I
From the early morning it was apparent to Sarah that something was wrong. In the first place, she was late for breakfast and no one came to hurry her. When she finally grew tired of acting in front of the mirror, she went out of her room and found Uncle Ralph and Mr. Wilson standing on the landing. Uncle Ralph was speaking; although the words did not make sense, she knew that it must be something important because he was leaning towards Mr. Wilson and his voice had a strange, pleading quality which Sarah had never heard before, as though he wanted something from Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson, however, was looking straight past Uncle Ralph at the landing window. As Sarah came towards them, he said: ‘I am responsible for myself.’ And he looked at the catch on the window as though it were a living thing that he hated.
‘We are all responsible for one another,’ Uncle Ralph said. ‘And I, particularly . . .’ He stopped as he noticed Sarah. ‘Run along, my pet.’
She went slowly down the stairs, her hand trailing on the banister rail; when she reached the bottom, she lingered in the hall. She heard Uncle Ralph say:
‘This is something we must leave to Pym. You understand that, don’t you? We must leave it to Pym.’
Mr. Wilson did not answer. Sarah hated him. Uncle Ralph went on: ‘I do want you to promise that you won’t take the law . . .’ The imploring tone made Sarah’s skin prickle with embarrassment; she could not bear to hear him humble himself in this way. It made him seem less strong, less safe. She ran into the kitchen and slammed the door. Aunt Myra, who usually hated doors to be slammed, looked up from the stove but made no complaint. After breakfast, she said to Sarah:
‘Run along and play with Sukie.’
The day when her parents went off in the car, her mother had said: ‘Run along and play with Nancy, there’s a good girl.’
‘I don’t want to play!’ Sarah said vehemently to Aunt Myra. ‘I want to stay here.’
Although she was persuaded to go out, she kept the house in view all day, and several times she crept in to make sure that Uncle Ralph was still there. On these occasions odd bits and pieces of conversation came to her, like disconnected pieces of a jig-saw puzzle. After lunch, Uncle Ralph told Aunt Myra that he had decided that ‘Rutledge ought to be brought into the picture’; he went into the hall and returned a few minutes later to say that Mr. Rutledge would not be in until late because he was going to see Sid Price on his way home. ‘And Pym is out, too,’ he said.
‘Why do you want Mr. Pym?’ Sarah asked.
But he only answered: ‘Run along and play, dear.’
As if she could play when this dark, mysterious cloud cloaked the house! It was Mr. Wilson’s fault; she realized this much from what she overheard. He was in danger. She did not feel sorry for him; she just wished that if something nasty was going to happen to him he would go away and have it happen somewhere else so that Uncle Ralph would be safe. She suggested this to him when he passed her as she was digging her garden plot.
‘I expect you’d like to have a bit of a change now, wouldn’t you?’ she said. ‘You’ve been here a long time.’
His lips hardly moved and his voice sounded pinched as he answered: ‘It would be the same wherever I went, Sarah.’
She wondered whether to suggest that he should go and stay with Jill, but she suspected that this was not something which she should mention. And, in any case, he did not seem to be in the mood for suggestions.
In the evening Aunt Myra went to visit a sick old lady. She said to Sarah before she left the house:
‘You can go to the meeting with Uncle Ralph and Mr. Wilson. It’s just a discussion about the youth club and you’ll probably find it very dull, but at least you won’t be in the house alone.’ She added that, in the meantime, Sarah could run along and play.
Sarah went and sat on the churchyard wall, from where she could see Uncle Ralph’s study and could catch occasional glimpses of him as he moved about the room. It was a nice evening. The air was mild and people had windows open; she could hear pop music blaring from a house near by. There was the sound of a lawn mower over in the direction of Apsley Crescent. She tried to think about the Easter pageant which excited her so much. But it did nothing to dispel her fear. It occurred to her that she might strike a bargain with God, and she said aloud: ‘I’ll give up my part, if I can keep Uncle Ralph.’ But the only result was that she felt rather silly and glanced over her shoulder to make sure that no one could have heard her.
It was then that she saw Spencer. She watched him shuffling along the road, his lame leg dragging badly the way it always did when he was particularly sorry for himself. It would be a relief to torment Spencer.
‘Good evening,’ she shrilled as he prepared to cross the road.
He hesitated on the kerb, and then continued along her side of the road.
‘Where have you been, Spencer?’ she asked as he came nearer. She wasn’t supposed to call him Spencer; she wondered whether he would have the courage to tell her about the mister. He didn’t.
‘I’ve been down to the shops, dear,’ he said softly, and he smiled the smile that wrinkled up his face and left the eyes untouched.
‘Did you go to post a letter?’
‘No, dear.’
‘Because you don’t have to go all that way. There’s a box right outside your house.’
