Suddenly a blinding light was in his eyes, so bright that at first they both turned their heads away.
‘Well, what’s going on here then?’ a man’s voice said, dropping the torch beam a little and running it over the girl’s open buttons and the curve of her breast. George, blinking in the light, couldn’t understand why she didn’t move away, didn’t cover herself. In his shock, George had the bizarre notion that they were caught in some music-hall tableau of static nudity, where the slightest movement would bring down the force of the law. Then, as if a moment of posing for a photograph were over, she pulled away and began expertly restoring her clothes to order.
‘That’ll be five shillings,’ she said matter-of-factly.
‘I’m sorry?’ George said, not understanding.
‘Five shillings,’ she said slowly as though explaining to an idiot. ‘You’ve had your pleasure, now pay up, there’s a good boy.’
‘But I didn’t ask …’ George started. ‘You …’ The sudden change of circumstances left him floundering. He couldn’t grasp what was happening or quite believe what was being requested of him. He felt weak and pressed his head back against the wall as if its cool solidity could give his mind focus. He started to tuck his shirt in and then stopped, feeling ashamed.
‘Come on, pay up,’ said the man, and this time George raised his head as he recognised the voice of the chap who had sat in the corner with the newspaper earlier in the evening; he squinted against the light, trying to see him. In an instant the torch was thrown down – he heard it hit the gravelly ground with a crunch – and the man was on him, slamming his head back against the wall and punching his fist into his gut. George doubled over, retching, a dry acidic heaving from the depths of his empty stomach. He sank down against the wall and slid to his knees, winded, unable even to shield himself against the man’s boot as it met his ribs and tipped him on to his side. He lay groaning, his eyes scrunched up in pain. He felt, rather than saw, the girl bending over him and then, with her small fat fingers, quickly feeling into his jacket pockets, pulling all their contents out on to the ground and picking through them. He heard a heavy and a lighter tread as both of them walked away.
The side of his face was pressed against the sharp gravel and he could feel a long string of saliva dribble from his open mouth. His arms were folded across his stomach as if to hold him together and contain the burning pain in his gut and the pulsing throb of his ribs. He could think of nothing but the pain yet he knew that when it finally abated, what was beyond it would be even worse: the vague outline of thoughts that heaved at the edge of his consciousness would resolve into monstrous, shameful shapes.
He could no longer feel the weight of the sketchbook against his chest. Slowly he stretched out one hand, trying to trick the pain through moving by degrees; groping across the dirt, he felt the crumpled handkerchief, the coldness of a few scattered coins. He couldn’t find it. He slumped back with a groan.
Across the yard, he saw the back door open, throwing a quadrangle of light across the steps and releasing the sound of voices and laughter into the air. A small figure came out and hesitated, peering around as if waiting for his eyes to get accustomed to the dark. George tried to call out but all the air seemed to have left his body and only a moan came from him.
‘Farrell?’ The figure came down the steps and picked its way towards him. ‘Farrell? Are you all right?’ Then Rooke bent over him, taking his elbow, trying to lift him up. ‘What the hell happened?’ He looked about him quickly, checking that whoever had done this wasn’t still around. He managed to raise George into a sitting position. ‘I’ll get the others,’ he said.
George hung on to his arm. ‘My book. I can’t find my book.’
‘Never mind that, we need to get you out of here,’ Rooke said.
‘I need it.’ George struggled to control his voice.
Rooke squatted beside him and felt around until he found the book. He put it into George’s hands and then ran back to get the others.
The book’s smooth covers were grainy with sandy earth. George brushed his fingers over them and put the book safe in his pocket, wincing as he lifted his arm. Rooke returned with the others who lifted him and got his arms over their shoulders so that they could help him along.
‘We’d better take him back to our lodgings,’ Turland said to Rooke. ‘You get the bike.’
Rooke pulled it out from behind the bushes and wheeled it along beside them.
‘Took your money, I suppose,’ Haycock said.
George nodded.
‘Did you see who it was?’
‘No. He jumped me from behind,’ George said, already forming the lie that he would tell and retell, already feeling the hot shame creeping through him, sordid and unclean.
When Violet had first arrived at the Cedars, Elizabeth’s family home, Edmund had been away and she had been so busy, in the first week, meeting the Lyne family’s cousins and friends for luncheon parties, picnics and concerts, that she had almost forgotten Elizabeth had a brother. After a morning spent boating with a group of relations who had failed to include sunshades in their preparations, Elizabeth had felt the worse for the sun and suggested that they withdraw to their rooms for the afternoon, the better to enjoy the evening’s entertainment.
Violet, however, was unable to rest. Despite closing the drapes against the intense heat of the June afternoon and taking off her shoes and lying full length on the bed, her thoughts were too full of the unwonted excitements of the last few days, her mind a whirl of gowns and opera glasses, new faces, drives in the motor, parlour games and laughter. The room was stuffy, the satin quilt beneath her sticky and clinging, and at length she gave up, slipped her shoes back on again and decided to go in search of something to read.
Downstairs, the tall double doors of the library were open and Violet went in softly, glad that she wouldn’t have to risk breaking the oppressive quiet of the afternoon by their creaking. The room was lined with books from the floor to the ornately plastered ceiling, and was furnished with library steps to reach them. Chairs, couches and occasional tables stood around for the convenience of the reader, some arranged in a group in the centre, some placed with their backs to the room giving a view from the long French windows of the sloping lawns, elms and cedars. A large desk, belonging to Elizabeth’s father, stood to one side, littered with stamps, magnifying glass and glue pot and Violet felt that she was intruding a little and thought that she would choose something quickly and go.
Her eyes travelled over the books in the lower shelves, which were large, dull, leather-bound volumes of county history, and passed up through travelogues and heavy-looking biographies until she found a set of the Waverley novels on one of the top shelves. She wheeled the library steps along and positioned them so that they were well braced against the shelves; then, picking up the skirts of her afternoon dress in one hand, she awkwardly climbed up to find one that she hadn’t yet read. The set, tightly packed together, wouldn’t yield a volume easily. Getting a finger hooked into the top of the spine of the book in the middle, she pulled hard, dislodged several, then, juggling books, steps and skirts, tried to catch them and failed so that three volumes fell with an almighty thump on the polished wood floor.
There was a muttered curse of ‘What the devil?’ from one of the couches and a man sat up and rested his elbow on its upholstered back. He blinked and passed his hand over his face and through