‘The table,’ cried Edward. ‘That’s perfect. Of course. It’s bound to put their minds at rest.’
Powerless to dampen his enthusiasm, the gunmen accompanied Edward as he cajoled his troupe up the stairs. Muriel stayed on the sofa.
They heaved the table on to its legs. Harry and Widnes watched from the doorway. Ginger sat on the stairs smoking a cigarette.
Edward urged Simpson to remove his bandage.
‘Leave me alone,’ shouted Simpson furiously. He lashed out at Edward with his fist.
Offended, Edward backed away. The man’s pain had turned him into an animal. ‘He’s got money troubles,’ he murmured to Binny. ‘He’s up to his eyes in debt.’ He supposed at a distance the blood on Simpson’s shirt might be taken for some kind of pattern.
‘We’ve got bats,’ said Binny, fetching them from under the bed. ‘But there isn’t a ball.’
‘Never mind,’ cried Edward. ‘It won’t be seen.’ Like an impresario he arranged the setting. ‘Lights,’ he called.
The gunmen shuffled backwards on to the landing. Alma, her arms about Simpson’s waist, supported him at the table. He blinked in the light. A green bat was shoved into his hand.
‘Laugh,’ ordered Edward. ‘Look as if you’re enjoying yourselves.’ He served an imaginary ball across the net. He ducked, slammed, made a little leap in the air.
‘He’s very good,’ observed Alma, watching the game from beneath Simpson’s armpit.
For almost a minute Simpson remained propped at the table, mesmerised by his opponent’s play. Then, stamping his foot in a tantrum, he tore free from Alma’s embrace and hurled his bat across the room.
‘What a bad sport!’ chided Alma, avoiding his flailing arms.
‘Lights off,’ shouted Edward. Exhausted, he led the way on to the landing.
‘You,’ said Ginger, tapping Binny on the shoulder, ‘I want a word.’
Going downstairs, Edward felt there was nothing more he could do. He hoped the newspaper reports wouldn’t distort the scene at the ping-pong table. He wanted Helen to read that he was alive and well, not having the time of his life. He wondered if he hadn’t overdone the laughter.
16
Preceding Ginger into the bedroom, Binny was already composing in her head sentences she would repeat later to Edward and the others. I don’t really know myself why he chose to confide his plans to me. Perhaps I remind him of someone . . . he has a sister, you know. Mind you, we hit it off right from the beginning. Perhaps it’s a little fanciful, but I had the feeling we were on the same wavelength. It happens sometimes—
‘Over there,’ said Ginger.
She looked across the room. He was staring at the divan bed shoved against the far wall.
‘Hurry up,’ he said.
She wasn’t sure if she’d understood him. They’d been such pals.
‘Get your drawers off,’ he urged.
She was astounded. She said, ‘Don’t be silly.’
He took hold of her arm and squeezed it tightly. ‘Do as you’re told.’
She sat down on the bed and began to unzip the side of her dress. She was showing all her teeth and grinning in the near darkness. She felt ridiculous. It would have been better if he’d threatened her with a gun or smashed her across the face instead of pinching her arm in that spiteful fashion.
‘No,’ he said sharply. ‘I don’t want you with nothing on. Only take your stockings off.’
She thought he was very old-fashioned. She hadn’t worn stockings for years. Swivelling round on the bed so that her back was to him, she began to wriggle out of her tights. She hoped her feet didn’t smell. Just taking her shoes off made her feel suddenly very tired and shaky. It was the cleaning she’d done in the morning – or was it yesterday? Not to mention the shopping, the cooking, rowing with the children. All that energy, all that locomotion, hour after hour after hour—
‘Lie down,’ he ordered.
She lay flat and hoped he wouldn’t strangle her. It didn’t seem very likely, not with everybody sitting downstairs, talking and making jokes. She distinctly heard the trill of Alma’s laughter. If he put his hands round her throat, once she was sure he really meant to harm her, she would jab him in the crotch with her knee. She couldn’t do it immediately because his hands weren’t anywhere near her neck and she had to give him the benefit of the doubt. She wasn’t sure whether you could kill somebody by banging them there. She would rather die than act too hastily.
