I KNEW THEM AT ONCE, EVEN THOUGH THE ONLY LIGHT WAS THE FADED orange blear from the streetlamp some way down on the other side of the road. The four who had jeered. The four from the incident in the pub. The four brain-dead apprentice thugs.

And this time not even the parade-ground authority of ex–warrant officer Cooksley would have stifled their mob-handed intent.

By the time Karl and I were outside and had taken in what was going on, they were ripping apart the rods from the sculpture and flinging them around the garden.

Karl let out a cry of rage and launched himself in ruggerstyle at the nearest vandal.

Instinctively aware that this was not a wise move, I shouted at him to stop and set off after him, meaning to hold him back. But had taken no more than a couple of strides when one of the rods came flying at me, struck me on the chest so hard that I stumbled, my foot slipped on the icy path, and down I went, cracking my head on the stone wall dividing my garden from my neighbour’s.

I came to in a hospital bed an hour or so later. For once, I can’t be exact about the time.

What happened next I know only from what I was told by Mrs. Williamson and Karl himself over the next two days, and from the testimony of my next-door neighbour, Gillian, a middle-aged divorced librarian, Tom the publican from the pub up the road, and the police, during the trial of the four offenders in the magistrate’s court a couple of months later.

Karl’s rugger tackle brought down one of the four, who struggled to get free while yelling to his pals to “get ’im off of me.” Karl was sure it was the one he’d had the barney with in the pub. (I learned the names of the four of them from the police after they were arrested. But can’t use their names for legal reasons.)

The others came to his aid and hauled Karl to his feet.

But Karl, with his robust and fit 180 pounds in full flood of anger, was not a force to mess with. And though his assailants were the soul of bravery when mob-handed and timidly opposed, their emboozed physique was no match for an enraged Karl. As he twisted out of their grip their flabby condition was no protection against an elbow rammed into the brewer’s gut of one, a plumber’s fist jabbed into the snozzle of another and a back-footed kick into the groin of the third.

The gutted one bent double, gripping his belly while he chundered the evening’s intake onto his feet. The snozzled one staggered back, holding his face in his hands while letting out a sound resembling an alpine yodel. And the groined one fell jackknifed to the ground, knees up and hands gripping himself between his legs, while alternately moaning and sobbing.

This should have been the end of it. But in the time the bout with the threesome was in progress, the one Karl had felled got to his feet, grabbed a rod, and as Karl turned from his demolition job, he thrashed the rod across Karl’s left leg just below the knee, sending Karl sprawling to the ground, gasping with pain. He knew at once that his leg was broken and didn’t try and stand.

It’s anyone’s guess whether the gang would have taken the chance to exact vengeance and cause more injury had it not been for Tom the publican, alarmed by the noise, coming to see what was going on. What he didn’t know was that Gillian had heard the noise when it started, had got out of bed and looked out of her bedroom window. Seeing the yobs attacking the sculpture she had called the police. And then, when she saw me collapse, had called an ambulance as well.

Tom recognised the foursome only too well from other episodes in his pub besides the one involving Karl. He would have tried to detain them but when he saw me comatose on the path and Karl shouting that his leg was broken, he decided it was more important to attend to us.

Gillian opened her window and shouted to Tom that she had called the police and an ambulance.

This news galvanised the foursome, distracting them enough from nursing their various bruises to hightail it out of the garden and away up the road.

The rest is straightforward. The police arrived and learned from Karl, Tom and Gillian what had happened and who the perpetrators were. The ambulance arrived moments after the police and carted Karl and me to hospital. Karl phoned his mother while we were on the way. Mrs. W. took a taxi to the hospital. She was the first person I saw when I came to.

Gillian made sure everything was secure in my house and locked up. We have keys to each other’s house in case of emergency when one of us is away.

The foursome were rounded up by the police next day, appeared before the magistrates on charges of grievous bodily harm, trespass and destruction of property. They were bound over to keep the peace until their trial came to court two months later. They were found guilty, but because they had no previous convictions, and their snazzy lawyer, paid for by the local councillor father of one of them, argued they had been provoked by Karl attacking them and were only acting in self-defence, they received a telling-off by the magistrate, and were sentenced to twelve months’ probation and one hundred hours’ community service.