The aspirin saw off the headache, He phoned the office to say he’d been detained, finished his tea and went back upstairs to have a think about what to do next, and then the ruddy doorbell went again and despite the fact that nobody could possibly get in, the room was suddenly full of people. More noses in his business, and when he’d politely asked the Hilary woman, who always smelt like a stale ashtray to please not interfere, she was unnecessarily offensive. She was jolly lucky he was a reasonable man.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
He was not going to descend to Hilary’s level of vulgarity, but he felt he needed to indicate this was no laughing matter. Still seated on the stool, he leaned down to one side and picked up something. It was heavy, an effort to lift from his sitting position but he didn’t want to stand, standing he felt was more aggressive and he didn’t want things to escalate.
“This,” he said reasonably, showing them what he was holding with both hands, “is a cast iron doorstop, shaped like a tortoise, d’you see? The parents bought it years ago.” He leaned forward, an elbow resting along each knee so the doorstop was now poised above Brenda’s head. “If,” he said, “you all turn right around and go, we’ll say no more,” he paused. “If you persist in interfering in what really is nothing to do with you, I will drop this onto her head. Now what’s it to be?”
Normally, in an awkward situation I would have assessed, decided and implemented whatever needed to be done. Implementation isn’t always right, but it’s usually better than hanging around to see how things go. Now though, it felt as if everything was happening too quickly and I hadn’t caught up, in fact the room seemed to be tilting slightly and I felt the need to hold tightly to the door jamb next to me. There was some kind of interference coming from somewhere or someone, it was blurring both my reasoning and my balance and then I felt the faint beginnings of a not-quite-comfortable tightening around the baby, increasing to not-so-comfortable-at-all. It was familiar, nothing to worry about, a Braxton Hicks, my body rehearsing for when the time was right, but oddly enough it counteracted the interference in my head.
I straightened up; Brenda wasn’t dead, which had been my initial horror, I could see her chest rising and falling but I didn’t know how badly she was hurt and was pretty sure a cast iron item on her head wasn’t going to improve things. I lifted it out of his hands; he was right it was heavy, and sent it swiftly across the room. It struck the opposite wall with a dull thud and made a dent before hitting the floor.
Trevor stood abruptly, he wasn’t sure exactly what had happened there, he hadn’t planned to throw the doorstop, but in his head violence was fast superseding control, although righteous indignation was struggling for position too. The current circumstance was directly and incontrovertibly the fault of all these interfering, jibber-jabbering women. Lessons needed teaching. He pulled his foot back to kick Brenda in the ribs and I knocked him flying in the opposite direction. He landed clumsily, crashing hard against the wall, slipping sideways then out of sight on the far side of the bed. On the bedside table sat an ornate wrought-iron lamp base up which, three seriously over-fed cherubs were climbing towards a faded pink, tassel-trimmed shade. He must have hit the table corner on his way down because it tipped slightly, the lamp slid and from the emitted ‘ooof’, must have been nearly as heavy as the tortoise. From Joy, I registered a fleeting shaft of pleasure, she loathed that lamp, it’d belonged to his mother and he wouldn’t hear of changing it, then I think she passed out again. I hoped she didn’t have concussion.
Hilary was still having trouble with the tights; I had a go at ripping them but couldn’t, so I burnt through them. As they split, Joy’s arm flopped loose, still tightly braceleted and Hilary suddenly remembered she had scissors on her. Whipping them from her coat pocket she cut away the material to reveal and relieve the sore wrist beneath. I thought, when we had a moment, I must tell her it wasn’t sensible to carry scissors like that, what if she fell? Someone nudged me and I jumped. Martin was behind me.
“Called Police,” he mouthed, jerking his head slightly to a phone on a landing table, then his eyes widened and he took a precautionary step back as Trevor made a sudden reappearance, surging up from the far side of the bed like a demented Jack-in-the-Box. He staggered to his feet, then flopped down next to Joy who was just coming round again. She saw him and shrank back against Hilary, who put both arms round her and hissed at him - an entirely instinctive, animal response, and all the more effective for that. Trevor, jerked back a little but his need to put the truth out there was stronger than anything.
