‘I will not,’ I said. ‘I want to eat . . .’ I didn’t hold with backing horses. My dad has always said it’s a mug’s game.
Her eyes grew fierce. ‘Give me all the money that is mine.’ For the first time, I was just a little scared of her.
I gave her eighty pence. ‘Go ahead,’ I said. ‘Go ahead and lose it. Then you’re on your own.’
‘I will not lose it,’ she said. ‘Where is the betting-shop?’
There was only one betting-shop in Balloch then, and it was decidedly scruffy, full of old men in caps and mufflers. But for a lady, she didn’t bat an eyelid. Then we had to hang around waiting for the two-thirty race. It began to rain. We sat in the café, making cups of tea – paid for out of my last money – spin out as long as possible. At twenty-five past two, she left me. When she’d gone, I realized she hadn’t even looked at my watch, which I always keep a quarter of an hour fast anyway. And there wasn’t a clock in sight. And she certainly hadn’t been wearing a watch of her own when I first saw her . . .
I waited, feeling bored and empty and pointless and cruel. I was going to enjoy walking out on her, when she came back empty-handed.
She came back carrying thirty-five pound notes. ‘The odds lengthened,’ she explained. She gave me a pound. ‘Put that on Starway Boy in the three o’clock at Newton Abbot.’ It sounded like an order. ‘And drink some more tea. I am going shopping again. I like shopping.’
I won’t draw out the whole long day. We betted alternately, and she shopped in between. That poor bookie would have liked to have killed both of us by the end of racing for the day. Every horse she named, won. We slept that night in the Balloch Hotel (in separate bedrooms) and dined off grouse pie like lords. I had two hundred pounds in my pockets, and God knew how much she had in hers. And Balloch is a good place to buy country clothes. She not only reappeared in anorak, new polo-neck sweater and very pukka climbing boots, but was able to change into a neat plaid skirt and stockings for dinner. Not bad for a girl who twenty-four hours ago had been stark naked. Now she was the utter lady; this waitress called her madam.
‘I have enjoyed today,’ she announced, as we parted for bed. ‘I am going to enjoy it here, I think.’
‘Where’s here?’ I said, suddenly and unwarrantedly hostile.
‘Why, Scotland, of course,’ she said.
She wanted to go on plundering the Balloch betting-shop the following day. We argued over it, at breakfast.
‘We can’t do it.’
‘Why? It is not illegal.’
‘Look, you’ll make the poor sod bankrupt. There’s a limit to what anybody can take, and he’s only a little guy.’
‘What is bankrupt?’ There she went again; funny gaps in her knowledge. Like at dinner the previous night; she handled all the cutlery of a five-course meal far better than old peasant me, but when she dipped her pie into her little mound of salt, she went on getting it far too salty and pulling a face. As if she’d been taught all she knew of life in some school, and taught very well, but had been ill and missed some lessons altogether.
I tried again.
‘We ought to go to a big town, where there are lots of big betting-shops that can stand the punishment . . .’
She thought, toying with the last of her bacon (she had a man’s appetite to go with her size and strength), then nodded.
‘What is the nearest big town?’
‘Glasgow.’
‘We will go to Glasgow.’
I wished I’d kept my mouth shut. I may be irrational, but I’ve always been terrified of that city. When I’ve passed through it, going climbing, I’ve always taken the direct bus from one outskirt to the other and never got off. I know people write to the papers about what a fine, warm city Glasgow is; about the noble Grecian architecture (black with soot) and the art gallery, and the Glasgow Orpheus Choir, but all I can think of is the Gorbals, and the gang-fights on the Easterhouse estate. I’d much rather have gone south to somewhere like Peterborough or Leicester, where I’m more at home. But there was no moving her. She had made up her mind. I found that out about her: if I wanted to change her mind, I had to give good reasons quick, before she’d announced her decision. Once she’d pronounced, her mind sort of locked.
