Symes rose from his chair, his face a mask.
‘Drop’em!’ commanded his tormentor.
With trembling fingers, Charles Symes struggled to undo the buttons of his trousers. The last one wouldn’t come free of the hole. After watching him fiddle with it in vain for some time, the woman reached across and tore the fastening loose. The trousers fell heavily to the man’s ankles, revealing the wrinkled, sheeny expanse of his buttocks smeared with a brown glutinous mess.
‘Oh my Christ!’ the woman exclaimed.
She gazed at the spectacle in disgust for some time, wiping her hands on the front of her overalls.
‘What I ought to do,’ she remarked at length, ‘is make you lick it up and then cauterize your arse with a red- hot poker. But seeing as my hands are full with Channing I’ll settle for a cold shower and Dettol rub followed by a night locked naked in the outside loo to remind you what that facility is for. Now fuck off out of here before I puke, you filthy old bastard.’
Holding his trousers loosely round his hips, Symes hobbled towards the door. The woman turned expressionlessly to the others. She walked over to Belinda Scott and plucked the paper poppy from her dress.
‘Remembrance Day’s long past, Lindy. Not that you have anyone to remember, do you? Or anyone to remember you.’
She tore the flower apart, petal by petal, and let the pieces fall to the floor.
‘Do you?’ she insisted.
‘No, Miss Davis. Sorry, Miss Davis.’
The woman nodded.
‘Still, look on the bright side, eh? At least you might still be in the land of the living come next Poppy Day, unlike some people I could mention.’
She shot out a finger at Dorothy, who got to her feet. Rosemary also stood up. Miss Davis raised her eyebrows at her.
‘No one rang for you, Travis.’
Rosemary squeezed her friend’s hand.
‘I’ll wait for you here, Dot. Don’t worry, it’ll be all right.’
Miss Davis sauntered over to them. She leaned very close to Dorothy, searching her face.
‘Yes, it’11 be all right,’ she said. ‘Just as long as you keep your trap shut, don’t fidget, shoulders back, tummy in and knickers clean. Otherwise you know what’11 happen, don’t you?’
Miss Davis stared at her intensely, her face a couple of inches from Dorothy’s. She leaned forward suddenly and kissed her on the mouth. Dorothy gave a muffled cry. When Miss Davis drew back, there was blood on her lips.
‘Yes, you know,’ she said. ‘You’ve dreamed about it, more than once. Only this won’t be a dream, my poppet. This will be real.’
She snatched Dorothy’s hand and led her to the door while Rosemary looked on in helpless anguish.
CHAPTER 4
As dusk gathered beyond the plastic-shrouded windows, the light in the lounge imperceptibly faded, until the residents were no more than insubstantial shapes merging into the outlines of the furniture. For the most part they were silent, but from time to time one would suddenly burst into speech. This set others off, until soon the whole group was yattering inconsequentially away, all talking, none listening. Then as suddenly as it had begun it would stop, each speaker breaking off in mid-sentence until the final voice ceased and silence resumed once more.
This time it was Samuel Rosenstein who started it. His name was actually Rossiter, but Rosemary and Dorothy had needed a Jew to complete their cast of suspects.
‘Hello? ‘Hello?’ he shouted into the telephone. ‘Operator? Connect me to the police immediately!’
Next Jack Weatherby chipped in with a few stray phrases from the news bulletins he had once read on the BBC World Service.
‘…on the clear understanding that the respect of such demagogues can only be won by a show of force, thus enabling any eventual negotiations to proceed from a position of…’
‘…turned my back for a single instant,’ cried Grace Lebon, whose real name was Higginbottom or something equally unthinkable, ‘to look at something which had caught my eye in a shop window, and when I looked round again the pram was empty!’
‘…can’t say when I’ve enjoyed myself so much,’ broke out Purvey, a retired accountant who had no more connection with the Church than Weatherby with the Army. ‘Unfortunately the last train seems to have gone, so if it wouldn’t inconvenience you too terribly I wonder if…’
This brought Belinda Scott to her feet.
‘We’ve got to take under our wings, tra-la!’ she bawled at the top of her voice. ‘These perfectly loathsome old things, tra-la!’
As the tumult rose about her, Rosemary gave a panicky glance at the clock, which of course still stood at ten past four. How long had Dorothy been gone? Rosemary had said she would wait for her, but how long would that be? Would she return at all? They might already have dragged her off to hospital, trussed and gagged on a stretcher like Channing on his bed.
As the realisation of what her friend’s absence was going to mean came home to Rosemary for the first time, she felt her control begin to slip away. For years now they had been at each other’s side night and day. It was always Rosemary who had taken the initiative. It was she who introduced new twists and turns in the story which they had elaborated together, she who kept all the strands of the plot in play while still managing to accommodate-and thus to some extent control-the real horrors which surrounded them.
In contrast, Dorothy’s had been the subordinate role.
Her task had been to fill in the gaps which Rosemary left blank for her, to spot the errors which Rosemary had deliberately planted for just that reason, to approve and criticise, suggest and reject. Thus when Rosemary had allowed herself to consider the possibility of Dorothy being sent away to hospital, she had seen it in terms of her friend being cut off from her, and hence from the source of the comforting narrative which had sustained them both for so long. Now she was forced to acknowledge that her own position would be little better, in that respect at least.
The stories were a collaboration, she realised now, and although Rosemary had always been the dominant partner she could no more keep them going by herself than one player, however brilliant, could have a game of tennis with no one on the other side of the net. A sense of panic gripped her at the thought of her coming isolation, of the fear and uncertainty and loneliness she was going to have to endure, night and day, without respite or relief. She would end like the others, just another voice in that chorus of manic despair.
She felt someone touch her arm and looked round to find Mrs Hargreaves gazing down at her with an expression of concern. Hargreaves was in fact the woman’s real name, although Rosemary had tacked on the ‘Hiram’ and III’ to make her sound more like a rich American widow. By now she had grown so accustomed to thinking of Mrs Hargreaves as a petulant, cold, selfish hypochondriac that she was initially shocked rather than comforted to hear her say kindly, ‘You look just about at the end of your feathers, Miss Travis.’
Tm fine!’ Rosemary rapped back in a manner which challenged the woman to deny it.
‘You’re sure there’s nothing I can do you for?’
‘I can manage perfectly well on my own, thank you,’ Rosemary shouted, only to find that the tumult of competing voices had died away. To make amends for her rather aggressive tone, she added, ‘I felt a bit giddy for a moment, but it’s passed.’
‘I’ll just come and sit with you until she gets back,’ said the woman, taking Dorothy’s place.
“There’s no call for that, Mrs Hargreaves. I’ll be quite all right now.’
‘Call me Mavis.’
Rosemary, who had no intention of ever calling anyone Mavis if such a thing could possibly be avoided, smiled remotely.
‘Terribly kind of you, I’m sure, but…’
