They had all heard the shouting in the road, had all turned in the half-light under the projector's beam, looked at the door and seen Paul slip busily out. Barry Carstairs, attention elsewhere, led the applause. He was about to offer their thanks to the speaker when the swing doors burst back open.
The silence fell, Paul shouted, 'It's Gussie, the police nearly shot him. It was the detective at the Perrys' he had his gun on him, and then he kicked him to shit. I thought he was going to shoot him. Christ, we all know Gussie, he's hardly Brain of Britain, but he was damn near killed!'
There was a stampede to the door. The crowd surged past Simon and Luisa Blackmore and out into the night. Many were in time to see Gussie staggering across the brightly lit forecourt of the pub.
Jerry Wroughton said, the rain running on his face, 'This nonsense has gone far enough.'
Forgetting her reservations of the previous morning, Emma Carstairs said, 'It's time somebody did something.'
Martindale saw him first and dropped the glass he was drying. Vince turned on his stool.
Gussie stood in the doorway, gasping for breath. His hair was plastered down on his forehead and his eyes showed stark terror, his face laced with bloody scratches. They could all see the dark patch at the crotch of his jeans, and the rips at the knees. None of them laughed.
Gussie stammered, 'He was going to kill me the man at the Perrys', the cop, he had his gun on me. I was only joking him, but he was going to shoot me. I thought I was dead, and he kicked me. I wasn't doing anything, it was a bloody joke.'
Vince stood his full height. The drink gave him the stature and the courage.
'Don't know about you lot but I don't think those bastards have got the message. Myself, I'm going to see they get it. It's time the shits were gone…'
When the first rock hit the window, Meryl woke. Half conscious, she heard the cheer. She groped for Frank in the darkness beside her, but he wasn't there.
There was another crack of breaking glass and another cheer. She pushed herself off the bed, and heard Frank's voice, frantic, calling for Stephen, and the rush of feet through the kitchen below her, and into the hall. He'd promised her, she'd had Frank's promise.
She went to the top of the stairs. The bell rang, three bleats. Blake had a vest on, the gun drawn. Paget was in front of him. Paget did the door and Blake covered him. As it was opened, she heard the shouting, the obscenities, heard her name and Frank's, clearly. Davies squeezed through the half-opened door, and Paget slammed it behind him. More rocks, maybe half-bricks, and perhaps an empty metal dustbin, clattered against the door.
She was at the top of the stairs and they had not seen her.
Blake yelled, 'What the fuck is going on here?'
Davies was leaning against the hall wall and the water dribbled from his coat on to the paper.
'It's about a bloody moron.'
'What's half the flicking village got to do with a bloody moron?'
'I was walking. The bloody moron did me with a plank I thought it was a shot. I bloody near fired. Christ, I had him in my sights. He was just drunk. I roughed him. If it's not happened to you then you wouldn't know what it's like. Bloody hell.'
Bill Davies looked up the stairs and saw her. It was as if the panic cleared off his face, and the tiredness; his expression was a mask. He said calmly, as if she'd heard nothing, 'Everything's under control, Mrs. Perry. There's been an incident, but it'll be over in a moment. Please stay upstairs, Mrs. Perry.'
'Where's Stephen?'
'Stephen's with Juliet Seven sorry, with Mr. Perry. Stephen's fine… Please, stay upstairs.'
They didn't want to know about her. As far as they were concerned, she was just a woman. She heard the murmur of the voices of Davies, Blake and Paget, and she caught the name Juliet Seven, and the words 'safe area', and mention of 'sector two' and 'sector four'; her man, her home and her garden. There was a window at the front of the landing at the top of the stairs, beside the airing-cupboard door. She peeped past the curtain. A little tableau was laid out below her. For a moment there was quiet, as if they regrouped, reconsidered, as if the fainter hearts ruled. They were all there. On the green, the village~ ids were at the front and behind them were Vince and Gussie and Paul, and others she recognized who worked on the farms or had no work or took the small fishing-boats with visitors and sea-anglerS. Further back, half hugging the shadows, were Barry and Emma Carstairs, Jerry and Mary Wroughton, and Mrs. Fairbrother. Deeper into the shadows, but she could still see them, were Dominic and his partner, and the vicar. She knew them all.
