Injury Time (12 page)

‘You wouldn’t need to make holes in the brick,’ said Alma, kneeling on all fours and putting her head in the grate. ‘They could dangle a little bug thing down the chimney.’ She felt about in the darkness for wires.

Simpson averted his eyes from her buttocks. He said stubbornly, ‘I’m not prepared to sit here and do nothing. Personally it won’t give me any satisfaction at all to know my groans are being recorded when I’m trussed up like a turkey. I want to know the lay-out down there.’

‘Down where?’ asked Binny.

‘The garden. How many steps are there into the garden?’

‘Six,’ said Binny, after some thought.

‘Eight,’ corrected Edward. He detested inaccuracy.

‘And what’s at the bottom of the steps? Flower pots . . . garden furniture?’

‘There’s nothing,’ Binny said. ‘Except for a rabbit hutch against the back wall. It’s just a yard.’

Alma returned to the table and told them that when she was little she thought Father Christmas lived up the chimney. ‘My Uncle Len used to stand in front of the fire on Christmas eve and shout in a funny voice, “Are you all right, Father Christmas? Not too hot, I hope?” Isn’t it silly, darlings, what you think of?’

‘I can’t remember its name,’ mused Edward. ‘Tiger . . . Twinkle . . . something like that.’

If they really were listening to every word, thought Simpson, the police would think they were cracking up. When he got out of this, even if it was dawn, he was going to go straight round to Marcia’s and find out who had answered the telephone. The lunches he’d bought her, the bottle of perfume he’d sent on her birthday, the time he’d wasted when he should have been attending to his business! He wondered sadly if she found bald men unattractive. Muriel had once told him he was better-looking now than when she’d first met him. But then, when she’d met him, Marcia hadn’t been born. How the devil had she known he was in a call box?

‘The gun,’ Muriel said. ‘On the draining board.’

They stared bewildered at the weapon not six feet away. ‘It proves my point,’ Edward said uneasily. ‘They wouldn’t leave a loaded gun lying around.’

‘They’re under a considerable strain,’ reminded Simpson. ‘Particularly that poor girl.’ He was acutely aware of his wife, sitting there in the shadows in an attitude of childlike passivity, detached from the general discussion yet capable of noticing such things. She was behaving oddly. Usually in a crisis – the girls late home, a minor accident to the car – she was prone to bossiness, to taking control. He’d tried twice in the last half hour to comfort her; each time she’d removed her cold hand from beneath his and withdrawn it to her lap. He sensed she was watching, waiting, and it unnerved him. ‘I think you ought to have a dekko at it, Freeman,’ he said. ‘Your background and all that.’

‘Look here, I never saw any action, you know.’

‘I meant the ducks, old man. That sort of thing.’

‘They told us we mustn’t move,’ whispered Binny. ‘They said we’d better not.’ All the same she loosened her arms from about Edward’s neck.

‘I’ll provide a cover,’ offered Simpson, as Edward rose reluctantly from his chair. He began to mutter absurdly, ‘Rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb . . .’

The floorboards creaked as Edward tiptoed laboriously towards the kitchen. Though he was inching his way with obsessive caution, one foot placed carefully in front of the other, it was as if he was running full tilt across the room. It was similar to those agonising moments in the school gymnasium, when it was his turn to vault the horse. Any second now he was doomed to spring upwards and attempt the splits in mid-air. Perspiration began to trickle down the collar of his shirt. He should never have mentioned those beastly birds. He peered at the gun from several angles, bottom thrust to the group in the other room, heart thumping lest Harry should return – or worse, the inhuman brute who had leapt upon the woman. To his relief the gun was lying on a bed of upturned plates. Moving considerably faster on his return journey to the table, he explained that the whole thing was rather like a house of cards. The weapon was lodged among dishes and things. One false move and the whole caboodle would fall with a fearful clatter into the sink. If the women hadn’t been present he might have been prepared to take the risk. As things stood he simply couldn’t take the responsibility for a confrontation at this point. They could all be shot down like flies. ‘You see my dilemma,’ he said, hovering thankfully about the table.

‘But you said the guns wouldn’t be loaded, pet.’

‘We can’t be certain. Not one hundred per cent certain.’