He began to walk towards the gate to the churchyard which was a few yards away; he kept looking at her all the time. Of course, she had meant to annoy him, so really she should not have minded the way he was looking at her.
‘Now, what’s all this about a letter, dear?’ he said as he opened the gate.
She moved away from him; her legs felt boneless as though they were made of rubber and she had the nightmare feeling that if she turned to run it would be like wading through treacle.
‘I just thought you ought to know about the letterbox.’
‘But there’s something else that is worrying you, isn’t there, dear?’
They were back in the shadow of the yews now. There wasn’t anything worrying her at all; she just knew that for some reason he had been annoyed when she saw him going past the letter-box carrying a letter and she had thought it would be amusing to annoy him again. In the distance a door slammed, but it seemed a long way away and she could not take her eye from Spencer.
‘What else is it you’ve got on your mind, dear?’
‘Nothing.’ She stepped back and upset some primroses in a jam jar on one of the graves. ‘I don’t mind where you post your letters.’
He reached out his hand and caught at her arm. His face came down towards her. He was smiling again, but it was a strange sort of smile as though his mouth had got fixed that way with the lips stretched tight across the gums; the furrows on either side of his mouth were wet. Sarah hit hard at his face and pulled away from him at the same time. He did not let go, but his foot caught on the jam jar and he staggered to one side. Over his shoulder, Sarah saw Mr. Wilson coming through the churchyard gate.
‘Mr. Wilson!’
Spencer let go of her arm when she screamed and she found that she could run quite fast; as she ran she was bellowing: ‘I didn’t mean any harm about the letter-box.’ Mr. Wilson ran towards her and picked her up; she clung to him tighter than she had clung to anyone for a very long time.
‘I didn’t mean to tease him about where he posts his old letters,’ she said because it occurred to her that she must have done something particularly bad to have made Spencer behave in this way. She said over and over again that she didn’t mean to tease him. She could feel Mr. Wilson rubbing his hand up and down her back and she remembered that this was something that her mother used to do; it had a soothing effect and after a time she paused for breath and took some note of her surroundings. They were in the path just before the yew trees; the lawn mower had stopped and it was very still. Mr. Wilson was holding her and looking across at Spencer; a little smile twitched his lips. Spencer was walking round them, making a big half-circle, scrambling across the graves, stumbling over the roots of the big trees, backing down towards the gate. He didn’t look frightening any more, just a very stupid, undignified old man. Perhaps Mr. Wilson felt this, too, because although he watched him, he didn’t tell Spencer off or make any kind of a fuss. Indeed, he looked at Spencer with a kind of relish which shocked Sarah. When Spencer had reached the gate and was crossing the road to his cottage, very fast in spite of his lame leg, Mr. Wilson put Sarah down.
‘Mr. Rutledge should be in the vestry by now; I saw him coming up the street. You stay with him.’
‘Shall I tell him about Spencer?’ she suggested, rather aggrieved that so little was being made of the episode.
‘There’s nothing to tell, is there? You teased him and he grabbed at you.’
‘He frightened me,’ she grizzled resentfully. ‘And he bruised my arm.’
He looked at her arm.
‘Aunt Myra will give you something to rub on it.’
He was breathing rather quickly and his eyes were bright; he kept glancing in the direction of Spencer’s cottage. Sarah could see that he wasn’t going to offer much sympathy so she turned away sulkily and walked up the path towards the vestry. Although she was cross with him, curiosity made her look round before she went into the porch. He must have waited until she was there, because he was only now turning away. She watched as he crossed the road and went up to the door of Spencer’s cottage. From a near-by house came the sound of jazz music, very loud.
II
‘I don’t want no trouble,’ Spencer said as he opened the door a few inches.
Wilson gave the door a sharp blow with his fist at the level of the knob and applied pressure lower down with his knee; the door cracked back against the wall. Spencer had only held it with one hand because the other was grasping a heavy brass candlestick. Wilson pushed into the hall and shut the door. The hall was narrow and dark. They faced one another, very close and both breathing rather heavily.
‘You just brought that along to make your peaceful intentions quite clear?’ Wilson jerked his head at the candlestick. He looked as though a threatening reply would be a gift and his clenched fist was eager to hand out punishment.’
Spencer wetted his lips and said carefully:
‘I don’t want no trouble.’
But he grasped the candlestick more firmly, just to show that he was ready for it if it came.
‘You haven’t much space to swing your arm, have you?’ Wilson pushed Spencer towards the sitting-room. ‘Let’s go in here.’
The sitting-room didn’t given them much space either. It was cluttered with furniture, some of which Spencer had brought across from the church to repair and then forgotten. Wilson shut the door and leant against it. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, rather like a swimmer drawing himself together before the moment of diving. While he was thus occupied, Spencer furtively dribbled a torn hassock into line between them.
