The door banged against the wall. All four were in the room. She cried: cunning bastards. But she spoke quietly. ‘Get out, or I’ll call the police.’
Alf took her case and was off with it downstairs. George threw her coat into her face. ‘Wrap this round you.’ He smiled: the leader had won. ‘Come on, you’ll need it.’
When she refused he crammed it under his arm, and sent two driving blows, one into her ribs and the other at the side of her head that flung her against the wall. No messing this time. She freed herself from one of the scarves that decorated it.
Harry and Bert pinned her arms. It was no dream. They pulled her out of the room. She kicked till Bert fell at the wall to nurse his bruise. Her shoe had flown with him. From the top of the stairs she screamed for Judy, her voice like a noise that rushed out at her from another door. George snarled. ‘She isn’t in. Gone to get her National Assistance, I expect.’
They had waited downstairs, impatiently smoking their fags to the stub while George made his first attempt. You didn’t bring her? Why, you dozy bastard! You’re as soft as shit, George. She had a knife? They laughed all over the pavement. And you let that stop you? Bleddy ’ell! Do you want to get her back, or don’t you? Don’t cry about it. She ain’t worth it. You do? Come on, then, there’ll be no pissin’ about this time. After all, George, this trip’s costing you a bomb. You might as well get summat out of it, even if it’s only a bit of you-know-what!
Harry alone was left to help him pull at her, and she struck his face with her clenched fist. She’d never hit anyone in her life before. He must have got out of bed too early to shave that morning. ‘For God’s sake give us a hand,’ he called, as his own hand slipped from her. He stumbled half down the first flight and continued on his way. She kicked again, but a blow landed at her face that sent her back through the doorway into her room.
She leapt at the chest of drawers. When George clutched her from behind she kept her grip on the knobs. His wrench was tigerish, an effort which pulled the drawer open for her, so that she took the knife and swung towards him. He let go. All three were back, and then at various points of the landing.
‘You don’t need to use that,’ Bert wheedled. ‘Does she, our George?’
She tore Alf’s suit at the lapel. Thinking she had stabbed him, he struck at her face. The wall spun and she was on the floor, still gripping the knife. She kept her eyes closed against the stained carpet, and waited for her chance. A shoe stamped on her wrist, the pain grinding all breath away. She held to the dark as if it were a big foul blanket to crawl under. It comforted but did not strengthen her. She felt herself going, but did not know where. Someone kicked her. Two yellow sparks came together from opposite ends of darkness, then shot apart, and slowly moved towards each other, over and over, forcing her into a tunnel without even a pinpoint of light at the end.
A voice was toned with rough animal-like anger at the fact that they were too long at their simple job. She dimly noted the manner of subdued rage at their stupidity in not being fit to do something which the power behind such a voice obviously would be able to accomplish with no bother at all. She had given in. There was only silence and stillness left in her. She forced back her sobs, all future existence dependent on what pride she could muster. It was the only force she could draw on. Years of dust scraped her face, the detritus of centuries. When the foot ceased to crush her wrist she waited for the last blow to descend, hoping there would be nothing more in life to come.
‘What’s going on?’ The words were distinct, not violent or loud, though they had a promise of becoming so. The voice kept her alive, free of final darkness, not from hope of salvation but out of curiosity, for it seemed hardly human, rang up and down the stairs in a sort of commanding bark that she had only ever heard from someone talking to a pack of dogs. She trembled with dread, but would not move, even if he killed her.
‘She took a knife to us,’ Alf said.
A dizziness faded into and then away from her. Why should he apologize? she wondered, as she battled against the sensation of fainting.
‘Shut your mouth, or I’ll take my boot to you.’ The same voice, an island unto itself, seemed to come out of the roof, with a stridency that had little to lose and nothing on earth at least to be afraid of. The dominating ugliness struck even her in the face, a voice accustomed to making itself heard, understood and obeyed against the noise of engines or the elements, or both – not, perhaps, the voice to command from the throne of absolute authority, but that of someone expounding the law of good behaviour which had been passed on to him. He was finding it no easy task, but in a crisis there was nothing else to rely on, and because the odds were so much against him the transference had to succeed. ‘What are you doing here? There’s eighteen months inside waiting for the lot of you.’
‘It’s none of your business,’ Alf shouted. ‘She’s our brother’s wife, and she’s coming back to Nottingham with us, where she belongs.’
George threw her coat on the floor. ‘It’s no bleddy use. Let’s clear off.’
She looked, and listened, and waited for the ability to get on her feet. He was holding her suitcase as if it were weighted with iron, and he would swing it against them. His reddening face seemed about to burst with a rage she could never have mustered in herself no matter what they did, and that she thought was containable in no human being. She had not known him before. His head was held back, as if to see above any level they would reach.
‘Let them go away,’ she said.
‘Not likely.’ He put her suitcase by the wall, seeing Bert making signs to push against him. ‘Keep back, sailor!’ he shouted in the voice she hoped never to hear again.
‘Fuck off!’
His knees lifted, and the sharp smack of bone against Bert’s face was followed by a colder thump. Bert was taller, and Tom fell grunting with two dull blows at the cheek, but he recovered, and boxed, and edged himself around, and suddenly Bert was heeling down the stairs. George sidled by, and was out of sight. She couldn’t tell how it happened, pressed herself in a corner to stay clear.
He maintained his attitude of defence, knowing that Alf would try to avenge his brother. Because there was something funny and pathetic about his two fists, which seemed childishly deployed, she wanted to laugh – despite her tears and the sharp aches. His fists would shield him, and her, from the world threatening to burst through their puny guard. She couldn’t laugh. But there was something comical in being defended.
Alf made one last savage attack, but it ended in a circular kind of scuffling around the landing, occasional jabs going out from both. The skirmish seemed to go on for ever. When she looked it was to see Alf go sideways across Tom and follow a pathway down the stairs.
Tom pursued them below the first landing. ‘If you come here again, I’ll break you in pieces!’
He breathed as if an engine were locked inside, a weird and distressing effect when he tried to smile. He seemed far away from himself, and separated from her by the agony of breathlessness and pain. The front door slammed, and he walked cautiously down to make sure they were on the right side of it, pressing himself close to the wall on one flight, and against the banister on the next. She supposed he had done such manoeuvres often to be so adept in them.
They had swung at his shopping bag on the way by, all of it spilled and scattered. He thought it cheap at the price. Half a dozen cardboard boxes telescoped into one, which he had brought from the supermarket to serve as containers for their belongings, stood by the door, hardly damaged by their boots in the hurry to get out.