too heavy, there wasn’t enough room to swing one. A broom? No.

“Keep out of line of the window,” he said. “Isn’t there anything heavy?”

It was then that Bert Voizey, pressing himself against the wall under the dining-room window, struck a match and cupped it between both hands as he rose, slowly. The wind had blown out three matches but this time he kept it alight until his hands were through the broken
pane. Like smoking out rats. He could do this, let Norman and Hedden finish it. He would have run away long ago, but he was a crafty man and he knew what they’d do if they got caught.

Bert Voizey’s father had been one of the men who’d hacked the soldier’s head off in the field. Bert had always guessed this, but it wasn’t till the old man was dying that he’d started to talk about it.
Us all done him,
’e
deserved her, us niver told nobody... any man talkt an’ us’ll do him, sure enuff...

He got the thin gauze curtain going then held it against the folds of the heavy curtain.

“Hey, Norman,” he hissed. “Her’s burnin’ now.”

Norman came along the front of the house, leaving Chris Cawsey still tied to the window of the study.

“Come on, Tom,” he shouted. It would have been easier if he’d had the shotgun, for Tom Hedden was too crazed to follow anybody else’s plan. However, he did leave the front door, which he’d been trying to force with a big shepherd’s pocket-knife, the three cartridges having made little impression. Norman was just as glad it was Tom who had the gun. If things went wrong he could put it on to Tom.

“He’ll come to put her out,” he said to Tom. “You keep the gun on him. We’ll tell him to open the door, less the house burns down.”

“Mibbe he’s got a gun of his own like?” said Bert. “Them yanks all got guns they say.”

“Nah, he ain’t got no gun, he’s just a bigmouth.”

Louise saw the new light flickering on the wall of the diningroom. She nudged George.

“They’ve started a fire,” he hissed. “The dirty bastards. There’s water on the
Aga
, you get it. And keep down, there’s enough light for them to see us.”

Louise darted across the dining-room.

If only he had something heavy. Some kind of weapon. Christ, to think of all the arguments he’d had back in the States with people who kept guns in the house to keep out housebreakers. A phrase went through his head: There’s no burglary in Texas.

He’d stopped thinking about thresholds and divides. Since Karen’s scream he’d forgotten all that. If he’d had a gun in his hand now he would have shot their heads off.

Louise slipped along the wall, holding a heavy pan of steaming water. He moved up the dining-room wall, ready to throw the water over the flames. The curtain wasn’t burning very quickly – not yet. It would be wet with snow blown through the broken panes of glass.

“You’m don’t move,” came the hard voice from outside. “I’ll shoot you there. You’m go round and open the door.”

The light was against him now, the glare of the flames preventing him seeing out of the window. They could see him, a barn-door target for a shotgun at that range.

“Okay,” he called. He turned and made the door to the sittingroom. He stopped, pressing his back to the wall. He thought he heard them moving. The curtain light was brighter now, flickering shadows racing up and down the white walls of the dining-room.

“Keep behind the stair wall, Louise, they’re ready to shoot,” he whispered.

Then he ran back into the dining-room and dropped behind the long, scrubbed-wood dining-table. He remembered moving it when they first came to the house. He put down the pot of water and got his shoulder under the end of the table. He stood up, hands guiding it up and on to its other end. He shoved it towards the window, knocking over a chair. They
must
hear that and come back. The
table threatened to overturn. Somebody shouted, but he caught it and kicked it forward, wood scraping on stone. Then it was in front of the window, end up, a tall, narrow shield. He jumped into the corner. The curtains were now on fire all up one side.

“Open the door or I’ll blow you to...”

He didn’t hear any more. Using the table as cover, he ran in a crouch and picked up the pot of water. It felt pretty hot still.

The noise of the gun was like a kick on the ear. For a moment he felt numbed. The table began to collapse towards him. He dodged to one side and then made the corner of the wall again. Changing the pot into his right hand, he got it into position.