‘Where to?’
‘I don’t really know,’ I said despairingly. ‘I’m in a telephone box on a country road miles from anywhere. The telephone exchange is Hampden Row.’ I spelled it out for her. ‘I don’t think it’s very far from London, and somewhere on the West, probably.’
‘You can’t come back on your own?’ she asked.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ve no money and my clothes are wet.’
‘Oh.’ A pause. ‘All right, then. I’ll find out where you are and come in a taxi. Anything else?’
‘Bring a sweater,’ I said. ‘I’m cold. And some dry socks, if you have any. And some gloves. Don’t forget the gloves. And a pair of scissors.’
‘Sweater, socks, gloves, scissors. O.K. You’ll have to wait while I get dressed again, but I’ll come as soon as I can. Stay by the telephone box.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘I’ll hurry, don’t worry,’ she said. ‘Good-bye.’
‘Good-bye...’ I fumbled the receiver back on to its rest. However quick she was, she wouldn’t arrive for an hour. Well, what was one more hour after so many? I had had no idea it was so late: the evening had certainly seemed to me to be going on for an eternity, but I had lost all sense of actual time. And Kemp-Lore hadn’t come back. His show had been over for hours, and he hadn’t come back. The bloody, murdering bastard, I thought.
I sat down on the floor of the box and leaned gingerly against the wall beside the telephone, with my head resting on the coin box. Exercise and the bitter wind outside, inactivity and shelter inside; one looked as cold a prospect as the other. But I was too tired to walk any more if I didn’t have to, so the choice was easy.
I put my hands up to my face and one by one bit my fingers. They were icy cold and yellowish white, and none of them had any feeling. They would curl and uncurl, but slowly and weakly, and that was all. I got to work on them seriously then, rubbing them up and down against my legs, bumping them on my knees, forcing them open and shut, but it seemed to make little difference. I persevered from fear that they should get worse if I didn’t, and paid for it in various creaks from my sore and sorely misused shoulders.
There was a good deal to think about to take my mind off my woes. That sticking-plaster for instance. Why had he used it? The strip over my mouth, I had assumed, had been to stop me shouting for help; but when I got it off at last and shouted, there was no one to hear. No one could have heard however loud I yelled, because the stable was so far from the lane.
The strip over my eyes should have been to prevent my seeing where I was going, but why did it matter if I saw an empty yard and a deserted tack-room? What would have happened differently, I wondered, if I had been able to see and talk.
To see... I would have seen Kemp-Lore’s expression while he went about putting me out of action. I would have seen Kemp-Lore... that was it! It was himself he had not wanted me to see, not the place.
If that were so it was conceivable that he had prevented me from talking simply so that he should not be trapped into answering. He had spoken only once, and that in a low, unrecognisable tone. I became convinced that he had not wanted me to hear and recognise his voice.
In that case he must have believed I did not know who had abducted me, that I didn’t know who he was. He must still believe it. Which meant that he thought James had knocked Turniptop’s doped sugar out of his hand by accident, that he hadn’t heard about Tick-Tock and me going round all the stables, and that he didn’t know that I had been asking about the Jaguar. It gave me, I thought, a fractional advantage for the future. If he had left any tracks anywhere, he would not see any vital, immediate need to obliterate them. If he didn’t know he was due for destruction himself, he would not be excessively on his guard.
Looking at my bloodless hands and knowing that on top of everything else I still had to face the pain of their return to life, I was aware that all the civilised brakes were off in my conscience. Helping to build up what he had broken was not enough. He himself had hammered into me the inner implacability I had lacked to avenge myself and all the others thoroughly, and do it physically and finally and without compunction.
She came, in the end.
I heard a car draw up and a door slam, and her quick tread on the road. The door of the telephone box opened, letting in an icy blast, and there she was, dressed in trousers and woolly boots and a warm blue padded jacket, with the light falling on her dark hair and making hollows of her eyes.
I was infinitely glad to see her. I looked up at her and did my best at a big smile of welcome, but it didn’t come off very well. I was shivering too much.
She knelt down and took a closer look at me. Her face went stiff with shock.
‘Your hands,’ she said.
‘Yes. Did you bring the scissors?’
Without a word she opened her handbag, took out a sensible-sized pair, and cut me free. She did it gently. She took the harness hook from between my knees and laid it on the floor, and carefully peeled from my wrists the cut pieces of rope. They were all more brown than white, stained with blood, and where they had been there were big corrugated raw patches, dark and deep. She stared at them.
‘More bits of rope down there,’ I said, nodding towards my feet.
She cut the pieces round my ankles, and I saw her rubbing my trouser leg between her fingers. The air had been too cold to dry them and my body had not generated enough heat, so they were still very damp.
‘Been swimming?’ she said flippantly. Her voice cracked.
There was a step on the road outside and a man’s shape loomed up behind Joanna.
‘Are you all right, miss?’ he said in a reliable sounding Cockney voice.
‘Yes, thank you,’ she said. ‘Do you think you could help me get my cousin into the taxi?’
He stepped into the doorway and looked down at me, his eyes on my wrists and my hands.
‘Christ,’ he said.
‘Very aptly put,’ I said.
He looked at my face. He was a big sturdy man of about fifty, weather-beaten like a sailor, with eyes that looked as if they had seen everything and found most of it disappointing.
‘You’ve been done proper, haven’t you?’ he said.
‘Proper,’ I agreed.
He smiled faintly. ‘Come on then. No sense in hanging about here.’
I stood up clumsily and lurched against Joanna, and put my arms round her neck to save myself from falling; and as I was there it seemed a shame to miss the opportunity, so I kissed her. On the eyebrow, as it happened.
‘Did you say “cousin”?’ said the taxi driver.
‘Cousin,’ said Joanna firmly. Much too firmly.
The driver held the door open. ‘We’d better take him to a doctor,’ he said.
‘No,’ I said. ‘No doctor.’
Joanna said, ‘You need one.’
‘No.’
‘That’s frostbite,’ said the driver pointing to my hands.
‘No,’ I said. ‘It isn’t freezing. No ice on the puddles. Just cold. Not frostbite.’ My teeth were chattering and I could only speak in short sentences.
‘What happened to your back?’ asked the driver, looking at the tattered bits of shirt sticking to me.
‘I... fell over,’ I said. ‘On some gravel.’
He looked sceptical.
‘It’s a terrible mess, and there’s a lot of dirt in it,’ said Joanna, peering round me and sounding worried.
‘You wash it,’ I said. ‘At home.’
‘You need a doctor,’ said the driver again.
I shook my head. ‘I need Dettol, aspirins and sleep.’
‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ said Joanna. ‘What else?’
‘Sweater,’ I said.
‘It’s in the taxi,’ she said. ‘And some other clothes. You can change as we go along. The sooner you get into a hot bath the better.’