Mrs Palissey, that Sunday, had the van. The Rover estate was standing in the yard where I’d left it when Gerard picked me up. Despite my protestations, when we returned at six he insisted on turning into the service road to save me walking the scant hundred yards from the end.
‘Don’t bother,’ I said.
‘No trouble.’
He drove along slowly, saying he’d be in touch with me the following day as we still had things to discuss, turning into the third yard on the left, at my direction.
Besides my car there was a medium-sized van in the yard, its rear doors wide open. I looked at it in vague surprise, as the two other shops who shared the yard with me were my immediate neighbour, a hairdresser, and next to that a dress shop, both of them firmly closed all day on Sundays.
My other immediate neighbour, served by the next yard, was a Chinese takeaway, open always; the van, I thought in explanation, must have driven into my yard in mistake for his.
Gerard slowed his car to a halt... and a man carrying a case of wine elbowed his way sideways out of the back door of my shop: the door I had left firmly bolted at two o’clock. I exclaimed furiously, opening the passenger door to scramble out.
‘Get back in,’ Gerard was saying urgently, but I hardly listened. ‘I’ll find a telephone for the police.’
‘Next yard,’ I said over my shoulder. ‘Sung Li. Ask him.’ I slammed the door behind me and fairly ran across to the intruding van, so angry that I didn’t give my own safety the slightest thought. Extremely foolish, as everyone pointed out to me continually during the next week, a view with which in retrospect I had to agree.
The man who had walked from my shop hadn’t seen me and had his head in the van, transferring the weight of the case from his arms to the floor, a posture whose mechanics I knew well.
I shoved him hard at the base of the spine to push him off balance forwards and slammed both of the van’s doors into his buttocks. He yelled out, swearing with shock and outrage, his voice muffled to all ears but mine. He couldn’t do much to tree himself: I’d got him pinned into the van by the doors, his legs protruding beneath, and I thought with fierce satisfaction that I could easily hold him there until Gerard returned.
I’d overlooked, unfortunately, that robbers could work in pairs. There was a colossal crunch against the small of my back which by thrusting me into the van doors did more damage still, I should imagine, to the man half in the van, and as I struggled to turn I saw a second, very similar man, carrying another case of wine with which he was trying to bore a hole straight through me, or so it felt.
The man half in half out of the van was practically screaming. The urgency of his message seemed to get through to his pal who suddenly removed the pressure from my back and dropped the case of wine at my feet. I had a flurried view of fuzzy black hair, a heavy black moustache and eyes that boded no good for anybody. His fist slammed into my jaw and shook bits I never knew could rattle, and I kicked him hard on the shin.
No one had ever taught me how to fight because I hadn’t wanted to learn. Fighting involved all the scary things like people trying to hurt you, where I considered the avoidance of being hurt a top priority. Fighting led to stamping about with guns, to people shooting at you round corners, to having to kill someone yourself. Fighting led to the Victoria Cross and the Distinguished Service Order, or so it had seemed to my child mind, and the bravery of my father and my grandfather had seemed not only unattainable but alien, as if they belonged to a different race.
The inexpert way I fought that Sunday afternoon had nothing to do with bravery but everything to do with rage. They had no bloody right, I thought breathlessly, to steal my property and they damned well shouldn’t, if I could stop them.
They had more to lose than I, I suppose. Liberty, for a start. Also I had undoubtedly damaged the first one rather severely around the pelvis, and as far as he was able he was looking for revenge.
It wasn’t so much a matter of straight hitting with fists: more of clutching and kicking and ramming against hard surfaces and using knees as blunt instruments. At about the instant I ran out of enthusiasm the second man succeeded finally in what I’d been half aware he was trying to do, and reached in through the driver’s door of the van, momentarily leaning forward in that same risky posture which I would have taken advantage of if I hadn’t had my hands full with robber number one. Too late I kicked free of him and went to go forward.
Number two straightened out of the front of the van, and the fight stopped right there. He was panting a little but triumphantly holding a short-barrelled shotgun which he nastily aimed at my chest.
‘Back off,’ he said to me grimly.
I backed.
All my feelings about guns returned in a rush. It was suddenly crystal clear that a few cases of wine weren’t worth dying for. I walked one step backwards and then another and then a third, which brought me up against the wall beside my rear door. The door tended to close if not propped open, and was at that point shut but on the latch. If I could go through it, I thought dimly, I’d be safe, and I also thought that if I tried to escape through it, I’d be shot.
At the very second it crossed my mind that the man with the gun didn’t know whether to shoot me or not, Gerard drove his car back into my yard. The man with the gun swung round towards him and loosed off one of the barrels and I yanked open my door and leaped to go through it. I knew the gun was turning back my way: I could see it in the side of my frantic vision. I knew also that having shot once he’d shoot again, that the moment of inhibition was past. At five paces he was so close that the full discharge would have blown a hole in an ox. I suppose I moved faster in that second than ever before in my life, and I was jumping sideways through the doorway like a streak when he pulled the trigger.
I fell over inside but not entirely from the impact of pellets: mainly because the passage was strewn with more cases of wine. The bits of shot that had actually landed felt like sharp stings in my arm: like hot stabs.
The door swung shut behind me. If I bolted it, I thought, I would be safe. I also thought of Gerard outside in his car, and along with these two thoughts I noticed blood running down my right hand. Oh, well... I wasn’t dead, was I? I struggled to my feet and opened the door enough to see what I’d be walking out to, and found that it wouldn’t be very much, as the two black-headed robbers were scrambling into their van with clear intentions of driving away.
I didn’t try to stop them. They rocketed past Gerard’s car and swerved into the service road, disappearing with the rear doors swinging open and three or four cases of wine showing within.
The windscreen of Gerard’s car was shattered. I went over there with rising dread and found him lying across both front seats, the top of one shoulder reddening and his teeth clenched with pain.
I opened the door beside the steering wheel. One says really such inadequate things at terrible times. I said, ‘I’m so sorry...’ knowing he’d come back to help me, knowing I shouldn’t have gone in there, shouldn’t have needed help.
Sung Li from next door came tearing round the corner on his feet, his broad face wide with anxiety.
‘Shots,’ he said. ‘I heard shots.’
Gerard said tautly, ‘I ducked. Saw the gun. I guess not totally fast enough,’ and he struggled into a sitting position, holding on to the wheel and shedding crazed crumbs of windscreen like snow. ‘The police are coming and you yourself are alive, I observe. It could fractionally have been worse.’
Sung Li, who spoke competent English, looked at Gerard as if he couldn’t believe his ears, and I laughed, transferring his bewilderment to myself.