Theirs Was The Kingdom (27 page)

“Why not?”

“With him it usually depends on circumstances. There was a case rather like it six months ago. The foreman was just sacked.”

“Then it depends on what kind of report you make?”

“I imagine so. That’s why I needed time. As I say, there was you to consider.”

“You don’t think I had anything to do with it?”

“Good Lord, of course not! But you’ve been jolly decent to me. What sort of return would it be to see you turned out of house and home?”

About a minute ticked by. He could hear her controlled breathing as she remained in the window bay. Finally she said, “He knows you’ve stumbled on something. He sent Hester to Shawe with a message before dinner. That’s where he must have gone, to concoct some story I suppose. But there’s far more to it than that. Lizzie’s involved in it now.”

“In what’s going on at the yard? But that’s nonsense…”

“Not in what happens there but what’s meant to happen here. It’s beginning to make sense. I knew I was right. Did Lizzie give you something more to drink when I went out with the coffee cups?”

“Yes. She gave me a brandy from a new bottle. It must have been a stiff one. I seemed to pass right out when I moved from a hot room to a cold one.”

“Well, there you are. I understand it now. He intends to use Lizzie as his first line of defence.”

“But how can Lizzie help him?”

“You’ll find that out soon enough if you stay here. Do I have to spell it out, word for word? Haven’t you noticed what she’s had in mind all along, even if he’s only just given a thought to it? You lads who go to expensive schools… they don’t teach you a damned thing worth knowing! How to watch out for yourselves, for a start. The moment Lizzie hears his step on the path she’ll skip in here stark naked and climb into bed with you, hoping you’re still dead drunk or, even if you aren’t, would want to make the most of the opportunity, as lads would, you included, I wouldn’t wonder. I’ll ask you something and risk outraging your modesty. Have you ever had a woman? Properly, I mean?”

“No, never.”

“My God, lads like you take their time growing up, don’t they. No wonder I scared you with that kiss this morning. I did, didn’t I?”

“A little. No one ever kissed me that way before. But…” and he stopped, feeling himself flushing, and very thankful now that she had not put a match to the gas jet.

“But you liked it. Well, that proves they knew their man. I’ll light the gas now and you can pack a few things. Then I’ll let you out the back and that’ll make nonsense of their little game. Wait… I’ll make sure of the curtains, the least chink of light would put him on his guard.”

He heard her fumble with the curtains, pulling them so that the join overlapped. He understood then precisely what she was driving at, why she was here and why she was urging him to leave. Shawe, or Broadbent, or both of them had discovered something amiss after he had left the yard. Probably they had searched for the paper he still had in his pocketbook and after failing to find it had made enquiries that led them to the stableman, and the questions he had asked about the hay. They would know then that the game was up, unless he could be silenced in some way. And what better way to make him forget the whole incident than to discover him in bed with Lizzie? Some kind of bargain would have to be struck and contemplation of the various alternatives made him feel sick. He stood up, belching, and then she was beside him; the gas mantle was glowing, and he realised that she was in her nightdress with a robe over her shoulders, her hair flowing free. He said, “I’ll get my things…” But then stopped, looking across at her distractedly. “How about you, Laura? What will happen when he finds out you took a hand?”

“He won’t if you hurry. Don’t make a sound.”

Together they padded around the room, collecting some of his clothes and stuffing them into the larger of his grips. It occupied no more than a minute and then they were out on the landing, listening. No sound came from the hall or the girls’ room, so they crept downstairs, leaving the landing gas burning, passing through into the kitchen and thence to the scullery, where she slipped the bolt of the back door.

“I’ll want to know what happens to you. I’ll go to the yard now and send myself a telegram as soon as an office opens. I’ll say I’ve had orders to go to Edinburgh earlier than I planned. He’ll swallow that, won’t he?”

She smiled. “After you having decamped in the middle of the night? I think not, my dear.”

“I’ll find some way…” He stared at her, feeling cornered but fearful of what might happen to her when he left and Broadbent returned to discover his bargaining counter gone.

