‘Well,’ Dawson barked abruptly, ‘how much did you add just now?’
Tony looked up quickly.
‘At least another foot,’ he said.
‘Nine inches,’ said Morgan.
‘Nine inches?’ Dawson echoed with a touch of a snarl. ‘Now listen, that’s too bleeding slow.’
‘We’ve been having to do a bit of shoring-up like,’ Morgan explained, sulkily.
‘Shoring-up? What the hell do you think you’re making? The Channel Tunnel? Get back down and dig.’
‘It isn’t as if we’re getting all that much help, is it?’ Morgan answered.
‘You’d like me down there, wouldn’t you?’ Dawson said. ‘And what’d happen when some nosy neighbour came knocking at the door? That old bitch in the bathroom would start screaming, and we’d have a police-car outside in no time.’
Morgan glared at the grey and yellow checks of Mrs Prothero’s desecrated lino.
‘Well, what about the peterman?’ he said. ‘Playing bloody Patience in that bedroom. Not even coming out for his coffee. Why can’t he take a turn?’
‘Not in his contract, mate,’ Dawson answered, with a return of his old cheerfulness. ‘He comes to blow the safe, and he doesn’t—’
He broke off.
From outside in the hallway there had come a tattoo of muffled knocks.
‘It’s them,’ young Smith whispered hoarsely. ‘The police.’
‘It’s the old bitch,’ Dawson replied. ‘Go and shut her up.’
‘But last time...’
Dawson moved one stubby fist. Young Smith positively scuttled for the door.
He was not gone long.
‘She wants to talk to you,’ he said, putting his head shamefacedly only just back into the room.
‘Did you tell her to stop that row?’ Dawson said.
The boy looked as if he would have liked to have ducked his head back and stayed out of sight till things had calmed down. But plainly he did not dare.
‘I told her it was no use asking to talk to you,’ he offered.
A sharp grin flicked across Dawson’s mouth.
‘So you come and ask?’ he said.
‘But she said Mr Prothero’s really bad,’ Smith pleaded. ‘She said something about a fracture of the skull. I don’t know.’
‘All right, so he’s got a fractured skull,’ Dawson said. ‘Who cares?’
From behind Smith the thumping on the locked bathroom door began again. Smith stood where he was, half in, half out.
‘All right,’ Dawson said at last. ‘Bring her in.’
Smith disappeared quickly as a schoolboy let off a punishment. In a moment Mrs Prothero came marching into the kitchen ahead of him.
The hours locked away with her injured husband had worked on her. Her features had lost what feminine softness they had had. Her eyes were deep sunk. And they blazed.
‘So,’ she said, going straight up to Dawson, ‘here you are quietly relaxing as you go about your money-grubbing moles’ work. Well, here’s a fact to slap into your dream of unending riches. Not three yards from where you sit lies a man facing his Maker. And it is at your hand he is dying.’
She got no reaction from Dawson, swinging his legs on the table. But she clearly had an effect on the others. Tony shifted on his neatly painted chair and darted a glance of entreaty at Morgan. And Morgan went stony-faced as a rock from his native mountains.
Soon enough Dawson answered her.
‘Okay, but I don’t believe a word of it.’
He jumped down, forcing Mrs Prothero to take half a pace back.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘back you get inside there, and don’t let’s have any more trouble.’
Mrs Prothero looked at him with conviction burning on her helmetlike features.
Dawson grinned.
‘You can take a coffee,’ he said. ‘Or two, one each.’
‘Coffee,’ Mrs Prothero retorted. ‘You are faced with a man who will be dead before Christmas Day is gone, and you offer him coffee.’
Suddenly she swung round to the others.
‘No,’ she said, ‘I won’t allow you to let him die. Isn’t there one of you with the courage to speak up?’
But Dawson was undismayed.
‘All right,’ he said, ‘let’s see if anyone’s chicken.’
He looked at them one by one. Then abruptly jerked back to stare at Tony.
‘Do you believe the lady?’ he asked. ‘Come on, don’t be scared to say. Do you believe the old geezer’s dying?’
Tony reddened.