Binny made no move to let him sit again. He was forced to lean against the wall, fists clenched to the pit of his stomach.

‘Loaded or not,’ Muriel remarked. ‘It won’t make any difference. They don’t mean us to live.’

O
utside, the police were requesting householders to remove their cars from the street. Several women in torn nightclothes dragged deck chairs on to the balconies.

A confused report had come in regarding a woman and two children held for six hours in a house in Wood Green and just released. Nothing had been verified, but someone higher up thought that the events in Wood Green and the uprising in Fulton Street might be connected. A baby’s shawl had been found on the railings and the tracks of pram wheels on the pavement.

The taxi, abandoned with open doors in the middle of the road, was briefly scrutinised and then photographed. Later a breakdown van arrived to take it away for more serious examination. There was a subdued round of applause from spectators as the taxi was hoisted into the air, doors swinging, and lowered gently on to the bed of the truck. Inquiries were made and statements taken. A dishevelled Mrs Montague, spitting with excitement, told of a crying female sprawled on the step earlier in the evening, of a lady in a blue frock holding a suspicious-looking parcel in her arms. A youth across the road swore he’d seen a man with a wooden leg dragging himself toward the garage at about nine o’clock. Several people recalled a shortish individual in a suede overcoat, prowling up and down the steps of houses and behaving like a Peeping Tom.

The neighbours on either side of Binny were warned they might have to be evacuated. It was not clear what was going on inside the barricaded house, or how many persons were involved, but investigations were under way. Sybil Evans answered the questions put to her as discreetly as she was able. She was shy and hated explicit conversation. She had known Mrs Mills for a number of years – they were friendly, not close. It was a popping-in-and-out sort of relationship – borrowing things, feeding cats when one or other of them went away on holiday. Loyally she forbore to mention that it was Binny who did the borrowing. Two older children were staying with friends and the youngest child was upstairs sharing the back bedroom with her own daughter. When asked if she thought any significance could be attached to the absence of all the children from the house, she was nonplussed. ‘Well,’ she said weakly, ‘there’s a dinner party, I believe, and she wanted the house to herself.’ As she spoke, she realised she’d implied that Binny might have been planning some kind of orgy. ‘They’re large children,’ she added. ‘Noisy and hard to control.’ She hadn’t been told who was coming to dinner and she hadn’t asked. It was none of her business. She had no objection to a policewoman asking the youngest child for information, but not until the morning – the little girl was fast asleep and it was going to be difficult enough to cope with her when she woke; she was very attached to her mother. To her knowledge Binny wasn’t in the habit of entertaining formally – people dropped in for a drink, but she didn’t hold dinner parties. She had no idea why tonight had been an exception. There was a gentleman friend, but she hadn’t met him and she didn’t know his name. ‘Please,’ she said finally, ‘I don’t wish to say any more.’ Pressed, she admitted she’d glimpsed Binny that morning throwing something down into the yard. Only for a second. Her interrogators wanted to know how Binny had seemed. Was there anything unusual about her, peculiar – ? With some spirit she declared that anyone would appear peculiar in these particular circumstances. ‘Life itself is peculiar,’ she cried. Willingly she described the interior of Binny’s house, the position of the furniture. She allowed an assortment of men, uniformed and otherwise, to bring their equipment into the hall. Painstakingly they began to measure the dimensions of the rooms.

T
here was talk of tying Edward and Simpson to their chairs with rope. Simpson glanced accusingly at Edward but said nothing. The gunmen were worried that with Widnes in the bathroom and Ginger upstairs, it left only Harry to deal with a possible rebellion in the kitchen. Their injured confederate was unlikely to move fast in an emergency. Binny said she didn’t own any rope.

‘You needn’t worry about us, dears,’ Alma told them. ‘We shan’t be any trouble.’

‘Don’t you have a washing line?’ asked Ginger. ‘Where do you hang your stuff?’

‘I go to the bagwash down the road,’ Binny admitted. ‘There’s a spin-drier. I don’t need to put it in the yard.’ Years ago she had pegged the clothes out to dry in the back, but it was such a business tripping down the steps that she kept forgetting where she’d put the jeans and the pyjamas. When she did remember, they were either wetter than ever or stiff with frost. In the summer the soot from the factory chimney two streets away drifted like pollen across the gardens. She’d stopped bothering.

