Gordon Williams (12 page)

“Don’t be stupid, Louise. You know as well as I do he couldn’t have.”

“I don’t know anything. It would be us, wouldn’t it?
We’ve
got to protect that – that animal.”

“Why don’t you make some coffee, honey? I know it’s been a helluva thing to happen but –”

When the window smashed they both jerked round. A stone fell on the floor underneath the curtains.

“Jesus Christ!”

George went to the window and pulled back the curtain. One of the four panes was punctured by a ragged hole. He could see nobody outside. He went quickly to the front door, but Bert Voizey
had already pulled Norman Scutt out of sight down the lane, followed by Phil Riddaway. He locked the door and slipped the chain into its slide.

“Oh George, I’m scared,” said Louise, her hands across her throat, her forearms covering her breasts as though she were naked. For a moment he was glad they’d thrown the stone, it had taken the anger out of Louise.

“Oh don’t worry, they’re only silly bastards. Still, I suppose you can understand how they feel. We’re lucky they went so peacefully.”

It had been no easy business to get Mrs. Hedden up the stairs and into bed, with Tom Hedden interfering rather than helping. Doctor Gregory Allsopp waited in the bedroom, which was as dirty and untidy as the rest of the house, until the sedation pills began to take effect. He was tired. His car had stopped in the snow about half a mile from the Hedden farm and he and Tom – who was half-drunk and full of self-pity – had carried her the rest of the way in a fireman’s lift, Tom stumbling and cursing, his wife hysterical. Eventually it was Bobby Hedden who had helped him up the stairs with his mother, Tom being at that annoying stage of drink where everything he said and did only added to the general confusion.

If he had not long ago disciplined himself in the ways of these Dando people, Gregory Allsopp would have felt angry at Tom. Mrs. Hedden was anaemic and should have been under treatment for months. Having five children between the ages of fifteen and three, as well as doing the woman’s work about the farm, would have been taxing enough for any woman, but add to that her anaemia
and
the strain of looking after Janice and you had one of those cases that made a doctor’s logical mind
fume.
But a doctor’s logic came from
another world. Doctors could see what was wrong with people’s lives – but society wasn’t interested in doctors’ views. It wanted the doctors to patch people up after the damage had been done. Any attempt to prevent the damage was either Utopian nonsense or patronising interference. He talked to Tom Hedden in what he knew were the only terms he’d understand. He made sure Bobby was listening, for it was really up to the boy.

“You must understand what the position will be if she has any more strain,” he said. “She may have a breakdown and you’ll be on your own for a long time. Do you understand that?”

“Oh aye,” said Tom Hedden, “her’ll stay in bed. It’s not her us are worried about, it’s Janice, where is she, what’s happened to her?”

“She’ll turn up, don’t worry,” said the doctor. “I’m going back to the Inn, they’ll take her there when they find her. She’s probably gone to somebody else’s house, somebody without a telephone. The important thing is to keep Mrs. Hedden in bed.”

Father and son both nodded, but he wondered. People presented one face to a doctor – as they did to a policeman or a priest or a landlord – and kept their real thoughts until they were on their own. He knew well enough what would happen – Mrs. Hedden would wake up in the morning and they’d tell her she was supposed to stay in bed and she’d get up anyway and they would let her. And perhaps she wouldn’t have a breakdown this time... he suppressed a flicker of anger. No doctor could afford to become emotionally involved with his patients’ troubles, for there were too many troubles. People like the Heddens could not be helped.

He was about to leave, fastening up his coat for the long walk back to his car, when they heard a motor outside. Gregory Allsopp thought it might be somebody come from the village to help look
after the Hedden children. The three younger boys had been fed and put to bed by Bobby, but they were making a lot of noise.

It was Chris Cawsey who came out of the snow that blew round the yard. Gregory Allsopp saw people not as farmers or mechanics but in the light of what he knew of their medical history. He hadn’t treated Cawsey since he’d left school yet from what he had heard and seen he had always felt there was something not quite right about Chris Cawsey. As a boy the kind of trouble he’d got into was not the ordinary sort of trouble boys get into.

“Here, Dr. Allsopp, they’m got Henry Niles up at Trencher’s Farm,” Cawsey blurted out before he was actually inside the house. “They’m want you up there, that yankee fella run him down on the road.”

“Niles?” said Tom Hedden, his brain and his voice thick with drink. “Niles the looney?”