‘Oh, shut up, for heaven’s sake,’ he said. ‘Of course I don’t believe it. He can’t be.’
Behind Dawson young Smith’s face registered almost comical relief to have escaped the dilemma.
Dawson turned to Morgan.
‘Well, how about you, Welshie? Do you think he’s dying?’
Morgan contrived to put on a judicial look.
‘I expect the good lady’s a bit hysterical like,’ he said.
Dawson grinned his twisty little grin.
‘Yes, hysterical,’ he said. ‘You can ignore her then, can’t you, boy? Hysterical women are something a nice young man making his way in the world, with his own Health Club and all, doesn’t have to have anything to do with.’
Morgan bit his lip.
‘And ain’t it a pity,’ Dawson went on, ‘that that Health Club got so rotten into debt that nice Mr Morgan has to rob a bank?’
Morgan started out of his chair, but thought better of it.
Now Dawson turned to young Smith.
‘Well, do you believe your former employer’ll never get his gold watch for fifty years’ devoted service?’ he said.
‘No, no,’ Smith almost shouted. ‘No, I don’t believe the stinking cow.’
But he was not going to escape so lightly.
Mrs Prothero marched up till her long implacable face was within inches of his.
‘No,’ she said. ‘You have seen my husband. You are going to tell the truth.’
‘I—I didn’t get more than a glimpse.’
‘You took your look. I was watching. Answer me.’
Young Smith had no answer.
‘Come on, laddie,’ Dawson said. ‘Answer up.’
The boy tautened his whole body.
‘No,’ he flung out. ‘No. I tell you I don’t believe a word she says. He’s all right. Old Prothero’s all right, I tell you.’
Dawson pushed his stocky frame behind him and Mrs Prothero.
‘Too bad, Ma,’ he said. ‘It didn’t come off. Now back inside.’
‘I’m tired,’ Morgan protested when Dawson woke the three of them next evening.
‘Tired?’ Dawson snapped. ‘You’ve just had an hour’s kip, haven’t you?’
Do you think I have? Do you think I’ve closed a blessed eye ever since we’ve been here?’
‘I don’t see why you couldn’t have done,’ Morgan answered.
‘Don’t you? Well, I’ll tell you why not. Because if I did Smithie here’d let that bitch out before anyone knew it. Anybody can see he’s fallen for that story of hers.’
‘I could have kept watch on him,’ Morgan said.
Dawson darted him a look.
‘Do you think the boy’s scared of you?’ he asked. ‘He knows you’re a sight too worried about what the neighbours’d think to belt him one. He’d get his little dander up and tell you to go to hell. And then where’d we all be?’
He turned away and studied the clock on the mantelpiece.
‘Just gone half past six,’ he said. ‘We’ll be in there by half seven now. That gives the peterman all and more of his blessed three hours to muffle the safe and set his stuff right, and then we blow it just as the old church bells start going hammer and tongs. As planned.’
He stood there with his stumpy legs astraddle, and a gleam of something like visionary light in his eyes.
It was abruptly extinguished.
‘Smithie,’ he sai
d, ‘go and have a look in the bathroom.’
But young Smith jibbed.
‘Me again. Why does it always have to be me?’
Dawson looked at him. Then he swiftly crossed the room to where his overcoat lay flung on a chair. He dipped his hand into a pocket and pulled out the knuckle-duster.
Young Smith needed no further hint.
But he was out of the room for only a few seconds before he came in again following Mrs Prothero.
‘Christ,’ said Dawson, ‘you’ve not let her out again?’
Mrs Prothero ignored this.
‘No,’ she said harshly to Dawson, ‘he is not dead. That’s what you sent the boy to find out, isn’t it?’
‘If he was going to die,’ Dawson replied, maintaining an appearance of calm, ‘I might send to ask. But as he isn’t, I don’t.’
From the door Smith put in a word.
‘He looks pretty rough now though.’
‘Does he?’ Dawson answered. ‘Perhaps you’re setting up as a doc, are you? Seeing you’ve given up a career in banking.’
‘No,’ said Smith, ‘but he’s rotten. You can see he is.’
Mrs Prothero pounced.
‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘You can’t get away from that fact, can you? So you had better persuade your friends to let me go for help.’