‘Do you want to feel my chest?’ she said. She was showing him she was uninhibited and matter of fact about the whole business. He needn’t worry that she would throw hysterics or start imagining that he was madly in love with her. She was a woman of the world.
‘Keep quiet,’ he said. ‘I can’t abide tits.’
The neck of his woolly jumper smelled of aftershave; he was resting the point of his chin on her forehead. She moved, and for an instant his mouth brushed hers. He jerked his head away. He didn’t touch her at all; he just slipped inside.
She kept thinking of Lawrence of Arabia feeling ashamed at being done so easily. It hadn’t made it very clear in the film what had happened to him. He merely came out of the man’s tent looking a bit po-faced and walked off into the desert in a funny stiff way as if he’d been on a horse all his life. She wouldn’t have known what it meant except somebody told her the following day. But it was understandable really, him being excited and ready for it. It wasn’t anything to do with wanting it – the rudeness of the whole thing accomplished the necessary lubrication. The divan was awfully uncomfortable. When Harry had tugged the sheet from the bed he’d messed up the blankets. There was something digging into her back and she wriggled.
‘Stop that,’ said Ginger.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
She supposed she was being raped. One huge tear gathered in her left eye and rolled down her cheek. She wasn’t feeling hurt or humiliated – he didn’t do anything dirty or unusual. He wasn’t stubbing cigarettes out on her despised breasts or swinging from the chandelier, member pointed like a dagger. It was unreal, of no account. That’s why she cried – though she wondered why it was only in one eye. It would be better not to mention any of this to a soul, not even under torture. Unless she had bruises to show for it or a nervous breakdown, people would have doubts. It was like when small children were molested on the way back from sweetie shops. However sympathetic one felt towards the distraught parents, there were always those reservations. Why was the child out at that time of night? What was she doing on her own? It was dreadful, but blame was apportioned.
Ginger was clutching her head and muttering one word over and over. She couldn’t be sure, because his fingers were stuffed in her ears, but it sounded like steak, steak, steak. It was funny the way persons behaved at certain times. During the war, when bombs were dropping or ships were going down, people coupled. Men grunted in the blackout.
She wasn’t even young enough, she realised when Ginger rolled off her, to feel sorry for herself. It hadn’t mattered that much. He was an ineffectual young man.
He jumped up almost at once and fastened his trousers; he stood smoothing the hair back from his forehead.
‘Everything worked perfect,’ he said. ‘Those mates of mine did everything right, nobody got hurt. We got the bloke at the bank by the short and curlies. The kids went home. They’ll know that by now. We rang up on the dot, like we said – on the bleeding dot.’
‘My son,’ Binny said, ‘wants a motorbike. I shan’t let him have one.’
‘We all left at the same time. Geoff went off down the back of Lemon Street. We weren’t half feeling chuffed. He was meant to come up by the cinema and down past the pet shop. When we couldn’t spot him we went round in circles.’
‘I nearly bought a puppy there,’ said Binny. ‘Alison wanted one. He was lovely – he had a little fat tummy. It’s quite an expense, you know. They have to have injections for ’flu and things.’
‘We were sing
ing in the taxi. Widnes was bouncing up and down like a budgie on a perch.’
Binny sat up and felt with her toes for the discarded tights. ‘Do you know, I passed there one night and there were rats running over the floor. I expect they were drawn by the birdseed. There was one sitting in a cage with a canary. Honestly. The poor thing was turned the other way with its head on its wing, pretending it wasn’t happening.’
‘Get up,’ said Ginger. ‘You go downstairs first. You let out one word and I’ll bust that fat bloke’s nose.’
It wasn’t light but the birds were singing. It was like being in the country. It had been happening for ever, thought Binny, nights passing, dawn coming. All over the city people were lying in bed, either in pairs or alone. In the park, two streets away, grass beaded with dew, health fiends ran in tracksuits along the cinder paths, hurdling squirrels. Organised people had the breakfast table ready laid.
