The Weeping Women Hotel (36 page)

Patrick
successfully countered the Tin Can Man’s first assaults with a series of blocks
and punches then tried to get him on the floor with a move that was called
Passing Swoop Knee Grab. Harriet remembered he’d told them at the dojo that
this was based on the tango and had come to Martin Po from his days in the
ballrooms of
Hong Kong
. Now in
a real fight it looked ludicrous. The homeless man shook Patrick off easily and
instead threw his opponent to the ground then crouched over him. She’d heard
people speak about somebody ‘having lumps torn off them’ but nobody could
imagine they’d ever see it, yet with his grimy, dirt-encrusted, claw-like nails
and his little teeth the Tin Can Man ripped at Patrick’s flesh, spittle and
blood flying from his mouth.

‘Harriet
…‘ Patrick called, reaching out his arm, ‘Harriet, help me …’

The Tin
Can Man hunkering above Patrick also turned to her. ‘You don’t want to see
this,
Lynn
,’ he said.

‘I’m
not … I’m not
Lynn
,’ she
replied after a second’s pause. ‘I know you’re not, darling,’ he said. ‘Now
leave us alone, the men have things to do.’

And he
turned and began again tearing at Patrick. Harriet knew that she should try to
intervene: she was supposed to have all these fighting skills, all this
strength and agility but she knew, deep in her bones, an animal knowledge, that
no matter what she did it would be of no use at all. She would be unable to make
any impression on the ferocious attack. There was an implacable quality to the
Tin Can Man’s violence as if something metal or glass, a bus shelter or a
railway engine, had come to life and was ripping at Patrick. She had not
imagined such a level of violence could possibly exist in the world and in that
moment a terror rose inside her so strong that it sent Harriet running out the
park, her dress streaming in rags around her.

When she awoke in her flat
it was mid-morning. Harriet was amazed that she’d fallen asleep but it turned
out that staying up all night for months then rising at six to jump out of a
tree, getting badly beaten and witnessing … no, she wasn’t thinking about
that yet … that could really exhaust a person. She took herself alone to the
Casualty department of the
North
Middlesex
Hospital
, where they strapped up the
broken ribs and patched her broken nose and cheekbone. She supposed she could
have got Lulu or Rose to come with her if they weren’t tied up with work but
Harriet didn’t want to explain anything, and more than that she wanted to be
alone. On the way back to the fiat she forced herself to limp across the park.
A couple of young mothers, their buggies parked side by side, sat with their
backs against the oak tree chatting happily. There seemed no sign of last
night’s disturbance, perhaps somebody had cleaned it up, she thought, it was
impossible to tell.

For the
rest of the day Harriet wandered up and down her house, from the shop at the
bottom which today she kept closed, up to the living room and the bedrooms. She
sat in a corner of her big room for a time while the sun carved its way across
the floorboards. At dusk Harriet rose from the couch, put a couple of changes
of clothes in a carrier bag and descended the stairs. All day there had been an
insistent thought in her head that she needed to get away to some place where
she could rest; there was a crushing tiredness that threatened to squash her
like a flatfish.
Scotland
seemed like it might be a good idea, mountains, castles, heather, all that.

Euston Station
late in the evening, empty and echoing, reminded her of one of those badly
designed cathedrals of the 1960s built after people had forgotten what religion
was for. Staring at the big black departure board she saw that there was a
night train leaving for Glasgow in twenty minutes; the ticket for a one-way
first-class sleeper compartment almost cleaned out her current account and what
remained she took from a money machine on the concourse. The attendant brought
a cup of tea and a biscuit before they departed.

Through
the early hours the train crept gently north, lingering on remote platforms of
Midlands
stations for half an hour at a
time while freight wagons clattered past on parallel tracks.

The
night train came to a halt once more at some dark stop, though she couldn’t
tell where since a long, unrelenting brick wall blocked the view out of the
window. Since she had been lying fully clothed at least there was no delay in
getting dressed. Nobody saw her open the train’s door and step down from the
carriage, no one saw her walk along the dark, sticky platform, no member of
staff stopped Harriet passing through the barriers and walking out on to the
Nantwich Road where the traffic lights changed unheeded from red to green and
back again as a motorbike with a faulty silencer raced from miles away to
racket past her down the dead straight road.