Doctor Who_ Bad Therapy - Matthew Jones [23]
Chris paused to watch as an attractive young blonde woman wearing a fur clambered drunkenly from it and rummaged through her handbag for the fare.
She wore a childlike frown of concentration across her face as she swayed in the middle of the road, oblivious to all else as she counted out her money.
Chris sighed to himself. Was everyone in 1950s England a drunk?
The smog in the street reduced visibility to only ten or fifteen metres, so Chris heard rather than saw the car. His long love affair with motor vehicles of all kinds alerted him to the speed the car was travelling when he first heard its strained engine. He felt himself move into policing mode, making a series 37
of judgments about distance and speed. And he was already running forward when the vehicle’s headlamps lit up the smog like a cloud in a lightning storm.
Chris sprinted across the street and, barely breaking his stride, threw his arm around the blonde woman’s waist and pushed her into the back of her taxi as a dark shape hurtled past them. There was the sharp screech of tearing metal as the door of the stationary taxi was ripped off its hinges by the speeding car, then bounced and skittered across the road.
Chris found himself lying on top of the young woman on the floor of the cab. In spite of her brush with death, she was looking up calmly at him, an amused expression on her face.
‘Hello you,’ she said, arching a painted eyebrow. ‘Well what’s on your mind?
As if I didn’t know.’
Chris, who had been expecting her to be shocked, relieved or at least grateful to be alive, found himself momentarily lost for words.
The noise had brought a few of the Tropics’ patrons out on to the street.
Leading the way was Tilda, who, ignoring the shocked and angry cries of the cab driver, poked her head into the back of the taxi where Chris and Patsy lay in their uneasy embrace.
‘Well I can see that formal introductions are going to be a little unnecessary.
I’m pleased that you’ve managed to break the ice, deahs, but why not come upstairs and have a drink with Mother before you go any further?’
Jack pulled the drawstrings of his duffel bag tightly closed and sat back down on his bed. It had taken him less than five minutes to pack the few possessions that mattered enough to take with him. He’d sold his watch and his bicycle to pay the blackmailer’s first demand. He’d naively thought that they’d stop when he didn’t have anything left. But the old man had just smiled and told him that he’d have to find a way to get more. So Jack had stolen from work to meet the next payment, and the next, and the next. And he’d done it all to keep Eddy out of trouble. To keep what they had safe. To keep it secret.
He should be upset, crying or something. But every time he thought about Eddy he just felt numb.
Jack decided to sit and catch his breath for a minute before he headed off.
He wasn’t exactly sure where he was going to go. He had a vague idea that he would make for the coast. Portsmouth or maybe Southampton. He had twenty quid on him. Enough, he felt sure, to buy himself a job as a steward on a ship sailing to France. That ought to be far enough, oughtn’t it? he thought to himself. Far enough to keep himself out of the hands of the blackie and the Law.
He couldn’t stay here. The police would be around soon enough. Then it would all come out. They’d find out about the blackie and the money he’d 38
been quietly pilfering from work every Friday. They would find out about the money and they would find out about the photograph. They would find out about him.
‘I can’t stay and face the Law,’ he’d told the Doctor. ‘I’ll end up spilling the gaff, I know I will.’
He would as well. Once they got you into one of their cells you didn’t stand a chance. Jack had heard all the stories from the older men who drank at the Magpie. Stories about those who’d been unlucky enough to be caught in a lay or a park. It wasn’t just the beatings, although they did beat you of course. It was the letters they wrote to your family, the visits they made to your workplace,