17
It was worse in the morning. More sordid. Harry opened the shutters a fraction and let in daylight. There were plates of congealed food, broken glass, clothing strewn about the room. Even the pink carnations seemed blowsy. Simpson lay like a road casualty under the table; specks of dried blood freckled the knuckles of his outflung hand.
Harry marched them to the bathroom. They stood patiently in the passage awaiting their turn. Binny was concerned that her son’s bicycle was badly damaged.
‘He’ll be so angry,’ she told Edward, fingering the bent spokes of the rear wheel. ‘He loves his bike.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Edward gently. ‘We’ll buy him a new one.’ He looked terrible and appeared to be itching all over. He had run out of tobacco and constantly rummaged in the pockets of his wrinkled suit, hoping for a miracle.
I’ve turned him into an incontinent tramp, thought Binny, regarding his unshaven face, puffy above a shirt collar rusted with Simpson’s blood.
Muriel’s appearance, despite her dishevelled clothes, was wholesome. She had slept longer than any of them and her naturally wavy hair and plump cheeks were an advantage. Her mouth, rubbed free of scarlet lipstick, curved full and rosy.
‘You do look rested,’ said Alma suspiciously. She herself, waxen-faced, eyes curiously exposed without her false lashes, waited corpse-like in her satin dress. Her body, slender in the candle glow, had turned to skin and bone in the morning light.
Widnes stayed in the bathroom while they used the lavatory. He stood facing the yard with his hands over his ears. He hummed a tune. When it was Muriel’s turn she ordered him from the room. He obeyed, lumbering down the passageway with his fair hair sticking up in tufts and his shoulders bowed.
Edward made tea. He helped Simpson to a chair and inspected his wound. He fetched warm water in a porridge bowl and tenderly swabbed the mutilated ear. ‘Does it hurt much?’ he asked.
‘Only when I laugh,’ said Simpson sarcastically. When he kissed Marcia, she had a habit of twining her fingers in his hair. Finding his hair scanty, she ended by caressing the lobe of his ear. He doubted if she was going to bother in the future. Seeing his creased and ravaged countenance in the bathroom mirror he had realised his dancing days were over. To hell with Marcia, with her flat mates, her play mates, her unknown men answering the telephone. Women were used to men losing their hair. They didn’t expect ears to recede as well; he wasn’t Van Gogh. Touched by Edward’s obvious concern, he said reluctantly: ‘Sorry about last night. I should have exercised a little more self-control. I must say, I was in the most damnable pain.’
‘My dear chap,’ cried Edward. ‘Don’t say another word.’
Simpson had no intention of doing so. He was embarrassed at recalling the woman sitting in the hall with her back to the door. It would have been far more sensible if he’d made a break for it that way; one heave at her ankles and he’d have been down the steps in a jiffy.
There was no fraternisation between the gunmen and their hostages while morning tea was drunk. They each stayed in separate halves of the room, rubbing their eyes and yawning.
Ginger, using the top of the fridge as a desk, was writing a letter. Earlier he had asked Binny for pen and paper and she’d torn the middle section out of Alison’s spelling book and given it to him. He wanted a dictionary as well, but she couldn’t find one.
Edward sat on the floor and leaned his head wearily against the radiator.
‘Please forgive me,’ said Binny. She squatted earnestly in front of him, cupping her hands round a mug of tea. ‘I realise I’ve been selfish. I’ll go and talk to Helen when it’s all over. I’ll make her see I’m not important.’
‘Shh,’ he said.
‘I’ll make her understand it was just a diddle on the side. It didn’t mean a thing.’
‘But it does,’ he said. ‘You’ve never understood.’
‘Well,’ she said. ‘I’ll make it all right. You’ll see.’
He searched his pockets again and fell back defeated. ‘I don’t know that I want it to be all right,’ he said. ‘I see things now in a different perspective. I’ve been thinking about love—’
‘Love?’ she said, looking away from him in embarrassment.
