‘Looks like the frame needs work,’ he remarked casually.
‘One o’ these days,’ murmured Kez. ‘Was just a’sayin’ there’s things need to be done.’
‘Saying?’
‘To th’dawg.’
‘Intelligent dog.’
Driver tried to glance through the window, but the glass was so grimed that nothing but a blur could be seen beyond; a whitish blob that could have been a bed in the middle of the room.
Kez noticed the glance. Nothing was happening as it should. It was almost as bad as the time when they had to chase the scout and cut his throat in the woods. He had screamed and struggled. If they weren’t careful, this one might scream and struggle too. This one had to be reassured about the things he had seen through the window. But when he spoke, Keziah’s voice was strained.
‘Guess that’s Betsey,’ he croaked. ‘You don’t have to worry none ’bout Betsey.’
‘Betsey?’
The last pane of glass was broken. Kez had meant to fix it some time, but they never used the room, and Betsey wouldn’t mind. Driver peered through the hole.
In contrast to the bright sunlight outside, the room was in shadow; but this made the bed in the middle of the room so much more conspicuous. The coverings had once been white, except where great, dark stains were splashed. A thick film of grey dust covered everything, so at first it was not easy to make out what lay on the bed. It had a human form — if human can be taken to mean a mere structure of bones covered like a drum with parchment skin. Judging by the flowing hair the thing on the bed had once been a girclass="underline" but should any girl be holding her head in her hands? — especially when that head rested on her navel.
Slack-jawed, Driver turned from the window to find himself staring into the florid, shining face of Kez.
‘Said there’s things needin’ to be fixed,’ muttered Kez apologetically.
Driver’s scream was like a trapped animal. Kez was taken aback by it, knowing that he hadn’t even touched the man. Driver turned and ran. He had reached the porch before Kez had gathered his wits sufficiently to act.
Hearing the cry Adam leaped out from behind the shack. He did not wait for explanations, but seeing the stranger hurtling away, pounded after him. Kez followed.
Driver could not piece together the situation. At this time he did not want to. His one concern was to get away from the shack and everyone and everything in it as soon as he could. He kicked the hoe left lying in front of the porch, and lost valuable seconds as he paused to grab it up. It was a poor weapon, but better than bare hands. Then he heard shouts behind him as he fled towards the car.
His breath whistled painfully in his throat, his chest seemed clamped in a vice unable to admit more air; an ache spread from his calves to his ankles; his feet might have been encased in leaden boots, rising and falling as slowly as in a nightmare; and he knew that, even with the few yards advantage he had snatched, he could not reach the car. He turned at bay.
A wild giant with a chest-length beard that flared red bore down on him. This monster, with massive shoulders and a waist like an oak, brandished an axe that might have felled a sapling at a blow. The creature screeched furiously, and with the lunacy that survives in the numb corner of a terrified mind, Driver thought of a baby whose bottle has been taken away.
For a second Driver stared at death as he had done year’s before. Then, with a click, another man seemed to take over; a man used to finding a bayonet in his hands. Automatically he thrust the hoe at the exposed navel of the giant, who being no more than a man, bent double, winded. Adam fell forward, and the axe flew from his hands, skimming over the hard ground to come to rest a couple of yards away from the car.
Driver pounced upon it. When he straightened up, Kez was hardly more than an arm’s length away, staring incredulously. The axe whirled, and a head bounced along the ground. The body swayed; then as twin founts of blood spouted from the neck, Kez fell across his brother, who writhed and moaned in the dirt.
Driver dropped the axe, turned, and stumbled idiot-faced towards his car. Dull-eyed and openmouthed, relying on habit to pilot him, he fell into the driving seat and turned the ignition key. No-one stopped him as he drove away. The sound of the engine faded, and the white dust settled again.
For a while Adam lay still. The discomfort had passed, and he would have liked to sleep; but the ground was hard and gritty, there was a weight on his back, and some hot, sticky liquid had been poured over him. He stirred, then sat up.
His brother’s body rolled over. His brother’s head, still incredulous, stared at him. Adam stared back.
‘I guess that was your fault, Kez,’ he said at last. ‘Goin’ on ’bout them canned beans. If the Lord had meant beans fer eatin’ they’d walk on legs just like you’r me.’
He stood up and rubbed his bruised belly.
‘That’s what comes of questioning the Lord’s provisioning arrangements,’ he went on. ‘Looks like we’ll be eatin’ this winter, Kez, but you won’t be sharin.’
He put his hands under his brother’s shoulders, and began to drag the body towards the shack. ‘The Lord provides,’ he cried.
One of these days he would go back and pick up the head.
‘Praise the Lord!’
PERFECT LADY
by Robin Smyth
I DON’T KNOW WHETHER to jump. It’s a long way down. Long way from the roof to the ground. Twenty-one storeys. And at the bottom it’s all those concrete pillars. What a mess I’ll be in. Makes you go cold just to think about it. Still, without my Winnie, life’s going to be all hairshirts and sourberries and I’ll never get my Winnie back now. I saw them wheeling her out of the garden in her chair. Two big policemen. They looked ever so small from up here. Like shadows on the stone. They don’t realize what they’ve done to me those policemen, taking my Winnie away like this. I mean, what has my Winnie ever done to deserve such treatment? She’s a very nice girl. Perfect lady. Never nags. Just accepts her role in life as a servant to the male. It’s going to be terrible without her. No more cuddles on winter’s nights. No more kissing on the sofa. No more reclining on the rug listening to Beethoven together. I like Beethoven, I do. Winnie does too. Everything I like, Winnie likes. And that’s as it should be.
God, it is a long way down and there’s a cold wind blowing across the river from Fulham way. Suppose I did jump and the wind caught me and tossed me into the branches of that oak down there. I’d be impaled. That’d hurt. Perhaps it wouldn’t be right to jump. Not a man of my age. Thirty-six. So young. Be a crime against humanity. Poor, dear Winnie. I wonder what they’ll do to her. I bet that Lizzie Spring’s got something to do with it. I wouldn’t be surprised. She’s a funny woman that Lizzie Spring.
I loved her, Lizzie Spring. Long before I got Winnie of course. Long before. But I did love her. Yes, I did. From the moment I spotted her in the automatic laundry place down Lillie Road one January evening. I thought she was I the loveliest, most desirable creature I’d clapped eyes on since Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch.
She was blonde and doll-like and as feminine as a lace handkerchief and I wondered if I dared talk to her. I was going on thirty two at the time and though I wore rather thick-lensed glasses and had a slight limp due to childhood rickets and a lump on my neck which was not noticeable when I bad my coat collar turned up, I was quite handsome in a journalistic sort of way. Kind of a Scoop McCoy, Fleet Street special reporter type, if you get my meaning. I always parted my hair down the middle and I would brush it with Brylcreem till it shone and though my blue stripe suit was a wee bit threadbare about the elbows, it was nonetheless clean, as were my brown brogues and my shirt collar. One thing my mother always taught me… no matter how shabby your attire, if it was clean the world would respect you. Mind you, I never got much respect from the world. Not in general. If they’d thought I was rich… well… they wouldn’t have laughed at me like they did… but they didn’t think I was rich so they just kept on and on. Whispering.