everything was all right.
'And there you were,' he said, 'looking like a pole-axed giraffe.'
'He hit me,' I said.
'You don't say.'
'With a baseball bat.'
'So you saw him,' Bananas said.
'Yeah. Just for a second.'
'Who was he?'
'No idea.' I drank some tea. 'Mugger.'
'How much did he take?'
I put down the tea and patted the hip pocket in which I carried a small notecase. The wallet was still there. I pulled out and looked inside. Nothing much in there, but also nothing missing.
'Pointless,' I said. 'What did he want?'
'He asked for you,' Bananas said.
'So he did.' I shook my head which wasn't a good idea as it sent little daggers in all cranial directions. 'What exactly did he say?'
Bananas gave it some thought. 'As far as I can remember, he said, 'Where does Derry live?''
'Would you know him again?' I asked.
He pensively shook his head. 'I shouldn't think so. I mean, I've a general impression- not young, not old, roughish accent- but I was busy, I didn't pay all that much attention.'
Oddly enough, though I'd seen him for only a fraction of the time Bananas had, I had a much clearer recollection of my attacker. A freeze view, like a snapshot, standing framed in my mind. A thick-set man with yellowish skin, greyish about the head, intent eyes darkly shadowed. The blur on the edge of the snapshot was the downward slash of his arm. Whether the memory was reliable, or whether I'd know him again, I couldn't tell.
Bananas said, 'Are you all right to leave?'
'Sure.'
'Betty will finish those grapes and stare into space,' he said. 'The old cow's working to rule. That's what she says. Working to rule, I ask you. She doesn't belong to a union. She's invented her own bloody rules. At the moment rule number one is that she doesn't do anything I don't directly tell her to.'
'Why not?'
'More pay. She wants to buy a pony to ride on the Heath. She can't ride, and she's damn near sixty.'
'Go on back,' I said smiling. I'm OK.'
He semi-apologetically made for the door. 'There's always the doctor, if you're pushed.'
'I guess so.'
He opened the door and peered out into the garden. 'There are beer cans in your pansies.'
He went out saying he would pick them up, and I shoved myself off the chair and followed him. When I got to the door he was standing on the path holding three beer cans and a tomato and staring intently at the purple and yellow flowers.
'What is it?' I said.
'Your radio.'
'I've just had it fixed.'
He looked up at me. 'Too bad.'
Something in his tone made me totter down the path for a look. Sure enough, my radio lay in the pansies: what was left of it. Casing, dials, circuits, speaker, all had been comprehensively smashed.
'That's nasty,' Bananas said.
'Spite,' I agreed. 'And a baseball bat.'
'I think,' I said slowly, 'that maybe he thought I was someone else. After he'd hit me, he seemed surprised. I remember him swearing.'
'Violent temper,' said Bananas, looking at the radio.
'Mm.'
'Tell the police,' he said.
'Yeah.'
I took the beer from him and sketched a wave as he walked briskly up the road. Then I stared for a while at the shattered radio thinking slightly disturbing thoughts: like what would my head have looked like if he hadn't stopped after one swipe.
With a mental shiver, I went back indoors and applied my concussion to writing up my weekly report sheet for Luke Houston.
CHAPTER 13
I never did get around to consulting the doctor or calling the police. I couldn't see anything productive coming from spending the time.
Cassie took the whole affair philosophically but said that my skull must be cracked if I didn't want to make love.
'Double ration tomorrow,' I said.
'You'll be lucky.'
I functioned on two cylinders throughout the next day and in the evening Jonathan rang, as he sometimes did, keeping a long-distance finger on little brother's pulse. He had never grown out of the in loco parentis habit and nor, to be honest, did I want him to. Jonathan, six thousand miles away, was still my anchor, my most trusted friend.
A pity about Sarah, of course. I would have seen more of Jonathan if I could have got on better with Sarah. She irritated me like an allergy rash with her bossiness and her sarcasm, and I'd never been able to please her. I'd thought at one time that their marriage was on the way to the cemetery and I hadn't grieved much, but somehow or other they'd retreated from the brink. She certainly seemed softer with Jonathan nowadays, but when I was around the old acid rose still in her voice, and I never stayed long in their house. Never staying long in one place was in fact, according to her, one of my least excusable faults. I ought to buckle down, she said, and get a proper job.
She was looking splendid these days, slender as a girl and tawny with the sun. Many, I supposed, seeing the fair hair, the good bones, the still tight jawline, the grace of movement, would have envied Jonathan his young-at- forty-five wife. And all, as far as I knew, without the plastic surgeon's knife.
'How's Sarah?' I said automatically. I'd been asking after her religiously most of my life, and not caring a jot. The truce she and I maintained for Jonathan's sake was fragile; a matter of social form, of empty politeness, of unfelt smiles, of asking after health.
'She's fine,' he said. 'Just fine.' His voice after all these years had taken on a faint inflection and many of the idioms of his adopted country. 'She sends you her best.'
'Thanks.'
'And you?' he said.
'Well enough considering some nutter hit me on the head.'
'What nutter?'
'Some guy who came here and lay in wait, and took a bash at me.'
'Are you all right?'
'Yeah. No worse than a racing fall.'
'Who was he?' he asked.
'No idea. He asked for directions from the pub, but he'd got the wrong man. Maybe he asked for Terry… it sounds much the same. Anyway, he blasted off when he found he'd made a slight error, so that's that.'
'And no harm done?' he asked insistently.
'Not to me, but you should see my radio.'