‘Tell me about the letters,’ Wilson still had his eyes closed, but there was a knife-edge to his voice. ‘Why you wrote them and . . .’
‘This is my house.’ Spencer’s voice spiralled petulantly. ‘You can’t force your way in here . . .’
‘Don’t argue. Just tell me about the letters.’
Very imperious; yet there was a note of pleading, too, in the voice. Spencer understood that. He had had all he could take, had young Mr. Wilson, and this was the moment of release, the moment they all welcomed when the pressure was removed, the restraining bonds cut. Only Wilson was the type who likes to feel justified when he smashes his fist into your face, so he wanted Spencer to give him an excuse. Spencer had no intention of co-operating. Tell him, indeed! And get a beating followed by a nice stretch for blackmail. Spencer reverted to his own grievance.
‘This is my house.’
A nerve began to jerk in the young man’s cheek. He braced himself against the door and held his head stiff and high as though his collar were too tight for him. His fingers were spread out on the door behind him, exploring the grain of the wood with restless impatience. Spencer watched those exploring fingers.
‘Tell me!’
In the house next door a radio was switched on loud to a jazz programme; Wilson moved his shoulders uneasily against the door as though the erotic beat of the rhythm accentuated the discomfort of his body.
‘I had a right,’ Spencer snivelled heedlessly. ‘I had a right. You wanted my things, my house . . .’
The room was hot and airless, the furniture was smeared with damp and there was a smell of all the meals that Spencer had had over the past few days, toast and liver, cheese and cabbage mingled with the ranker odour of Spencer’s clothes. A pulse began to beat in Wilson’s throat.
‘I wanted your things?’ he repeated incredulously. ‘Your house . . .’
Spencer watched him. Over the years he had become used to contempt and he understood the signs; the twist of the lips, the flare of the nostrils, the bright hardness of the eyes—once they got to feeling like that about you, you didn’t have a hope. Spencer gave up. ‘Go on, beat me,’ he thought. ‘I’m old, soiled, just waiting to be broken and thrown away on a rubbish dump by a piece of arrogance like you. Do what you want to; only stop tormenting us both and get on with it.’ But when fear loosened his tongue he said none of these things; instead he began to babble obscenities. Mostly he was incoherent, but eventually he enunciated clearly enough:
‘I know about you whoring with that randy bitch at the vicarage.’
It was the moment for which they had both been waiting, but somehow it went ludicrously wrong. As Wilson sprang forward he caught his foot on the hassock and sprawled across a chair. Spencer made the most of this comic intervention. He was round the other side of the table before Wilson and the chair had skidded to a halt; still clutching the candlestick in one hand, he made his way towards the door, hurling anything that came within range of his free hand. A bottle of glue, a bread-board, a vase of dead daffodils, two lemons and a copy of Hymns Ancient and Modern marked his passage to the hall. There he made a mistake, blundering into the kitchen instead of making for the front door. He tried to get the door shut but Wilson was too quick for him and the nightmare scramble round the table began again, like a parody of a children’s game. The sink was, as usual, full of pots and pans; as he came to it Spencer managed to get his hand round an empty milk bottle which he broke as he passed the gas stove. The greasy water had done its work, however, and it slipped out of his fingers. Wilson, who could afford to disdain such weapons, kicked it out of the way. They did a turn round the table.
Wilson was not in so much of a hurry now. He had fallen into a rhythm. Spencer, too, began to feel himself a part of the rhythm. It was as though the two had become united in a dance, moving to a pattern beyond their own design. Spencer reached towards the table for the hot-water jug—the water would still be hot enough to scald. Wilson twitched the table-cloth and it was Spencer who was scalded. They did another turn round the table. There was nothing left to throw now. Wilson’s cheeks were flushed and his breathing was quick and shallow; his eyes didn’t seem to focus too well, but he moved with the precision of a dancer. Spencer had seen men like this before, moving in with deadly grace to kill or maim. He knew that the climax must come now.
‘They’ll hear us next door,’ he whined.
He was backing away into a corner between the boiler and an ancient wringer. Wilson was walking round the edge of the table, still unhurried and with that unpleasant, half-hypnotized look about the eyes. Spencer huddled back against the wall, cradling the candlestick in his arms; tears of exhaustion and despair gushed down his face. The thin veneer of respectability had peeled off and he was just a shoddy, unsuccessful criminal cornered once again.
‘We’ll have the bogies in,’ he whimpered. ‘I hadn’t reckoned to go to prison again.’
