by Rosie Thomas
She stood up, awkward and stiff, and wandered into the kitchen. There were no tins left in the store-cupboard, she had never been a stockpiler. She would have to go shopping. The thought brought anxiety flicking in its wake, anxiety that intensified to the point where it caught at her breath. She was frightened to go out: recognition of it made nothing easier, only bringing further awareness of what she had done to Simon.
‘Is this what it was like?’ she said aloud. ‘Was it?’
Only Harriet knew that she wasn’t afraid of the reporters, if any of them had bothered to linger, or any of the physical manifestations of the world outside the front door. She was afraid of nothing more than the emptiness, the inaction after so many years of occupation. She could keep it at bay by denying the outside, but it also lurked inside with her, expressionless in the neutral walls, implicit in the bare cupboards, eloquent in the absence of a life in the elegant decor.
She had never felt more impotent or more hopeless.
‘I wish I could talk to you,’ she told Simon.
Even the one-way conversation began to seem impertinent and irrelevant. Simon was gone. He had never told her again that he wished she really were his daughter.
With relief Harriet saw that it was getting dark outside. There seemed no sign of spring. The day’s brief sunshine had been wintry, and now it had been extinguished by the evening’s cold. Harriet shivered. Her blood was still thin after the prodigal warmth of the Coast. She told herself that it was perfectly in order now to draw the curtains on the greenish twilight, to turn up the heating and watch television.
She took a jar of Marmite out of the cupboard and spread it on the last crackers. She made tea, pouring the water on to a tea-bag in the bottom of a mug that had earlier held coffee. She discarded the tea-bag in the sink, but then she had a sudden clear vision of the throat-blocking flotsam in the bottom of Simon’s sink. She snatched up a teaspoon and prodded the brown lump down the plughole. Then she turned the stopper of the waste-unit and listened to the mechanism grinding the scrap of mess away.
Harriet decided. Later, when it was completely dark, after News at Ten perhaps, that would be the best time, she would go out and do some shopping. She would walk down the hill, to the late-night supermarket in Belsize Park. It stayed open until midnight, and there was rarely anyone in the narrow aisles in the last hour. Harriet remembered it very well; the shop was just round the corner from the dingy flat she had borrowed when she was struggling with the beginnings of Peacocks. She used to rush in and buy ready-made meals out of the freezer, scooping up whatever there was without wasting time on deliberation. She had been too busy to shop, too busy to cook. A long time ago, although she had been too busy ever since. Until now.
Well, then. She would walk down the hill and stock up. She would lay in plenty of supplies, it was a good opportunity. Tins, and packets of dry goods that would keep, that was what she needed. There was no point in dashing out every five minutes, after all. It was much better to have whatever was necessary right to hand, in the kitchen cupboards.
Harriet nodded in her relief. She would watch the early-evening soaps, because she was already beginning to feel that she knew who was who, and after all why not? Then there was a play she wanted to see, and the News afterwards. After that she would have a walk, one of the calming, invisible night-walks that had soothed her in the past, and she would take a route that curved backwards, towards home once more, past the late-night shop.
It would be good to get out for some fresh air. It was how many days since she had come home from Peacocks?
Harriet carried her Marmite crackers and tea through to the sitting room. She sat down in one corner of the sofa, shoring up the space around her with cushions. She ate her way through the small meal without tasting it, her eyes remaining fixed on the television screen. She watched the soaps and a game show, the play and then the news bulletin in which the stories from the Lebanon and China and the Princess Diana end-piece seemed to come from worlds equally remote.
At half past ten she stood up, stiffly, with pins and needles prickling her feet. She spent a long time searching for a scarf to go under her coat, and a red beret that she had not worn for years but was suddenly convinced was the only thing that would keep her ears warm. Then she found her purse and put it in her shoulder bag, and made a meticulous round of the doors and windows, checking the locks and bolts.
It was almost eleven o’clock when she let herself out of the front door.
