The Facts of Life (34 page)

‘Hey!’

Her system still humming with adrenalin, she was swifter to react this time.

‘Hey! Wait!’

She ran. Hard. She would never look around. Never.

‘Your bag. I got your bag back for you!’

She turned. It was the taller one, the third man, his black coat flapping about his legs.

‘Fuck off,’ she warned. ‘The police are coming.’

He was indeed clutching her bag. Turning to continue running, she made a rapid mental checklist of its contents. Wallet. Press-on towels. Diary. Lipstick. Chequebook. Paperback. Condoms. All replaceable. The manuscript. Damn! It was a particularly valuable one; the first draft of a new Judith Lamb she had bribed from someone in Lamb’s agency by putting forward a modest proposal for one of his newcomers. Alison’s secretary had not yet found time to photocopy the thing. She staggered panting to a halt and turned, pointing.

‘Stop there.’ He stopped. ‘Move back below the light so I can see you.’

Breathless too, he took a few shambling steps back to stand beneath a streetlamp. He had short, untidy black hair, a gold earring and several days’ growth of beard. A spotted handkerchief was tied at his neck. Beneath the coat his clothes were filthy. A far cry from the other two.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘If you like I’ll leave it down here for you then just piss off, all right?’

His accent sounded West Country. Or was he just another Londoner? She found it hard to tell. He was older than the others. Thirty. Maybe a little more.

‘No. Stop. You … You weren’t with them, were you?’

‘Jesus! What planet are you from? Of course not. I broke the bastard’s arm for you.’

She remembered the crack and felt slightly sickened, and at the same time excited.

‘I chased the other one to those flats near the flyover. You know?’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘Did he, er, put up much of a fight?’

‘Look. Do you want the bag or don’t you?’

‘Yes. Sorry.’

She walked hesitantly over to him. He was very tall. Huge in fact. Despite the layer of grime, he didn’t stink. He wasn’t a wino. The grime, she now saw, was brick dust, making him almost swarthy in the face. He held out the bag and she took it, glancing to check for the manuscript.

‘Look. I didn’t take anything,’ he said. ‘All right?’

‘No,’ she tried to explain. ‘I was only –’

‘My pleasure.’

He turned on his heel and began to stride away. She scrabbled inside for her purse and found herself calling after him.

‘Look. I’m sorry.’

He stopped.

‘What?’

‘You … You saved my life. Thank you.’

He shrugged.

‘Here,’ she went on. ‘You must let me …’

She opened her wallet.

‘I don’t want your money,’ he said.

‘Well let me buy you a drink.’

‘No. How far do you live?’

‘Not far.’

‘I’ll walk you home, then.’

‘But …’

‘I’ll walk you home. Come on.’

His tone was firm. Sober. She paused for a moment then began to walk beside him. She thought of leading him to a false address, to the priest’s house perhaps, then took another look at his long, extraordinary face and decided to repay chivalry with trust. As they walked, the after-effects of the adrenalin began to make her shudder and she asked him questions to occupy her quivering jaw. He was from Plymouth, it transpired. Laid off at the naval docks, he had hitch-hiked to London and spent the previous two years working on building sites where the foremen weren’t fussy about national insurance papers or bank accounts. When she told him she worked in publishing he confessed to having once enjoyed
North and South
. And he told her not to be such a patronising git when she voiced happy surprise.

‘What will you do about, you know, back there?’ he asked.

‘Ring the police when I get in.’

‘Why?’

‘They tried to rape me. I saw their faces, their clothes. I heard their names. I could give good descriptions. I’ve even got a witness, now.’

‘Oh no,’ he shook his head.

‘But surely?’

‘Please,’ he said, stopping to lay a huge, beseeching hand on her forearm. ‘Don’t call the police.’

‘But I should. They might do it again.’

‘They won’t. Not after what I did to them.’

‘It would make me feel safer.’

‘I’ll protect you.’

‘Oh well, now I feel a
lot
safer.’