“Listen,” he said, struggling to sit up, “this isn’t how it looks, Joy, tell them,” he suddenly leaned over and ripped the tape fiercely from her face. She screamed as it came away, taking a lot of skin with it. Hilary, leaning over her, had tried to bat him away but wasn’t in the right position to reach him so I knocked him unconscious. Caught off balance on one elbow, his eyes rolled up and he toppled slowly back off the bed and out of sight again. I assume he landed on the lamp. I wasn’t sorry.
There were a few seconds while those of us still conscious took a breath, then Martin cautiously stepped to the end of the bed, peered, then white with fright turned back.
“I think you’ve killed him Hilary. For Christ’s sake, how hard did you hit him?” Hilary, having charged in like Boadicea spotting a Roman, was now starting to crumple a little at the edges, she clutched Joy even tighter.
“I didn’t touch him,” she said, “I couldn’t reach.”
“Don’t talk daft,” I said, “of course he’s not dead, just knocked out, nothing you did Hilary, he overbalanced.” She relaxed a little and Martin, now Trevor was out the way, let his better nature take over and moved to help her sit Joy up. Hilary was using her hanky to try and blot away some of the blood blooming across Joy’s face. Nobody questioned what I’d said, people don’t when circumstances are on the fraught side and memory’s the most unreliable of all our senses.
I let go of the door jamb, although not without an effort. I didn’t feel too brilliant and whatever was messing with my head, was still at it. I took Trevor’s place on the dressing table stool and bent to feel Brenda’s pulse; I felt her neck, just below her chin as Rachael had instructed me years ago in a not dissimilar situation. The pulse was strong and the ugly cut across her face had stopped bleeding. I abandoned the stool to kneel clumsily, and in the absence of anything else, tried to dab away some of the blood with the edge of my maternity smock.
“Ouch,” she said loudly, I jumped and she opened her eyes, “what’re you doing?” she swatted smock and hand away.
“Don’t move,” I said, pushing her down gently.
“She OK?” Hilary called over.
“’Course I’m bloody OK. Where’s that bastard, I’ll teach him to hit me.”
“Seems to be back to normal.” I reported back to Hilary, as Brenda clambered unsteadily to her feet and I grabbed her hand. I wanted to stand too, but that wasn’t going to happen without help. She pulled me up next to her and we swayed a bit, holding each other for balance before Martin took action again – he was turning into a proper power-house. He tried to sit us both back on the stool but it was instantly clear that wasn’t going to work without one of us falling off the end, so he led Brenda to the end of the bed. She sat heavily and turned, the first time she and Joy got a proper look at each other and both were shocked into silence. I felt lightheaded, mainly from the noise in my head and put it into my hands for a moment or two to see if that helped.
“’M’alright.” I muttered, to reassure Hilary whose anxiety was thrumming across the room. Then there was the shocking sound of the front door slamming back hard against the wall, and what sounded like an army storming the stairs yelling “Police.”
“Oh, dear God,” said Hilary, “I’m in Z Cars,” and slid off the side of the bed in a dead faint, at least I hoped it was just that, although I felt a bit peeved she’d got in first. It wasn’t an army, just two reassuringly bulky police
men who took in the scene and had to be dissuaded from cuffing Martin who was slapping Hilary’s face to bring her round. Behind and almost obscured by larger colleagues and high helmets, was a smaller man who looked thoroughly cheesed off. If there was one thing he hated, it was a domestic. In his time, he’d seen too many people battered black and blue, still insisting they’d walked into a cupboard door. Time wasted and no arrest to go on the sheet. And then he caught sight of me and became even less thrilled.
“I know you, don’t I?” he said accusingly, I knew him too, Detective Sergeant Mousegood, who could forget a name like that? He’d taken my statement after the Lowbell fiasco, he’d had a nasty cold then, his small pointed nose, red raw from handkerchief action and I saw he was sniffing now, maybe not a cold, perhaps hay fever? From a pocket he extracted hanky and notepad and I admitted that yes, he did know me.