“Yeah. The doctor’s wife phoned the Inn, like, Harry Ware asked me to come up here and fetch the doctor.”

“Can you get up that road?” Gregory Allsopp asked. Even as he tried to think of what he’d have to deal with at Trencher’s he was subconsciously noting something peculiar about Chris Cawsey. He was excited, but there seemed to be more to it than the news of Niles.

“I reckon so.”

“You can drive me up there then,” he said. “Did they say how badly hurt he was?”

“I dunno.”

Tom Hedden seemed to be hit by a sudden idea. He turned without speaking and left the kitchen.

“Remember, Bobby,” said Gregory Allsopp, “keep your mother in
bed, you’d better stay with her, your father seems a bit upset.”

“He’s pissed drunk,” said Bobby.

“And I should try and quieten the other boys, they sound as if they’re fighting.”

“Always are,” said Bobby.

“I’ll be back tomorrow.”

He was following Chris Cawsey across the yard, the beam of his heavy torch giving little light in the heavy, slanting snow, when Tom Hedden came floundering up behind them.

“You stay at home, man,” said Gregory Allsopp. “Look after your kids.”

“They’ll be all right,” said Hedden, walking on. “If they’m got that looney bugger kids’ll be all right.”

It was then Gregory Allsopp noticed that Tom Hedden was carrying something. A stick, he thought. He lifted the torch. Cradled in his right arm Tom Hedden was carrying a shotgun.

“Hey, Tom, what’s that you’ve got?”

“Where’s the Land-Rover, Chris?” Hedden shouted.

“Up past the barn, couldn’t risk bringin’ her down the hill.”

‘Tom!” Gregory Allsopp had to run to catch up with Hedden. He grabbed at the sleeve of his black donkey-jacket. “What are you carrying that gun for?”

“That’s for him, Niles!”

“What do you mean? Are you bloody mad, man? Get back inside, you’re drunk.”

“That’s what happened to my Janice. That looney got her. Well I’ll get him.”

“You certainly will not.”

Hedden ignored him.

“He’s got a shot-gun, Chris,” he shouted ahead. Cawsey made no reply. They were on the short slope up past the barn. Gregory Allsopp knew Tom had been drinking at lunchtime and then again at night. There was no knowing what he would do with the gun if he got near Niles. Allsopp ran forward, grabbing the barrel of the shotgun.

“Give that to me, Tom.”

“I need it for him. That’s who had our Janice, that Niles.”

“I said give me that.”

They swayed as the doctor tried to pull the shotgun out of Tom Hedden’s hands.

“Help me, Chris,” he called, but again there was no answer. The torch fell into the snow, its beam diffusing into a soft glow. The doctor slipped. Tom Hedden pushed his face and jerked the gun free. The doctor grabbed at Tom Hedden’s knees. The farmer tried to pull himself away but the doctor held on. Tom Hedden jabbed the butt of the shotgun into the doctor’s face.

“What the hell –”

He grabbed at the butt, but this time Tom Hedden swung hard. The stock crashed down on the doctor’s head. Gregory Allsopp went down face first.

“Let me alone,” Tom Hedden shouted. He raised the shotgun again and stabbed the butt down. Then he turned to Chris Cawsey, the gun raised ready to strike again. “I’m goin’ up there to that Niles,” he said. “You goin’ wi’ me?”

“Come on.” Chris Cawsey giggled. “You’m hit the doctor then,” he said. “Hit him real hard like.”

“I don’t want no interferin’.”

They got into the Land-Rover. Snowflakes began to stick to Gregory Allsopp’s hair like metal filings to a magnet...

* * *

The wind cut into their faces and hard-driven snow was blinding them, but the three policemen, Sergeant Wills and Constables Picken and Davies, pushed on as fast as they were able to plunge through the drifts. Their three torches made little impression on curtains of snow. When they spoke they had to shout at each other’s ears, so loud was the howl of the wind.

“We still on the bloody road?” yelled Davies.

“Look out for the big oak,” Wills yelled back. The big oak stood on the road to Fourways Cross, just before it sloped down between high banks to Drabble Ford. He estimated they had come a mile. It was two and a half miles from the main road at Compton Wakley to Fourways Cross, where roads led to Compton Fitzpaine, South Compton, Beal Bishop and Dando Monachorum. From the cross it was four miles to Dando and then they had about two miles to the farm where Niles was.