‘I’ll protect you,’ he repeated, challenging her cynicism. She caught that expression in his eyes again. True. Sober. Lost for words, she turned and they continued on their way in companionable silence.

‘Well,’ she said, as they reached her door. ‘Good night. Are you sure you won’t let me give you something? The price of a pint at least?’

He shook his head.

‘Don’t drink much,’ he said. ‘And I’ve money of my own. In you go.’

He watched her turn her key in the lock and let herself in, something she had been trying to persuade taxi drivers to do for years. ‘Goodnight,’ she said, ‘And thank you.’

She set a bath to run then walked briskly round the house drawing curtains. When she came to pull the ones at the front, she glanced down and saw him lying on the broken council-issue bench across the way from her house, gazing up at the sky. She stared for a moment, astonished, then twitched the curtain closed. Greatly though the Cynthia in her rebelled against it, his guarding presence did make her feel safer. It relaxed her to the point where she found it safe to cry. Weeping, she tore off her clothes and stuffed them all in the kitchen dustbin. Ignoring the telephone, which rang twice, she lay weeping in her richly scented bath until she could cry no more and the water began to cool. Wrapped in her dressing gown, preparing to tumble into bed, she looked out of the bedroom window again, assuming he would have gone by now. He was still there.

Though she often felt only half-alive, and was regarded by the more powerful women in her life as a sort of listless child, Alison had a powerful will when she found the courage to assert it. Occasionally a strong resolve formed in her mind and with it, an utter calm and clarity of vision. Sure of purpose, she would do what she had to do.

He stirred from slumber at her touch, blinked awake, then sat up, astonished to find her out on the pavement in her dressing gown.

‘What? Oh! What is it?’ he mumbled, rubbing his hair. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘You can’t sleep here,’ she said. ‘It’s absurd.’

‘I nodded off. You want me to move on, then?’

‘No. But don’t you have anywhere to go?’

‘I lost the key to my bedsit chasing that wanker back there. I can get another one tomorrow, when the caretaker’s in. It’s not cold though. I’ll be okay here.’

‘No. You must come inside. Come on. I’ve got a spare room that I never use. I know that sounds disgustingly middle class, and I suppose it is, and I am.’

‘But …’ He sat back upright on the bench, looking at her, running a hand across his dusty hair and frowning with uncertainty. ‘You don’t know anything about me. You don’t know who I am.’

‘You saved my life. Come on. I’m still hot from my bath. I’ll catch my death out here.’

She pulled gently on his sleeve and he stood, towering over her once more, stooping slightly as though his height shamed him.

Leaning out of his kitchen window to water his tubs of herbs, the priest saw her lead the huge man inside and smiled to himself. He tweaked off a sprig of rosemary, sniffed it, then, turning back into the sitting room held it out to his friend who was watching an old film on television.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘Smell.’

‘You did
what
?’

‘I asked him in. Offered him the spare room. I couldn’t leave him outside. He’s been there three, no, four nights now. It’s fun!’

Alison had no sooner begun to tell her story than she wished she had held her peace. Jamie was looking amazed and slightly prurient, Miriam stunned and disapproving and Francis, whose face could never be called expressive, simply looked shocked. The weekend had gone fairly well until this point, with everyone on their best behaviour. She had helped Miriam cook lunch, avoided teasing her about her unsuccessful but doubtless expensive new hairstyle and carefully parried her attempts at unnervingly intimate ‘girl talk’. Relaxed by too much wine however, she had started to tell them all about Sam and, having started, had been unable to stop on account of their relentless interrogation. She had given them an edited version, made the attack sound like a simple, random mugging.

‘Why didn’t you just give him some money?’ Francis asked.

‘He doesn’t
need
money,’ she insisted. ‘He gets building work. He has savings.’

‘Typical scrounger,’ Francis declared. ‘These homeless people are all the same.’

‘No! You don’t understand,’ Alison was appalled. ‘You’re not listening.’

‘Let him get a flat,’ Francis went on.