‘Don’t be blasted silly,’ Smith burst out at this. ‘Do you think ambulance men are going to come and fetch him and leave us getting on with what we’re doing.’
‘Then you’ll have to stop what you’re doing, won’t you?’ returned Mrs Prothero implacably.
‘We can’t stop it, we can’t,’ Smith shouted. ‘We’re in sight of it now. More money than I ever dreamt of having. And then I’ll show them. Out in South America I’m going to have cars by the garageful, and suits. And the dollies’ll come crawling, you’ll see.’
‘Money,’ retorted Mrs Prothero. ‘A little money, and a human life. You’ve got to choose.’
‘No,’ the boy yelled. ‘I tell you he isn’t that bad. All I saw was a face with a lot of bandage round it. He might be fit as a fiddle for all I know.’
‘You know he is not. And I am not budging from this spot till I’ve made you act on that.’
But now Dawson stepped in.
‘Tony,’ he said curtly, ‘put her back.’
‘Me?’ Tony exclaimed, a look of hurt outrage beaming out of his liquid brown eyes.
‘Yes, you,’ Dawson said. ‘I’m doing the telling now, and don’t you forget.’
Tony went up to Mrs Prothero.
‘You’ll have to go, you know,’ he said.
Mrs Prothero ignored him.
Tony offered her his arm in a gesture of slick over-politeness.
‘Allow me to have the pleasure?’
Again she ignored him.
‘Tony,’ Dawson said.
A look of childish fury darkened Tony’s face and he seized Mrs Prothero by the arm and dragged her out, slamming the door violently behind him. Out in the hallway, where quantities of dirty soil from the tunnel had by now encroached, he shouted loudly.
‘For God’s sake, stop all this.’
Then he abruptly lowered his voice.
‘And anyhow it’s no damn use. You don’t know Dawson. He’s got young Smith so scared he wouldn’t do a thing, even if he wanted to. And I don’t much suppose he wants. He’s a nasty-minded little tick.’
Mrs Prothero whispered too. But it was a fierce whisper.
‘And you’re not nasty, are you? You’d like everyone to be nice and comfortable, wouldn’t you? I know, you see.’
Tony shrugged his shoulders.
‘Well, there’s nothing wrong in wanting to have a good time and wanting others to have a good time, too,’ he answered.
‘And so you persuade yourself my husband is having a good time,’ Mrs Prothero whispered sharply. ‘A good time as he slips nearer and nearer the graved
‘No,’ said Tony, almost speaking aloud. ‘But, I mean, all that’s just a trick, isn’t it? It’s okay for keeping Dawson in his place, and I don’t blame you. But you can tell me, you know.’
‘All right, I will tell you. As a secret between the two of us.’
Mrs Prothero’s grey eyes looked into his.
‘My husband is dying,’ she said. ‘Get that into your head. Just one unpleasant fact. He is dying, and you are letting him die.’
‘Look,’ answered Tony, casting a look desperately round. ‘I’d like to help. But I can’t. I’m just as much trapped as you are.’
‘Pull yourself together, man,’ Mrs Prothero snapped, with a glance of simple disgust. ‘We’re going back in there, and you are going to tell the others it’s time my husband had help.’
‘No,’ Tony pleaded.
‘Get in,’ said Mrs Prothero.
She went over and jerked the sitting-room door open.
Tony went in, with Mrs Prothero close behind.
Dawson looked at him.
‘I thought I told you to lock her up,’ he said.
‘Yes. Yes. Look, Mrs Proth—’
‘Tell him,’ Mrs Prothero said.
Tony turned to Dawson, almost all the way.
‘For God’s sake,’ he suddenly burst out, ‘she’s right. We all know she is. The fellow’s dying. We can’t just let him.’
Now at last his eyes found Dawson’s.
‘You’re going to let her go for help,’ he said. ‘Or I’ll bloody shout out of this window.’
He swung away and began to make for the window. Dawson caught him by the elbow almost before he had moved. He spun him round and sent him smack back against the wall by the bureau. Then he stooped to the chair where he had let the knuckle-duster fall on top of his coat and picked up the little strip of heavy brass.
