Injury Time - Beryl Bainbridge [55]
‘The third week,’ Muriel said, laying the strips of cotton in neat rows upon the green table, ‘we stopped sitting in front of the blackboard and did practical work. A man had fallen off a ladder and we attended to him.’
‘I’d have run the other way,’ admitted Binny. ‘I couldn’t have gone near him.’
‘He hadn’t really fallen off a ladder,’ Muriel said. ‘There were possible internal injuries and multiple fractures on both legs—’
‘Good Heavens.’
‘I was given his right leg. I put on splints. The following week he treated me for burns. We met secretly for twelve months.’
After a moment’s silence, Binny asked: ‘What happened? Did Simpson find out?’
‘We wanted somewhere to go. Once we went into a field, but it wasn’t very satisfactory. I asked a woman friend of mine if we could use her house one afternoon. We’d been at school together. She’d met X and she said he was a fine man – we could have the house any time we wanted. We were always good chums at school. She even offered to have a key cut for me. Her husband was dead, you see, and she went out to work.’
‘What a nice woman,’ said Binny. She sensed some tragedy was about to be disclosed.
‘When I told X he was delighted. It was Thursday and I’d been to the hairdresser. It rained and rained. We’d decided beforehand that it would be more exciting if I arrived first and waited for him like a wife . . . I’d let him in. It would be more like our own home—’
‘Actually,’ objected Binny, ‘he’d have his key if it was home.’ She could have bitten her tongue for putting her thoughts into words. Muriel had closed her eyes and was gripping the edge of the table.
She said: ‘I waited for hours. He didn’t come. I never heard from him again.’
Binny picked up the rags of cotton and wound them round her wrist; they weren’t long enough to bind anybody’s chest. ‘Perhaps he was run over,’ she said finally. She prayed he had been. How Muriel had suffered – waiting at a window for the kiss of life and recalling, while listening for the sound of Mr X’s footsteps squelching up the path, those nursing nights they’d swabbed and cleaned and tended imaginary wounds.
‘I wore this dress,’ said Muriel.
Binny looked out into the street and saw a large crowd gathered behind a barrier on the corner; she almost waved. A television camera, angled on the roof of a van, was pointing directly at the house. She hoped the eggshells wouldn’t show up in the bedraggled hedge. As she watched, craning for a glimpse of Lucy or Gregory, a door opened in the flats opposite. Draped in a travelling rug, Mrs Papastavrou advanced to the balcony railings. One long high-pitched wail echoed along the street before several policemen leapt from other doorways and hustled her inside.
She’s made a mistake, thought Binny. It can’t be half-past six.
Behind her, the injured woman groaned. Leaving Muriel lost in nightmares at the table, Binny took a pillow to the divan; she was bending down to slip it into place when the woman groaned again, and uncurling herself from that foetal position against the wall lay flat on her back in the bed. She was a man.
20
They didn’t see the house or the street on television after all. Something had gone wrong with the set.
‘You do have trouble with your plugs, pet,’ said Alma, disappointed. She was hoping that Frank might have been interviewed and that he would have said what a wonderful wife and mother she was. It wasn’t very likely, but then appearing on television did peculiar things to people.
Edward was brought from the bathroom at seven o’clock. He couldn’t help remembering the night before when they’d eaten bread and cheese by candlelight. Binny said it was today, but he found it hard to believe. He had gone twelve hours without tobacco and was feeling both edgy and depressed.