Decider. Part 12

'I didn't want to stay.'

'But I told you we would look after your boys.'

'I know. One or two might have been all right, but not five.'

'They're easy children,' he protested.

'They're subdued, today. It was best I came back.'

He made no more demur but, as if unready yet to talk of the things uppermost in his thoughts, asked which was which. 'To get them straight in my mind,' he said.

I answered him in much the same way, postponing for a breathing s.p.a.ce the questions that would have to be asked and answered.

'Christopher, the tall fair one, he's fourteen. Like most oldest children, he looks after the others. Toby, the one with me today in the stands, he's twelve. Edward's ten. He's the quiet one. Any time you can't find him, he's sitting in a corner somewhere reading a book. Then there's Alan '

'Freckles and a grin,' Roger said, nodding.

'Freckles and a grin,' I agreed, 'and a deficient sense of danger. He's nine. Leaps first. Oops after.'

'And Neil,' Roger said. 'Little bright-eyed Neil.'

'He's seven. And Jamie, the baby, ten months.'

'We have two daughters,' Roger said. 'Both grown and gone and too busy to marry.'

He fell silent, and I also. The respite from gritty life slowly evaporated. I shifted with sharp discomfort on the sofa and Roger noted it but made no comment.

I said, 'The stands were cleaned yesterday.'

Roger sighed. 'They were cleaned. They were clean. No explosives. Certainly no det cord running round that staircase. I walked everywhere myself, checking. I make rounds continually.'

'But not on Good Friday morning.'

'Late yesterday afternoon. Five o'clock. Went round with my foreman.'

'It wasn't a matter of killing people ' I said.

'No,' he agreed. 'It was to kill one main grandstand, on one of the very few weekdays in the year when there are no race meetings anywhere in Britain. Precisely not not to kill people, in fact.' to kill people, in fact.'

'I expect you have a night watchman,' I said.

'Yes, we do.' He shook his head frustratedly. 'He makes his rounds with a dog. He says he heard nothing. He didn't hear people drilling holes in the walls. He saw no lights moving in the stands. He clocked out at seven this morning and went home.'

'The police asked him?'

'The police asked him. I asked him. Conrad asked him. The poor man was brought back here soggy with sleep and bombarded with accusing questions. He's not ultra-bright at the best of times. He just blinked and looked stupid. Conrad blames me for employing a thicko.'

'Blame will be scattered like confetti,' I said.

He nodded. 'The air's dense with it already. Mostly everything's my fault.'

'Which Strattons came?' I asked.

'Which didn't?' He sighed. 'All of them except Rebecca that were here for the shareholders' meeting, plus Conrad's wife, Victoria, plus Keith's wife Imogen who was squinting drunk, plus Hannah's layabout son Jack, plus Ivan's mousy wife, Dolly. Marjorie Binsham used her tongue like a whip. Conrad can't stand up to her. She had the police pulverised. She wanted to know why you, particularly, hadn't stopped the stands blowing up once your infant child had done the trouble-spotting for you.'

'Dear Marjorie!'

'Someone told her you'd d.a.m.n nearly been killed and she said it served you right.' He shook his head. 'Sometimes I think the whole family's unhinged.'

'There's some Scotch and gla.s.ses in that cupboard above your head,' I said.

He loosened into a smile and poured into two tumblers. 'It won't make you feel better,' he observed, placing one on the built-in table with drawers under it that marked the end of my bed. 'And where did you get this splendid bus? I've never seen anything like it. When I drove it down here with the boys on board they showed me all round it. They seemed to think you built the interior with your own hands. I reckon you had a yacht designer.'

'Both right.'

He tossed off his drink neat in two gulps, army fashion, and put down the gla.s.s.

'We can't give your boys beds, not enough room, but we could do food.'

'Thanks, Roger. I'm grateful. But there's enough food in this bus for a battalion, and the battalion's had a good deal of practice in do-it-yourself.'

Despite his a.s.surances I could see his relief. He was indeed, if anything, more exhausted than myself.

I said, 'Do me a favour, though?'

'If I can.'

