Lovers Meeting (38 page)

He screamed with pain and shock, recoiled and let go of her hair to clap his hands to his eyes. Then, sobbing with pain and rage, he flailed around with his left hand until he found the pillar. With that as a guide he lashed out with the knife, underhanded at waist level. His target was Josie, drawn back to the full length of her arms on the other side of the pillar. She twisted aside, away from the thrust, but pain flickered along her side. Josie knew that, tethered as she was to the timber pillar, it could only be seconds before the knife found its mark again. And again.

Garbutt pulled back the knife and lifted both his hands to wipe at the tears of pain that ran down from his eyes. Josie, acting instinctively, used the trick Garbutt had used on her. Perhaps subconsciously trying to stun him by striking his head against the pillar, she lunged forward, grabbed his hair in her hooked fingers and threw herself backwards again. Garbutt was caught unprepared and off balance. He was yanked forward and his hands started to come down as he stumbled. The knife was between him and the pillar. As he was slammed against the pillar, the blade sank into the side of his neck.

Garbutt screamed again. The knife fell as he used both hands to tear at Josie’s, prising her fingers from their grip on his hair. Now he was in agony, sobbing and wailing. Once free he stepped back and fumbled his way, nearly blind, along the wall to the steps. He climbed them on all fours, one hand groping ahead to test the way, the other on the wall at his side. He passed the shrinking Charlotte, without seeing her or caring, and at the head of the steps he stood and opened the door, then passed through and out of sight. Josie heard his boots shuffle erratically across the kitchen, along the passage and the hall, then there was silence. He had left a thick red trail on the steps.

Josie was leaning against the timber, weeping, exhausted and faint from shock. Then she slowly became aware of Charlotte again. The child still sat on the steps, crying. Josie knew she had to get her out of this. As she began trying to fight her way free from the chain that held her, she tried to steady her voice and called, ‘Charlotte! Charlotte, there’s a good girl. Go on out of the house and find someone, tell them I’m here.’ When Charlotte did not answer Josie repeated her instruction, but still the little girl cried.

Until she lifted her head and wailed, ‘I want to stay with you!’

Josie pleaded, cajoled, begged and then in desperation shouted, but this only set Charlotte to weeping more than ever. ‘It’s dark there and the man will get me.’ She had sat, face crumpled with horror, as Garbutt had fumbled his way past her, brushing against her, leaving his red stain on her dress. And she had seen him go into the kitchen. ‘I’m not going! I
can’t
!’

And all the time Josie fought to break free, twisting her slender hands, trying to slip them out of the chain, but they were not slender enough.

Then the lamp flickered, and again. Josie peered at it and saw the reason. The water had risen until it lapped at the flame. She had been aware of it creeping up her body, felt its slow, chill, inexorable progress. Now it was up to her chin and she was already standing on her toes. Then the lamp flickered once more and went out. Pitch darkness descended on the cellar.

Josie tried to climb up the timber as she had once climbed trees, and the rope dangling down the side of the
Northern Queen
, but her waterlogged skirts were wrapped around her legs and foiled her attempts. There was no sound in the cellar but her own rapid, shallow breathing, soon to be cut short, and the whimpering of the frightened child on the steps.

Then Josie heard the tramp of boots returning in the passage above. Charlotte stopped whimpering and Josie could picture the child holding her breath. As was Josie. Somehow Garbutt had bound up his wound and come back to exact some final revenge for it. There was the scrape of a match in the kitchen above and light filled the rectangle of the doorway at the top of the steps. A figure appeared, towering huge and black against the light behind it, and Josie regressed twenty years. Shock, fear and nervous exhaustion took their toll. She was four years old again and there was the giant, growing, becoming more monstrous with every beat of her heart. And as her senses left her …

26

‘
Josie
!’ Tom Collingwood shouted it.

Tom. Josie silently mouthed his name.

He had been headed for the Langley yard when he realised that if Josie had left the party she might also leave the house before he got to it from the yard. He had bawled at the cabbie, ‘Take me to the Langley house!’

Now he clattered down the steps but slowed as he came to the water, realising that if he jumped into it the resulting wave would wash over Josie’s head. He let himself down into it and waded slowly and cautiously across to where her face was turned up, her head back, straining to keep her mouth and nose above the surface. Despite his care, water still slopped into her face, setting her coughing and gasping. Tom lifted her, vital inches that raised her mouth clear of the water. Then he seized the chain that bound her wrists but saw at once that it was not some cord that he could snap – or cut. He held Josie up with one hand and with the other reached down into the water to his pocket. He pulled out his sailor’s clasp knife and opened the blade with his teeth. Then he raised it with his arm at full stretch and with an overhand blow sank it deep into the timber high above Josie’s head.

‘Put your hands over!’ Tom ordered, and lifted Josie bodily. She obeyed, clumsily eager but her hands shaking. Tom held her with one arm around her and hooked her wrists over the knife so she hung from it by the chain. Now her head was well clear of the surface. She swung like some carcase from a hook, her face rubbing against the timber, but she could breathe and the strain was taken from her neck and her legs from standing on tiptoe.

‘I’ll be quick!’ Tom waded away to the steps. As he climbed them he scooped up the child who sat there and carried her with him. In the kitchen he set Charlotte down in a chair, crossed to the sink in two long strides and turned off the tap. Then he went to a cupboard and raked through the miscellany of tools he knew were kept in a box there. With a hammer and chisel he plunged into the cellar again. He smashed the padlock with his second blow then dropped the hammer and chisel. When he pulled off the padlock and loosened the chain, Josie began to slide down again, but he was quick to catch her before she went under. He lifted her in his arms and carried her up the steps and out of the kitchen.

Josie clung to him and cried, ‘Don’t leave me!’

It was long past midnight when Josie faced Tom outside her door. She wore a dressing gown, her wet clothes discarded. She had told her story and Tom his. The others had come home and all were abed, Charlotte sleeping peacefully after drinking hot milk with a powder administered by a doctor. He had dressed the slight wound on Josie’s side. It did not bother her now.

Sergeant Normanby had come and gone after reporting, ‘We’ve found Garbutt in Church Street. I suppose he was making for the hospital in Roker Avenue, thinking they could save him. But if he’d survived he would have hung.’

The house was silent save for the slow ticking of the clock downstairs in the dark hall. There was only one gas jet hissing on the landing, leaving it a place of shadows. Tom said, ‘When we brought in the
Northern Queen
, I knew then how I felt about you. But I couldn’t court you when I was still engaged to Felicity.’ He had told Josie of Felicity’s elopement. ‘And if you had been a fortune-hunter you could have claimed your inheritance at any time. And you wouldn’t have run away – or tried to – as you did.’

He stood tall and broad above her, blotting out what light there was from the single jet. He reached out for her and Josie whispered again, ‘Don’t leave me!’

‘Never!’