Chapter 15

The Gunner came awake slowly, yawned and stretched his arms. For a moment he stared blankly around him, wondering where he was and then he remembered.

It was quiet there in the comfortable old living-room—so quiet that he could hear the clock ticking and the soft patter of the rain as it drifted against the window.

The blanket with which Jenny Crowther had covered him had slipped down to his knees. He touched it gently for a moment, a smile on his mouth, then got to his feet and stretched again. The fire was almost out. He dropped to one knee, raked the ashes away and added a little of the kindling he found in the coal scuttle. He waited until the flames were dancing and then went into the kitchen.

He filled the kettle, lit the gas stove and helped himself to a cigarette from a packet he found on the table. He went to the window and peered out into the rain-swept yard and behind him, Jenny Crowther said, “Never stops, does it?”

She wore an old bathrobe and the black hair hung straight on either side of a face that was clear and shining and without a line.

“No need to ask you if you slept well,” he said. “You look as if they’ve just turned you out at the mint.”

She smiled right down to her toes and crossed to the window, yawning slightly. “As a matter of fact I slept better than I have done for weeks. I can’t understand it.”

“That’s because I was here, darlin’,” he quipped. “Guarding the door like some faithful old hound.”

“There could be something in that,” she said soberly.

There was an awkward pause. It was as if neither of them could think of the right thing to say next, as if out of some inner knowledge they both knew that they had walked a little further towards the edge of some quiet place where anything might happen.

She swilled out the teapot and reached for the caddy and the Gunner chuckled. “Sunday morning—used to be my favourite day of the week. You could smell the bacon frying all the way up to the bedroom.”

“Who was doing the cooking?”

“My Aunt Mary of course.” He tried to look hurt. “What kind of a bloke do you think I am? The sort that keeps stray birds around the place?”

“I’m glad you put that in the plural. Very honest of you.”

On impulse, he moved in behind her and slid his arms about her waist, pulling her softness against him, aware from the feel of her that beneath the bathrobe she very probably had nothing on.

“Two and a half bleeding years in the nick. I’ve forgotten what it’s like.”

“Well, you needn’t think you’re going to take it out on me.”

She turned to glance over her shoulder, smiling and then the smile faded and she turned completely, putting a hand up to his face.

“Oh, Gunner, you’re a daft devil, aren’t you?”

His hands cupped her rear lightly and he dropped his head until his forehead rested against hers. For some reason he felt like crying, all choked up so that he couldn’t speak, just like being a kid again, uncertain in a cold world.

“Don’t rub it in, lass.”

She tilted his chin and kissed him very gently on the mouth. He pushed her away firmly and held her off, a hand on each shoulder. What he said next surprised even himself.

“None of that now. You don’t want to be mixed up with a bloke like me. Nothing but a load of trouble. I’ll have a cup of tea and something to eat and then I’ll be off. You and the old girl had better forget you ever saw me.”

“Why don’t you shut up?” she said. “Go and sit down by the fire and I’ll bring the tea in.”

He sat in the easy chair and watched her arrange the tray with a woman’s instinctive neatness and pour tea into two cups. “What about the old girl?”

“She’ll be hard on till noon,” Jenny said. “Needs plenty of rest at her age.”

He sat there drinking his tea, staring into the fire and she said softly, “What would you do then if this was an ordinary Sunday?”

“In the nick?” He chuckled grimly. “Oh, you get quite a choice. You can go to the services in the prison chapel morning and evening—plenty of the lads do that, just to get out of their cells. Otherwise you’re locked in all day.”

“What do you do?”

“Read, think. If you’re in a cell with someone else you can always play chess, things like that. If you’re at the right stage in your sentence they let you out on to the landing for an hour or so in the evening to play table tennis or watch television.”

She shook her head. “What a waste.”

He grinned and said with a return to his old flippancy, “Oh, I don’t know. What would I be doing Sundays on the outside? Spend the morning in the kip. Get up for three or four pints at the local and back in time for roast beef, Yorkshire pud and two veg. I’d have a snooze after that, work me way through the papers in the afternoon and watch the telly in the evening. What a bloody bore.”

“Depends who you’re doing it with,” she suggested.

“You’ve got a point there. Could put an entirely different complexion on the morning in the kip for a start.”

She put down her cup and leaned forward. “Why not go back, Gunner? There’s nowhere to run to. The longer you leave it, the worse it will be.”

“I could lose all my remission,” he said. “That would mean another two and a half years.”

“Are you certain you’d lose all of it?”

“I don’t know. You have to take your chance on that sort of thing.” He grinned. “Could have been back now if things had turned out differently last night.”

“What do you mean?” He told her about Doreen and what had happened at her flat. When he finished, Jenny shook her head. “What am I going to do with you?”

“I could make a suggestion. Two and a half years is a hell of a long time.”

She examined him critically and frowned. “You know I hadn’t realised it before, but you could do with a damned good scrub. You’ll find a bathroom at the head of the stairs and there’s plenty of hot water. Go on. I’ll make you some breakfast while you’re in the tub.”

“All right then, all right,” he said good-humouredly as she pulled him to his feet and pushed him through the door.

But he wasn’t smiling when he went upstairs and locked himself in the bathroom. Two and a half years. The thought of it sent a wave of coldness through him, of sudden, abject despair. If only that stupid screw hadn’t decided to sneak off to the canteen. If only he hadn’t tried to touch up the staff nurse. But that was the trouble with life, wasn’t it? Just one big series of ifs.