“Those nutters in Hampstead, wasn’t it? He said surveying the room with a jaundiced eye, “What is it with you and trouble? Hobby is it?”
I could see the telling of what had transpired was going to fall to me as Martin was busy protesting his innocence, Hilary was spark out and Brenda and Joy didn’t seem to have a coherent. word to share between them. I started, but was stopped by one of the uniforms who’d removed his helmet and immediately looked less intimidating.
“Hang on hen,” fifties, with a head of thick silver hair and eyes which had seen too much over the years. He’d identified himself as PC Macleish, and when not yelling ‘Police’ with the intention of putting the fear of God in you, was softly spoken. “Still in the house is he?”
“Trevor?”
“He the scrote who’s done this?”
I indicated, “Other side of the bed,” I said, “he fell off.”
“Fell off did he, how’d that come about then?”
“Overbalanced?” I suggested. He looked over at the bloodied faces of Joy and Brenda and his lips tightened. He’d grown up with a father whose regular end-of-week celebration was a skin-full, followed by what he called a wee cuddle. On the occasions the wife didn’t cuddle with enough enthusiasm, a slap or two was in order, just so’s she’d know better next time. The slap or two had never produced the hoped for level of compliance in PC Macleish’s Mother, and over time there were more black eyes than hot dinners, a twice-dislocated jaw, loss of hearing in one ear and dead of a heart attack before she touched 60. Not long after, the howlin auld bugger’s liver gave up and gave in; he died swiftly, unmourned. Years ago it was now but time hadn’t healed. He moved over to peer down at Trevor, tightened his lip further and turned back to Mousegood.
“Out cold,” he reported. Mousegood had it in mind to further explore, how a fall off the bed had knocked someone out quite so thoroughly, so I put my hands on my bump and winced a little to refocus his mind and he took a step back, nobody wants to upset a pregnant lady. He sneezed and nodded at the other PC.
“Sanders?” the other uniform was checking Joy with brisk efficiency and innate kindness, “you’re not bloody Florence Nightingale you know, just get an ambulance, man, that’s what they’re for.”
I was indescribably relieved that people who knew what they were doing were here now, but the noise in my head had ramped up and I was having terrible trouble shutting it out. My attention was caught and held by a small black and white dog I hadn’t noticed before. It was sleeping on its side in a corner of the room, breathing deeply and evenly, and that was odd because it had a silver zip running all the way from tummy to throat. Trevor bought it for Joy last year, gave it to her in the office, to ‘keep your jim-jams in.’ I remember Hilary and I had exchanged a look, now the pyjama case turned its head slowly and opened one sleepy plastic eye to look at me. I must have exclaimed because a hand took my elbow.
“Hey,” Macleish was moving me back to the stool to sit again, “not going to faint on us too?” I shook my head; Hilary had played that card, nevertheless the solidity of the hand was welcome, I glanced up to thank him. Bending solicitously over me was a porcelain-headed, laughing policeman; wide-mouthed with mirth as he leaned in further, tilting his head in a parody of concern. Eyeless he watched me, tongueless he chanted. I knew the chant and my mind chanted with him; ‘Oh, I wish, I wish, I wish I knew, exactly what to do with you.’ And I was completely swamped, suddenly and unexpectedly by the bitter intensity of a wave of anger and in that instant I knew the thing I wanted most in the world, was to take the blue serge arm against which I was leaning, and break it. I knew precisely the three weakest break points on the bones, the ones which would inflict maximum pain and permanent damage. I readied myself to turn and act, I had to be swift, needed to take him by surprise.
“NO!” I said aloud and loudly - no time for pussyfooting around, “Not my circus, Not my monkeys!”
“Is it the bairn?” concern was broadening his accent, but at least he had his head back..
“Not unless it’s Rosemary’s Bairn,” I said grimly and used the strength of the blue serge arm to lever myself up from the stool, I needed to stand and stand strong. The arm’s owner was worried, although not half as much as he’d have been if he knew what I’d had in mind a few seconds earlier. One thing I was certain of though, whatever I’d just experienced, it wasn’t anything to do with the baby, this was an old and knowing anger and bitterness.
