‘They didn’t just give it back,’ I said. ‘They gave it back because I made them.’
‘You couldn’t...’
‘I told everyone I was going to. And I did.’
‘No. No. No.’
‘Yes.’ I said flatly.
Her expression slowly changed, and highly frightening it was too. I waited while it sank into her disorganised brain that if Byler sent his horses to Cranfield after all it was me alone she had to thank for it. I watched the intention to kill widen to embrace me too. The semi-cautious restraint in her manner towards me was transforming itself into a vicious glare of hate.
I swallowed. I said again, ‘If I hadn’t made the Stewards give Mr Cranfield’s licence back, he would still be warned off.’
Roberta said in horror, ‘No, Kelly. Don’t. Don’t do it.’
‘Shut up.’ I said. ‘Me or your father... which has more chance? And run, when you can.’
Grace wasn’t listening. Grace was grasping the essentials and deciding on a course of action.
There was a lot of white showing round her eyes.
‘I’ll kill you,’ she said. ‘I’ll kill you.’
I stood still. I waited. The seconds stretched like centuries.
‘Come here,’ she said. ‘Come here, or I’ll cut her throat.’
Chapter Fifteen
I took myself crutch by crutch towards her. When I was half way there Mrs Cranfield gave a moaning sigh and fainted, falling awkwardly on the rug and scattering the brass fire irons with a nerve-shattering crash.
Grace jumped. The knife snicked into Roberta’s skin and she cried out. I stood half unbalanced, freezing into immobility, trying to will Grace not to disintegrate into panic, not to go over the edge, not to lose the last tiny grip she had on her reason. She wasn’t far off stabbing everything in sight.
‘Sit still,’ I said to Roberta with dreadful urgency and she gave me a terrified look and did her best not to move. She was trembling violently. I had never thought I could pray. I prayed.
Grace was moving her head in sharp birdlike jerks. The knife was still against Roberta’s neck. Grace’s other hand still grasped Roberta’s shoulder. A thread of blood trickled down Roberta’s skin and was blotted up in a scarlet patch by her white jersey.
No one went to help Roberta’s mother. I didn’t even dare to look at her, because it meant turning my eyes away from Grace.
‘Come here,’ Grace said. ‘Come here.’
Her voice was husky, little more than a loud whisper. And although she was watching me come with unswerving murder in her eyes, I was inexpressibly thankful that she could still speak at all, still think, still hold a purpose.
During the last few steps I wondered how I was going to dodge, since I couldn’t jump, couldn’t bend my knees, and hadn’t even my hands free. A bit late to start worrying. I took the last step short so that she would have to move to reach me and at the same time eased my elbow out of the right-hand crutch.
She was almost too fast. She struck at me instantly, in a flashing thrust directed at my throat, and although I managed to twist the two inches needed to avoid it, the hissing knife came close enough, through the collar of my coat. I brought my right arm up and across, crashing crutch against her as she prepared to try again.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Roberta wrench herself out of Grace’s clutching grasp, and half stumble, half fall as she got away from the chair.
‘Kill you,’ Grace said. The words were distorted. The meaning clear. She had no thought of self defence. No thought at all, as far as I could see. Just one single burning obsessive intention.
I brought up the left-hand crutch like a pole to push her away. She dived round it and tried to plunge her knife through my ribs, and in throwing myself away from that I overbalanced and half fell down, and she was standing over me with her arm raised like a priest at a human sacrifice.
I dropped one crutch altogether. Useless warding off a knife with a bare hand. I tried to shove the other crutch round into her face, but got it tangled up against an armchair.
Grace brought her arm down. I fell right to the floor as soon as I saw her move and the knife followed me harmlessly, all the impetus gone by the time it reached me. Another tear in my coat.
She came down on her knees beside me, her arm going up again.
From nowhere my lost crutch whistled through the air and smashed into the hand which held the knife. Grace hissed like a snake and dropped it, and it fell point down on to my plaster. She twisted round to see who had hit her and spread out her hands towards the crutch that Roberta was aiming at her again.
She caught hold of it and tugged. I wriggled round on the floor, stretched until I had my fingers round the handle of the knife, and threw it as hard as I could towards the open door into the hall.
Grace was too much for Roberta. Too much for me. She was appallingly, insanely, strong. I heaved myself up on to my left knee and clasped my arms tight round her chest from behind, trying to pin her arms down to her sides. She shook me around like a sack of feathers, struggling to get to her feet.
She managed it, lifting me with her, plaster and all. She knew where I’d thrown the knife. She started to go that way, dragging me with her still fastened to her back like a leech.
‘Get that knife and run to the stables,’ I gasped to Roberta. A girl in a million. She simply ran and picked up the knife and went on running, out into the hall and out of the house.
Grace started yelling unintelligibly and began trying to unclamp the fingers I had laced together over her thin breastbone. I hung on for everyone’s dear life, and when she couldn’t dislodge them she began pinching wherever she could reach with fierce hurting spite.
The hair which she usually wore screwed into a fold up the back of her neck had come undone and was falling into my face. I could see less and less of what was going on. I knew only that she was still headed towards the doorway, still unimaginably violent, and mumbling now in a continuous flow of senseless words interspersed with sudden shrieks.
She reached the doorway and started trying to get free of me by crashing me against the jamb. She had a hard job of it, but she managed it in the end, and when she felt my weight fall off her she turned in a flash, sticking out her hands with rigid fingers towards my neck.
Her face was a dark congested crimson. Her eyes were stretched wide in a stark screaming stare. Her lips were drawn back in a tight line from her teeth.
I had never in all my life seen anything so terrifying. Hadn’t imagined a human could look like that, had never visualised homicidal madness.
She would certainly have lolled me if it hadn’t been for Tony, because her strength made a joke of mine. He came tearing into the hall from the kitchen and brought her down with a rugger tackle about the knees, and I fell too, on top of her, because she was trying to tear my throat out in handfuls, and she didn’t leave go.
It took all Tony could do, all Archie could do, all three other lads could do to unlatch her from me and hold her down on the floor. They sat on her arms and legs and chest and head, and she threshed about convulsively underneath them.
Roberta had tears streaming down her face and I hadn’t any breath left to tell her to cheer up, there was no more danger, no more... no more... I leant weakly against the wall and thought it would be too damned silly to pass out now. Took three deep breaths instead. Everything steadied again, reluctantly.
Tony said, ‘There’s a doctor on his way. Don’t think he’s expecting this, though.’
‘He’ll know what to do.’
‘Mother!’ Exclaimed Roberta suddenly. ‘I’d forgotten about her.’ She hurried past me into the drawing-room and I heard her mother’s voice rising in a disturbed, disorientated question.