He was just finishing dressing when she knocked on the door and said softly, “Come into my room when you’ve finished, Gunner—it’s the next door. I’ve got some clean clothes for you.”

When he went into her room she was standing at the end of the bed bending over a suit which she had laid out. “My father’s,” she said. “Just about the right fit I should say.”

“I can’t take that, darlin’,” the Gunner told her. “If the coppers catch me in gear like that they’ll want to know where it came from.”

She stared at him, wide-eyed. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“If I go back it’s got to be just the way I looked when I turned up here last night otherwise they’ll want to know where I’ve been and who’s been helping me.”

The room was strangely familiar and he looked around him and grinned. “You want to get a curtain for that window, darlin’. When I was in the loft last night I could see right in. Quite a view. One I’m not likely to forget in a hurry.” He sighed and said in a whisper, “I wonder how many times I’ll think of that during the next two and a half years.”

“Look at me, Gunner,” she said softly.

When he turned she was standing at the end of the bed. She was quite naked, her bathrobe on the floor at her feet. The Gunner was turned to stone. She was so lovely it hurt. She just stood there looking at him calmly, waiting for him to make a move, the hair like a dark curtain sweeping down until it gently brushed against the tips of the firm breasts.

He went towards her slowly, reaching out to touch like a blind man. Her perfume filled his nostrils and a kind of hoarse sob welled up in his throat.

He held her tightly in his arms, his head buried against her shoulder and she smoothed his hair and kissed him gently as a mother might a child. “It’s all right, Gunner. Everything’s going to be all right.”

Gunner Doyle, the great lover. He was like some kid presented with the real thing for the first time. His hands were shaking so much that she had to unbutton his shirt and trousers for him. But afterwards it was fine, better than he had ever known it before. He melted into her flesh as she pulled him close and carried him away into warm, aching darkness.

Afterwards—a long time afterwards, or so it seemed—the telephone started to ring. “I’d better see who it is.” She slipped from beneath the sheets, and reached for her bathrobe.

The door closed softly behind her and the Gunner got up and started to dress. He was fastening his belt when the door opened again and she stood there staring at him looking white and for the first time since he had known her, frightened.

He took her by the shoulders. “What’s up?”

“It was a man,” she said in a strained voice. “A man on the phone. He said to tell you to get out fast. That the police would be here any time.”

“Jesus,” he said. “Who was it?”

“I don’t know,” she said and cracked suddenly. “Oh, Gunner, what are we going to do?”

“You stay put, darlin’, and carry on as normal,” he said, going to the bed and pulling on the boots she had given him. “I’m the only one who has to do anything.”

He yanked the sweater over his head and she grabbed his arm. “Give yourself up, Gunner.”

“First things first, darlin’. I’ve got to get out of here and so far away that the coppers don’t have a hope of connecting me with you and the old girl.”

She looked up into his face for a moment then turned to the dressing-table and opened her handbag. She took out a handful of loose coins and three pound notes.

When she held the money out to him he tried to protest, but she shook her head. “Better take it, just in case you decide to keep on running. I’m not holding you to anything.” She went to the wardrobe and produced an old single-breasted raincoat. “And this. It was my father’s. No use to him now.”

Suddenly she was the tough Yorkshire lass again, rough, competent, completely unsentimental. “Now you’d better get out of here.”

He pulled on the coat and she led the way into the passageway. The Gunner started towards the stairs and she jerked his sleeve. “I’ve got a better way.”

He followed her up another flight of stairs, passing several doors which obviously led to upper rooms. At the top, they were confronted by a heavier door bolted on the inside and protected by a sheet of iron against burglars.

She eased back the bolts and the door swung open in the wind giving him a view of a flat roof between two high gables. There was a rail at one end and on the other side of it the roof sloped to the yard below.

“If you scramble over the gable end,” she said, pointing to the left, “you can slide down the other side to the flat roof of a metalworks next door. Nothing to it for you—I’ve done it myself when I was a kid. You’ll find a fire escape that’ll take you all the way down into the next alley.”

He stared at her dumbly, rain blowing in through the open doorway, unable to think of anything to say. She gave him a sudden fierce push that sent him out into the open.

“Go on—get moving, you bloody fool,” she said and slammed the door.

He had never felt so utterly desolate, so completely cut-off from everything in his life. It was as if he had left everything worth having back there behind that iron door and there was nothing he could do about it. Not a damned thing.

He followed her instructions to the letter and a minute or so later hurried along the alley on the far side and turned into the street at the end.

He kept on walking in a kind of daze, his mind elsewhere, turning from one street into the other in the heavy rain. About ten minutes later he found himself on the edge of Jubilee Park. He went in through a corner entrance, past the enigmatic statue of good Queen Victoria, orb in one hand and sceptre in the other, and walked aimlessly into the heart of the park.

He didn’t see a living soul which was hardly surprising considering the weather. Finally he came to an old folks’ pavilion, the kind of place where pensioners congregated on calmer days to gossip and play dominos. The door was locked, but a bench beside it was partially sheltered from the rain by an overhanging roof. He slumped down, hands thrust deep into the pockets of the old raincoat and stared into the grey curtain. He was alone in a dead world. Completely and finally alone.