You’ll have noticed that by this time I had no further doubts about her power to pick winners. I was living in a crazy dream, where none of the usual rules worked; but by now I had got used to living in that dream. You can get used to anything, given forty-eight hours. So we took the bus to Glasgow and were soon ensconced in separate rooms in a very solid, respectable commercial hotel off Sauchiehall Street, run by a sharp body called Mrs Wemyss. Mrs Wemyss did not like our separate-rooms relationship, but Joan put on the queenly airs and totally charmed her. In fact, after that, every time I met Mrs Wemyss in the corridor, she’d look in the general direction of Joan’s room and hiss in a loud stage whisper, ‘She’s a real leddy.’
Joan got straight down to the Scotsman with a pencil, and I worked out the strategy. We would visit the ten big betting-shops, and have a twenty-pound double at each. Joan picked two horses at ten-to-one odds. If they came up, we’d walk away with a cool twenty-five thousand pounds.
We walked; I did the betting. Women didn’t go into Glasgow betting-shops much, except old biddies with carpet slippers, curlers and five pence each way on a Yankee. Joan would have stood out like a sore thumb, in her twin-set and plaid. And it seemed to go all right, though the last betting-shop had several characters hanging around who were more than just sleazy. They would have made a great white shark look like Florence Nightingale. And they gave me the eye. I hadn’t realized then that telephones in betting-shops are not just for the benefit of people placing bets. Bookies talk to each other, about anything unusual . . .
Anyway, the two horses came up; I never expected they wouldn’t. We went off to collect our winnings, and something, some twitching in my bones, made me insist on taking a taxi. It waited outside for us, while we collected. Even so, it was as well I took my rucksack; it’s amazing just how bulky twenty-five thousand in notes is, and I wouldn’t – couldn’t – take cheques. Sometimes we had to keep the taxi waiting a long time, while they scratched together the notes. And I thought the cheerful way they paid up was a bit ominous.
The last shop was empty when I collected, which was a relief. It was less posh than the others, and the district it stood in was being allowed to run down into decay; half the houses were empty and the rest had gaping front doors, and groups of people sitting watching on their granite front steps. When I got outside, the taxi was gone; Joan was standing alone on the pavement, with the rucksack at her feet.
‘What the hell . . . ?’
‘Two men came and took the taxi. They were in a terrible hurry to get to a friend lying dying in hospital—’
‘Were they big guys,’ I asked, ‘with cropped hair and boots?’
She nodded. I began to feel very insecure. It was Glaswegian teatime; the smell of haggis cooking filled the greasy yellow air. Most of the porch-squatters had gone; no doubt standing by the family gas-stove with their skean dubhs at the ready. There was not a taxi in sight. Of course.
We started to walk. With every step the wads of notes on the Linen Bank of Scotland thumped and rustled seductively in the rucksack on my back. I felt the whole city must know about them. I was even flinching away when little girls passed, pushing toy prams. I wished I was home with my mum in Geordyland. I even wished I was sitting in my tent by Loch Lomond, eating wet bread and rotten plums.
‘Do not worry,’ said Joan. ‘I will look after you.’ I looked at her; she seemed in great form: glowing colour in her cheeks, an extra spring in her lovely athletic stride. Oh you poor innocent, I thought . . .
They stepped out of an alley between two warehouses, on the quietest part of the road home. I looked around hopefully, but there was no one within two hundred yards, and the only man in sight had his back turned. I considered shouting for help, looked at the three he
avies and changed my mind. They gestured into the alleyway.
Joan stepped into the alleyway quite gaily, as if she was going on a school outing. All I could do was follow. They closed in behind. Joan, meanwhile, was not content to stop in the alley’s mouth, where there was still a one per cent hope, such as a police car or a battalion of the Black Watch marching past. She walked right to the end of the alleyway and round the corner out of sight of the road. That even threw the yobs a bit. Too much of a good thing.
Joan turned and faced them. So did I. God, I never saw three faces I liked less. I could see they were busy planning to add the crime of rape to the crime of robbery with violence. And that would probably mean the crime of murder too. It seemed unfair; I was only twenty. They gestured to me to hand over the rucksack; they wouldn’t want to risk getting the money splashed with blood.
