It crossed my mind that they were going to kill me, that maybe they weren’t meaning to, but they were killing me. I even tried to tell them so, but if any sound came out, they took no notice. The larger one hauled me bodily to my feet and the small one broke my ribs.
When they let go I crumpled slowly on to the floor and lay with my face against cigarette butts and the screwed up wrappings of sandwiches. Stayed quite motionless, praying to a God I had no faith in not to let them start again.
The larger one stooped over me.
‘Will he cough it?’ the smaller one said.
‘How can he? We ain’t ruptured nothing, have we? Careful, aren’t I? Look out the door, time we was off.’
The door slid open and presently shut, but not for a long time was I reassured that they had completely gone. I lay on the floor breathing in coughs and jerky shallow breaths, feeling sick. For some short time it seemed in a weird transferred way that I had earned such a beating not for writing a newspaper article but because of Gail; and to have deserved it, to have sinned and deserved it, turned it into some sort of expurgation. Pain flowed through me in a hot red tide, and only my guilt made it bearable.
Sense returned, as sense does. I set about the slow task of picking myself up and assessing the damage. Maybe they had ruptured nothing: I had only the big man’s word for it. At the receiving end it felt as though they had ruptured pretty well everything, including self respect.
I made it up to the seat, and sat vaguely watching the lights flash past, fuzzy and yellow from fog. Eyes half shut, throat closing with nausea, hands nerveless and weak. No one focus of pain, just too much. Wait, I thought, and it will pass.
I waited a long time.
The lights outside thickened and the train slowed down. London. All change. I would have to move from where I sat. Dismal prospect. Moving would hurt.
The train crept into St. Pancras and stopped with a jerk. I stayed where I was, trying to make the effort to stand up and not succeeding, telling myself that if I didn’t get up and go I could be shunted into a siding for a cold uncomfortable night, and still not raking up the necessary propulsion.
Again the door slid open with a crash. I glanced up, stifling the beginnings of panic. No man with heavy overalls and knuckleduster. The guard.
Only when I felt the relief wash through me did I realise the extent of my fear, and I was furious with myself for being so craven.
‘The end of the line,’ the guard was saying.
‘Yeah,’ I said.
He came into the compartment and peered at me. ‘Been celebrating, have you sir?’ He thought I was drunk.
‘Sure,’ I agreed. ‘Celebrating.’
I made the long delayed effort and stood up. I’d been quite right about it. It hurt.
‘Look mate, do us a favour and don’t throw up in here,’ said the guard urgently.
I shook my head. Reached the door. Rocked into the corridor. The guard anxiously took my arm and helped me down on to the platform and as I walked carefully away I heard him behind me say to a bunch of porters, half laughing, ‘Did you see that one? Greeny grey and sweating like a pig. Must have been knocking it back solid all afternoon.’
I went home by taxi and took my time up the stairs to the flat. Mrs Woodward for once was in a hurry for me to come, as she was wanting to get home in case the fog thickened. I apologised. ‘Quite all right, Mr Tyrone, you know I’m usually glad to stay...’ The door closed behind her and I fought down a strong inclination to lie on my bed and groan.
Elizabeth said, ‘Ty, you look terribly pale,’ when I kissed her. Impossible to hide it from her completely.
‘I fell,’ I said. ‘Tripped. Knocked the breath out of myself, for a minute or two.’
She was instantly concerned; with the special extra anxiety for herself apparent in her eyes.
‘Don’t worry,’ I comforted her. ‘No harm done.’
I went into the kitchen and held on to the table. After a minute or two I remembered Elizabeth’s pain killing tablets and took the bottle out of the cupboard. Only two left. There would be. I swallowed one of them, tying a mental knot to remind me to ring the doctor for another prescription. One wasn’t quite enough, but better than nothing. I went back into the big room and with a fair stab at normality poured our evening drinks.
By the time I had done the supper and the jobs for Elizabeth and got myself undressed and into bed, the main damage had resolved itself into two or possibly three cracked ribs low down on my left side. The rest slowly subsided into a blanketing ache. Nothing had ruptured, like the man said.
I lay in the dark breathing shallowly and trying not to cough, and at last took time off from simply existing to consider the who and why of such a drastic roughing up, along with the pros and cons of telling Luke-John. He’d make copy of it, put it on the front page, plug it for more than it was worth, write the headlines himself. My feelings would naturally be utterly disregarded as being of no importance compared with selling papers. Luke-John had no pity. If I didn’t tell him and he found out later, there would be frost and fury and a permanent atmosphere of distrust. I couldn’t afford that. My predecessor had been squeezed off the paper entirely as a direct result of having concealed from Luke-John a red hot scandal in which he was involved. A rival paper got hold of it and scooped the Blaze. Luke-John never forgave, never forgot.
I sighed deeply. A grave mistake. The cracked ribs stabbed back with unnecessary vigour. I spent what could not be called a restful, comfortable, sleep-filled night, and in the morning could hardly move. Elizabeth watched me get up and the raw anxiety twisted her face.
‘Ty!’
‘Only a bruise or two, honey. I told you, I fell over.’
‘You look... hurt.’
I shook my head. ‘I’ll get the coffee...’
I got the coffee. I also looked with longing at Elizabeth’s last pill, which I had no right to take. She still suffered sometimes from terrible cramp, and on these occasions had to have the pills in a hurry. I didn’t need any mental knots to remind me to get some more. When Mrs Woodward came, I went.
Doctor Antonio Perelli wrote the prescription without hesitation and handed it across.
‘How is she?’
‘Fine. Same as usual.’
‘It’s time I went to see her.’
‘She’d love it,’ I said truthfully. Perelli’s visits acted on her like champagne. I’d met him casually at a party three years earlier, a young Italian doctor in private practice in Welbeck Street. Too handsome, I’d thought at once. Too feminine, with those dark, sparkling, long lashed eyes. All bedside manner and huge fees, with droves of neurotic women patients paying to have their hands held.
Then just before the party broke up someone told me he specialised in chest complaints, and not to be put off by his youth and beauty, he was brilliant: and by coincidence we found ourselves outside on the pavement together, hailing the same taxi, and going the same way.
At the time I had been worried about Elizabeth. She had to return to hospital for intensive nursing every time she was ill, and with a virtual stamping out of polio, the hospitals geared to care for patients on artificial respiration were becoming fewer and fewer. We had just been told she could not expect to go back any more to the hospital that had always looked after her.
I shared the taxi with Perelli and asked him if he knew of anywhere I could send her quickly if she ever needed it. Instead of answering directly he invited me into his tiny bachelor flat for another drink, and before I left he had acquired another patient. Elizabeth’s general health had improved instantly under his care and I paid his moderate fees without a wince.