The Beaufort Sisters. Jon Cleary

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СКАЧАТЬ from his face. Next moment the whole mob had surged forward, pickets clambering to get up at the men in the trucks like pirates boarding a convoy of galleons. Whistles blew and the police came in at the mob of strikers from the other side of the trucks.

      Tim knew he was in danger. Mob mindlessness had taken over; if there was a cool head among the three or four hundred men it was having no effect. Bumper Cassidy, beside Tim, had responded to the uproar with a reflex action; he was a big, bald-headed man who, if he was lost for words, was never lost for fists. A man fell out of a truck and Bumper hit him on the way down, stopping him for a moment in mid-air as if the blow from his fist was stronger than the pull of gravity. Then a police baton hit Bumper on the side of the head and he fell sideways against Tim, who went down in the stampede.

      Tim fought his way to his feet, hitting out indiscriminately; a man he worked with every day, blind with rage, threw a punch at him and he just managed to duck under it. Choked with dust, blinded by sweat, gasping for breath in the stifling heat, he found himself being swept round in the mob as in a whirlpool. Suddenly he was on the edge of the big melée, but in a worse position; he thudded up against the railings of a yard, felt a searing pain across his belly as a steer’s horn swept by. He was spreadeagled against the fence, the fighting crowd behind him hammering him there; right in front of him the stampeding cattle thundered by, eyes white-wild, their bellowing as brutally bruising as if they were running him down. Their horns went dangerously close as some of them thudded into the fence; he fought to push himself away from the railings but the crowd threw its weight against him, unaware of him. For a moment he thought of trying to climb over the fence, but knew at once that that would mean almost certain death.

      He began to fight his way along the fence, punching and swiping at everyone in his way. He had almost reached the edge of the crowd when something hit him behind the ear; he went down, dazed, had no strength to pull himself up again. Then he felt someone lifting him, a black man who was faintly familiar; he clung to the man as the latter began to drag him out of the riot. He was dimly aware of a policeman appearing out of nowhere, baton raised; the black man let go of Tim with one hand, swung at the policeman and the latter went down. Tim was dragged over the fallen officer, then the black man picked him up in a fireman’s lift and carried him out of the yelling, struggling crush and down the road. He was dumped into the seat of a car that was also vaguely familiar, he felt someone kiss him, then he passed out.

      ‘Get going, Miz Nina!’

      Nina swung the MG round, ignoring the shouts of the police sergeant as he ran down towards them, and took the car down the road with a screech of tyres.

      9

      ‘Disgraceful!’ Lucas looked as if his bones wanted to blow him apart; all arms and legs and rigid body, he stalked up and down his study. ‘The papers have got on to the story! The two of you down there like damned agitators. And George hitting that policeman – Goddam it, what got into you?’

      ‘You can’t blame George for anything he did – he was just trying to rescue Tim.’

      Nina had never seen her father so angry; but she was surprised at her own total unconcern for his reaction. All she cared about at the moment was Tim, lying in their bedroom in the house across the lawns with twelve stitches in the wound in his belly, two broken ribs and a slight concussion. She was off-balance emotionally, as if there had been a subsidence within her, a breaking-up of levels that had sustained her all her life up till now. There had been worries and doubts in the sixteen months she had been married to Tim, all brought on by Tim’s sometimes prickly attitude towards her father: there had never been any open quarrel but at best his attitude had always been one of guarded geniality, his smile not hypocritical but a defence that neither of her parents had recognized as such and had never penetrated. The evidence had been growing in her mind for months, but only today had it all suddenly formed itself into a pattern that she acknowledged. It was no news to her that Tim had never really accepted her father, but it had come as a shock to learn that her father returned the attitude.

      ‘I’ve had to talk to the chief of police, get him to drop the charge against George. Damn it, you know what they could do to him – a Negro hitting a white officer! And you took George down there with you, let him get into that situation!’

      ‘I didn’t do any such thing!’ She never had fought with her father like this; she burned with both shame and temper. ‘George came of his own accord – to help me. And he went into the mob to help Tim because he had some spark of humanity in him – something I think you’ve forgotten!’

      She had hurt him, she could see that, but he wasn’t a weak man: he did not retreat behind a whine of reproach for her betrayal. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. The company has always been fair with its workers – it isn’t inhumane to object to their greediness. They get a fair share in wages of the profits – ’

      ‘It’s nothing to the money we have!’

      ‘Don’t be naïve. You don’t run a business that way. The Cattle Company has to pay its own way – whatever else we have doesn’t enter into it. You’re talking like some woolly-minded socialist. If you got that from your husband – ’

      ‘I didn’t get it from my husband – he has a name or have you put it out of your mind? He’s never attempted any propaganda with me – I think he’d laugh his head off if you called him a socialist. I worked it out for myself – I think the men are entitled to what they’re asking for.’

      ‘They get a living wage – ’

      ‘A living wage isn’t enough! God, Daddy, you’re still in the last century – I don’t think I’ve ever looked at you properly. Grandfather must have put blinkers on you when you were born – ’

      Her voice had risen; she was almost shouting. The study door opened and Edith came in quickly, closing it behind her. ‘I told myself I was not going to interfere. But this has gone on long enough and loudly enough – too loud, all the servants can hear you. I think you had better apologize to your father, Nina, then go home and cool down. You’d better cool down, too, Lucas – your voice has been just as loud as hers.’

      ‘I’m not going to apologize! Tell your husband to come into the twentieth century – he just doesn’t know what’s going on in the world!’

      ‘My husband?’ said Edith.

      But Nina had already rushed out of the room, past George Biff standing in the hall, his face grey with pain and emotion; then she was running across the lawns, through the afternoon heat, like someone fleeing a catastrophe she couldn’t face. Margaret and Sally, coming up from the tennis court, called to her, but she didn’t hear them. She ran towards her own house, tears streaming down her face, but even in her distress she knew the house was no real haven, that it had never really belonged to her and Tim. It had been a gift from her parents and she ran now through the strings that bound it to the big house that dominated the park.

      Tim lay flat on his back in the bed, a low pillow under his head. He tried to sit up when she came into the room, but winced in pain and lay back at once. ‘What’s the matter? For Christ’s sake – Nina! What happened?’

      She had flopped on the foot of the bed, hand over her face, her head shaking from side to side. She struggled to control herself, the sobs coming up as great gobs of pain in her chest. He reached for her, but she got up and moved away, waving a dumb hand for him to remain lying down and not hurt himself. She should have stayed downstairs till she had composed herself, but she had come headlong up the stairs to the one true haven that was all her own, him.

      He СКАЧАТЬ