Injury Time - Beryl Bainbridge [32]
Chasing the lampshade and jabbing upwards with the sawn-off barrel of his gun, the man called Harry smashed the light bulb. Someone jerked open the shutters. Cautiously Edward crawled backwards towards the wall and stood upright. In the kitchen he saw Simpson and Binny standing motionless, cheek to cheek, as though waiting for a dance orchestra to play.
A tremendous pounding began on the front door. Savagely Edward was gripped by the front of his shirt and thrust against the windows. Bewildered by a curious blue light that flashed across the panes of glass, he stared foolishly into the garden. Black figures milled about the crazy paving. All at once, sighting the pale blur of his face, they swarmed to the railings. Jostling for space on the daffodil border, they shouted words he couldn’t understand. Binny and Simpson were hustled to stand beside him. The three of them, aware of guns pointed at their backs, grimaced into the darkness. Binny, trembling with shock, thought only of Edward. Liberated by the fact that her children were not involved, she concentrated entirely on her lover. Knees pressed to the radiator beneath the window ledge, she forgot his failings and his attitudes. The body of Simpson, interposed between them, was an intrusion; her place was at Edward’s side. All through dinner she had missed her chance to touch his hand, press his knee. When it came to it, she had given the best chop to Muriel.
She saw Mrs Montague under the lamplight, holding a bottle of stout in her arms. She was talking to a policeman.
Edward, afraid and alert, visualised Helen in the garden and his son slouching through a gate. He had mistaken familiarity for boredom. Like a landslide, the truths of his childhood, his schooldays, rushed upon him. Play the game, own up, be a man, soldier on. For the second time in his life he had let down the side. God had struck.
In front of the hedge, men held little black boxes to their mouths and communicated with a higher authority.
‘What do we do, Ginger?’ asked Harry.
By way of answer the red-haired man clubbed the window with the butt of his gun. There was a small stampede as the pane ruptured and pieces of glass spilled into the room.
‘Back off,’ he roared. ‘Back off.’
Outside nobody moved. Mrs Montague stood with her fist to her cheek. Across the street, crowding the rails of the balconies as though putting out to sea, people waved.
‘We’ve got four of them here,’ shouted Ginger. ‘Bloody well back off.’ Squeezing Binny by the neck, he ordered, ‘Tell them your name. Say you live here. Tell them to move, or else.’
‘My name is Mrs Mills,’ cried Binny. ‘I live here. Please go away.’ Fearing they might not have heard, she put her mouth to the shattered glass and repeated her request.
Slowly the uniformed men ebbed from the garden and regrouped on the pavement. A whistle blew. Binny’s neighbour, the one who was looking after Alison for the night, came to the fence and demanded information. An alsatian dog on a leather strap leapt round the hedge and nosed the bins.
Ginger closed the shutters.
The room, lit only by a dim bulb hanging above the refrigerator at the kitchen end, seemed touched by moonlight; the edge of a chair shone, a fold of white tablecloth, the bevelled corner of a cardboard invitation stuck in the frame of the mirror. On the wall beneath the electric clock, a red indicator on a power point burned like the butt of a cigarette.
Binny could see Alma sitting bolt upright on the sofa, eyes staring. The men took no notice of her.
‘You,’ said Ginger, looking at Binny. ‘Is there anyone living upstairs?’
‘No one,’ she said. ‘Honestly. I promise you.’
‘Have you got shutters on the first floor windows?’
‘Not any more,’ she said apologetically. ‘They had woodworm.’
‘Right,’ said Ginger. He spoke to Harry. ‘We don’t have to worry about the front door, or the roof. We’d hear the bastards. It’s the back and the first floor that needs watching.’
The woman lying on the carpet, knees buckled against