The thought filled him with an emptiness more terrible than the fear of violence which was at least a positive thing. There would be no way back this time. He stopped gibbering and his mouth hung slack, his eyes became vacant as he thought of those four walls and that iron-barred window which would see him into eternity. After a few moments his sense of timing, which was instinctive in such matters, told him that something was wrong. Violence should have intervened between him and the vacuum by now. He looked up. The glazed look in Wilson’s eyes had been replaced by something which could have been fear; he was standing in front of Spencer, but leaning back a little, his hands hanging uncertainly at his sides. Spencer did not waste any time analysing this strange phenomenon. It was the second reprieve; the gods don’t give more. He raised the candlestick above his head and brought it down with all his strength. He was too excited to aim carefully, and in any case he was not well placed; but although he missed Wilson’s head he caught him a good, jarring blow on the right shoulder. Spencer’s own wrist and arm went numb for a moment.
Wilson staggered back. Spencer waited, the candlestick poised for another blow should it be necessary. But Wilson was in bad shape. These youngsters collapsed easily, Spencer thought contemp¬tuously as he watched the young man doubled up, one hand grasping the back of a chair. Spencer went up and inspected him warily. He was very white and his face was twitching, but he did not seem to be in actual pain.
‘I warned you,’ Spencer admonished. ‘You shouldn’t have tried to stand in my place, influencing them against me . . .’
Wilson did not reply. He might not have heard; he might even have forgotten about Spencer. His face was a putty colour now and beaded with sweat. Spencer felt a little frightened.
‘You’re not going to want a doctor, are you?’
Wilson shook his head.
‘It would be better not,’ Spencer agreed. ‘You’d have a bit of explaining to do, forcing your way in here like this.’
Wilson raised his head. His hand tightened its grip on the back of the chair as he tried to stand erect. He might have been suffering from a severe cramp, the process was so agonizingly slow. Spencer watched, biting his lip in agitation. The sooner Wilson got out the better; it would take a lot of explaining if he flaked out here.
‘Do you want a drink or something?’ he asked grudgingly.
Wilson looked at him; his eyes travelled over Spencer’s face as though trying to memorize the features. Spencer, who was unused to such attention from any but policemen, stepped back and held the candlestick more tightly. Wilson swivelled away from him, hesitated a moment, his injured arm hanging loosely, and then began to walk towards the door. He walked stiffly, feeling his way along the wall like a blind man. Spencer limped along behind him.
‘Where are you going now?’ he demanded, suddenly suspicious.
‘Going?’ Wilson shook his head and swayed drunkenly into the hall. ‘Just out of here.’ He got the front door open and leant against the door post; he made an effort to focus on Spencer. ‘You don’t have to worry,’ he said, his speech a little slurred. ‘I don’t want your house. I don’t want ever to stand in your shoes.’
Spencer thought he understood: a bargain was being struck. He said reassuringly:
‘There won’t be any more letters.’
Wilson was not listening. The night air had made him shiver; Spencer had not seen anyone shiver like that since a man broke down in his cell once when there was a hanging at Wandsworth. He watched Wilson walk slowly to the gate. In the distance the vicar could be seen making his way to the church. He saw Wilson and called out:
‘Hurry up! We’re late already.’
He went up the path without waiting for Wilson who was swaying in the road. Spencer wondered whether Wilson would get run over. He doubted it: the devil looks after his own. He shut the door. He felt shaken, but relieved; the only thing that bothered him was Rutledge. Now that he and Wilson had reached an agreement, he wished he had not said so much to Rutledge this afternoon. Perhaps he could go round to see Rutledge and say that he had made a mistake? Then he began to wonder about the child. He doubted whether she could be made to understand about bargains.
Wilson sat on the grass at the side of the church. He dug his fingers into the grass and wondered why he was sitting there. His arm, which up to now had been numb, was beginning to throb. He felt sick and the branches of the trees seemed to be swaying in a rather exaggerated way above his head. He lay back on the grass. He was shaking all over and his teeth were chattering ; he would have to stop this nonsense before he went to the meeting at the vestry or they would wonder what he had been up to. Come to that, what had he been up to?
He turned on his side and pain seared his body. Even when the red-hot pincers had stopped eating into his shoulder, the pain was severe; but his mind seemed to have cleared. ‘You know a bit more about yourself now, don’t you?’ he thought. ‘No use pretending that the Teddy boy affair was an isolated instance. Better face it, maintaining some kind of balance is more difficult for you than for most.’ When he went across to Spencer’s cottage, he had been saying to himself: ‘Better let go; fall one way or the other, it doesn’t matter, but let go. The strain is too much; you don’t have the kind of spiritual muscle that can stand so much strain.’ Yet, at the last, something had held him back from the edge.