“I’ve never met anyone like you, Laura. There
isn’t
anyone like you…”

And suddenly thanks seemed utterly inadequate and he dropped his bag and threw his arms around her, kissing her cheeks and then her mouth, holding her so closely that they lurched against the door.

His back was to the kitchen so that he did not see Lizzie’s approach but felt Laura’s body contract and whipped round to see her with candle held high, like a figure in a melodrama—Lizzie Broadbent, mouth agape, nightdress hitched in one hand and neck ribbons trailing, so that he could glimpse her small, flattish breasts. He felt Laura stiffen and then heard Lizzie’s shriek, expressing the wildest indignation but also a sound that somehow epitomised the terrible tensions that had existed between these two women all the time he had lived in the house.

“
Bitch! Filthy bitch!
It was you! All the time it was
you…
!”

And then the scene resolved itself into a nightmare, from which all sense and predictability departed, so that he felt caught up in their hatred like a cork swirling between two crashing waves. Laura darted past him as Lizzie slammed down the candle on the kitchen table, raising both hands to ward off the blows Laura rained on her, but the older woman’s onrush carried Lizzie as far as the kitchen door where Laura followed her, pulling her down and screaming, over her shoulder, “Get
out! Go
!”

And he went, having no stomach to watch two women rolling the width of the kitchen floor, clawing and spitting at one another like a couple of frenzied cats.

He had a final glimpse of the mêlée as he swung round to slam the door on them. Laura, her nightdress ripped as far as the waist, was on top. Lizzie, her bare legs spreadeagled, had seized a double handful of her opponent’s hair and both women’s mouths were wide open in screams of fury and pain.

Their outcry followed him as far as the yard where he groped his way down the path to the back gate giving on to a parallel road behind the house. He had reached the end of the passage before he was sick, leaning against the roughcast wall of the adjoining house and standing there for what seemed a long time until his stomach was empty and a spate of dry retching had subsided, leaving his mouth parched but full of the sour taste of bile. Then, pulling himself together, he picked up his bag and went on down the road towards the orange blur of the station lights, telling himself that, however the situation resolved itself, nothing would induce him to return to that place.

By the time he reached the booking office he had some kind of control over himself and was able to ask the sleepy clerk if there was a train on to Salford. There was not but the man said a goods train was moving off in a few minutes and he was welcome to ride with the guard for a shilling. Having said this he winked very solemnly and pocketed the coin, so that George thought, “God damn everybody in the whole world! All anyone cares about is money!” but he climbed aboard gratefully and travelled the short distance to Salford, where the train slowed to a crawl and he jumped off and made his way through empty streets to the Swann yard.

The night-watchman and a couple of stable lads were on duty and seemed not to find anything odd about his demand to be let into the office on the excuse that he had lost his key to his lodgings and meant to spend the rest of the night beside the stove. It was warm in here, so he settled himself in Shawe’s swivel chair, with his feet on a crate. And soon, without having resolved anything but to keep clear of Broadbent and revert to his original idea of consulting Sam Rawlinson, he was asleep, the office cat on his lap.

He jumped up like a man shot in the backside when somebody nudged his foot and there, his back to the door, and looking across at George with a sardonic grin, was Harry Broadbent; beside him, looking less sure of himself, was the clerk Shawe, a pudgy little man of indeterminate age. It occurred to him then, if briefly, that he was not cut out to be a thief-taker, or even a watchman, for here he was, once more robbed of the initiative. All he could do for the moment was blink foolishly and flex a numbed right arm.

Broadbent said, easily, “Well, now, why should a gentleman like you prefer a night over a coke stove to a comfortable bed, with ladies to wait on him? Aye, and keep him warm if need be,” but as Shawe made a furtive move to slip away Broadbent’s hand shot out like a boxer’s and he grabbed Shawe by the shoulder, spinning him round and saying, in a grating voice, “Stay put man, and face the bloody music! You’re in this as deep as me but neither one of us so deep as Lord Tom Noddy over there!”