‘She doesn’t want him to,’ Jamie put in playfully. ‘She’s taken a shine to him.’

‘You shut up,’ she snapped, patiently turning back to Francis. ‘He’s got a bedsit in some awful hostel,’ she explained.

He shrugged brutally, pouring himself some more coffee.

‘I don’t know,’ he sighed, tapping the back of Miriam’s chair in passing. ‘Your children.’

‘But we get on, I like having him around and I’ve given him a key,’ Alison continued, desperate not to let him rile her.

‘Your idealism’s great, Angel,’ Miriam enthused. ‘Just great. I think it’s awful – all these people on the streets – but isn’t it, well, a bit risky for you?’

Alison rounded on her.

‘I told you. He’s not homeless. I only
thought
he was because of how he looked and where I met him. He’s not even on the dole.’

‘No. But …’

‘Oh
please
!’

‘I mean,’ Miriam went on, ‘if he disappeared, you wouldn’t know where to get hold of him.’

‘So? He probably
will
disappear. I don’t think he’s really comfortable being back in a house. He goes on these huge, restless walks. To Epping Forest. Greenwich. All about the city. He hardly sleeps. I don’t know how he finds the energy to work.’

She smiled across at Jamie, apologising with her eyes for not having told him before, in the privacy of his car.

‘It makes me feel quite safe at night,’ she said. ‘Like having a big security guard in the place.’

Jamie merely raised an eyebrow at this as he sipped at his cup, teasing her over its gold-leafed brim. He forgave her. Alison stood and went to the French windows to look out at Francis’s immaculate, mower-striped lawn. He threw a party out there every summer for his grateful clients. He hired staff, put up a marquee, Miriam wore a hat, people cried in bathrooms and there was always a fight over the ‘children’s’ failure to attend.

‘Honestly,’ she said. ‘I wish I’d never brought it up.’ She knew Miriam would be throwing a look at Jamie behind her back; one of her ‘is-everything-okay-really?’ looks. ‘If I’d wanted a normal lodger,’ she added, ‘I’d have advertised for one ages ago and ended up with some drip with a dying yucca, a soap allergy and a cash-flow problem.’

‘I’m sorry, Angel.’ Her mother’s voice reached out at her across the room like a plucking finger. ‘I didn’t mean to get heavy. You tell her, Jamie. It’s only that we never see you and I
worry
.’

‘Well don’t. All right?’

‘Fine. Pardon my caring.’

The telephone rang. Mother and children looked studiously in opposite directions and listened to Francis answering it. Jamie helped himself to a chocolate from a box on the unplayed piano.

‘Henchley Manor,’ Francis announced pompously.

‘Since when?’ Jamie asked and Miriam shushed him conspiratorially, regaining lost ground at her husband’s expense.

‘It’s for you.’ Francis turned and held out the receiver. ‘From America.’

‘If it’s that bloody woman again about …’ Miriam fell silent as she reached him, finishing her sentence with an eloquent glare. She cleared her throat and pushed back her hair. ‘Hello? … Yes, this is Miriam Deakins speaking … I thought I
told
you! … No. Absolutely no. I know nothing and I don’t think there’s anything more to find out.’

She dropped the receiver smartly back into its cradle. Francis touched her shoulder, bending his head towards her. She took his hand and squeezed it briefly. Alison watched, still fascinated, despite herself, by any evidence that might explain the mysterious dynamics of her mother’s marriage.

‘Who was it?’ she asked, happy to deflect attention away from herself once more.

‘That wretched Holly wood journalist again, Call-Me-Venetia.’

‘Which?’ Jamie asked, opening a colour supplement as he stifled a post-lunch yawn.

Miriam poured herself a brandy and flopped back on to the sofa. Francis came to stand behind her, rubbing her neck with a thick, proprietorial hand. Alison watched his unreadable expression and wondered, as she often had since her mother had married him, whether he found them all intimidating. She feared the depressing truth was that he found them merely stupid and wantonly irrational in their behaviour.