Josh helped himself to more rice. “I don’t know what to think. Right now I feel like I’m right on the edge of going crazy. If I wasn’t sitting here, eating this chicken, I wouldn’t believe it, any of it.”
Nancy said, “You’ve cooked a great meal, San.”
“Thank you,” said San, bowing his head politely. “My mother taught me. She believed that every man who calls himself a man should learn to cook.”
“My compliments to your mother. Is she still out in Burma?”
San nodded. “My family, too. My sisters, my cousins. But I don’t hear from them any more.”
“Is there some kind of trouble in Burma?” Josh asked him. “Where we come from, Burma isn’t called Burma any more. It’s called Myanmar, and it’s run by a bunch of generals.”
“Burma is still Burma, but Burma is British. The Puritans tried to convert the Buddhists to Christianity, and there was bad fighting. Much ketchup. Many Burmese martyrs. That was why I came here, to London. I thought that I could talk to the Puritans. I thought that I could persuade them to change their minds, and let us worship Buddha in our own way.”
“And?”
“And he nearly got skinned alive for being an impertinent wog and he ended up with me,” Simon explained.
“So what now?” said Josh.
“Nothing in particular,” said Simon. “If he goes back to Burma, he’ll be hung up by his heels and his tongue cut out. If he stays here, he’ll have to keep away from the Hoodies and go on scavenging for a living with yours truly. Not a pretty choice. But I think he’d rather scavenge than swing, wouldn’t you, San?”
San smiled, and nodded. He had such grace that Josh found it hard to believe that anybody would want to persecute him.
“I’ll tell you something,” said Simon. “He’s got the lightest fingers that I’ve ever seen. He could be halfway to Holland Park with your best braces before your trousers fell down.”
“You must miss your family so badly,” said Nancy.
“Love always brings pain,” San told her, with candle flames shining in his dark brown eyes. “If a thing doesn’t hurt, then what is its value?”
By the time they had finished their meal, it was growing dark outside, and the small square of sky that Josh could see from the kitchen window was the color of royal blue ink. San washed the plates and Nancy dried them, while Josh and Simon talked about tomorrow. Josh was worried that once they had gone back through the door to find themselves some suitable clothes, they wouldn’t be able to find their way back again.
“You still don’t believe this is really real, do you, guvnor?” said Simon. His pronunciation was almost Dickensian – “veely veel”.
Josh leaned back in his armchair. He was so tired that he felt that he was hallucinating. “No … I guess that’s the problem. It’s more like a dream. I keep thinking that I’m going to wake up and none of this has happened.”
“You wait till you find the toe-rag that killed your sister. Then it won’t seem like a dream.”
They were still talking when they heard dogs barking outside; and doors slamming; and windows slamming, too.
“What’s the matter?” asked Josh. San went to the window and peered through the split-bamboo blind.
“I can’t see nothing. Whoever it is, they’re staying well out of sight.”
There was more banging, more barking. Then suddenly, within the building, they heard the tearing, creaking sound of a door being forced off its hinges, and glass breaking, and men shouting. Footsteps came running upstairs. Another door broke, and Josh heard a flat, uncompromising bang as it dropped to the floor.
“They’ve found us,” said Simon. “God knows how, but they have.”
“How the hell did they find us here?”
“Grasses,” said Simon, contemptuously. “The Hoodies only have to offer them a couple of quid, and they’ll sell their maiden aunts.”
San said, “I’ll hold the door. You get out on the roof.”
The access to the skylight was tiny: a small window not more than two feet square, in the center of the living-room ceiling. Simon dragged the coffee table underneath it and then balanced a chair on top. He mounted the chair and banged at the tiny window with his clenched fist until he managed to dislodge it. A shower of rust and leaves came down, as well as a tiny fledgling, no more than two days old, already green with decay.
“You first,” said Simon, taking Nancy’s hand. “Climb out on the roof and keep your head down. Wait by the chimney stack.”
Josh said, “You don’t have to come with us, either of you. You haven’t done anything wrong, have you?”
“You’re joking, guvnor. San’s a political fugitive and I’ve got a drum full of other people’s property. They’ll Holy-Harp us without a blink.”
Heavy footsteps reverberated on the landing outside. San locked and bolted the door and stood with his back to it. Nancy climbed on to the coffee table, and then on to the chair, and climbed awkwardly out of the skylight, her boots kicking behind her. There was a violent knocking on the door, and the handle was shaken so furiously that it dropped off on to the floor.
“Open up, in the name of the Commonwealth!”
“Hurry,” Simon urged; and Josh climbed out on the roof, too. Nancy was already waiting by the chimney stack, but he knelt down beside the skylight and held out his hand to help Simon climb up after him.
There was a devastating crash as the Hooded Men tried to force down the door – then another, and another. The door frame cracked and plaster sifted on to San’s shoulders. He kept his back pressed against the woodwork, his knees braced, and there was a look of grim determination on his face.
Josh climbed up on to the coffee table. “Come on, San! Before they break the whole goddamned door down!”
“Just go!” San told him.
There was another crash as the Hooded Men kicked against the door panels, and one of the lower panels split. San stood with his arms outspread, his teeth gritted, his heels digging into the threadbare carpet.
“Come on, San!” Simon shouted at him. “You can’t hold them back for ever!”
San braced himself, ready to abandon the door and make his escape through the skylight. But as he did so, the point of a brightly shining sword came darting out of the middle of his chest. Another came out of his left shoulder, and a third penetrated his right thigh. He opened his mouth wide, as if he were going to scream, but before he could do so, another sword-blade leaped out from between his lips, like a shining steel tongue.
Fourteen
Two more swords came through the door – one of them jabbing out of San’s stomach and the second out of his upper arm.
San stared up at Simon and Josh in helpless agony, the sword-blade still sticking out of his mouth, with blood dripping from the tip of it. “Aaarrghhh,” he gargled, and reached out with one hand, but that was all he could manage.
Simon shouted, “Hold on, San! I’m coming to get you!”
“Are you out of your mind?” said Josh.
“He’s my mate,” said Simon, his face gray and his eyes aglitter with shock.
“Simon – there’s nothing you can do. He’s as good as dead already.”
San stared back at them, unable to move. The door shook again, and again, and San’s knees began to buckle.
“Sod this, I can’t just watch him die!” said Simon, and swung his legs back down into the skylight.
Josh seized his arm. “Don’t! You’ll only make it worse!”
“What could be worse than watching this? Tell me? What in the whole of God’s creation could be worse than watching this?”
The door repeatedly shook as the Hooded Men kicked and battered against it, and with each shake, San sank a little lower. His bathrobe was covered in rapidly widening maps of blood, and blood was running down his ankles and spreading across the carpet.