A Sunday Kind of Woman

by Ray Connolly

  For some time no one had said anything. It was obvious to Charlie that he had been taken to be disposed of, but for reasons which he could not comprehend his own immediate fate seemed to make him almost light-headed, and instead of fear he had found himself regretting the opportunities which he and Kate would not now be sharing. The thought of Kate bothered him. Maybe they would deal with her more leniently, he thought. But how could they? Then another thought had occurred. Would it be quick? Would he know the moment? And then lastly he had realized that he was not afraid because he really could not believe that he was going to die. No wonder they talked of men being brave in condemned cells, he had thought. They must always hope for a miracle. For the first time he began to look around the room for something which might help when the miracle happened.

  Had his wrists still not been taped together he might possibly have discovered something like a miracle, but movement was very restricted and quite painful.

  ‘You’d never believe I played Houdini once, would you?’ he asked of his captors. They looked at him bleakly. Clearly they had never heard of Houdini. ‘University of London Drama Society, 1966, it was. Every night I got out of a little box, just having been sawn in half by a beautiful blonde mystery woman who always sat in Row G so that I could see her. Houdini was an escapologist,’ he explained. No response. ‘A magician.’

  The two men watched him and then exchanged glances. Charlie considered them again. He had to get a dialogue going, he thought. That was what they always did in films when they were in situations like this. What about some jokes, he thought. He knew millions. Maybe he could laugh his way to safety, the way Colin laughed his way into bed.

  ‘What about Irish jokes?’ he asked. Everyone laughed at Irish jokes. That should break those sullen faces. ‘Did you hear about the Irish magician, who put his hand in a rabbit and pulled out a top hat? Or what about the Irish nudist magician who couldn’t keep anything up his sleeve? Or the Irish goldfish that drowned? Or the midget cowboy who rode sawn-off shotgun?’ His captors looked at him blankly. He tried again. If he could distract them with jokes he might still have a future. ‘What about the Irish firing squad who formed a circle? The meteorologist who got six months for screwing meters? The Irishman who bit his dog and it died of rabies … Jesus Christ … doesn’t anything make you laugh?’

  Keith shifted himself on his chair and stroked the gun he was holding in his pocket. ‘Yes,’ he said finally. It was the first full word Charlie had ever heard him say. ‘You’ll make us laugh, all right. We’ll laugh ourselves silly when we see you floating face down in the river out there.’

  Charlie stared at him: his accent was pure Dublin.

  Face down in the Thames. That figured. A last joke forced itself on to Charlie’s lips. ‘What’s black and charred and hangs from the ceiling?’ he asked, his eyes boring into Keith and Big Willie. ‘Come on, boys, you should know this one with your experience.’

  Keith and Big Willie stared at him sullenly.

  ‘Would you believe an Irish electrician?’ came back Charlie desperately. Face down in the Thames, he thought. And he wondered how soon it would be.

  It was night-time before Sarah returned. Kate was still sitting on the top floor of the house, staring out at the lights on the river, and trying to avoid the fish-gaze of Daley. At one point she had looked up in surprise when she had heard music as a pleasure cruiser covered in fairy lights steamed down towards Greenwich, its disco blaring something about ‘Staying Alive’, but the day and evening had, apart from that, passed almost without her noticing.

  Daley had been unusually quiet. With both Keith and Big Willie occupied guarding Charlie he had, she assumed, been without his audience, and consequently without his steady stream of chatter.

  She heard Sarah’s car approaching before he did, and then watched as the headlights made a pattern on the wooden lattice which covered one wall.

  ‘I think,’ said Kate, as Daley became aware of the car, ‘the board-meeting must be over.’

  ‘Downstairs then,’ said Daley.

  Kate shrugged, stood up and started down the stairs. As she did she heard Sarah letting herself into the house. Her heart was beating rapidly. She could feel little pools of perspiration on the palms of her hands. Whatever was going to happen could not now be delayed very long.