She hesitated on the top step, peering into the night murk, but there was only the sound of distant traffic on the hill and music from a neighbouring window. There was no one watching or waiting any longer, of course, as her rational self had always known. She would have a walk, do her shopping, and come back home again. When she reached the gate Harriet was thinking, tomorrow I’ll go into Peacocks. I’ll pack up my office, talk to Graham, have a cup of coffee with Karen. Tomorrow afternoon. Or perhaps in the morning the day after tomorrow.
She began to walk. Recollections of other night-time expeditions came back to her. It had been a habit of hers for a long time now, to walk off her anxieties in the darkness. She had walked the dormant streets around Sunderland Avenue when Simon had died, and she had felt his fear pursuing her, just as she felt it gathering tonight in the corners and pressing itself against the window-panes of her rooms. Her steps quickened. The steep incline of the hill drew her on, faster, towards the traffic and away from the hedged residential streets. She couldn’t submit to the fear. She would go to Peacocks tomorrow, she would open her curtains wide.
Harriet’s arms swung with the rhythm of her steps.
She crossed the main road and her unplanned route led her through a housing estate where blue television lights showed in uncurtained windows, and music crackled in defiant bursts over brick balconies. Big, uncollared dogs sniffed in torn black plastic sacks that spilled their greasy contents between the dustbins. Harriet hurried past the daubs of slogans on the corners of the blocks and emerged again under the orange pall of street lights. A little further on she came to the place where she had run with Linda on the happy afternoon before they met Caspar for their hamburger dinner. It was almost a year since she had come home with Robin and found Linda hiding in the hedge.
Harriet walked further, down gritty roads, thinking about Linda. In a few days’ time she would be back in England for the summer term.
Linda would not sympathise with closed curtains and locked doors, unanswered telephone messages.
Came on, Harriet. Shape up. Harriet even smiled at the heartiness of her self-admonition. There was no point in hiding with her defeat. She shouldn’t allow Robin that satisfaction. It was time to turn back, if she was to reach the shop before midnight.
It was a quarter to twelve when she pushed the door open. The tired shopkeeper in a blue coat nodded at her from behind his till, recognising her from her Belsize Park days. Harriet moved up and down the cramped aisles, dropping packets and jars into her basket. She was aware of the shopkeeper drawing down steel shutters while he waited for her, preparing to close up for the night.
She took her loaded basket to the till. She stared at the tins of Campbells soup and jars of pâté as they were checked through, wondering a little at why she was buying all this stuff. The total, when the shopkeeper rang it up, seemed huge. Pâté de campagne in little glass jars bought in shops that stayed open until midnight was always expensive, Harriet reminded herself. She opened her purse. There was plenty of money. More money than she could imagine what to do with. Harriet was grinning a little too widely. She saw the shop man looking sideways at her as he piled her purchases into two brown bags. Harriet dropped some notes on to the counter and he pushed two of them back at her.
‘Plenty, plenty,’ he muttered.
‘Thank you very much. Good-night,’ Harriet said in a friendly voice. The man followed her to the door of the shop and closed it behind her with evident relief. He pulled a blind down to cover the glass and Harriet heard the l
ocks clicking. She hoisted her brown bags in her arms and walked again.
The underpass led beneath the main road. In daylight Harriet always took it because the main road overhead was busy. Late at night there were fewer cars, but a fast-moving line of them must have swept by when she reached the kerbside, with the mouth of the tunnel at her left hand. She was thinking with relief that her shopping was done and looking forward to being back in the sanctuary of her home. Her mind was occupied, fixed on getting back as quickly as she could, away from people and cars and streetlights. Harriet didn’t think any further. She began to descend the familiar steps, her bags held tight against her chest.
She didn’t glance at the slashes of graffiti or the drifts of rubbish against the grimed walls. She saw the legs of the two men as soon as they appeared, coming down the steps to meet her at the opposite end of the tunnel. She walked on, not altering her pace, all her longing focussed on home.
