• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 567 0

he was. There wasn’t a phone number in his diary, or any little pieces of incriminating paper in the pockets of his other suits. She’d look up Simpson’s number in the directory, he supposed, but that wouldn’t help. He didn’t imagine Simpson would have told his daughters where he was going; they were both over eighteen and possibly out themselves. Helen would ring the hospitals first and later the police. It would take hours to get through to the casualty wards – it was practically impossible to find anyone on duty even in an emergency. By the time she’d finished her enquiries, they might be released and free to go home. He’d have to make a statement of course, but these days the police were very understanding. He could even say he’d been passing the house and decided to give chase. The police were always inciting the public to have a go. Or maybe he was on the premises at Simpson’s invitation. He could mention he’d been taken ill – something like a heart attack. He’d lie merely to Helen, not to the police – that would be irresponsible and wrong. God knows, he wouldn’t have to fake it – he felt like death.

‘Can I sit with them, dear?’ said Alma. ‘I feel a bit out of it over here.’

The woman didn’t reply. Keeping a wary eye on the shot gun, Alma moved from the sofa to sit at the table. She was still wearing the duffle coat with its hood pulled over her head. She looked like an under-sized monk, the tip of her nose showing and her hands lost in a welter of sleeves.

Overhead footsteps sounded on the wooden floor. Furniture was being dragged across the room.

‘I don’t suppose this will go on for very long,’ said Edward. ‘They’ve got procedures worked out for this sort of situation. There’s been so much of it lately.’

Alma was anxious to know what sort of situation it was. Having been asleep at the time, somewhat under the weather as she freely admitted, she wasn’t absolutely sure what had occurred. Like a bird, eyes bright, beaked nose dipping above the tablecloth, she peeped from the hood of the duffle coat.

‘Hostages,’ explained Edward. ‘It’s obvious. They’ve escaped from somewhere. Some jail. It happens all the time.

‘But how can they be hostages, darling?’

‘Lower your voice,’ snapped Simpson. ‘Not them. Us.’

Alma looked at him. ‘You were horrid to me before,’ she said. ‘Yes you were, pet, don’t deny it.’ She waggled her sleeve at him flirtatiously.

Edward spoke in low undertones of a decaying society, the gradual breaking down of law and order, overcrowded prisons, lack of money. There was no doubt about it, they were living in decadent times. He was conscious that no one followed his train of thought. ‘Why, only last week,’ he confessed, ‘I was undercharged at the chemists. Helen had a twinge of neuralgia and I went to buy aspirins. I don’t hold with aspirins myself. Do you know, I pocketed the surplus change without a word. I’m not proud of my action, but I did.’

‘Why couldn’t she buy her own aspirins?’ asked Binny. She would have liked to move from Edward’s knee, but there was nowhere else to sit.

‘They can’t have been in much of a hurry to get away,’ said Simpson. ‘I’ve seen one of them before. Hours ago when I went to fetch the wine from the car.’

They sat hunched over the table, talking softly, pushing knives and forks across the cloth and playing with small crumbs of bread. Those initial minutes of violence receding into the past, they were like travellers previously lost in a blizzard who found themselves safe for the moment beside the fire. Muriel alone crouched silent in her chair; now and then her eyes strayed to the blue pram in the kitchen. Alma was incensed, on Binny’s behalf, at the broken window and the mutilated lampshade. In her view such vandalism was quite unnecessary. She had run away from her own home earlier in the evening because her husband, unable to find any clean socks for the morning, had called her a slut and thrown the milk jug at her. She was willing to admit she’d been remiss – though they weren’t her socks and he hadn’t as far as she knew an allergy to soap – but he’d given her