“Ha’way, then,” he said. “Let’s hit the town.”
THIRTEEN
SHE FOUND HER POLICEMAN BUSY IN THE LINE OF DUTY.
Skidding on sheer ice, Sam hurried down the hill to the layby. Relief glowed through her, making the gin in her belly bubble up in anticipation. Here was the police car she had been looking for tonight and, odds on, her Bob was in it, traffic-watching. She knew they put unmarried bobbies on the job during sacred holidays; they were missing less, they had fewer family ties. But Sam wanted Bob tonight.
As she tottered closer to the panda, she peering in through the dark windows, hoping for a glimpse. She saw the white cords of his neck twisted round, the Adam’s apple working, as it did when he talked to her. She could watch the muscled intricacies of his body work all night and never hear a word, she said. She loved to watch him talk. And the dark fingers of hair spread down his neck; definitely Bob.
Relief and savage joy picked her up like a weightless doll and flung her the last remaining steps to the car door. Her frozen fingers clutched at the handle and, with a swift scorch of adrenaline, she wrenched it wide open.
This was a police car she was attacking! Imagine doing this if policemen were fully armed! She was risking her life and flouting the letter of the law, but only because she wanted to see Bob.
Bob was caught at work, delicately nibbling away at segment after segment of the orange. For a quarter of an hour now, with his mate squirming and moaning beneath him, he had been popping the tiny cells of flesh between his teeth, sucking out the volume of juice slowly, painstakingly.
Sam stared dumbfounded at this revealed tableau. Bob had swung round, mouth dripping orange juice, his whole face smeared and pith stuck in rags on his stubble. His mate still lay prostrated with the bulk of the fruit wedged solidly in place.
“What the fuck is going on?” Sam demanded, appalled by unsure what, exactly, she was looking at.
“What are you doing here?” Bob asked.
She couldn’t figure this out at all. Bob’s amazingly serene tone and the stillness of the other man conspired to make her believe that she was the one out of the ordinary. For a moment she was about to close the door again, say goodnight and slip away.
“I came looking for you,” she said. “I needed to see you.”
“Right,” Bob said. “Get in the back.”
Sam was watching his throat work out of habit as he talked. She could see he was angry, and so she complied.
“I’ll see to you next,” he said as Sam got in and sat quietly on the cold back seat. “I’ve got this stupid fucker to sort out first.”
His mate gave a low growl of complaint, but Bob shot him a warning glance. At last Sam asked, “What’s happening, exactly?”
Bob ignored her and examined his friend again. “I think I’ve made it worse.” His mate whimpered a single note of inquiry. “I think I’ve pushed it further in.”
Sam was beginning to wish she had braved it out at home. She wasn’t up to having another facet of Bob revealed to her tonight.
“Sit back,” he told his mate. “We’ll have to change seats. I’ll drive you to hospital.”
“Hospital?” echoed Sam.
“Put your seatbelt on,” Bob snapped at her and climbed out of the car, motioning to his mate to move seats. His friend looked glum, acquiescent and, as he struggled over the clutch, supremely uncomfortable.
We’re going to the hospital, thought Sam woozily, and settled back in confusion. Bob took the driver’s seat and started the engine. As the wheels ground into the hard frost of the layby, Sam concentrated on the pleasingly aggressive noise of the motor and was content to be born along for a while, slumped in the back seat, during somebody else’s drama.
“IT’S SO WARM!” MARK GRINNED, LINKING ARMS WITH THE TWO OLD dykes. And it was; he couldn’t work out how. They were walking the perimeter path of the estate, quite sedately. As they passed under each streetlamp he felt they were giving off a radiation as gentle as the lamps.
“It’s just the gin,” Peggy said.
“And the female bonding!” cried Iris.
The houses were dark and built like shoe boxes. At night they seemed the size of shoe boxes, as if, driving past, you could stretch out a lazy limb and scatter them across the ground. There was no one around to notice the walkers tonight.
Beside the estate, the fields rolled dark and static with frost, pressed under a weight of violet cloud. The town clock rang out the odds and only then, as the hour reminded Mark of Sam’s running out, and of Sally being in by herself, did he give an involuntary shiver. The soles of his feet were hard, glass slippers on the tarmac, his fingers so cold that if he bit his fingernails now he would expect them to snap, and his balls felt as if they’d knotted right up inside out of consternation, as a plane taking off retracts its wheels.
They passed into the older streets with their bristling high hedges and patios left alight for Santa Claus. Once, a dog came sniffing out of an alleyway, saw them from afar and bolted. They were approaching the town centre and still hadn’t seen anybody real.
“I never meant us to come out this far,” said Peggy. “Isn’t it a pleasant night?”
“I can’t believe we’ve walked so far into town like this,” Mark breathed.
“It’s quite a coup,” Iris cackled.
“But naked!” Mark was starting to be shocked by himself.
Iris stopped to look him up and down. He was suddenly acutely conscious of his shrinkage. “Just look at yourself,” she told him. “You’re not more naked now than anybody ever is when they’re out.”
She left him to absorb this as they walked on in their
