I threw my arms round his neck and kissed him back – hard, on the lips. I said, ‘You’re the most wonderful man I’ve ever met in my life. Thank you for being here. And please, James. Be careful! You haven’t seen them like I have. They’re really tough. Please don’t get hurt.’
He kissed me back, but only lightly, and I let go of him. He said, ‘Don’t worry. I’ve seen this sort before. Now you do all I told you and get off to sleep. ’Night, Viv.’
And then he had gone.
I stood for a moment looking at the closed door, and then I went and brushed my teeth and got ready for bed. I looked at myself in the mirror. I looked like hell – washed out, no make-up, and deep circles under my eyes. What a day! And now this! I mustn’t lose him! I mustn’t let him go! But I knew in my heart that I had to. He would go on alone and I would have to, too. No woman had ever held this man. None ever would. He was a solitary, a man who walked alone and kept his heart to himself. He would hate involvement. I sighed. All right. I would play it that way. I would let him go. I wouldn’t cry when he did. Not even afterwards. Wasn’t I the girl who had decided to operate without a heart?
Silly idiot! Silly, infatuated goose! This was a fine time to maunder like a girl in a woman’s magazine! I shook my head angrily and went into the bedroom and got on with what I had to do.
It was still blowing hard and the pine trees clashed fiercely outside my back window. The moon, filtering through high scudding clouds, lit up the two high squares of glass at each end of the room and shone eerily through the thin, red-patterned curtains. When the moon went behind the clouds, the blocks of blood-red photographer’s light went dark and there was only the meagre pool of yellow from the oil-lamp. Without the brightness of electricity, there was a nasty little movie-set feeling about the oblong room. The corners were dark and the room seemed to be waiting for a director to call people out of the shadows and tell them what to do.
I tried not to be nervous. I put my ears to the connecting walls to right and left, but across the space of the car-ports I could hear nothing. Before I had set up my barricade I had softly opened the door and gone out and looked round. There had been a glimmer of light from Numbers 8 and 10 and from James Bond’s Number 40 away down to the left. Everything had been peaceful, everything quiet. Now I stood in the middle of the room and had a last look round. I had done everything he had told me to do. I remembered the prayers I was going to say and I knelt down there and then on the carpet and said them. I thanked, but I also asked. Then I took two aspirin, turned down the light and blew across the glass chimney to put it out, and went over to my floor bed in the corner. After unzipping the front of my overalls and unlacing but not removing my shoes, I curled myself up in the blankets.
I never take aspirins or any other pills. These, after carefully reading the instructions, I had taken from the little first-aid kit my practical mind had told me to include in my scrap of luggage. I was anyway exhausted, beat to the wide, and the pills, to me as strong as morphia, soon sent me off into a delicious half-sleep in which there was no danger but only the dark, exciting face and the new-found knowledge that there really did exist such men. Soppier even than that, I remembered the first touch of his hand holding the lighter and thought carefully about each kiss separately, and then, but only after vaguely remembering the gun and slipping my hand under the pillow to make sure it was there, I went happily to sleep.
The next thing I knew I was wide awake. I lay for a moment remembering where I was. There was a lull in the wind and it was very quiet. I found I was lying on my back. That was what had awakened me! I lay for a moment looking across the room at the square of red high up on the opposite wall. The moon was out again. How deathly quiet it was! The silence was warm and embracing after the hours of storm. I began to feel drowsy and I turned over on my side so that I lay facing into the room. I closed my eyes. But, as sleep held out her hands to me again, something nagged at my mind. My eyes, before I had closed them, had noticed something unusual in the room. Unwillingly, I opened them again. It took minutes to recognize again what I had seen. The faintest chinks of light were shining from between the door frames of the clothes cupboard up against the opposite wall.
How stupid! I hadn’t closed the doors properly and the automatic ‘courtesy’ light inside hadn’t switched itself off. Reluctantly I got out of bed. What a bore! And then, after I had taken only two steps across the room, I suddenly remembered. But there wouldn’t be a light inside the cupboard! The electricity was switched off!
I stood for a moment, my hand up to my mouth, and then, as I turned to dive for the gun, the doors of the cupboard burst open and the crouching figure of Sluggsy darted out and, a flashlight in one hand and something swinging from the other, he was on top of me.
I think I gave a shrill scream, but perhaps it was only within me. The next moment something exploded against the side of my head and I felt myself crash to the floor. Then all was darkness.
My first sensations on coming round were of terrific heat and of being dragged along the ground. Then I smelled the burning and saw the flames and I tried to scream. I realized that nothing was coming out of my mouth but an animal whimpering, and I began to kick with my feet. But the hands held my ankles firmly and then suddenly, with painful bumps that added to the frightful pain in my head, I found myself being dragged into wet grass and tree branches. Suddenly my feet were laid down and there was a man on his knees beside me and his firm hand over my mouth. A voice close to my ear, James Bond’s voice, whispered urgently, ‘Don’t make a sound! Lie still! It’s all right. It’s me.’
I put a hand out to him and felt his shoulder. It was naked. I pressed it to reassure him and the hand came away from my mouth. He whispered, ‘Wait there! Don’t move! Be back in a second,’ and he slipped noiselessly away.
Noiselessly? It wouldn’t have mattered how much noise he made. There was a tremendous roar and crackle of flames behind me and orange light flickered against the trees. I got carefully to my knees and painfully turned my head. A great wall of flame extended down to my right all along the row of cabins. God, what he had saved me from! I felt my body and put my hands up to my hair. I was untouched. There was only the throbbing bruise at the back of my head. I found I could stand, and I got up and tried to think what had happened. But I could remember nothing after I had got hit. So they must have set fire to the place and James had somehow got to me in time and pulled me out into the trees at the back!
There was a rustle among the trees and he was beside me. He was wearing no shirt or coat, but there was some kind of harness across the sunburned, sweating chest that glistened in the light of the flames, and a heavy-looking automatic hung, butt down, below his left armpit. His eyes were bright with tension and excitement and his smoke-streaked face and tousled hair made him look piratical and rather frightening.
He smiled grimly. He nodded in the direction of the flames. ‘That’s the game. Burn the place down for the insurance. They’re just fixing the flames to reach the lobby building, sprinkling thermite dust along the covered way. I couldn’t care less. If I took them on now, I’d only be saving Mr Sanguinetti’s property for him. With us as witnesses, he won’t even smell the insurance. And he’ll be in jail. So we’ll just wait a bit and let him have a total loss on his books.’
I suddenly thought of my precious belongings. I said humbly, ‘Can we save the Vespa?’