Injury Time - Beryl Bainbridge [6]
“You’re a bundle of nerves,’ decided Alma some moments later, coming across Binny leaning against the wall of a public house. ‘You should have had a little swiggie when I pressed you.’
‘I don’t know how you could talk to them,’ said Binny. ‘They looked dangerous.’
‘Silly girl. They were only enjoying themselves.’
‘She had iodine dabbed all over her face,’ said Binny.
‘Well, she had one or two cuts on her nose,’ defended Alma. ‘It’s natural. Old people are always falling over. Think of your own mother when she dislocated her hip.’
‘She stumbled getting out of a taxi,’ Binny said. ‘She wasn’t rolling about in the gutter with a bottle of meths.’
In silence they walked down the street. Alma slowed her steps expectantly at each shop doorway, but Binny hurried on. She had no money.
At last, made miserable by the chill wind and deafened by the roar of traffic, they fled inside the Wimpy bar for a cup of coffee. The waitress was affronted at the bold way they expected service. After five minutes of hostile inactivity she relented and left two cups of pale yellow liquid at the edge of the table.
‘I wouldn’t mind a doughnut,’ called Alma, but the waitress had better things to do.
From where she sat in the window, Binny could see both the perambulator braked at the steps of the bank and the clock above the door of the shoe shop. It was ten minutes to three. If the bank closed before she had time to cash her cheque, she wouldn’t be able to afford cream for the baked apples, or Greek bread, or buy enough salad to make a splash. She was tempting fate. She wanted the dinner party to go well for Edward’s sake, but she didn’t want to strive for success. All her life she had found that when she went to a great deal of trouble, the results were never satisfactory; her greatest triumphs had been accidental.
A man in a bowler hat, strolling backwards and forwards in front of the bank, took a rolled-up newspaper from under his arm, and pausing in his stride proceeded to tap the hood of the perambulator.
Alma was in the middle of a story concerning her son Victor, who only the day before had behaved badly in a car. ‘He told me to throw it away,’ she was explaining. ‘He said the smoke irritated his throat. So I did. Not at once, I grant you – after a few quick puffs. I know it’s not fair to give the young cancer. We’d been for an Indian meal. I opened the window and threw it out and he told me to shut the window. He jostled me. Then he called me a toe-rag.’
A thin woman in a mackintosh came out of the doorway of the National Westminster and stood for a moment looking at the traffic. The bowler-hatted man dropped his newspaper on to the hood of the pram and walked briskly away.
‘Look at that,’ said Binny, pointing. She watched him disappear into the entrance of the tube station.
‘Don’t be fickle, darling,’ reproved Alma. ‘You be content with your lovely Teddy.’ She was keen on Edward and he liked her, though he was not over fond of being called Ted.
The woman in the mackintosh descended the steps of the bank awkwardly, as though afraid she might lose her balance. Using her stomach to propel the pram, she picked up the rolled newspaper and tipped it over the edge of the storm shield.
‘Poor little thing,’ cried Binny, aloud. It was unthinkable that any mother should shove a dirty newspaper on to the pillow of a sleeping child. The world was menacing and full of alarms. ‘I can’t stand it,’ she told Alma. ‘It’s disgusting and frightening.’
‘What is?’ asked Alma, gazing in bewilderment at the plastic table top and the sauce bottle in the shape of a tomato, a crust like blood rimming the imitation stalk.
‘Anywhere you can possibly go,’ said Binny. ‘It’s waiting round the corner. Faces with scabs . . . hit-and-run drivers . . .’
Though most of her life she had rushed headlong into danger and excitement, she had travelled first-class, so to speak, with a carriage attendant within call. The world was less predictable now. The guard was on strike and the communication