He stood in front of Tony and jabbed at his face until he fell to the floor.
Tony did not lie long where he had fallen. Dawson saw to that. He sent young Smith for water, splashed it over Tony, pulled him to his feet and sent him back down the tunnel, all within ten minutes.
But then something happened which had not at all entered Dawson’s scheme of things. The tunnel fell in.
It fell partly on top of Smith, and Dawson himself went down and hauled the boy, who was in a dead faint, out by his wrists. Then he went down again and with the aid of one of Mrs Prothero’s saucepans dug through the fall and got at Morgan.
When he eventually scrambled out Smith was still unconscious on the soil-strewn kitchen floor with Tony, his spaniel face terribly distorted with bruises and cuts, sitting looking hopelessly down at him.
Dawson sent him to fetch Mrs Prothero.
‘Get a look at the lad,’ he said to her when Tony brought her in. ‘Find out what’s the matter with him. We’ve had a bit of trouble.’
Without a word Mrs Prothero knelt beside Smith, as earlier she had knelt beside her husband. She went to work with cool expertness and at the end of five minutes looked up.
‘It’s only his foot as far as I can tell,’ she said. ‘But that’s badly crushed. It’s impossible to tell how badly. Otherwise he’s fainted, but he should come out of that soon enough. Poor lad.’
‘All right,’ Dawson said, ‘do what you have to do for him.’
‘What I have to do?’ retorted Mrs Prothero, still kneeling on the earth-stained linoleum. ‘It’s not a question of what I can do. This boy must go to hospital.’
Dawson gave her one of his savage little grins.
‘Hospital nothing,’ he said. ‘You told me he’s just hurt his foot. You can deal with that. You missed your chance though, didn’t you? You ought to have added him to your list of the dead and dying.’
Mrs Prothero had been busy with her patient. Now she gave Dawson a brief glance.
‘Isn’t it about time you stopped this nonsense of pretending my husband isn’t as bad as I’ve said?’ she asked.
Dawson made no reply. For a little he walked about the kitchen, where he could for earth an
d rubble. Then he went and stood over Mrs Prothero again.
‘Listen,’ he said, ‘you’re going to get that boy patched up so we can leave here as planned with all our nice gift-wrapped parcels full of money as the crowds come out of the Midnight service at the church. If need be, we’ll carry the lad and pretend he’s drunk. But we’re going then, and we’re going with the money. Understand that.’
Mrs Prothero looked up.
‘And what if I won’t do as you say?’
Dawson’s answer came without hesitation.
‘You saw me deal with Tony here. You’ll get the same. Woman or no woman.’
Mrs Prothero looked at him quite calmly.
Then I shall have to help you,’ she said.
Dawson glanced at Smith. He was, for all his youth, a full six feet tall and he occupied a lot of the kitchen floor.
‘Here,’ Dawson said, ‘I’ll dump him out in the hall. With the doorkey in my pocket you’ll be as safe there as anywhere, and we can get on with the digging. There’s a whole lot more earth to be shifted now. I’ll have to take a hand myself.’
He left the kitchen and Mrs Prothero heard him with a sudden switch to considerable deference asking the man who had all the while occupied the bedroom in solitary state whether he could as a special favour guard the bathroom key and ‘keep an eye on the old bitch’. Apparently he agreed because Dawson came back in, unceremoniously picked up Smith’s thin body and dumped him on the hall carpet next to the earth-pile there. When she followed she caught a glimpse of the mysterious safe-blower. He was lying propped on one elbow on her bed, with his shoes on. And spread out on her husband’s bed were two packs of playing-cards in an elaborate game of Patience.
Young Smith recovered consciousness soon after Dawson had gone back to the tunnel. Mrs Prothero wiped his forehead with the dampened tea-towel she had brought from the kitchen.
‘Well,’ she demanded briskly, ‘and how are we feeling now?’
Smith admitted in a croaky voice to not feeling too bad. He demanded, querulously, to know what had happened and Mrs Prothero told him, right down to Dawson’s instructions to her to get him well enough to leave with the money some three hours hence.
Richard Dalby (ed) Page 8