‘You are close to me. I mean we are both here breathing and sweating in this small room. I am a big animal. You find me powerful and frightening and interesting. It is a momentary impression.’
‘It is your atomic flash. I feel now - almost - in love with you.’
‘Don’t be silly, Hattie. Keep your sense, keep your senses.’
‘I’ve never felt just this before.’
‘I’m not interested.’
‘Oh you - you - I don’t understand you!’
‘It’s all to do with the past, Hattie. When I told you what I ought never to have told you - you are quite right - a sort of guillotine came down. I didn’t realize it at once. But time was cut off. I have no more time - I mean, for you. It is as if I have killed you. You will always be the same now, but dead.’
‘How can you say such hateful cruel things? Why not let me try to make you happy somehow? Don’t say it’s impossible. Think about it. Not now, but later, we’ve done enough now, we’ve said enough and we’re beginning to talk nonsense. Only don’t cut it all off, don’t consign me to being dead.’
‘Oh you will be alive enough, somewhere else. I hope you will be very happy, I really hope it.’
‘You don’t. You are trying to curse me, to destroy my happiness forever. You won’t share my life so you want to blacken it.’
‘Please don’t think that.’
‘You’re so sorry for yourself, you’re so stupid. I do care for you, I do love you, you’re lucky to be loved by me, why throw it all away, why do we have to think what it means, let’s see what it means. All right, this has been a crazy stupid conversation, you made it so. Why not let’s just go away now, to the railway station, to the airport, to America.’
‘Hattie, don’t do this to me.’
‘Let’s go away together.’
‘Hattie, stop, listen. I want you to leave this house at once and return to the Slipper House. You can have Pearl back if you want, I don’t care now so long as I don’t see you again.’
‘You’re mad.’
‘I will send you money, arrangements about your English college, all that. You can do what you like, I’ll be in America, but now go, will you, it’s still early, no one will see you, just go.’
‘I will not go, why should I? I hate all this tormenting repetitive talk just tearing at our nerves. I can’t bear being so close to you, feeling so close, and feeling - and not — ’
‘Go away, now, please.’
Hattie sprang up. She was flushed and her face was dirtied like a child’s with traces of tears. She had not plaited her hair or even combed it and now it had been tangled by her anxious clutching tugging fingers. Her dress was buttoned awry. Her lips, her jaw were trembling, her hands shaking, she breathed with audible shudderings. Her pale milky-blue eyes shone with tears and anger. John Robert who was sunk deep in the sagging armchair, like a huge half-hidden toad, struggled to rise, scrabbling his feet on the torn carpet, cracking the sides of the chair with his braced arms, but failed to get up. He murmured, ‘Don’t come near — ’
For a moment it looked as if Hattie were going to hurl herself upon him, leaping on to his lap like a kitten. Then she fell on her knees beside the chair, grasping one of his hands and covering it with tears and kisses. ‘Forgive me, don’t leave me, you are my dear grandfather, I love you, I have nobody but you, look after me, love me, don’t leave me alone.’
‘Stop it, Hattie,’ said John Robert.
At that moment, and suddenly, there was a loud noise in the house. Hattie sat back on her heels. The loud noise was repeated, a violent echoing banging sound. Somebody was knocking, was hammering, on the front door. They looked at each other. John Robert said, ‘It must be the police.’ That was his immediate thought.
‘Don’t go,’ said Hattie, on her feet now. ‘No one knows we’re here.’
A prolonged ring on the bell was followed by more and louder banging, a fist applied to the panels.
John Robert got himself on to one knee, and then to his feet. He mumbled, ‘I must go, I must.’ He blundered stiffly out into the hall followed by Hattie, and after fiddling with the door in the semi-darkness, opened it. The bright cold light from the street came dazzling in.
Tom McCaffrey was standing outside. He stared at them with dazed exhausted wild eyes. His hair was bedraggled, his shirt was unbuttoned and he was barefoot. He said in a low clear voice, ‘I’ve come for Hattie.’
John Robert did not hesitate for a second. He turned, and pushed and bundled Hattie somehow past him, between his great bulk and the wall, and out into the street. Tom later remembered seeing John Robert’s hands clutching the material of her dress as she stumbled out through the door.
Hattie cried, ‘No!’
Tom received her as she fell against him, touched by her, by her warm neck, her cool hair. A moment later he had taken her damp hand firmly in his. He said, ‘Come on!’ and pulled.
The door of number sixteen Hare Lane slammed shut.
Tom began to run, pulling Hattie after him. At first she resisted, then ran with him, holding his hand.
Who, drawing back his curtain in the early morning saw, in that clear sunny light, through empty streets, Tom McCaffrey running away with Hattie Meynell? I did.
After a while, somewhere in Travancore Avenue, they stopped running and walked on panting. Tom let go of Hattie’s hand. She was crying quietly, clearing her eyes with her knuckles from time to time. Tom kept glancing shyly at her.
‘Hattie, don’t cry, darling, what’s the matter? It’s only me.’
She shook her head and did not reply. Her face was red, her eyes bloodshot, her mouth wet. Her tears were abating, but she gave panting sobbing breaths, like little cries. She drew her tangled hair down about her face like a veil.
They passed Greg and Ju’s house. The curtains were drawn. All was silent, no one was about in Ennistone. Tom’s feet were aching, his knees were hurting. He had kicked off his shoes and removed his socks somewhere in the course of the night’s adventure, which now seemed long ago.
When the lights had gone out Tom had decided in a second to execute his plan nevertheless. His body, trained by his careful looking, remembered what to do. His right foot touched the projecting knife lightly, then rested weight on it for a moment as Tom flew upward, his hands climbing the vertical bars of the upper stairway, his left knee fumbling in the dark for a place to rest. The knife gave way and fell with a clatter on to the concrete floor below. Tom’s knee blundered against the bars, finding the space it was making for too narrow. For a moment, his arms taking most of the strain, Tom hung with his knee jammed against the bars, painfully supported by the inch or two of tread which projected on the near side, his right leg now hanging in mid-air. The weight on his arms increased as his hands began to slide slowly down the wet slippery bars. Then somehow his right knee had risen up, finding a similar auxiliary lodgement on a higher tread, leaving him hanging, crouched spider-like against the side of the structure. Instinctively Tom jerked his left knee free and, dabbing sideways, lodged his left foot securely between the bars on a lower step. The strain on his arms decreased and he rested for a moment, his body sloping sideways. Then he cautiously removed his left hand to a lower bar, nearer to his left foot, and pulled hard, working himself into a more upright position, his right hand now able to grasp the banister at the top of the vertical bars, while his right foot also found a place upon the treads. After another rest he was able to throw one leg over the banister and slide himself over so as to collapse on to the stairs. Here for some time he sat, massaging his painful knees, wondering if they were damaged. It was probably at this point that he took his shoes and socks off and mislaid them in the dark. He was sorry to have lost the knife.