To pack was easy, and then to unpack. ‘Let go of my arm.’ He had worked out his plan, so there was no one to help. ‘I don’t want to come with you.’
‘You will, though, let me tell you.’
She opened the drawer. One thrust, and she was up for murder. No one would believe her. He attacked me. Where are your marks? ‘And what are you going to do when we get to Nottingham? Do you have a room with bars at the window?’
‘Ah, no, duck.’ His mood altered. ‘Once you’re back home, and you see how nice it is, you’ll be your old self again. It’s warm and clean up there, not like this freezing pigsty. You’ll be as right as rain.’
‘I don’t suppose you’ve had breakfast yet,’ she said.
He sat down, resting on his knees, looking more alone than he could have thought it possible to be. ‘We was up at four. I’ve given them two days pay – double time – and a bonus after we’ve got you back home. This little lot’s costing me nearly two hundred. So just get packing, or I’ll block your throat with your teeth.’
‘It’s a lot of money,’ she said, ‘just to get me home.’
His brothers had fed him the filth. ‘It ain’t right for her to do it on you like this, George, after all you’ve done for her. I’ll bet she’s having a real old carry-on down in London. God knows what she’s up to, but she’s finding plenty to keep her busy. A woman can allus find a man down there when she wants to. Thinks she can get a lot more from him than she can get from her husband. I expect she can, as well. You was never one for giving her a lot of that, was you, George? Too busy at your factory, though we can’t blame you for that. I suppose she even cracks jokes about you to her new bloke. Wouldn’t be surprised, I wouldn’t. If I was you I’d go down and give her a bloody good pasting. Bring her to her senses. Get her back home for a dose of you-know-what. That’s all they want. If Mavis played the same stunt on me I’d give her such a smack in the chops she wouldn’t wake up for a week. She’d be as right as rain, then. That’s what you ought to do with your Pam. Do you both a lot of good. We’ll help you to find her and get her back, wain’t we, lads? Mind you, we’ve got a few jobs on at the moment and time’s money, ain’t it, George? You’re allus saying so, but we know you’ll make it right with us if we give you a hand. After all, brothers have to stand by one another.’
He threaded the fingers of both hands together, so that a whole series of cracks ran along the knuckles. ‘I can’t wait much longer.’
She dodged as he tried to grab. ‘I’ll come in my own time.’
Terrorist force was on his side, his unreal calculations taking account only of himself. He lived in the vacuum of his own needs, which admitted nobody else’s because he thought his desires were also the world’s. His clenched fist flashed at her face. ‘You’ll come now.’
He was quick, and the room was small, but she avoided all but the close-winded rush. She had nowhere to go. The refuge that had taken weeks to construct had turned into the perfect trap. ‘I’m not going by force.’
She spoke whatever words would stall him from one moment to the next, but despised herself for uttering such phrases of surrender before the threat of his fists. His eyes, and the brain behind them, assumed she belonged to him because he was stronger, and that she had no life of her own.
He stood back, as if he had won round one, and could afford to wait. ‘Take your time. Have a few minutes if you like. I don’t want to rush you.’
She was wary. He closed the door. She wouldn’t get it open in time if she ran. Tom had no doubt been waylaid by his brothers. Three to one was their style.
He lit a cigarette. ‘Want one?’
She shook her head.
He acted like a friend, but was not very good at it. He smiled. ‘Go on,’ and held the packet towards her.
‘No thank you.’
She put a suitcase on the table. She should have accepted the cigarette. Lull him. She took a dress from the wardrobe, and walked to fold it in the light of the window which gave a view up and down the street. Tom wasn’t in sight, but neither were the others. George’s car was in a meter-bay a hundred yards away. Maybe he had only put enough money in for an hour, and wanted her out quickly because he didn’t care to overstay his time. Like most ambitious men who lived in their own small area he was law-abiding, for while he had the born energy and skill to do his job well he did not have the ingenuity to break the law and feel confident that he would never get caught, especially in London. Nor did he have the necessary panache to bend the regulations and not care whether he was found out. Therefore he had put in enough money for the maximum of two hours in case something went wrong.
‘I must get some fresh air into the room after sleeping in it all night.’ She opened the window. Impossible to jump before he grabbed her. His hands twitched, as if afraid she might try. Perhaps he wouldn’t care. If she flashed out of his sight it would make a respectable end to his troubles. Or he would hire someone to push her around in a wheelchair for the rest of her life.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘the room does pong. You must have been drinking. You never did booze, though. The odd shandy now and again. But I expect you’re on the hard stuff every night, with the sort of company you keep.’
He looked wretched again, and threatening. A real woman would have sympathized with his suffering – and been destroyed. But she wouldn’t. He could plead as much as he liked. Every word he spoke ate into his self-esteem. Then he became quiet. She too had better say nothing. Yet silence could only mean surrender. He called the tune. The leader led, but where did he take you? You didn’t follow. So he was no longer a leader. But the rules he made her live by were so deep in him that he wasn’t even aware that they existed. Lucky man. All men were lucky – though they might not know it – by much more than a head start. Yet it was best not to think so, because that too was only part of their unspoken rules and the effect they had on you. How could you be yourself, or know yourself, if you were under that kind of domination? You didn’t follow. You did anything but follow. A man with no one to follow him was finished. He was beaten. You just did not follow.
He smiled at her silence. Won again. He didn’t even need to say it. The damp air that came coldly in might stir her sufficiently to think properly and find a way out of her peril. Still holding the dress, she went to the chest of drawers. ‘I don’t drink half as much as you imagine. I can’t take it. Do you remember when we went to that club? I had, two small gins, and was ill when I got home. All I drink is a glass of wine, and then only with a meal.’
Using her dress as a cover she opened the drawer and gripped the knife in her right hand. There was no other way. The more she spoke the more silent and depressed he became. He pulled back into the bleak spaces inside, his familiar manoeuvre being to retreat with set mouth and glazed eyes, and surround himself with a broken-glass zone of resentment that could only be entered by those who admitted to being the cause of his distress, even if they weren’t. It was a trick he had often used, of blaming her for the dark moods that would occasionally envelop him for no reason. She was long used to his expressions. To comfort him was to accept the blame for the way he felt, and not to comfort him was to be blamed because her very presence made him feel worse. It was as if she were back home already. Futile emotional competition once more enmeshed them. Her months of freedom vanished in a moment.
Air from the open window pushed at the small of her back. Her face burned but her body stayed cold. The dress fell to the floor and she held the knife in front. She knew him too well not to love him, but it was the love of pity, not the love between equal human beings. Despair pierced her so sharply that she lunged.