In the distance he could hear people coming across the grass; the vicar and the treasurer had been inspecting that damned boiler. They seemed to accentuate his loneliness, these tranquil, unburdened people. He wondered whether the vicar, up on his cloud-capped heights, ever saw any of the smoke signals rising from the little jungles of hell. The voices died away in the direction of the vestry. Wilson sat up. The world spun round and seemed to hit him in the face. He lay down again. Never mind the dizziness; the fact remained that back there he had kept his balance, though how it had happened he was not sure. Perhaps the sight of Spencer had helped. Not that he would ever whine and cringe as Spencer had done; he would be the angry sarcastic type, the all-the-world’s-out- of-step-but-me type. But the end would be the same: the blankness behind the eyes, the destitution of hope. Perhaps this bleak vision had been enough to hold him back. But what was it worth, this one isolated triumph of sanity? How long could the precarious balance be maintained? When he was forty, would he still be asking; How long? It was a frightening thought. He was not sure that he could maintain such a long vigil. Help was needed, something to counteract the darkness, a buoyancy and a resilience which he did not himself possess.
He repeated the getting-up process again with extreme caution. The need for human contact had suddenly become desperately urgent. He must get over to the vestry as quickly as possible. Not that the vicar and Rutledge could ever understand, but they would, by their unquestioning acceptance of him, help him back a little further from the edge of darkness. He brushed down his clothes as carefully as he could with his left hand and fumbled in his pocket for a comb. He did not want to tell them what had happened. Perhaps one day Spencer would land himself in trouble again; but Wilson did not want it to happen through him. However long he lived, and however socially responsible he might become, he knew now that a part of him would always belong to Spencer’s fraternity.
He walked along the path to the vestry, more hungry for companionship than he had ever been in his proud life. He opened the door and saw Sarah sitting on a high-backed chair in the opposite corner. There was a queer lamp burning beside her. Perhaps it was that that made her face seem so stiff and frightened when she looked at him.
III
Mr. Rutledge was cross when he saw Sarah. He said:
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Mr. Wilson told me to wait in here,’ she replied.
No one answered. Mr. Rutledge and Mr. Harris, the people’s warden, had been talking when she came in, but now they didn’t seem able to say anything. Mr. Rutledge went across to the window and peered out through the tracery of ivy branches. He said: ‘Late, as usual.’ The back of his neck was crimson.
Sarah sat on the stiff-backed armchair in the corner. Mr. Harris put his hands in his pockets and jingled his money, staring down at the tips of his shoes. After a long silence he looked up at Sarah, his face crumpled unhappily, and said:
‘Hadn’t you better go and find your Aunt Myra? She’ll be wondering where you are.’
‘She’s out,’ Sarah’s lips quivered; she was tired and their unreasonable disapproval confused her. ‘I’m to stay here because the house will be empty.’
Mr. Rutledge sucked in air between his teeth, and Mr. Harris said:
‘We’re upsetting the little girl.’
He came across to her and picked up a flat, rather rough-looking bowl which was on the shelf just beside her chair.
‘Isn’t this a wonderful lamp that Mr. Rutledge has made for the pageant?’
Out of the corner of her eye Sarah could see Mr. Rutledge’s back arch like a cat that has had its fur rubbed up the wrong way. Mr. Harris put the lamp down on the floor and fumbled for matches.
‘And it really lights up.’
He struck a match. After a moment there was an unpleasant, oily smell and a dull orange blur spread inside the lamp. Mr. Rutledge beat with his fist on the window sill. Mr. Harris darted an anxious look at him and said:
‘You’re a real craftsman, Stanley.’
Mr. Rutledge did not answer and, as Sarah was not interested in the lamp, Mr. Harris put it back on the shelf. He sat on the edge of the table and spread his fingers across his face, pinching into the flesh in a painful way.
The smell from the lamp made Sarah feel sick. The two men seemed to have forgotten her and she was afraid to speak. They were both very upset and like all adult reactions there was something incalculable and mysterious about their distress. It was like the hints at unimagined horrors in a book which is suddenly snatched away, or a scene glimpsed in a room before the door is shut firmly in one’s face. But this time, it seemed that Sarah was not to be denied the climax. She would not have to run up to her room and lie on her bed, until she had somehow shaken the fear out of herself. This time she would see it through. Her hands gripping the arms of the chair, she waited full of the same unbearable tension she experienced when she was allowed to watch one of the plays for grown-ups on Sukie Price’s television. It was a long time before the play started and then it was slow to get going. First came the sound of steps on the gravel path. They halted some little way from the vestry and Uncle Ralph called out:
‘Is that you, Maynard?’
Mr. Maynard, who must have been coming across the path from Apsley Crescent, answered. The voices merged and then receded. Mr. Rudedge said:
‘What the devil are they doing?’
Mr. Harris, who was now slouched forward so that he looked as though he might fall off the table at any moment, muttered:
‘Maynard wanted to have a look at the boiler. Perhaps . . .’
He pushed his hands up to his face again and began to pat his cheeks. He was mumbling:
‘I don’t know. Oh dear, I really don’t know at all . . .’