Before they reached the oak tree they had been off the road twice, the wind-packed drifts having reached the level of low banking.

On the down slope to Drabble Ford they made no faster time, for between the high banks the drifts were deeper, sometimes waist-high. They were slowed up again when they came to Drabble Ford and found it flooded up on to the road on either side. They waded gingerly across the dark rush of water, hand in hand, icy water pouring over the tops of their thighlength rubbers. Sergeant Wills looked at his watch, holding his torch across his chest. It had taken them just under an hour to come a mile and a half.

“We’d been better off in the bloody Canadian mounties,” shouted Davies.

“Keep going, lads,” said Wills. “God knows what them Dando buggers’ll be getting up to.”

He decided that they would have every reason for stopping at the first farm they came to. It wasn’t the first time men had died of cold and exposure in weather like this. At least they could be sure Henry Niles wouldn’t be travelling far...

“Us’ll have to walk her,” said Chris Cawsey. “She won’t go up the hill.”

“I’d walk a hundred miles for that bugger,” said Tom Hedden. They got out of the Land-Rover and started up the hill on the road from Dando Monachorum to Trencher’s Farm. On the way up they met Voizey and Norman Scutt and Phil Riddaway.

“They’m got Niles up there?” asked Hedden.

“Yeah, an’ I’d have got from him where your Janice is but for that yank,” said Norman Scutt. “Still, I had a stone into his window, bigmouth bugger.”

“Tom’s got a gun for Niles,” said Chris Cawsey, giggling again. “That right, Tom, you’m goin’ to show him?”

“He knows where my Janice is,” said Tom Hedden. “A devil like that – with my little girl!”

He started off up the road.

“You comin’?” Chris Cawsey said to the others. “I reckons Tom’ll create a bit of havoc.”

“It ain’t right, that pervert,” said Phil Riddaway. Norman had told him about perverts. They did terrible things to little girls.

“Come on, then,” said Norman Scutt. “We’ll show that yank he ain’t going to let a bloody kid get murdered just because he thinks he’s Mr. Big.”

They hurried to catch up with Tom Hedden. Chris Cawsey almost skipped with excitement. He put his right hand under his heavy jacket, pushing his fingers into the warmth of his belly. He felt the hard length of the knife down his thigh. It made him feel like giggling out loud.

Louise Magruder was standing at the
Aga
waiting for the coffee to boil when she heard the noise. She thought it must be George slamming a door. She heard it again. She went through the diningroom into the sitting-room. George was standing in the doorway to the hall.

“What is it?” she asked.

“There’s somebody kicking the door,” he said.

“Maybe it’s the doctor?”

“Does it
sound
like the doctor?”

It sounded like a gang of wild, shouting men trying to batter the door down.

George tried to avoid Louise’s eyes. Perhaps she expected him to open the door and throw these men over the garden wall. Perhaps he didn’t want her to see that he was frightened. He knew very clearly the difference between a stray brick hurled through a window and the overt hostility of attacking their front door. These men were serious about getting Niles. Something had changed.

“Go away,” he shouted.

“I want that Niles,” came back Tom Hedden’s high-pitched voice.

“You’re not getting him, go away.”

They went on kicking.

“Don’t worry, the door’s very solid, it’ll stand up to a whole army,” he said to Louise.

“Will it? Is that all you’re going to do, stand here and let them kick it? For God’s sake, George, make them stop it.”

“How? Pour boiling oil on them from the bedroom window? Listen, to me, Louise, I know how they feel, I’d be the same way
if it was Karen out there. They’re not
criminals.
If I open the door they’ll probably do something they’d regret tomorrow. They’ll get tired of it.”

The phone rang.

“Oh thank God,” she said. “Maybe it’s the police.”

He picked it up, standing about three feet from the door.

“Who’s this?”

“Hallo, Mr. Magruder? This is Knapman here.”

“Hallo.”

“Int this snow terrible? I never seen such a bad night of it.”

“You’re not kidding.”

George realised that Knapman probably didn’t know they had Niles in the house.

“I’m sorry to bother you and that, but Jean wanted to know about your turkey –”

“Turkey?”

“The one you ordered for Christmas like? Jean thought your wife might want her tonight, get her in the oven maybe.”

“I dont think we’re too worried about the turkey, Mr Knapman. Right now we’ve got this man Henry Niles inside the house and a gang of drunks kicking the door down.”