Paul came from the blackness, holding out the bottom edge of his coat to make a basket. When he loosed it, stones fell to the road.
The kids scrambled for the stones, snatched them up and hurled them against the walls of the house, and the windows and the door, and the cars parked at the front.
She saw hatred.
She had seen such mobs on television flickering, contorted faces from Africa and Asia, and from the corners of eastern Europe, but theirs was an anonymous madness. These faces she knew, and the faces of those who stood back in the shadows and watched.
There was a flash of light in the far blackness, then the light lit the torso of a youth. She recognized him. He was from the council houses and helped carry ladders for Vince. He held a milk bottle and the cloth stuffed in the bottle's neck was lit. The crowd roared approval. There must have been fifty of them, maybe more. The youth ran forward, past Mrs. Fairbrother and Mr. Hackett, past Dominic, past Emma and Mary, Barry and Jerry, past Paul and Vince, Gussie and Donna, and his arm arched to throw the bottle.
She heard the pandemonium in the hall below, then the bolt scraping open and the key turning.
Through the window, she saw Paget go out, crouch, fumble at his belt, then throw his missile. The youth dropped the bottle and turned. It splintered and the conflagration of fire burst where he had been. The gas canister detonated. The wind took the grey-white cloud past the light of the burning petrol and into the black darkness. She heard the choking, the coughing and the screamed protests.
They had gone, all of them, to the cover of darkness.
This was not Ireland, or Nairobi, wasn't Guatemala City this was her home.
The fire guttered, the gas dispersed, shadowy figures moved in the darkness. The two mobile cars were now drawn up to make a barrier in front of the house.
The argument raged in the hall below her, Frank and Bill Davies in spitting dispute. She was not supposed to hear. Then… Frank propelled Stephen, across the hall and up the stairs, before shrugging into a vest.
Davies wrenched open the door. She held Stephen and felt the blast of the cold air. She crouched.
Frank was outside with Davies and Paget. She could not see them. She was down on the floor and clinging to Stephen, holding his head against her and pressing her palms over his ears. He would be on the step, shielded by the bodies of Davies and Paget, protected by their guns and their gas against his friends, her friends.
He had to shout. To be heard across their low front fence and the grass, heard into the deep shadow, Frank had to shout.
'It's all right, you fuckers, you can go home. You can go home and be satisfied that you've won as much as you're going to win. I promised Meryl… Do you all remember Meryl? You should remember Meryl she did enough for you lot. I promised her that nothing more would happen. I was wrong. I had forgotten you, all of you. I can't see you now, any of you, in the dark, but, please, stay and listen. Don't creep away on your stomachs. Don't pretend it didn't happen. You will remember tonight, what you did, for the rest of your lives. If you're still there, if you're listening, then you should know that you have won a little victory. You have broken my promise to Meryl. She'll be going in the morning, and taking Stephen with her. She'll be trying to find somewhere to stay. She'll have to ring round, people she hardly knows, or check into a hotel she's never been to. Everyone she reckoned was her friend is here, soit won't be easy for her to find somewhere. Not me, though, not me… The tears streamed on her cheeks and fell on the hair of her child's head.
'You're stuck with me. Before tonight, I might just have gone with her, but not now. Your victory is that you've driven out a wonderful, caring woman, and her child. You don't win with me. I'm a proper bastard, your worst fucking nightmare, an obstinate sod. What I did, why there's the threat, I provided the information that killed a busful of men. I was prepared~ to betray a busful of men so, what happens to you is low down on any relevance scale to me. I don't care what happens to you, and I'm staying. Got that? Can you hear me? When you next go to