Mr. Rutledge turned back from the window and went to the opposite side of the room where a few chairs were stacked. He put five chairs round the table and counted them; then he paused, looking down at the fifth chair. There was a puffy vein standing out on one side of his face and his mouth was shut so tight that the lips had disappeared altogether. He was still there, glaring at the chair, when Uncle Ralph’s voice was heard again. Mr. Harris said:
‘If I were you I shouldn’t . . .’
As Uncle Ralph came through the door, Mr. Rutledge said:
‘Where’s Wilson?’
Uncle Ralph looked startled.
‘I thought he would be here by now.’
Mr. Rutledge leant forward, his hands gripping the sides of the table. He was staring at Uncle Ralph. Mr. Harris had turned away and was shuffling through the pages of a hymn book. His face was pink and shining. Mr. Rutledge said:
‘Well, he isn’t here. And that’s a pity because there are one or two things I want to ask him.’
Mr. Maynard raised his eyebrows.
‘We have all the evening, my dear fellow.’
He made a movement towards a chair, then stopped with his hand on the back-rest, and glanced from Mr. Rutledge to Uncle Ralph.
‘Is something the matter?’
Uncle Ralph gave an uncertain smile.
‘Not that I know . . .’
‘Don’t you, Vicar? Don’t you know?’
Mr. Rutledge leant further forward, his chin thrust out. He looked as though he intended to say something else; then there was the sound of footsteps outside and he stopped. The footsteps came on, rather slowly. As the door opened, Mr. Rutledge said to Uncle Ralph:
‘We’ll ask him then, shall we?’
Mr. Wilson came in. Sarah stared at him, willing him to go away again; just for a moment she thought she was going to be successful because he hesitated, looking at the men who formed a half-circle round him. Then he turned and shut the door, his movements rather clumsy. He wiped the palm of his hand down the side of his trousers and began to apologize for being late. Mr. Rutledge waited until Mr. Wilson’s voice trailed away. Then:
‘You were discharged from prison in January, weren’t you?’
He rapped the question out and Mr. Wilson answered: ‘Yes, sir,’ as though he were on parade and then drew his breath in sharply. Colour came and went in his face. Uncle Ralph, who had his back to Sarah, said:
‘This is unforgivable.’
Mr. Rutledge took no notice. He said, still staring at Mr. Wilson:
‘What was the charge?’
‘Grievous bodily harm.’
Mr. Wilson was not looking at the others now, but down at the table. He reminded Sarah of someone being made to stand out in the front of the class for punishment. Uncle Ralph moved towards Mr. Rutledge. Sarah was still unable to see his face, but the unsteadiness of his voice was enough to frighten her.
‘Couldn’t you have come to me about this?’
‘Couldn’t you have spoken to me about it, Vicar? Right at the beginning?’ Mr. Rutledge seemed to let go of breath that had been bottled up within him for some time and words rattled out. ‘If you had had any respect for me as your warden, isn’t that what you would have done? Instead you stood by while I made a damn fool of myself; you let me push him into the youth club, knowing that he was the last person for the job, knowing the kind of influence he would be. People came and made complaints to me, told me about things that were supposed to be going on; people who trusted my judgement. I brushed them aside because I believed the things you had told me about him—served in the navy, recommended for a commission; the one thing you neglected to tell me about was the thuggery.’
‘That’s an inhuman thing to say!’ Uncle Ralph’s voice stabbed at Sarah as though a nerve had been touched. ‘A first offender . . .’
‘They all start as first offenders.’
‘You know nothing about the circumstances.’
Mr. Maynard came forward and took Mr. Rutledge by the elbow.
‘I really think we should talk this over quietly. And not leave this young man standing while . . .’
‘I know about the circumstances all right.’ Mr. Rutledge pulled away from Mr. Maynard, ‘Spencer told me—read it up in a paper or something. He beat up a kid in a café—kid had to go to hospital afterwards.’
‘That’s not true!’ Uncle Ralph sounded desperate but Mr. Wilson just stood there taking no notice, looking down at the table.
‘It is true!’ Mr. Rutledge brought his fist down on the table and even Mr. Wilson winced. ‘And I know about more recent attacks, too.
Mr. Harris gave a little whinnying noise.
‘Oh Stanley, for goodness’ sake!’
‘There have been no recent attacks,’ Uncle Ralph protested.
‘I’d like to hear that from your niece Jill.’
They all looked at Mr. Wilson. He closed his eyes. He seemed to have gone limp, as though all the air had been let out of him. Mr. Rutledge went up close to him.
‘Well?’
Mr. Wilson kept his eyes closed and pleated up his lips tight. His face had a blank look as though the real Mr. Wilson had gone away somewhere. Mr. Rutledge did not like that. He hit Mr. Wilson across the face so hard that it jerked his head to one side.