Instead, Joan stepped forward, saying, ‘What do you want?’
‘Ye’ll do for a start,’ said the biggest one, reaching out a huge, grimy hand to grab her.
She made a movement then; very graceful, like the movement Sylvia used to make at tennis on the backhand, when the ball unexpectedly bounced too close to her. Next second, the biggest one was lying flat on his back, perfectly still. I mean, his chest was not going up and down. He did not seem to be breathing at all. It was absurd; such a little movement she had made; no noise, no blood. I couldn’t believe any of it, standing there, paralysed, with the rucksack dangling from my hand.
The second man couldn’t believe it either. He crouched, put out a hand gingerly to touch his friend.
‘Get up, Tam, get up! Wha’ the hell’s the matter wi’ ye? Get up, mon!’ This mumbled monologue seemed to go on for ever, with nobody moving. Then he raised a scraped, bone-white face, incredulous, indignant.
‘Ye’ve killed him, missus. Ye’ve killed him!’
She made the same graceful movement again, underarm this time. He collapsed gently across his friend.
The third man took to his heels. Joan was after him like a stoat after a rabbit. It had the same horrific fascination as a kill in a nature film; the same inevitability. At the last moment he turned and raised a helpless arm to protect his head. I felt a flash of pity for him then. She never touched his head . . . She came back, not even breathing heavily. She still had that glow in her cheeks; deeper, if anything. She took up the rucksack and walked away down another alley. All I could do was follow.
I caught up, and began to shout meaningless things at her. She gave me a look out of those steady blue eyes.
‘Shut up. Do you want to spend the rest of your life in prison for men like that? Walk beside me normally. Control your breathing. Put your hand through mine. Aren’t we supposed to be . . . lovers?’
I did as I was told. What else was there to do?
I tossed and turned in bed. The unbelievable scene in the alley played itself through and through my mind, like an ancient, silent newsreel that had never made sense even in the beginning.
The evening in the hotel had been awful. Sitting trying to eat dinner. Trying to watch a succession of totally meaningless TV programmes, and feeling I had gone insane. The beady-eyed Mrs Wemyss had, of course, noticed. She came across in her flowered overall, to ask if we’d enjoyed our wee meal and added, ‘Your young man’s looking a bit peaky . . .’
Joan gave her a charming full-face smile. ‘My young man and I have been having a frank talk. Just because we’re going to be engaged next week, and we’re staying in a hotel, he’s been getting . . . certain ideas. I’ve explained to him I’m not that kind of girl. He can wait till we’re married. So now he’s sulking.’
Mrs Wemyss gave me an all-knowing look. ‘That’s the way, hen,’ she said to Joan. ‘The men are all right . . . if they’re kept in their place. I was the same wi’ Wemyss when we were courting. I was brought up vairy pure; my family were Wee Frees. Men’ll always take advantage if they can. I say, what they don’t pay for, they don’t appreciate.’ The women smiled at each other, conspiratorially. I damned them to hell, and went to bed.
I heard my door open and close softly, and shot bolt upright. The heavies’ boss had tracked us down . . . the eagle-eyed Glasgow CID . . .
It was Joan, standing in her white nightdress, with lace at the throat and cuffs, looking like something out of a Vogue Bridal Supplement. Enough to soften the hardest male heart. She sat by me on the bed and took my hand. I thought bitterly: if only your friend Mrs Wemyss could see you now . . .
‘Why d’you do it?’ I spat at her.
‘It was necessary.’ She made it sound like a rough trip to the dentist’s.
‘But . . . three? The other two would have run away.’
‘And come back with their associates . . . Now, no one knows who we are or where we are, or even if we did it. Did you not tell me that gangs fight and kill in Glasgow?’
‘We should scarper . . .’
‘That is what their friends and the police will be looking for; someone – as you say – scarpering. No one will look for us here. We will leave in two days’ time.’
‘They were human beings . . .’
‘And what would these . . . human beings have done to me, if I hadn’t stopped them?’
‘Robbed you, raped you, killed you . . .’