Under the abrasive light she saw that they were young, white, thin-legged with shoulders broadened out of proportion by leather jackets. Their faces bore the same expression. Knowing she shouldn’t meet their eyes she turned her head sideways to the threat-daubed walls. When they were two yards in front of her they stopped, blocking her path, as she had known from the first glimpse they would do. She tried to walk on, intending to push past them. One of them grabbed her arm.
‘Give us your bag.’
It hung over her shoulder from a broad leather strap. Encumbered by her bags of shopping Harriet tried to pin it against her side with one elbow.
‘Mind out of my way, please.’ Her voice sounded thin, ridiculously over-modulated.
The grip on her arm tightened. ‘Give us – your – fucking bag!’
Very clearly, Harriet saw the studs in the leather, a rag knotted round one neck, chains round the other. She said, ‘No.’ She tried to hold her handbag more tightly to her side.
‘What’s in it?’ one of them jeered.
The other tore the strap off her shoulder. ‘Give it here. Bitch.’
A picture came back to Harriet. She had been walking across the park on a hot evening on her way to meet Robin, her head full of her own business. She had seen a little crowd gathered round an old woman who had been attacked or mugged. She could see the woman’s face, as vividly as if she stood in front of her now. Fear and bewilderment. It had been a sharp little contradiction of her satisfaction in the lovely evening, London in its summer dress. She had stood watching for a moment and then, unable to contribute anything, she had walked on. She had found Lisa and Leo together, in a wine bar.
They were pulling her handbag away from her. One of them lifted his arm and hit her, with casual violence, across the jaw.
Harriet had been frightened. But the shock of the blow seemed to deaden her fear. In its place, with the stinging pain, came a flood of anger. It turned the harsh subway light crimson, and reddened the dirty white walls. It braced her arms and back and drew her lips back from her teeth in a snarl. It encompassed much more than two youths in a deserted subway. It was for what she had lost, and how, and why. It was for her days as a recluse in her own home, and for the woman in the park, for Simon, Miss Getz, and Linda, as well as for herself.
Harriet let out a torrent of filthy words of her own.
Ridiculously, she clung on to her brown paper bags of shopping. She drew back one foot and kicked upwards between a pair of thin legs. There was a yell, and she heard her own shouts like a chorus, Leave me alone! Fuck you! Don’t touch me!
‘Fucking cow!’
The one she had kicked staggered back against the curved wall, then lurched upright. Once more, coming for her again. Harriet felt her head dragged back, viciously enough to snap her neck. She was propelled against the filthy tiles and pinned there. Two faces swam against hers. She sagged and one of the bags of shopping slipped out of her arms. But the anger still coursed through her. She sucked in her cheeks and then spat. One pair of hands twisted at her breasts and jabbed upwards into her crotch. Close to her, one mouth breathed out a long whistling sigh.
‘Like it rough, do you, darling? I can give you some.’
There was one more strike in her. She swept with her free arm, and felt it connect with a force that jarred her bones. There was a grunt, almost into her ear.
The hands released her, but only for long enough to hoist her again. Anger collapsed in a wash of terror. A blow caught the side of her head, smashing it against the tunnel wall. Harriet slid downwards, blind now, her mouth open and leaving a thin shiny trail down the tiles. Blood welled between her teeth. She descended into a huddle, her head pillowed on her hunched shoulders. There was a rain of kicks, but she didn’t feel them. Silence came.
The two men stood looking down on her.
One of them whispered, ‘Jesus.’
The other bent down and disentangled her handbag. He wrapped it against his chest inside the flaps of his leather jacket. Then he straightened up again. ‘Come on.’
They ran, their heels drumming, down the underground passage and up the steps at the far end.
Harriet opened her eyes. She could see a dirty white tube in front of her, with bright, hard points that shone out of it, and black steps that she longed to reach. Very slowly, with the back of her hand against her split mouth, she climbed to her feet. Looking down she saw that one of the bags of shopping was still intact. She hoisted it into her arms. Weaving like a drunk, with her breaths forcing little groans of pain and terror out of her lungs, she made her way down the long tube. At the steps she dropped to her knees and crawled up, dragging the bag.