‘I’ll have your attention, young man.’
Mr. Maynard put his hand on Mr. Rutledge’s arm.
‘Enough of that.’
There were red marks on Mr. Wilson’s face and a little blood on his mouth. Mr. Rutledge looked rather ashamed, but he began to shout all the louder.
‘Do you deny that you attacked Jill Hunter in the church hall after one of the youth club meetings?’
Mr. Wilson spoke slowly, his lips stiff.
‘I didn’t attack her.’
Mr. Maynard was standing very erect with his hands behind his back; his lower lip was thrust slightly forward and he looked severely at Mr. Wilson. Mr. Harris was looking at the floor and jingling the money in his pockets again. Mr. Rutledge went on:
‘Now be careful. There was a witness present, although you didn’t know it.’
Mr. Wilson turned his head away; his eyes wandered along the wall looking for a way of escape, but without much hope.
‘You didn’t touch her?’ Mr. Rutledge pressed. ‘Is that what you are saying?’
Mr. Wilson did not answer, but he turned his head and examined the other wall.
‘Well, did you?’
Mr. Wilson licked a speck of blood from his lips.
‘Maybe I touched her.’
‘You touched her but you didn’t attack her! What kind of talk is that? Are you trying to make out it was with her consent?’
‘No . . . No, I’m not saying that . . . But . . .’
Mr. Wilson had his back against the wall now. The child didn’t like to look at him; it made her feel sick to see the way his head writhed from side to side and his lips shook so that he didn’t seem able to control his words. Why didn’t Uncle Ralph make Mr. Rutledge stop? She looked at Uncle Ralph. He was standing at the top of the table and she could see his face now. He was staring at Mr. Wilson and he was not angry like Mr. Rutledge, or severe like Mr. Maynard, or embarrassed like Mr. Harris. He was sorry for Mr. Wilson. Or, at least . . . There had never been anything stronger than ‘sorry’ in Sarah’s experience of feeling for another person, but this time she knew it was not enough. The child saw that her Uncle Ralph’s face had lost its brightness; it was grey, hollowed with shadow beneath the eyes, bleached about the mouth; the eyes were dark and dull. His body was stiff, but his hands hung forward with the palms spread out as though he wanted to go to Mr. Wilson but was unable to move. It seemed to the child that her uncle was growing old and sick before her eyes. Sarah felt a crushing-pain in her chest that was beyond bearing.
Mr. Rutledge put his hand under Mr. Wilson’s chin and made Mr. Wilson look at him.
‘Did you or did you not?’
Mr. Wilson cried out:
‘All right! I . . .’
Sarah picked up the lamp and threw it at Mr. Rutledge. Mr. Rutledge staggered back with his arms to his face; there was a burst of flame and a lot of shouting. Sarah ran to the door and out into the cool evening air.
IV
‘You think the little girl was frightened, because she had hurt you and so she ran away?’
The sergeant looked round the room impassively as he spoke; he noted the burnt patch on the wall, the scorched baize table cloth with which the blaze had been stamped out, the complete absence of eyebrow which gave to Rutledge’s face an expression of permanent incredulity.
‘We had forgotten she was there,’ the vicar muttered.
The sergeant, a family man, frowned and licked the tip of his pencil.
‘And then Harris lost his head and rushed into the street bellowing: “Fire, fire!” Probably scared the wits out of the child.’ Rutledge dabbed at his blackened face with a handkerchief. ‘Oh dear, oh dear! The poor lassie. Someone has a lot to answer for.’
It was a strange thing to say, the sergeant thought. But then something strange had been going on; they were all so subdued and didn’t seem to be able to look at one another.
There were footsteps outside and Pym came in; he was off-duty and had come to join the search. He and the sergeant acknowledged one another rather awkwardly, as though Pym by virtue of his church membership had got himself mixed up in a dubious enterprise.
‘No bones broken?’ Pym asked the vicar.
The vicar didn’t seem to hear and it was Mr. Maynard who replied:
‘No. Fortunately the lamp only caught Rutledge on the side of the head and then burst into flames when it hit the wall behind him. We managed to get it out quite quickly.’
The vicar said: ‘Sarah!’ in a dazed voice.
‘We’ll find her soon enough, don’t you worry,’ Pym assured him comfortably. ‘She’s probably hiding in someone’s back garden.’
The sergeant shut his notebook with a snap.
‘Even so, she’ll have had a nasty scare.’
They went out into the churchyard. There was already a crowd at the church gate; several scouts, a few older people, a couple of photographers, firemen standing about with nothing to do, and Sukie Price on a borrowed bike.
‘We’ve come to look for Sarah,’ Sukie said.
Sarah was very popular suddenly.
Spencer had just left his cottage and was limping across the road. Wilson said tentatively to the vicar:
‘I don’t know whether we want Spencer?’