The complacency of the man had the effect of rallying George somewhat. He said, looking steadily across at them, “Bluff won’t help, Broadbent. I’ve got a good idea what you two have been about and if I were in your shoes I’d own up to it. You may even come off with a flea in your ear. My father has overlooked worse, or so they tell me at Headquarters.”

“Ah, I don’t doubt it,” Broadbent said, thoughtfully, “and I’m obliged to you for the hint. Maybe you’d even speak up for me, seeing you wouldn’t care to have me tell Headquarters of the commissions you’ve been collecting as my star boarder ever since New Year.”

Shawe said, indecisively, “Listen here, Harry, why don’t we…” but Broadbent snarled, “Shut your gob and leave the talking to me. As one man of the world to another, eh, George?”

“I don’t know what the devil you have in mind, Broadbent,” George said, slowly, “but whatever it is, it won’t wash. I’ve nothing to apologise for. I daresay Mrs. Broadbent will have told you I left your place and came over here before Lizzie had a chance to play the part you wrote for her.”

Broadbent pursed his lips, but his genial expression remained unchanged. He said, in the same bantering tone, “Mrs. Broadbent didn’t have all that to say for herself, George. She was too busy applying a beefsteak to her eye and lard to her backside. Not the way gentlemen like you handle women, maybe. But then, gentlemen’s wives don’t hop into bed with star boarders as soon as their old man is out of the road, do they?”

It was as if Broadbent had struck him hard an inch or so below the navel. He said, in a voice that did not seem to be his, “If you’ve laid a finger on that woman you’re really for it! I’ll make it my business to see it’s not just the sack. I’ll make my father press charges and you could do up to three years for cooking those books and pocketing money on Barlow’s hauls. You know it and Shawe knows it. And from the look of him right now it won’t take much to make him turn State’s evidence!”

For the first time Broadbent lost some of his poise, but he was a hard man to outface. In a matter of seconds he regained control of himself, saying, “Now who’s bluffing? My wife has been your doxy ever since you unpacked, and talking of witnesses—Lizzie will swear to that in court if necessary. Damn it, Swann, you were cuddling her in my scullery a few hours since, weren’t you. Why don’t we call quits? I’ll forget my gripe, you forget yours. I’ll go one better. If you fancy Laura that much you’re welcome to her. She was always a bad bargain…”

Broadbent seemed to have made inadequate allowance for George’s youth and fitness, raising his guard no higher than his chest as George cleared the crate at a bound and brought his fist crashing into the manager’s mouth, dislodging a front tooth and hurling Broadbent against the flimsy door so that its panels splintered under the impact. Shawe, bawling an oath, tried to dodge behind the desk, but George caught him by the collar, jerking him sideways so that he reeled against the stove in the centre of the room. As his hands came into contact with the red-hot lid, he screamed like an animal, but by then Broadbent was up again and charging forward, head lowered like a bull, so that it was easy for George to land a second blow on his ear as he skipped to one side. When the manager’s rush carried him as far as the window, George aimed a flying kick at his buttocks. The kick hit Broadbent behind the knees, so that he pitched on his face among a pile of cartons. He was on his feet again in an instant and glaring wildly round for a weapon, finding one in a heavy ebony ruler that lay on Shawe’s desk, but as he pranced forward, blood streaming from his lip, the frantic bookkeeper impeded him, and George had time to slip round the end of the desk and grab him by the throat. Shawe, still screaming with pain, somehow became entangled with the pair of them so that they lurched, all together, against the window frame that burst outwards with a shattering crash. Broadbent landed a glancing blow on George’s temple with the ruler, but the pain only increased George’s fury and he exerted every ounce of his strength to force Broadbent backwards over the wrecked frame, half his body projecting into the yard. Men came running then, from two or three directions, but it took the combined efforts of watchman and stable staff to wrest the manager free from George’s grip, yanking him clean through the window and ripping his coat to shreds on the jagged glass. The room was a shambles. Everything in it was overturned and Shawe, sitting against the wall with his blistered palms tucked under his armpits, continued to yell and yell at the top of his voice.