“Easy pet, you’re shaking. Is... y’ know, anything happening at the minute... downstairs?”
“Only cramp in my leg.”
He chuckled in relief, “Aye, it’ll be on your nerves. Wife always says, on your nerves when they’re inside, on your nerves when they’re out! Here, let’s get you over to the bed, make you more comfortable.”
“Thank you Constable, that’ll do.” DS Mousegood, in the face of labour being imminent had backed off, but now he’d statements to take; just his luck he thought, that he’d been saddled with Sanders and Macleish, molly-coddlers both of them.
The bed was getting more crowded by the minute, lucky it was a good size. Joy was sitting up, Brenda had an arm around her, while Hilary perched on the side with Martin patting her hand, was apologising for being so silly. I found myself a space at the foot and prepared to give a slightly expurgated version of events. PC Macleish was right I was shaking, fine tremors travelling up and down my body, I wasn’t cold, more feverishly hot and louder now, on the extreme edge of my perception, the soft, grieving keening was rising and falling.
As Mousegood appropriated the stool, dragged it nearer, sneezed and prepared to take details. I was aware that from somewhere, something had watched this whole episode with curiosity and delight and was still watching.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
David was not best pleased. He’d phoned home mid-morning and been informed by Mr Peg that I’d gone off in a proper rush. Jumping immediately to the wrong conclusion he’d driven back from Oxford, where he’d been doing research at the Bodleian. At Formula 1 speeds, he’d made good time and headed straight to the Royal Free Hospital where, as luck would have it, he arrived around the same time as we did. He was surprised to find that far from breathing in short pants in Maternity, I was part of a procession of anxious, bloodied people being escorted into A&E. Martin, holding on to Hilary, Brenda and Joy holding on to each other and Trevor, stretchered and unconscious shepherded by a couple of large policemen, one of whom put a firm flat hand on David’s chest as he rushed towards me, and demanded to know who he thought he was.
Having identified himself and had it confirmed by me that he was indeed my husband, he was obviously interested in an explanation. This took some time because there were several people doing it and as I expected, the others had noted nothing attributable to me that struck them as any odder than everything else that was going on at the time.
Brenda needed a substantial number of stitches while the rest of us were bathed and bandaged; correctly counted the number of fingers held up; said what day of the week it was and told them who was Prime Minister and after not too long a wait, were pronounced go
od to go.
David who had been despatched to phone the office, came back to report all was well. Not only had Aunt Kitty, Ruby and Trudie taken over and held the fort, upstairs and downstairs like the troupers they were, but Kitty, who’d never been out the country in her life, sold two expensive Italian holidays on the strength of her wonderful memories of Sorrento, and another family was coming back the next day to hear all about Torremolinos.
PCs Macleish and Sanders stayed long enough to see us given the all-clear, which was above and beyond and very much appreciated. Joy, white and rigid had reconfirmed there’d never been any physical violence prior to today, she definitely didn’t want to press charges and Brenda, tight-lipped, stitches and bruising livid on her face, acceded to Joy and followed suit. Macleish knew this wouldn’t be the end of it, not by a country mile. Experience, professional and personal, had taught him once violence comes out, it’s well-nigh impossible to lock it up again. He told us all to take care now, patted a shoulder or two, and wished me best of luck with the bairn then high-helmeted once more, departed.
Trevor had suffered a stroke. I didn’t know whether it was my fault or not. He’d regained consciousness we were told; they were taking him up to the ward now, Mens’ General, visiting hours on the noticeboard. As the doctor nodded to us and hurried off I followed, cornering him before he could dash into another cubicle. He didn’t hide his irritation, pointing out stiffly that as I wasn’t related to the patient, he could give no further details. He made to move around me, but I was a bulky blockage and assuming that shoving me to one side might well go against the ‘do no harm’ principle, I didn’t budge. I said I understood but could a stroke be caused by a knock on the head? I’ve found in the face of a direct question, relevant information usually snaps unavoidably into place. As he repeated firmly he could tell me nothing, I read that Trevor had already been on medication for high blood pressure, a problem they felt was certainly a major contributory factor.
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