The vicar was talking to Mr. Maynard and he did not hear. A voice behind Wilson said:
‘Don’t worry about Spencer.’
It was Pym. He gave Wilson a wink and went across to talk for a few moments to two plainclothes men.
As the various groups moved off, the two plainclothes men came up one on either side of Spencer. The first one said:
‘I should stay here if I were you. We don’t want so many people milling around.’
He spoke pleasantly, just like a B.B.C. policeman. Spencer wondered how far the sweet reasonableness would stretch. He answered obstinately:
‘I want to help search for the little girl.’
‘There’s been a lot of burglaries around here lately,’ the other man said. ‘If you’re found wandering about the streets tonight, I wouldn’t be surprised if you were picked up for something.’
Spencer turned and went back to his cottage.
Shortly after the crowd round the church had cleared away, leaving one solitary constable searching among the gravestones, a rather battered grey car drew up outside the vicarage and a man got out. He stood watching the elephantine manreuvres of the constable, his eyes sharp and critical. After a few moments, he called out:
‘I should think you’ve scared ‘em as far as Hammersmith Broadway by now.’
The constable, pink in the face, came clumping down the path.
‘When I want any smart talk . . .’
He stopped, examining the card the man held out to him. He modulated his tone.
‘The vicar’s niece has run away, sir.’
‘Has she?’ The man looked towards the vicarage. ‘I was just about to call on the vicar. But it hardly seems the time.’
‘There’s no one in just now, sir. Someone went to fetch his wife, though. I expect she’ll be back soon.’
The man turned and locked the door of his car.
‘I’ll join in the search in the meantime,’ he told the unenthusiastic constable. ‘Where do you suggest we begin?’
Sarah had a very long start on the searchers. While they made their way laboriously in and out of gardens and along the quiet streets away from the main road. Sarah was threading her way through the jostling Saturday-night crowds outside Shepherd’s Bush Empire. The noise and speed of it all rather overwhelmed her and she felt a guilty excitement as she watched the boys and girls strutting outside the cinema or huddled on high stools in the milk bars. They belonged to the world of the bad people in the television serials she was not supposed to watch; and although at the moment there was nothing particularly sinister about their actions, the loud blare of their laughter had a quality that was itself frightening. Across the road from the Empire it was different. Garages and a few closed shops set far back from the road; not so many people. As the tension slackened, she began to notice that her legs were rubbery again and she didn’t have much breath. She felt confused and she wondered if she would ever complete the journey. She did not know the way, but she could follow the bus route and then when she thought she was nearly there she would ask a policeman.
She had turned into a darker road now with terraced houses on either side. The houses were old and the paintwork was dingy; some of them were used for offices and there were no lights in them; in the others she saw a few people moving about, mostly coloured, and once she had a glimpse of a dentist’s chair. She came to a row of shops and a public house with one or two men standing outside and a few children playing around. The road twisted and turned ahead; she felt as if she had gone a very long way, but a road sign said ‘Borough of Hammersmith’. Her legs could hardly carry her now. She went under a railway arch. Beyond there were some dark, sooty cottages opening right on to the street, a tobacconist’s shop with a man chatting to a woman with her hair done up in a turban and a cigarette drooping out of her mouth. Sarah was beginning to cry. There was a greengrocer’s shop with a few empty crates outside it and cabbage leaves trailing on to the pavement. She sat down on one of the crates. A man and a woman standing at a bus stop looked at her and the woman said:
‘I think that little girl is lost.’
The man shrugged his shoulders.
‘I don’t know. She probably lives above the shop and they won’t let her in.’
The woman shook her head.
‘She’s too nicely dressed.’
‘There’s a cop shop across the road,’ the man said irritably, ‘Make them do a bit of work.’
The woman crossed the road and the bus came and went and the man glared at Sarah. After a time the woman came back with a constable who was muttering about having just come off duty. He squatted down in front of Sarah.
‘Where do you live?’
She looked at him. He had small, pink eyes that were not friendly, but she had always been told that if she was lost or in trouble on her own she should go to a policeman. The inference was that he would work miracles. She decided, in spite of the pink eyes, to see what he could do.
‘I live at 44 A Hambledon Mansions, Chelsea,’ she told him.
He did work miracles. He stopped a car which had just come out of the police station yard. Sarah heard the driver say something about reporting to the sergeant, but her constable didn’t want to do that because he was in a hurry. In two minutes, Sarah was on the way in the police car. Twenty minutes later the same police car was on its way back with two red-faced policemen in the front and Jill and Sarah in the back.
After all, Sarah thought as the car turned into the Uxbridge Road, it was Jill who had brought Mr. Wilson to the house in the first place. It was only fair, now that he had caused so much trouble, that she should take him away again.