'Be vague about my whereabouts tonight? If, say, the police or the Strattons should ask.'

'Somewhere to the left of Mars do you?'

'One day,' I said, 'I'll repay you.'

The real world, as Toby would have said, had a go in the morning.

Travelling uncomfortably, I went along with Roger in his jeep to his office beside the parade ring, having left the five boys washing the outside of the bus with buckets of detergent, long-handled brushes and mops and the borrowed use of the Gardners' outdoor tap and garden hose.

Such mammoth splashy activity terminated always in five contentedly soaked children (they loved water-clown acts in circuses) and an at least half-clean bus. I'd advised Mrs Gardner to go indoors and close her eyes and windows, and after the first bucketful of suds had missed the windscreen and landed on Alan, she'd given me a wild look and taken my advice.

'Don't you mind their getting wet?' Roger asked as we left the scene of potential devastation.

'They've a lot of compressed steam to get rid of,' I said.

'You're an extraordinary father.'

'I don't feel it.'

'How are the cuts?'

'Ghastly.'

He chuckled, stopped beside the office door and handed me the walking frame once I was on my feet. I would have preferred not to have needed it, but the only strength left anywhere, it seemed, was in my arms.

Although it was barely eight-thirty, the first car-load of trouble drew up on the tarmac before Roger had finished unlocking his office door. He looked over his shoulder to see who had come, and said a heartfelt 'b.u.g.g.e.r!' as he recognised the transport. 'b.l.o.o.d.y Keith.'

b.l.o.o.d.y Keith had not come alone. b.l.o.o.d.y Keith had brought with him his Hannah, and Hannah, it transpired, had brought with her her son Jack. The three of them climbed out of Keith's car and began striding purposefully round to Roger's office.

He finished unlocking, opened the door, and said to me abruptly, 'Come inside.'

At walking-frame pace I willingly followed him round towards the far side of his desk where, as it happened, my jacket still hung over the back of his chair, abandoned since the previous morning. A lifetime, almost a deathtime, ago.

Keith, Hannah and Jack crowded in through the door, all three faces angry. Keith had reacted to the sight of me as if to an allergy, and Hannah wouldn't have admired her own shrewish expression. Jack, a loose-lipped teenager, mirrored his grandfather too thoroughly: handsome and mean.

Keith said, 'Gardner, get that d.a.m.ned man out of here! And you're sacked. You're incompetent. I'm taking over your job, and you can clear out. As for you...' he turned his glare fully my way, 'your b.l.o.o.d.y children had no right to be anyway near the grandstands, and if you're thinking of suing us because you were stupid enough to get yourself blown up you've another think coming.'

I hadn't thought of it at all, actually. 'You've given me ideas,' I said rashly.

Roger, too late, made a warning movement with his hand, telling me to cool it, not stir. I had myself seen the speed with which Keith's violence had risen in him at the shareholders' meeting, and I remembered the complacency with which I'd reflected that he'd have no physical chance against Madeline's thirty-five-year-old son.

Things had changed slightly since then. I now needed a walking frame if I were to stay upright. And besides, there were three of them.

CHAPTER 7.

Roger said 'h.e.l.l' under his breath.

I muttered to him similarly, 'Get out of here.'

'No.'

'Yes. Keep your job.'

Roger stayed.

Keith kicked the office door shut and though he, for a second or two, seemed to hesitate, Hannah had no doubts or restraints. I was, to her, the hated symbol of every resentment she'd fed and festered on for forty years. Keith, who could and should have soothed from childhood her hurt feelings, had no doubt encouraged them. Hannah's loathing was beyond her control. A dagger between the shoulder blades... it was there in her eyes.

She came towards me fast in the same leonine stride I'd seen in Rebecca and used her full weight to thrust me back against the wall while at the same time aiming with sharp-clawed fingernails to rip my face.

Roger tried civilised protest. 'Miss Stratton '

The stalking cat pounced, oblivious.