Harry went upstairs and brought down a sheet from the divan bed. Binny thought he was going to say it was a disgraceful colour, but he made no comment. He tore it into strips and sat Edward under the bulb in the kitchen. Binny felt possibly the government would give her money to buy new linen – there must be some kind of compensation for a situation like this, unless it came under an act of God.

Edward’s legs were tied together at the ankles. He found himself smirking with embarrassment as he helpfully stretched his feet in front of him. There was a moment, he realised, when everything was too late, but he couldn’t be sure which moment it was. It may already have passed. It would be foolish to be beaten insensible for nothing. They tied his wrists behind his back and finally he was tethered to the chair itself with several bands of sheeting.

‘Move about,’ said Ginger.

Edward did as he was told.

‘More,’ Ginger commanded.

Red in the face, Edward lunged obediently backwards and forwards. The chair fell apart. As he jerked his arms involuntarily to save himself from hitting the floor, the cotton bandages gave way.

‘Christ Almighty,’ cried Ginger. His grip tightened on his gun.

Edward wet himself.

B
inny woke thinking she heard children crying. She remained for several seconds with eyes shut, cheek pressed to the rumpled tablecloth. She identified the sound as that of cats yowling somewhere beyond the back yard. Still, her heart continued to beat fast with terror. She thought of a little girl, in the dark and afraid, standing in ankle socks on brown linoleum, wailing for her Mummy. Tears came to her eyes. When the children were younger and one of them had a feverish temperature, she was reduced to the same state of mind as if the child were already dead. If they were late home from school, dallying at the ice cream van, she imagined them lying in the centre of the road, vanilla cones upended in the dust, stricken down by some heavy vehicle. Sometimes she would torture herself with images of small coffins heaped with flowers and find herself at tea-time standing at the window, staring mesmerised at the bright blue sky, humming fragments of hymns learnt long ago on Sunday afternoons. When in the first years of her marriage she had confided these unhappy thoughts to her husband, he hadn’t understood. It was like wading through mud to reach him. ‘Don’t be silly, love,’ he’d said. ‘Don’t be morbid.’ Finally, worn down by such graphic descriptions of her maternal feelings, he had laughed uneasily and called her a neurotic bitch. She was sure he was right.

Raising her head, she looked emotionally about the room. Alma and Muriel lay upon the sofa, wheezing as they slept. As if hurled from a fast-moving train, they sprawled in grotesque disorder, pale legs entwined, sunk within the hollow of the couch. There was no sign of Edward or Simpson.

Earlier, Ginger had lined them up along the hall and allowed them to go singly into the bathroom. He’d kept the door ajar. Edward, for whom it was too late, had remained in the kitchen. When herded again into the front room, Binny had wanted to lie down on the floor with him and rest, but he’d refused. ‘I stink,’ he’d said forlornly. ‘Leave me alone.’

‘I don’t care,’ she’d cried. ‘You’re fragrant as apple blossom to me.’

‘For God’s sake,’ he’d said, and turning away had sat down beneath the shuttered windows with his back to the radiator and closed his eyes.

After a time Simpson had joined him. They slumped shoulder to shoulder, heads lolling, and drifted into sleep. Edward’s pipe had fallen to his lap. Binny had placed it carefully on the table. She would have liked to hold it to her heart, but its smell affected her.

The pipe had gone. She knelt and searched for it on the floor. When she stood up the tips of her fingers were stained with pink. She persuaded herself that it was wine not blood, standing there with her hand extended toward the light of the kitchen as though she were Lady Macbeth. Trembling, she went into the hall. Propped against the front door sat the injured woman, chin on her breast and gun laid across her knee.

Binny climbed the stairs and went into the bedroom. She stopped motionless on the threshold of the door, bewildered by the moon. She had been so long entombed in the dimly lit kitchen that she was unprepared for the sweetness of the air she breathed, the stretch of stormy sky beyond the windows, milky with light, filled with white clouds ballooning high above the roof tops. She felt that the room too was drifting in space, dappled with the shadows of leaves, of railings, and turning, turning . . .