  Sarah was waiting for her in the square ground floor hall. She looked pale and angry. She hung up her coat, and walking to a cabinet took out a bottle of vodka and poured herself a large drink. Then glancing at Kate she offered her one. Daley watched in suspicion while Kate helped herself to a drink.

  ‘The condemned drank a large vodka and tonic,’ said Kate, and tried a smile towards Sarah, but her hand was shaking so much that all she managed to do was to spill some of her drink down her jeans.

  Sarah looked at her sharply for a moment, and then turned her head away.

  ‘My partners are very upset with you Daley,’ she said, without looking at Daley at all.

  He didn’t speak, but Kate could see his eyebrows knit together as though trying to remember what he might have done to displease them.

  ‘They think you would have been wiser to have found some less flamboyant way of getting rid of our little problem.’

  ‘What?’ She was being too indirect for Daley.

  ‘Barbara’s suicide has frightened off some of the clients. Too much publicity,’ said Sarah. ‘It would have been better if she had just disappeared.’

  ‘We had to give the other girls a warning. And that bastard Harrigan, too.’

  ‘My partners seen unimpressed by that argument. They think the same ends could have been achieved with a more subtle approach.’

  Daley looked towards Kate. She was now shivering with fear. ‘What about this one?’ he asked.

  Sarah looked away from him in annoyance, but didn’t answer.

  ‘Why don’t you say it?’ said Kate. ‘Tell him what subtle approach has to be used on us.’ She might have sounded brave, but inside she suddenly felt as though her stomach had turned to water. She wondered whether her legs were going to hold her up.

  Sarah turned towards her: ‘You were the best of my girls, Kate. I had such ambitions for you …’ She stopped. She was, Kate thought, already using the past tense about her. Kate wondered if she were about to faint.

  ‘Did you hear something?’ Sarah had suddenly moved over towards the window. Kate hadn’t heard anything. ‘I’m sure there’s someone out there,’ She’s getting nervous, thought Kate.

  Daley moved across and stood beside her. Kate leaned against an oak table. She wanted to be with Charlie. She looked down the stairs towards the basement in which he was being held.

  ‘There’s someone outside, Daley.’ Sarah’s voice had a ring of urgency to it.

  Kate looked around, just in time to see them both throw themselves away from the window as the glass shattered and something came hurtling through.

  ‘In the name of God …’ Sarah started to shout, but stopped and screamed, as with a loud crack the missile which had crashed through the window burst into a roaring ball of fire.

  ‘It’s Harrigan …’ Daley was screaming. Suddenly the other window behind them smashed apart and a second fire bomb burst into the house.

  The three of them retreated from the flames. The heat was already intense.

  ‘For Christ’s sake …’ Sarah was howling at Daley. ‘You’ve got to put it out.’

  At that moment Keith and Big Willie appeared from the basement. Daley already had his gun in his hand.

  ‘Harrigan’s got all his boys out there.’ Daley was almost hysterical. ‘We’ll have to make a run from the front.’ He pulled open the front door. The smoke inside was clouding everything. Sarah was coughing and screaming. Daley shot a couple of times widely into the night and tried to step outside, but a none-too-accurate shotgun blast sent him diving inside again. He slammed the door behind him and moved to the window. ‘We’re fucking trapped …’ he yelled through the
smoke.

  ‘Put it out … for Christ’s sake …’ Sarah had found a small fire extinguisher and was spraying blindly about her in a hopeless attempt to quell the spreading flames. All of a sudden the beautiful box-like structure of her home was burning around her.

  Kate backed away towards the top of the basement steps just in time to see Charlie staggering up, clumsily crashing from side to side as he hurried forward, his hands still taped behind his back.

  ‘Free my hands,’ he shouted.

  Kate pulled him around and tried to tear at the tape. It was hopeless. She couldn’t find the end of the Sellotape. ‘I can’t. I need a knife.’

  ‘No. Burn them free,’ shouted Charlie, against the rising crescendo of pandemonium. ‘Push them into the fire. It’ll burn off.’

  Turning himself round he deliberately pushed his hands against the burning lattice work. The cuffs of his jacket caught fire, but the flames missed the tapes on his wrists. ‘Help me, Kate. Please. Push my hands into the flame.’ Already Charlie was caughing as the suffocating smoke got into his lungs. By the window Daley and Keith were shooting blindly.

  Half closing her eyes Kate pulled Charlie closer to the lattice work, and with one push forced his hands right back into the flames. She saw his face writhe in pain, and felt the pressure of his arms as with one enormous pull he forced his wrists free from the melting Sellotape.

  Whether or not Sarah or any of her boys had fully realized until this point that Charlie was free was unlikely, but it was already too late. As Sarah staggered towards them through the smoke and flames, Charlie took one swipe at her and sent her tumbling on top of Big Willie, who was trying, despite his broken fingers, to reopen the front door.

  ‘We’re coming out, Harrigan,’ screamed Daley through the smoke, but it was difficult to say whether Harrigan heard or not, because the reply was met with another blast from the shotgun.

  ‘Upstairs,’ shouted Charlie, and with Kate tearing in front, the two of them raced up the already flaming staircase. On the walls the paintings were curling and blistering. Below them they could hear the sound of Sarah screaming as she tried hopelessly to quell the flames, and Daley and his boys swearing and shooting as they continued to try to force their way out of the front door.

  Suddenly they were at the top of the house. Charlie kicked open the french windows which led on to the balcony. Below them the river was already alight with the reflection of the house.

  ‘There’s no way out,’ screamed Kate. ‘We can’t get any further.’

  ‘There’s down there,’ shouted Charlie. ‘We’ll have to try and swim for it.’

  ‘No. It’s impossible. We won’t have a chance in that current.’ Below, the Thames swept and eddied like a red cauldron.

  ‘We haven’t any choice.’

  ‘I can’t swim.’

  ‘You can’t stay here. Now over.’

  Dragging her up on to the balcony railing he steadied her for a moment before shouting ‘Now!’ And holding on to her with one blistered, bubbling hand he pulled her over and down after him into the swirling currents of the Thames forty feet below.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  It was the cold that was the biggest shock, the cold and the seemingly endless plunge through the water. Even before he had hit the river Charlie had lost hold of Kate and as time became stretched while he careered underwater he found that his arms were flapping out blindly in search of her.

  When he reached the surface again, minus his slip-on shoes which had been sucked away as his body found it buoyancy, he was coughing and spitting. For a moment he could see nothing, as the current suddenly picked him up and threw him several feet downstream. Then, throwing his body around in the water, he saw in the rosy light of the fire a pink and fair blob fighting and struggling to stay on the surface just a handful of yards from him.

  His hands and wrists howled in agony from the burns as he heaved himself towards her. She was going under again as he got there. He was sure he would be too late. But throwing out an arm he grabbed hold of her hair and hung on. For a moment her struggling pulled him under, too, as the current suddenly sucked them further out away from the wharfs, but then he had hold of her and was yelling at her to stop fighting him. Whether she heard or simply fainted from fear and exhaustion he didn’t know, but after a moment the struggling stopped and he was able to get one arm around her so that her chin stayed more or less clear of the water.

  They had been in the river for less than a minute but already Charlie could see that they had been swept a good thirty yards from the burning house. They were now out of the glow of the fire and being carried out into midstream. The fire was spreading throughout the wooden interior of the house with astonishing speed. He turned around to see where they were heading. As he did he thought he heard a low clap of thunder. Looking back he saw that the whole house was engulfed in flames. The gas main must have exploded.

  He didn’t care or wonder about Daley and Sarah and the rest. The house was by now tumbling, cascading into the river. Above the sound of the water he could make out the noise of fire engine bells, police sirens, and … could it be … music?

  Further out in the Thames the disco still played on board the pleasure cruiser as it made its way back up river towards Westminster. But now no one danced. Every eye was on the raging house, a fire which lit up the sky for miles down the river. Later some of the dancers and crew would swear that they had seen a woman, her dress in flames, standing on the balcony screaming just before the explosion. But if she had been screaming they wouldn’t have been able to hear. The music had been far too loud for that.

  In the water Charlie was quickly weakening. He has survived longer than he had expected, but he knew that unless he found a way out soon his arm would lose its grip on Kate. Desperately he looked over his shoulder and kicked again with his feet. The pain in his chest stabbed at him, but he hung on to Kate.

  ‘I ain’t no vision I’m the man, who loves, you, inside-and-out …’ From somewhere in the middle of this vast swirling, dragging, poisoning river the sound of music, ear-piercing Bee Gee music was growing closer. Charlie tried to turn around. Now he could hear the throb of a ship’s engine. That’s it … run over by a floating discotheque, he thought, but even as the prospect crossed his mind and he pushed again with his now leaden legs, he could feel his strength going and his grip upon Kate beginning to weaken.

  Momentarily they sank below the surface and he pushed again. Now it was the survival instinct that was keeping them afloat, as Charlie’s ears and nose flooded with water, and he forced his tired body to push again. Then slowly he began to give up the fight. Not with any terror, but rather the calm of the terminally ill man who wishes for a dignified exit from life. Although he still clung to Kate, keeping her chin a fraction above the water line, he accepted drowning as an inevitability, while still the music played, louder and louder.

  Part Four

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The merry saint came back into Charlie’s life at the beginning of November. They met, at her suggestion, at the open-air theatre in Holland Park. It was neutral ground, she had explained on the telephone, a place which held no bad memories for either of them.

  Charlie’s initial reaction when he had heard her voice again had been that of excitement, even elation, but tempered by caution. Ever since he had first met her his emotions, not to mention his body, had been used as a battering ram, and he was now half-afraid to lay himself open to what might, in the end, be just another shattering disappointment.

  He had seen her only half a dozen times since they had been hauled out of the Thames by derring-do disco freaks, more alive than dead, but hardly conscious all the same. The story of the fire and the brave dancers of the pleasure cruiser had caught the news headlines the following day, headlines made all the more sensational by the shooting at Sarah’s home, and a quickly spreading scent of scandal.

  Since Charlie’s hands and arms were suffering from bad burns and two o
f his ribs were cracked it was not surprising that Kate had been the first to recover. She had insisted upon seeing Charlie at once, although he was still heavily tranquillized.

  ‘How do you feel?’ she had asked, as she sat by the side of his bed and stroked his forehead.

  ‘I feel alive,’ he had said. ‘And it’s great. What happened?’

  Kate explained how they had been spotted by necking couples on board the disco cruiser Weekend Mutiny, who had alerted the crew and given a couple of German tourists the opportunity to impress their newly-acquired girl-friends no end, before a rubber dinghy and life-lines could be thrown to the rescue.

  ‘I was interviewed by the police this morning,’ Kate had said. ‘They think Sarah died in the fire. They haven’t found her body. It may have fallen into the river. Daley and the other two are both in hospital. They got out alive, but were burned. Harrigan’s gone missing.’

  ‘What did you tell the police?’ Charlie had asked.

  ‘I told them about Sarah and Daley and Barbara and me and Harrigan. I’ve told them everything I know except the names of the clients.’

  ‘Why not the clients?’

  ‘Oh, it’s something to do with wives and children and sprink­ lers on the lawns … you know. Those guys weren’t doing any­ one any harm. They didn’t tell me anything they shouldn’t … or any of that stuff. I’m not going to involve them.’

  ‘Good girl,’ Charlie had said, and smiled.

  Kate’s next visits to Charlie had been arranged at the convenience of the police, and to the delight of the squadron of Press photographers who now tailed her wherever she went. Rumours of sex orgies, murder and call girls which included all kinds of top government names were once again sweeping a London ripe for a new scandal, and Kate, due to do some highly organized leaks by the police, was right in the middle of it.

  Since she had been neither burned nor otherwise injured Kate had been allowed out of hospital after three days, and although she had continued to visit Charlie their conversations had been difficult and strained, particularly when the police, realizing that he had little to tell them, had had him moved into a public ward where Kate’s visits became the highlight of visiting time.