‘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 gun 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.
Binny wrenched her arms from his neck and glared at him. ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘He should tell her about his money problems, shouldn’t he? He ought to worry her silly over the bills and the mortgage, but he should keep his extramarital affairs to himself. Share his burdens but not his pleasures. You make me sick.’ She sprang to her feet and flounced through to the kitchen.
Ginger was leaning against the draining board. She shoved him out of the way and began noisily to slide the dishes into the sink.
18
G
inger switched on the wireless at midday to listen to the news.
‘Don’t touch it,’ warned Binny. ‘It won’t go at all if you move it.’ The wireless was old and there was a lot of interference. Alma said it was like being in the underground, crowding round an illegal transmitter, waiting to hear Churchill’s voice.
‘Illegal?’ questioned Edward. ‘In the tube station?’
‘Shh,’ said Simpson, endeavouring to listen with one ear.
There was a report of an air disaster somewhere in Latin America and a fire in New York. Nearer home an MP had died and the two grandchildren of a bank manager in Camden had been held to ransom for seven hours while thieves coolly cashed cheques totalling thousands of pounds.
‘Why do they always say “coolly”?’ said Alma. ‘It’s so silly. I bet they don’t feel cool at all.’
‘I can’t hear,’ complained Simpson. It was giving him a headache trying to make sense of the newsreader’s words. He wandered irritably up and down the room.
When the news was over Edward said they were obviously being very cagey. Rightly so.
‘Who are?’ demanded Simpson.
‘The authorities,’ said Edward. ‘Didn’t you listen?’
‘I don’t wear this for show,’ cried Simpson, touching the bandage wound about his head.
Ashamed of his stupidity, Edward repeated the news announcer’s report. Armed men had entered a house in North London and were holding an unspecified number of women and children as hostages. No names were available as yet.
‘I don’t call that cagey,’ Simpson said crossly. ‘It’s damned inaccurate.’
‘Fancy going in and out of a bank all day,’ said Binny, ‘cashing cheques. I do think it’s clever. Every time anyone queried the amounts I expect the poor manager just nodded his head.’
‘There’s no sodding food,’ Harry said. He swung the fridge door violently on its hinges.
Apart from the half-pound of sausages there wasn’t anything to eat. No bread, butter or eggs. There weren’t any tins of baked beans in the cupboard.
‘I don’t hold with bulk buying,’ Binny said defensively. ‘Take fruit. If I buy several pounds of fruit, the children give it to their friends. So I buy three oranges and three apples fresh every day and dole them out. It’s more economical.’
‘There’s no need to apologise,’ said Edward. ‘You’re not running a cafeteria. If necessary we can ask for supplies. I believe it’s quite usual.’ He began to write a list in the margin of his newspaper.
‘My ear hurts,’ Simpson said peevishly. He waited for his wife to respond. She was mute. He couldn’t imagine what was going on in her head. Not once had she mentioned the children.
He rose from the table and went to stand beside her. ‘Muriel,’ he said loudly. He prodded her leg with his bare toes. ‘Muriel—’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘The girls?’ he asked. ‘They’ll be worried, won’t they?’
She wouldn’t answer.
‘Did you tell them where we were going?’
‘I may have,’ she said. ‘But they wouldn’t have listened.’
‘Did you turn the kitchen light off?’
‘Go away,’ she said.
He seized hold of her arm and shook her. He couldn’t prove it, but he knew she was being deliberately provocative – it had nothing to do with their present situation. ‘It may be of little interest to you,’ he told her, ‘but I pay the electricity bills.’
‘You should see what they’ve done to your car,’ she said. ‘You’ll need a new wing and a door.’
He opened the shutters wider and stared into the little garden. The sun was shining on the privet hedge. He fetched a chair from the table and climbing upon it tried to see over the hedge into the street. ‘There’s no cars out there,’ he said.
‘Get away from that window,’ shouted Harry. He raised his fist threateningly.
Simpson closed the shutters and remained standing on the chair. ‘My car,’ he complained. ‘What’s happened to my car?’
‘They moved them all,’ said Ginger. ‘In the night. They’ve roped off the block.’
‘They rammed yours, George,’ Muriel said. ‘With a taxi. I saw them.’
