It had been too late to escape on the night that he erupted into the house, his eyes fiery with drink. He was not an especially big man, although he was quite tall, but he seemed to fill up the house with his presence on these nights.
There had not been a chance to make for one of the safer hiding places – the old wash-house or even the cupboard under the stairs – so there were only the sheets and the thin coverlet for protection. Sometimes, though, it was possible to force your mind away from the shabby bedroom and away from Pedlar’s Yard, and to delve down and down into the layers of memories and dreams…Like summoning a spell, a charm, that took you along a narrow unwinding ribbon of road, studded with trees and lined with hedgerows, and through the little villages with the Hobbit-like names that were strung out along the road like beads on a necklace…Far, far away, until you reached the house on the marshes, where the will o’ the wisps danced.
But tonight the charm did not work. Tonight something was happening downstairs that made that dreamlike road unreachable. Something was happening in the little sitting-room at the back of the house that was making Mother cry out and say, ‘No – please not—’
There was the sickening sound of a fist thudding flesh, and a gasp of pain, instantly cut off. Oh God, oh God, it was going to be one of the nights when he was hitting her: one of the nights when the neighbours would listen through the wall, and tell each other that one night that cruel monster would kill that poor woman, and someone ought to do something.
One night he would kill her. What if this was the night? What if Mother died, down there on the sitting-room floor? The horror of this very real possibility rose up chokingly. Someone ought to do something…
I can’t. I can’t. He’d kill me.
But what if he kills her?
There were ten stairs down to the sitting-room and they creaked a bit, but it was possible to jump over the third and then the seventh stair so that they did not creak at all. It was important to jump over those stairs tonight, and it was important to go stealthily down the little passage from the front of the house to the back, not noticing how cold the floor was against bare feet. It was important to open the door very quietly and peer inside without being heard. Because someone ought to do something, and there was no one else…
The room was filled with the tinny firelight from the electric fire, and shadows moved in an incomprehensible rhythm across the walls. They were huge shadows and it took a moment to sort them out because at first it seemed as if there was one monstrous creature, sprawling across the little gateleg table under the window…There was harsh rasping breathing in the room as well, like someone running very fast, or like someone sobbing and struggling…
The shadows moved again, and it was not one person, but two: two people fastened together, the larger shadow almost swallowing the thin frail one.
Mother was half-lying on the small sofa, her hair tumbled about her face – she had nice hair, dark and smooth – and her skirt pushed up to her waist. Her legs were bare and he was standing right up against her, pushing his body into her – pushing it in and then out and then in and then out, over and over, the muscles of his thighs and buttocks clenching and unclenching, his face twisted with concentration and with savage pleasure.