Injury Time by Beryl Bainbridge Page B

the chemists. Helen had a twinge of neuralgia and I went to buy aspirins. I don’t hold with aspirins myself. Do you know, I pocketed the surplus change without a word. I’m not proud of my action, but I did.’
    ‘Why couldn’t she buy her own aspirins?’ asked Binny. She would have liked to move from Edward’s knee, but there was nowhere else to sit.
    ‘They can’t have been in much of a hurry to get away,’ said Simpson. ‘I’ve seen one of them before. Hours ago when I went to fetch the wine from the car.’
    They sat hunched over the table, talking softly, pushing knives and forks across the cloth and playing with small crumbs of bread. Those initial minutes of violence receding into the past, they were like travellers previously lost in a blizzard who found themselves safe for the moment beside the fire. Muriel alone crouched silent in her chair; now and then her eyes strayed to the blue pram in the kitchen. Alma was incensed, on Binny’s behalf, at the broken window and the mutilated lampshade. In her view such vandalism was quite unnecessary. She had run away from her own home earlier in the evening because her husband, unable to find any clean socks for the morning, had called her a slut and thrown the milk jug at her. She was willing to admit she’d been remiss – though they weren’t her socks and he hadn’t as far as she knew an allergy to soap – but he’d given her no time before taking aim.
    ‘I’ve a good mind to have a word with that Harry man,’ she said. ‘It was very naughty of him. Men never think of the mess they make.’
    ‘Good Lord, don’t,’ warned Edward, full of misgivings. ‘It’s quite the wrong attitude to take. We have to strike up a rapport . . . It’s a question of psychology . . . We’re all in it together. At the same time we must strive to achieve a certain delicate balance between abject cooperation and some degree of firmness. There must be no aggravation, but on the other hand we shouldn’t crawl . . . if you follow me. We should endeavour to show them what’s what—’
    Alma smiled.
    ‘I’ve read about it,’ he said defensively. ‘It’s vital not to seem hostile.’
    ‘Don’t be silly, Ted darling. They’re no different from you and me. They’ve just got caught up in an everyday problem that’s gone a teeny bit wrong.’
    Edward began to bluster. He found Alma infuriating, quite apart from the way she addressed him. He jiggled Binny up and down on his agitated knees. ‘It may be an everyday problem to you, but personally I’m not used to being hijacked in my own home by armed thugs.’
    ‘Here, here,’ said Simpson.
    ‘They’re alien to us,’ insisted Edward. ‘It’s a different breed, a different culture.’
    Binny put her lips to his temple. His hair smelt of tobacco. She knew he had made a slip, thinking this was home, but all the same it was nice of him. At the back of her mind she thought she was making a fuss of him for somebody else’s benefit. To gain attention.
    Edward jerked his head away; he was trembling. