[Lambert and Hook 21] - A Good Walk Spoiled

by J M Gregson

  He looked at the scribbled notes in his hand and called out. ‘Direct action: Scott Kennedy to report on the initiative taken two weeks ago, please.’

  Kennedy stood up, stroking the stubble on his chin, waiting until an expectant silence fell upon the people packed so closely around him. He was a little nervous, but nevertheless determined to enjoy his moment of prominence. His dark eyes glittered with a heady sense of mission.

  ‘Following the approval expressed at our last gathering for such action, I conducted an abduction of the Research Director of Gloucester Chemicals from the dock area in Gloucester on that Thursday evening.’ He wasn’t sure he had got exactly the right word, but ‘abduction’ sounded better to him than a simple ‘kidnapped’. He had them quiet now, wanting the firsthand account from their own man of the exploit most of them had read about in the papers or heard described on radio and television. Scott said portentously, ‘I am confident he will not be able to identify me, even though I forced him to drive his own car for twenty-five minutes to the place where I had arranged to meet Tony and Wayne.’

  There was a little stir of movement as people looked sideways at their neighbours, trying to identify the supporting cast in this pleasing little drama. Scott Kennedy raised his hands unnecessarily in front of him, enjoying the feeling of control as he felt the hush descend upon his listeners. ‘I can report to the meeting that the Research Director in question, a man by the name of Richard Cullis, was shit-scared on that night.’

  There was laughter and delight at this sudden descent from formal language into mild obscenity, even the beginnings of a ragged cheer. As someone tried to begin a round of applause, Scott held his right hand up imperiously and said modestly, T had a knife pressed against the back of his neck and eventually against his throat. I flatter myself that I sounded as if I meant business at the time, so the bastard had every reason to be scared! I warned him that we wanted all animal experiments and all testing of drugs on animals at his place of work to cease immediately.’

  There were rumblings of approval of this. Then a white-faced, intense girl at the back of the room said, ‘And what has happened since then? Have they stopped torturing animals?’ Scott looked deflated. The man in charge of the meeting took the opportunity to regain his control. ‘We await developments. The gauntlet has been thrown down. Scott Kennedy’s mission was to issue this injunction, not to cause any physical harm to Richard Cullis at this stage.’

  ‘So what happens next?’

  The question the leader had not wanted. ‘Nothing’ was the answer, but he could hardly say that. ‘We’ve made our gesture.’ Hearing rumblings of support for the woman’s question, he went on hastily, ‘That is for this meeting to decide. Scott Kennedy has carried out the brief we gave him and is surely to be congratulated upon his success.’

  Someone shouted, ‘Hear! Hear!’ and this time there was a sporadic round of applause. Another voice from the back of the room called, ‘One of the reports on the radio said that we had claimed to have someone working within those laboratories. That wasn’t repeated in subsequent bulletins.’

  The leader glanced down at Ben Paddon, who gave him a little nod and then stood up, feeling his pulses racing as he looked down from his six feet five inches. ‘I am the person in position there. The police suppressed the information after that first bulletin, probably because they wanted to come up with a big announcement that they’d discovered our undercover man. Well, they haven’t! They spent two and a half days questioning people, including me, but I’m quite confident that the pigs haven’t a clue. They seem to be spreading the word that Scott’s warning to them was an empty threat. I know it wasn’t and now you know it wasn’t!’

  He sat down again to cheers, feeling his cheeks burning with excitement and pleasure, whilst the leader warned the meeting about the absolute importance of keeping his identity secret. Then the white-faced, thin-lipped woman at the back spoke up again. ‘So where do we go from here? What action are we going to take at Gloucester Chemicals?’

  There was some support for her question, but the leader sensed that the meeting wanted to enjoy the heady excitement of their successes, without pressing too hard at the moment for more tangible achievements. He said firmly, ‘I think you should leave that in the hands of your committee. We shall review the situation and decide how best we may build on the undoubted advantages we have gained. You may be confident that we shall take action, but that action needs to be derived from a day-to-day knowledge of the situation and the opportunities which may offer themselves. I don’t think it can be determined by a general vote at this juncture, which would tie our hands.’

  There was a little hubbub of discussion, which generally seemed to support this strategy. He said, ‘Speaking of direct action, we have to decide tonight on our tactics towards the hunt at the weekend.’ There was immediate animation at the prospect of more immediate excitements, as he had known that there would be. He emphasized that though the hunt officials were now claiming that this was just a drag hunt following a scent laid by human runners, there was reason to suspect that foxes were still being pursued and killed illegally. A chorus of disapproval followed and many hands were raised eagerly in support of an organized demonstration against the riders.

  Scott Kennedy, still thrilled with his earlier moment of prominence and disappointed that it had passed so quickly, said, ‘We’ve had a lot of publicity out of our efforts against Gloucester Chemicals. The television cameras will be at the hunt and the media will be out in force if we let it be known that we propose to be around. We should take full advantage of this situation to get our message across. We need some direct action against these buggers poncing about on horses and I’m prepared to lead it.’

  If one or two people suspected that there was a class element in this, perhaps even a suggestion of jealousy, they had more sense than to voice the thought amidst the exhilaration which was dominating the warm and airless room. Most people offered their support for the hunt protest and they agreed to meet together to coordinate their efforts half an hour before the stirrup cups which still signalled the beginning of the hunt. There was much excitement as the meeting broke up. The leader had to remind them these proceedings were secret, that they should depart quietly through the streets outside and keep a low profile around the centre of Cheltenham.

  The room seemed more squalid after the main body of the protesters had left. The leader waited for the excitement to seep away with them, for reality to reassert itself amongst his small committee. Then he said to Ben Paddon, ‘I don’t think you should have revealed your identity to the meeting at large tonight. The fewer people who know about it, the easier it is for you to operate to our advantage. Sooner or later your cover will be blown, now that everyone knows about it. We may need to bring forward our plans for direct action.’

  It wasn’t until they went out into the open air that Priscilla Godwin realized that she was much drunker than she had thought. She staggered a little, looked up at the almost full moon emerging from the clouds, and then wished that she hadn’t done that. The gable end of the pub span for a moment among the stars above her. She snatched at her escort’s wrist and found Richard Cullis’s arm instead round her waist, holding her hard against him; he giggled sympathetically with her as she stumbled, taking the chance to slide his hand up and over her breast.

  ‘Oops!’ she said. ‘Thank God I don’t have to drive! Are you sure you’ll be all right?’

  ‘Quite sure. You can rely on me, Pris.’

  Her head steadied after a moment and she recovered her balance. She extricated herself from his grasp in slow motion and made her way uncertainly to the passenger side of his car, moving round the BMW with her hands placed on the roof to support her. ‘Home, James, and don’t spare the horses!’ she commanded, then fell rather than slid on to her seat, laughing as hard as if she had offered an original and highly witty remark.

  Promising, thought Richard. Pleasantly pissed, without being too drunk to e
njoy herself in bed. And even more attractive, now that she had relaxed: he had always known that something hot and earthy lurked beneath that prim exterior. He wanted her here and now, in the car, but he controlled himself, knowing it would be better and more prolonged if he waited. He started the engine, left it running softly as an assurance that there was nothing to fear, whilst he pulled her gently towards him and kissed her upon the lips, quite chastely, without letting his hands go where they wanted to go. As he ran his lips softly across her brow, he could smell her perfume and the warm scent of her body and her hair, heavy with the promise of the more abandoned coupling to come.

  They did not say much on the journey to her flat. Richard had drunk much less than her, but he was near enough to the limit to ensure that he took great care with his driving. Priscilla Godwin fingered her grandmother’s amethyst and smiled happily to herself. She was enveloped by the drowsy euphoria which comes with the gentle movement of a comfortable car at the end of an evening of good food and wine in pleasant company.

  She jerked back into full consciousness when he stopped the car at the entrance to the small block of modem flats. ‘Safely home!’ she said a little stupidly. ‘Are you going to come in for a coffee, Richard?’

  ‘Just try to stop me!’ he said with a laugh. He was out of the car and round at her side to assist her whilst she was still fumbling for the door handle. Her skirt had folded beneath her and he had a generous glimpse of the top of her thigh as he helped her out. He felt a hot, almost overwhelming, craving, telling him to run his hands up beneath that blue cotton skirt, to have her here and now, with the stars above and the warm night air around them.

  But this was not the place, in the streets of suburbia with some late dog-walker likely to surprise them. That was for randy schoolboys who could not control themselves. Men of the world waited for the right moment, even when the urges returned to them as strongly as they had ever burned in youth.

  Priscilla did not need his assistance to move through the entrance and up to the door of her flat. She found the lock with her key at the very first attempt, though it needed the elaborate, slightly comic concentration of a child. He watched her with a smile and his hands thrust deep into his pockets: all her movements now were kindling to his lust.

  Priscilla switched on the lights and directed him when he requested it to her neat little bathroom. Then she moved with deliberation into the kitchen, absorbed and single-minded in her task, anxious to show him that she was not really drunk but just pleasantly tiddly. ‘Make yourself at home!’ she called over her shoulder. ‘It will only be instant, but it won’t take a moment.’

  She heard the lavatory flush as she set out china beakers and reached up for the jar of coffee. She did not hear him arrive in the kitchen and leapt with the shock when she felt his breath on her neck. ‘Forget the coffee! We can do better than that for ourselves, can’t we?’

  He was behind her, his hands round her waist, holding her body tight against him, feeling the soft curve of her buttocks intoxicatingly close to him through the thin material.

  ‘Richard, I don’t think—’

  But she could not get her rejection out. He was turning her torso towards his, crushing his lips against her mouth, thrusting his tongue urgently after hers. Then he lifted her, sliding his hands under her bottom, forcing his knees between her legs, carrying her out from the kitchen into the sitting room, hesitating there as he tried to decide which door led to her bedroom and the delights which awaited them there. ‘I’ve wanted this for months!’

  She felt the hot words in her ear, breathy, animal, terrifying. ‘Richard, you’ve got the wrong idea. It’s probably my fault, but—’

  He swallowed the rest of her protest, his lips hard, brutal, bruising. ‘It’s all right, Pris, I’ve got a condom on. You know you want it too. You know you’re a hot bitch beneath that cool exterior. And believe me, you’re going to enjoy it, girl!’ If she was going to play hard to get, that was all right by him: her modesty was fanning the flames of his lust even higher.

  She knew now that she was in trouble. The drink had fuddled her, delayed her realization of what was going on and her reactions to it. She must not panic, or what was going to be embarrassing for both of them might become something much worse. ‘Richard, this is silly! Stop this at once, please, before it goes any further and leaves us both regretting it.’ She was suddenly very sober, very prim, more prim than she could remember being since she was a teenager. But she had never had to contend with anything like this before.

  His voice was loud and harsh, as she had never heard it before. ‘You want this as much as I do, you horny little hussy! Don’t come the Little Miss Muppet stuff, you’re all the same with your pants off! I bet prudish Priscilla shouts as loud as anyone when she comes!’

  He bore her backwards towards the deep-pile mg in front of the fireplace, and she lost her balance even as she realized what he planned. She was on her back and he was on top of her, shouting words she could not hear, did not want to hear, in her ears. She tried to scream, to twist her body and throw him sideways and off her. But he was stronger than her and exulting in that strength. Every move she made seemed only to excite him more.

  Her skirt was round her neck, in her mouth, as she tried to shout at him. He was sliding her pants down. She needed hands everywhere, and still she would not have enough of them to fight him, to stop him from doing this unthinkable thing which had so abruptly become reality. He was on her, in her, grunting, shouting at her to enjoy it, yelling words at himself as his thrusting reached a climax. She wanted to faint, to lose all consciousness of what was happening to her, yet she could not. She saw herself and her sufferings from the side of the room, as if it were some other person who was enduring this.

  He stayed on top of her for what seemed a long time when it was over. Priscilla was too exhausted to try to move. She had an obscure fear that he might turn violent, that he might swing the back of his hand hard against her damp face, if she tried to move.

  Eventually he levered himself up on to his elbows, looked down at her face beneath him, muttered some coarse phrase she did not want to catch. She breathed in, felt his hips heavy and loathsome on hers, exhausted with their efforts, pinning her still to the rug. She had her eyelids shut still as she whispered her first hoarse words in twenty minutes. ‘Get out!’

  He levered himself off her, heavy and uncoordinated, all energy spent now. She kept her eyes closed, made no move after a single sweep of her right arm to move her skirt back to her knees, lest he should review where he had been and what he had done to her. He continued to talk, but she would not listen to what he was saying; she shut his words out without needing to cover her ears. She divined from the rhythm of his phrases that he was trying to soothe her, to rationalize what he had done, probably to talk about work and what they must do there.

  She took in all the breath she could and this time she shouted the only two words she had for him. ‘GET OUT!’

  After she had heard the door shut, she lay still for a long time, feeling the silence creep back into the flat and over her, like a weightless blanket. It was an effort to move, to rise eventually to her knees and rest her shoulders against the sofa which no longer felt familiar.

  It was minutes more before she lifted her head and looked round the flat. She saw the open door to the kitchen and the beakers which had never been used. She made herself look behind her and see the crumpled rug where he had taken her. She felt a stranger, as if this was someone else’s flat, with furnishings which had set themselves up to help the creature which had done this to her and now was gone.

  Her blouse was tom beyond repair. Her grandmother’s amethyst brooch lay beside it on the carpet. A little while later, she began to weep. She found that even the tears were painful, rather than the release they should have been.

  Seven

  Bert Hook was making nervous jokes. Nervousness came oddly from this stolid frame, this village policeman whose presence was an assuranc
e of normality to his fellows in a rapidly changing world. But Bert Hook was this morning not a detective sergeant but a student, suffering the anxieties which beset such beings when the crisis of an examination looms, suffering them much more acutely in fact because he was a mature student.

  The Open University is a splendid institution, offering people opportunities for study and personal development in later life which most of them had never anticipated, bringing the delights of learning to adults. Mature people are usually much more appreciative of the joys of higher education than the adolescents who have poured straight from school into universities, perhaps after the advantage of the now fashionable ‘gap year’.

  But every pleasure has its price. The time of reckoning for most students is examinations, and the anxiety brought by these trials is much greater for those who have been away from their tortures for twenty years and more.

  This morning Bert was off to a practice examination, a trial run, as the tutor called it. She had arranged it in answer to her students’ repeatedly expressed fears over the real examinations in November. As she continually reminded her group, their work and grades had been good throughout the year: because they already had excellent grades for coursework, they had nothing to fear from the more formal testing to come.

  The commonly expressed view among her students was, ‘We’re not too bad when we’ve plenty of time, but we can’t work under pressure. That’s where we’ll never measure up to the young ‘uns, when we have to compile answers under the pressure of time in examinations.’ They pronounced the five syllables of the dreaded word as if it were some dragon lurking within the cave of academia, waiting to emerge at the eleventh hour as success beckoned and incinerate them with long spouts of fire from its destructive nostrils.

  The tutor recognized an argument she was not going to win. ‘I can’t alter the OU system. But I can give you practice in this dreaded ordeal, if you want it. The eight of you can have a trial run in my front room. I’ll set the questions and I’ll mark your efforts. There’ll be strict adherence to time and no concessions. I’ll put my chiming clock on the mantelpiece and drive you to distraction!’