Simpson stepped down from the chair and leaned sluggishly against the fireplace; he yawned repeatedly. His wife sat a million miles from him, playing with a thread of cotton at the torn hem of her frock. He had always imagined that this sort of experience drew people closer together, made them nobler and more sensitive. He’d seen photographs of survivors of such dramas, and it had seemed to him that their eyes were tranquil with communal suffering. He glanced in the mirror and was unmoved by the frayed bandage tied in a small bow at the top of his balding head. He watched Ginger go to the kitchen door and turn to beckon Muriel.
‘You,’ Ginger said. ‘I want a word with you.’
Muriel tugged the thread from her dress and, rising, followed him into the hall.
‘Oh God,’ said Binny.
Edward was struggling to compose a shopping list. He had pencilled the word ‘tobacco’ several times along the edge of the newspaper. He couldn’t think of anything else; he found it difficult to concentrate. He had always left the shopping to Helen. He hadn’t thought of her for over two hours – he hadn’t thought of anything save his need for tobacco. His father too had smoked a pipe. When he’d gone to bed at night he’d left it under a cushion for safety. During the war, when tobacco was rationed, he’d stuffed wood shavings into the bowl and smoked those.
Edward was just considering whether bread crumbs could be utilised when he was ordered by Harry to go through to the bathroom. At the door he tried to pat Binny’s shoulder, but she wouldn’t let him. It appeared she was still put out by his earlier conversation, though he’d supposed her reaction would have been one of joy. He thought he’d offered to leave his wife. He certainly remembered saying it would be fun. He kept seeing his father holding a leather pouch on his lap, dabbling with his fingers in the moist shreds of tobacco.
‘I don’t know why he puts up with you,’ said Alma. ‘You’ll be wearing jack-boots next and trampling all over him.’
‘Be quiet,’ said Binny. ‘It’s nothing to do with Edward.’ She was waiting to hear Muriel scream. She looked at Harry and wondered if she dare confide in him – but then, if Alma was right and he was a bit slow, he wouldn’t understand what she meant until it was too late.
Ginger came back into the room and told her she was needed upstairs. She stared at him as though he had spoken in a foreign language. He hadn’t been absent for more than five minutes.
‘Piss off,’ he ordered.
When she’d gone he took hold of Simpson by the slack of his ruined shirt and warned him not to go near the shutters or the back window. ‘We’ll only be in the passage,’ he said. ‘And this time we won’t hit the bleeding wall.’
Weakly, Simpson nodded. He blinked his eyes rapidly to hide his tears; he hadn’t been bullied since kindergarten.
The men wheeled the pram into the hall and left Simpson alone with Alma. He clenched his fists, waiting for her inane chatter to begin. She remained in the kitchen for a moment pouring the last of the sherry into a glass. He couldn’t really blame her for wanting a drink. Marcia could put away a fair amount of booze. She was probably thinking his failure to telephone her this morning was due to pique – women always thought of themselves first.
Alma came to the table, sat down, and placed the glass at his elbow. Simpson looked at her. She had a small thin mouth and large eyes brimming with friendliness. She nodded encouragingly. Reduced again to tears, he was forced to turn his head away. Struggling to control his voice, he said with difficulty, ‘Thank you.’
‘Would you mind if we didn’t talk?’ said Alma. ‘I’d like to read the newspaper.’
19
C
limbing the stairs, Binny imagined Ginger intended to abuse both Muriel and herself: either one after the other, or together, if that was possible. She couldn’t bear the idea of seeing Muriel without her stockings. This time, she thought, I shall protest. He’ll have to shoot me. It was easier to be brave in daylight.
Muriel was bent over the divan, straightening the rumpled bedclothes. The injured woman lay on her side, stripped to the waist, face turned to the wall. The soles of her feet were black with dirt.
‘We need something to bind her ribs with,’ Muriel said. ‘She’s in pain. Do you have any more sheets?’
‘Yes,’ lied Binny. ‘But they’re at the laundry.’
‘We’ll use these,’ Muriel decided. She slipped the pillows from beneath the woman’s shoulder and took them to the ping-pong table. Discarding the pillows, she began to rip the frail cotton covers with her teeth.
‘Were you ever a nurse?’ asked Binny. She herself was hopeless in the sick room. The slightest cough or clearing of the patient’s throat convinced her that the grim reaper was at hand.