‘Well then. Now they can rob and rape and kill no more. Will not that make your world a better place?’
‘My world . . . ?’
She bit her lip, but recovered quickly. ‘You know what I mean.’
‘No, I don’t know what you mean. What do you mean – my world?’
‘The world you are so concerned about. You think too much.’
‘What are you? CIA? KGB?’
She shook her head. ‘I am . . . going to make you a millionaire, among other things.’ Then, without warning, she stood up, pulled the nightdress over her head and got into the bed beside me. Her warmth was overwhelming, but my body still rebelled against what had happened, what she had done; and that she could do nothing about. Nevertheless, her warmth was a comfort and I must have fallen asleep at last. And by the time I was fully awake again, sometime in the dawn, it was all over. She was awake too, and lay looking at me, strangely, I thought. I got in a panic then.
‘It’s all right,’ she said. With any other girl, that would have meant the safe time of the month. But there was something too . . . triumphant in this one’s voice. She had done something she had planned to do. I remembered the Black Widow spider, who eats her mate afterwards. But she just got up and put on her nightdress, and ghosted away well before HMS Wemyss, that well-known Scottish battleship, could arise to say her prayers to St John Knox and get the breakfast.
There’s no point in going into detail over what happened during the next three months. We bought a large motorized caravan, for cash and illegally, in a Glasgow used-car lot. I sussed out the caravans; Joan sussed out the dealers. I got us a useful Volkswagen Devon; Joan knew which dealer would take the hundred-pound bribe. Uncanny. We had to buy illegally because I’d only got a motorbike licence, and although Joan drove like a dream, the way she had arrived on my front doorstep precluded any chance of her having a licence tucked in her handbag.
We roved around England, only returning to one town so she could pass her driving test. She never liked being illegal more than was strictly necessary. And all the time we were placing bets and raking in cash, though she’d learnt caution now and we never took any bookie for more than he could bear. We built up massive accounts in bank after bank; then, by cunning transfers, she slowly gathered it all together in one account. You would have thought that some bright bank manager would have smelt a rat, but she sailed into each of their offices (in real pearls as well as the twin-set now) and charmed the pants off them with her royalty act. That was how I learnt the amazing fact that a girl of high breeding who underplays her legs and lace petticoat can addle the shrewdest male brain. Besides, who worries too much about a customer who is paying money in?
And preg
nancy just ices the cake, when you’re wearing a wedding ring – even if you haven’t come by the ring legally. For yes, she was pregnant; in fact, by three months she was so hugely pregnant that she could hardly get behind the wheel of the van. I was appalled by what I’d done, raged and wept. She just smiled at me (she’d learnt to smile so well now, though she’d never smiled at first) and patted me on the head, as if I was a good little boy.
She began getting ready for the birth in a way that seemed precipitate even for the keenest first-time mum. By the end of the third month she had everything ready. But what really brought me out in a cold sweat was that she bought three of everything. I mean, three carrycots, three lots of nappies, three sets of feeding bottles. I asked her, rather sarkily, if she was expecting triplets, and she gave me that wide blue look and said, ‘Of course. We always have three.’
‘Who’s we?’ I shouted, a panic that was always with me suddenly surfacing, as it did at times.
‘Our family, of course.’
‘Who are your family? Where are they?’
She pulled a face. ‘I had a row with them. You ought to be thankful. They’d get shot of you in a flash, for an ignorant yob.’
‘Why don’t you go and see a doctor?’ I asked.
‘It’s not time yet,’ she said, with another practised smile.
One wild October night, we parked the van on the hills above Porlock Weir. Autumn was upon us now, and the gusts of wind, carrying volleys of rain with them as they swept off Exmoor, set the van rocking, in spite of the shelter of a deep belt of trees. I was due to start back at college in three days; all summer long I’d fobbed off my parents with an assortment of postcards hinting vaguely at fruit-picking in Norfolk, or washing-up in Cornish hotels. Enough to dissuade them from reporting my disappearance to the police. But time was running out for me, and I was broody that night. She sensed it and tried to cheer me up by showing me our bank book.
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