‘Jesus!’ he swore under his breath. He could sense how Grimsby had suddenly become tense, backing away. "What the hell are they doing in there?’
The whole building seemed to be tearing itself apart. A loud creaking and rending as though in agony was followed by two cracks like rifle-fire; then a heavy tumbling of bricks, dust and debris as the upper part of the rear wall collapsed.
Recoiling in the darkness, Bob managed to release the Alsatian before a fresh shower of mortar and masonry enveloped him, smashing against his head and face and sending him reeling back. The hard dust was in his eyes, in his nostrils, choking him as he fumbled with his personal radio in a desperate attempt to call the office for help.
‘Jimmy, the whole fuckin’ building’s cornin’ down on top o’ me!’ He coughed and spluttered and spat, gasping for clean air but succeeding only in gulping in more of the filthy dust. ‘Jimmy, for God’s sake, get somebody here quick!’
An ear-piercing, unnatural keening split the air, a heart-rending sound which he knew could only be Grimsby, though he’d never heard such a banshee racket from him before, not from his dog.
‘Grimsby!’ he yelled, struggling in the blackness to get to his feet again, puzzled that his legs were now entangled in loops of sharp wire which dug into him. ‘Grimsby — here, boy!’
He almost made it, almost managed to push himself up on to one knee; then his precarious balance was lost and he fell painfully back, hitting his head. One more yelp from Grimsby; one only, and then nothing. Oh shit, if only he could seel
He lay there, winded, flat on his back, his whole body aching. The wound on the back of his head throbbed violently when he touched it. His fingers were sticky with blood. Cautiously he tried to sit up but his ribs gave him hell, one twinge of pure, searing pain after another. Yet he had to move somehow, hadn’t he, before the rest of the wall came down on him?
Directly above, where the darkness was less intense, he could pick out a few stars. He’d known about stars on the trawlers. Watching over him, he’d sometimes thought. Idiot idea.
But something was blotting them out, a pale, long shape like a bare arm with the fist clenched, undulating, slowly curving down towards him… A cold, treacly liquid was splashing on to his face, over his mouth and nose, and instinctively he turned his head away. In the next second came a slow, agonising suction on his neck till his skin burst, leaving a raw open wound. He was screaming, he realised that, screaming and struggling; but it all merged with a dancing, whirlwind dizziness and pinpricks of light before his eyes in a million colours. Disconnected thoughts and memories jumbled together until all consciousness was sucked down into a dank, dark tunnel through stinking rocks to the place where ice-cold Arctic waves were waiting to receive him. He heard Jake’s laugh down there, fuckin’ oP Grimsby Jake half-seas-over, and his voice intoning the hated words: ‘.. commit his body to the deep to be turned into corruption… into corruption.. commit his body to the deep to be turned… and turned.. and turned…’
That morning Guy was already up by six o’clock. He collected his tilings together in the half-darkness and retreated to Dorothea’s Hollywood-style bathroom to shave, wash and dress. Needing a clean shirt, he went back into the bedroom and opened his end of the wardrobe as quietly as the sliding door permitted, but Dorothea heard him just the same. From the heaped-up duvet came her muffled voice furiously informing him that he must be mad getting up in the middle of the night, he wasn’t in the Army now, and must he be so bloody noisy about it?
‘Sorry, love,’ he answered cheerfully, found a shirt and returned to the bathroom. She’d never been an early-morning person; in the Army he’d always left quarters long before she was awake.
Except perhaps in Cyprus. Things had been different there.
When he was ready he went quietly through the bedroom again to replace his slippers under the bed, return his electric razor to the top shelf of the wardrobe and take a clean handkerchief from the drawer.
Til not bother to come up again, Doro-Iove,’ he said gently, bending down to kiss her tousled head, the only part of her which was visible. ‘Leaving earlier this morning. Sorry I woke you.’
‘Oh, go to hell!’ came her reply from under the duvet. He grinned. That sounded more like her.
But sitting in the kitchen over coffee and toast — he always made himself toast for breakfast — he wondered again what was going wrong between them. Whatever it was, it had been happening for a long time now. Of course life in the Army hadn’t suited her, not as an officer’s wife. That was one thing. She’d trodden on a lot of corns — often deliberately, he suspected. She had a tongue like a sting-ray and a sharp eye for other people’s weaknesses. It was what had attracted him to her in the first place, that and the fact that she didn’t give a damn about anybody, however high-ranking. She was her own woman, was Dorothea.
And she could be bloody funny. At times she’d had the whole mess rolling about the floor.
In Cyprus, at the beginning, their love affair had seemed like a hurricane — even to her, he remembered. One night, lying back exhausted on the bed, both of them bathed in sweat, she’d suddenly blurted out: ‘Christ, and this is only Act One!’ For months afterwards it had been a private joke between them which she repeated at the most inopportune moments, such as the time they were taking sherry with a visiting Anglican bishop and his wife.
‘You’ve got a touch of Cyprus fever, that’s ail!’ the adjutant had dismissed it, laughing at him. ‘For God’s sake, take sick leave, take her to bed, and don’t get up till you’ve worked it out of your system.’
But he never did — work it out of his system, that is. As for her, he couldn’t be sure.
Though if he’d wanted to be sure of everything in life he would never have married her in the first place, a girl he’d known only three or four weeks, who’d gone to Cyprus on a package holiday with her boy friend, only to walk out on him after a quarrel in a late-night bar. They’d all thought Guy was mad, everyone in the mess. ‘Lay her an’ leave her!’ they’d unanimously advised him. But it was the madness that had appealed to him, that great feeling of kicking free. And it was that which was missing now, perhaps — for both of them.
‘Daddy?’ Kath was in her dressing gown, her long dark hair in a tangle around her face. ‘Can I have some coffee? Please?’
‘Couldn’t you sleep?’
He poured an inch of the strong black coffee into a breakfast cup and quickly warmed up some milk to add to it.
‘I’ve been awake for ages, she said. ‘I was thinking. These scars on your face really don’t make you look all that different.’
‘Who said they did?’ He turned off the gas and carefully poured the milk into the cup.
‘Susi. She saw the photo I’ve got in my room, the one from last year. Her father doesn’t have any scars.’
‘Oh?’
‘But he doesn’t live with them in their flat either, so that makes us even,’ she commented inconsequentially as she slotted a music cassette into her tape recorder and switched it on. ‘We’re going to do an evening of dance.’ ‘At the ballet school?’
‘Yeah. I’ve got to do a pas de deux with Susi, just the two of us. This is our music. She’s good. She’s the best.’ Guy glanced at the clock and saw it was already twenty to seven. He’d promised Mary Armstrong he’d be punctual at the workshop. Seven sharp, she’d said.