I'd have liked to have punched her hard at the base of the sternum and to have slapped her into concussion, but hindering taboos bristled in my subconscious, and maybe I couldn't floor that particular woman because of Keith's. .h.i.tting my mother. My mother, Hannah's mother. A jumble. In any case, I tried merely to grasp my wretched half-sister's wrists, which involved taking both my hands off the walking frame, and this gave Keith an opportunity he had no qualms in seizing.

He tweaked up the frame, barged Hannah out of the way and delivered a damaging clout in my direction in the shape of st.u.r.dy chromium tubing with black rubber-tipped feet. Not good. On the clipped-shut cuts, rotten.

Roger held onto Keith's arm to prevent a second strike and I held Hannah's wrists and tried to avoid her spitting in my face. All in all it had developed into a poorish Sat.u.r.day morning.

It got worse.

Keith lashed out at Roger with the frame. Roger ducked. Keith swung the tubes round my way and again connected and, what with Hannah tugging furiously to get free and Keith crowding in with the four black-tipped legs aimed roughly now at my stomach, my legs inefficiently decided against continued support and to all intents buckled, so that I wavered and wobbled and in the end folded up ignominiously onto the floor.

Hannah yanked her wrists out of my grasp and put her boot in. Her son, who didn't even know me, stepped into the fracas and kicked me twice with equal venom, but also without considering any consequences to himself. I grabbed the foot coming forward for a third time and jerked hard, and with a yell of surprise he overbalanced, falling down within my reach.

His bad luck. I grabbed him and hit him crunchingly in the face and banged his head on the floor, which set Hannah screeching over us like a banshee. Her shoes, I learned, had sharp toes and spikes for heels.

I was aware that Roger, somewhere above, was trying to stop the fray, but what the Colonel really needed was a gun.

Keith took his heavy feet to me, stamping and kicking. There were deep shudders in my body under his weight and his savagery. Roger, to his credit, did his best to pull him off, and roughly at that time, and not a moment too soon, the outer door opened again, bringing a welcome interruption.

'I say,' a man's voice bleated, 'what's going on here?'

Keith, shaking off Roger's clutch and undeterred, said, 'Go away, Ivan. It's none of your business.'

Ivan, I supposed, might have done as he was told, but on his heels came a much tougher proposition.

Marjorie's imperious voice rose above the general noise of battle.

'Keith! Hannah! What on earth do you think you're doing? Colonel, call the police. Call the police this minute.'

The threat worked instantaneously. Hannah stopped kicking and screeching. Keith, panting, stepped back. Jack slithered away from me on all fours. Roger put the walking frame next to me and stretched out a hand to haul me to my feet. It took him more effort than he'd expected, but by martial perseverance he succeeded. I propped myself upright on the frame by force of arms and leaned wearily against the wall, and found that not only Ivan and Marjorie had arrived, but also Conrad and Dart.

For a moment of speechlessness Marjorie took stock of things, noting the still scorching fury in Hannah's manner, the brutish force unspent in Keith and the sullen nose-bleeding vindictiveness of Jack. She glanced at Roger and lastly flicked her gaze over me, head to foot, coming to rest on my face.

'Disgraceful,' she said accusingly. 'Fighting like animals. You ought to know better.'

'He shouldn't be here,' Keith said thickly, and added, lying easily, 'He punched me. He started it.'

'He's broken my nose,' Jack complained.

'Don't tell me he attacked all three of you,' Dart mocked. 'Serves you right.'

'You shut up,' Hannah told him with bile.

Conrad gave his opinion. 'He must have done something something to start all this. I mean, it's obvious.' He became the examining magistrate, the heavyweight of the proceedings, the accuser; pompous. to start all this. I mean, it's obvious.' He became the examining magistrate, the heavyweight of the proceedings, the accuser; pompous.

'Well, Mr Morris, why precisely did you punch my brother and attack his family? What have you to say?'

Time, I thought, for the prisoner at the bar to defend himself. I swallowed. I felt weak. Also angry enough not to give in to the weakness, or to let them all see it and enjoy it.

When I could trust my voice not to come out as a croak, I said neutrally, 'I didn't punch your brother. I did nothing. They had a go at me for being who I am.'

'That doesn't make sense,' Conrad said. 'People don't get attacked just for being who they are.'