When she reached the top and the night air caught her in the face she fell forward. Her chin smashed against the top step. The bag of shopping broke open and the tins and jars and bottles rolled and bounced all the way down again, to settle in the drifts of debris trapped at the bottom.
Eighteen
‘So what did you expect?’ Charlie Thimbell demanded.
Harriet’s hospital bed was submerged in flowers. On the table at the foot of it stood a basket of lilies from Caspar, with a pyramid of roses next to it signed simply ‘from Robin’. Vases and pots of every kind of blossom in ever colour mounted on either side of her. They seemed to have come from everyone she knew in the world, even from ‘All of us at Midland Plastics’.
‘Just like a film star,’ Ivy in the next bed had said.
‘I don’t know what I expected,’ Harriet answered him, looking at the glory of the flowers. There were tears in her eyes again. She cried a lot. One of the doctors told her that it was reaction. ‘I didn’t expect to be beaten up on the way back from the late-night shop. I didn’t expect …’ she gestured at the flowers and the tears ran down her face.
Charlie shifted in the visitor’s chair, took a handkerchief out of his pocket and handed it to her.
‘Kindness? Sympathy? Come on.’
Harriet blew her nose. The vibration hurt her cracked jaw and she winced. She knew that it was easy for Robin to take out his credit card and call a florist; she knew that it was no more difficult to do the same all the way away in Los Angeles. It was the other flowers that touched her, the flowers and the messages of loving concern from Karen and Graham and the Success Story team and Kath’s neighbours and all the others, some of whom she hardly knew. The nurses seemed to bring fresh cellophane-crisp sheaves every hour. Harriet tried to stop herself crying. Her tears made her more aware of her own vulnerability. She felt soft and damp and helpless, a crustacean scooped out of its shell.
A passerby had found her, lying at the top of the steps. He had stooped down to her, and she had seen the turn-ups of his trousers, very close to her eyes. She had tried to say something to him, but the words wouldn’t come out of her broken mouth. An ambulance had come to take her away.
The hospital’s casualty department had peeling paint and there were empty paper cups on the floor under the rows of chairs. It was nothing like the Moor Park Hospital, Sherman Oaks, but as she lay on her str
etcher in a curtained cubicle, waiting for the doctor, it made Harriet think of Caspar. She wished pointlessly that he could be there with her, to hold her hand. Her face and chest hurt.
The doctor came, looking as young and tired as the other one. Like Caspar, Harriet was lucky. Her jawbone would knit, the stitches at the corner of her mouth would dissolve and leave barely a scar. The body bruising, internal and external, would heal itself.
‘You’ll be as good as new,’ the doctor said. ‘Can we telephone someone for you now? Relatives? A friend?’
‘In the morning,’ Harriet answered. She wanted to lie behind closed curtains, in peace. She wanted to cry without anyone to see her.
Almost as soon as she woke up in the morning, it seemed, Kath and Ken came. Their concern and their outrage washed over her. Everything that had happened seemed to have taken place inside her. The fact of the attack itself was almost peripheral. Harriet recounted the bare details to a woman police officer, and was glad when she went away.
Immediately after that, Jane came. She had managed to leave Imogen somewhere – Harriet had not seen her without her since the baby had been born. She inspected Harriet’s face, leaning so close that Harriet could see the down on her top lip. Jane was very angry. She kept repeating, ‘Why? What did they want to do?’ over and over.
‘They just wanted my handbag. I lost my temper. It was just a mistake, trying to resist them. I could have given them the bag, and they would have gone away.’
‘But you didn’t, and they did that?’ Jane was almost in tears too. ‘Harriet, what were you doing? Why were you wandering round on your own, in the middle of the night?’
Everyone asked her, of course, Kath, and Ken, and the young policewoman. Harriet couldn’t have explained her fear of the daylight and the busy outside any more coherently than Simon could have done. Nor could she have described the counterpoint of her enjoyment of the darkness, the way that the solitary walks soothed her, her need for the night’s anonymity.