‘It was always a stumbling block as far as I was concerned . . . right from childhood. Of course, my father—’
‘Shall I get you some more tea?’ Binny asked.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t want tea. What I felt for my father, my school, was quite normal. In the circumstances. Then later, after I’d suffered that shock, I used other emotions, but I thought it was the same thing. You see what I mean?’
‘Well,’ Binny said dubiously. ‘It’s not crystal clear.’
‘I met that rotter Muldoon, you know, a few years ago at some conference or other. He seemed to have shrunk. Do you know, he didn’t remember me. It was quite genuine . . . his forgetfulness. And I’d thought of him for thirty years. Isn’t it amazing?’
‘Very,’ said Binny.
‘He looked quite prosperous. Didn’t look as if he’d been near a cricket pitch for years. I found myself apologising because I’d drunk the last of the water in the jug. I’m always apologising . . . doing my best. It’s a symptom. I’ve read about it since.’
‘You’ve read a lot,’ Binny said.
‘I mean one should apologise . . . I think courtesy is very important, but it can be carried too far. I don’t see the harm in telling her I want to lead a different kind of life. Do you? She does have her meetings to fall back on. I don’t honestly think she’d mind.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Binny. It was typical of Edward to start talking in these terms when she was filthy dirty and worn out and they might be shot at any moment. She thought of all the times she had leaned towards him over the dinner table in some restaurant and willed him to say something like this. He’d talked instead about old Witherspoon and old Carmichael, until the lovely feeling went from her heart and she sat stiff as a poker looking down at the menu, unable to order artichokes or prawns or anything really special and tasty, because she might choke on them with disappointment. They would have turned to ashes in her mouth.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘You’re overwrought. When all this is over you’ll have to tell Helen the truth and I promise you it will be all right. She’ll forgive you. You needn’t worry about me. I shall get over it.’
I was raped not so long ago, she could have told him, and I hardly remember that.
‘But I’d like to be with you,’ Edward said. ‘It would be fun.’ He was staring at her full in the face. For once he didn’t notice the blotches on her cheeks, the state of her hair. He needed someone.
‘What about your garden?’ she reminded him. ‘You couldn’t leave your roses. Imagine all those little insects and things burrowing into the buds and nobody there to spray them.’
‘I often think I want the roses,’ he said, ‘because I had them as a child. I wake in the night thinking about that garden. I sit at the window and watch the sun rise and imagine my father walking through the dew with his g
un under his arm.’ He rubbed his eyes as though tired of searching for that solitary figure in gum boots. ‘They’re my father’s roses,’ he said. ‘In a manner of speaking.’
‘You should rest,’ Binny said.
‘I don’t need to rest,’ he protested. ‘I can’t. Everything’s so real now. It’s all so real.’
She gathered he meant the presence of the gunmen, the disordered room, their imprisonment. For the life of her, she couldn’t understand him – to her it was like a dream.
‘Think of it this way,’ she said. ‘It all equals out. Take Simpson and Muriel. They’re together and yet they’re not. We’re not together and yet we are.’ She touched his wrinkled cheek.
‘I feel dreadful about poor Simpson,’ he said. ‘Simply dreadful. I should have watched him more carefully. I don’t think we should blame Muriel too much. She’s pretty highly strung, you know, and he doesn’t confide in her as he ought.’
‘She’s highly something,’ said Binny. She looked at Muriel sitting composedly in the armchair by the hearth, genteelly sipping her tea. Though for some reason she’d screamed at the sight of the doll, she hadn’t made a sound when her husband entered covered in blood.
‘He’s in serious financial difficulties,’ Edward said. ‘I shouldn’t tell you this, but he’s terribly overdrawn at the bank—’
‘He’s over what?’ Binny asked. She put her arms about Edward’s neck and asked again. ‘He’s what?’
‘Shh,’ said Edward. He peeped over her shoulder. Simpson was lying with his good ear to the cloth, face turned to the back window. ‘His business isn’t going too well. He complains when Muriel goes to the hairdresser and so forth, but he never confides in her. I think it’s frightfully wrong of him.’
‘Does he tell her about his women?’ asked Binny. ‘Does she know about the VD?’
‘Good Lord, no,’ said Edward, shocked.
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