Injury Time - Beryl Bainbridge [45]
‘How does she seem?’ asked Binny.
‘She’s very butch, pet. She’s got hair on her knuckles.’ Alma looked at the disordered room. ‘Isn’t it funny, not having to do anything? We’re not expected to clear this up, there’s no meals to prepare, no beds to make. It’s hardly likely we’ll be asked to go shopping. People pay good money for this sort of life at holiday camps.’
‘I hate mess,’ said Binny. ‘It makes me sick.’
‘The children must feel like this all the time,’ Alma remarked. ‘Never expected to do anything, sitting in squalor, ordered about. It’s very restful.’ She gazed compassionately at the naked doll in her arms. ‘Poor wee thing,’ she crooned. ‘It’ll catch its death of cold. Did I ever tell you about my brother taking his trousers off in Marks and Spencers?’
‘Several times,’ said Binny. ‘Ginger’s got a brother, you know. He’s been in Walton gaol. But Ginger’s never been in prison. So he says.’
‘He’s been in a bank though, darling,’ Alma said. She rocked the ugly doll. ‘I peeped in the pram. It’s full of five pound notes wrapped in a woolly blanket.’
Muriel reared her head above the arm of the sofa. Neck wobbling, staring at Alma like a child waking from a bad dream, she opened her mouth and screamed.
14
When Edward was brought into the kitchen he embraced Binny and kissed her hair. He didn’t care who was watching. ‘Little one,’ he murmured into her ear, stroking her back with the stem of his pipe. ‘I’m sorry.’ He meant all the times he’d not been able to be with her. Lying curled in the empty bath and hearing that animal shriek of terror in the room along the hall, he had felt his heart break into pieces. He couldn’t bear to think of her afraid and alone. She was his responsibility. Even though he now understood it was Simpson’s wife who had screamed, he clutched Binny’s hand and vowed not to leave her. He was strengthened in his resolve by the growing conviction that the gunmen were decent chaps after all. They had allowed him to wash and make himself more comfortable. Widnes had encouraged Simpson to dab T.C.P., found in the bathroom cupboard, on his damaged ankle bone. And now they were all gathered in the front room, candles lit in milk bottles, enjoying a cup of tea and slices of bread and cheese. Ginger even suggested it would be a pity not to finish the wine. He and his men wouldn’t themselves partake – a further point, Edward felt, in their favour – because they needed their wits about them for the morning siege. Only Alma Waterhouse took advantage of the offer. It was true Muriel sat shuddering over a measure of sherry, but that was medicinal and purely to calm her nerves. Simpson wasn’t awfully good at coping with his wife in her present state of mind. He spoke brusquely to her once or twice and told her to pull herself together. He made excuses to Edward. ‘She’s been overdoing it lately,’ he muttered. ‘Housework, that sort of thing. Mowing the lawn, shifting the furniture. Don’t know what’s got into her.’ Edward found her behaviour perfectly justifiable. In the same situation Helen would be lying on the floor crying, or else abusing him for their predicament. He couldn’t help admiring Alma, sitting there in her shiny red frock, tossing back the wine and smiling affectionately around the table. There was quite a festive atmosphere in the room, with the candles flickering and the shadow of the pink carnations frilly upon the wall. The barrels of guns leapt like spiked leaves among the flowers.
To everyone’s embarrassment Ginger brought up the fact that Edward was a married man. ‘I can’t hold myself responsible for your morals,’ he told him. ‘That’s your lark, not mine. I don’t hold with you deceiving your missus, but I’m sorry if we’ve added to your difficulties.’
‘My dear fellow,’ cried Edward, growing red in the face. ‘It couldn’t be helped. You weren’t to know.’
‘Nobody asked you to be here,’ flashed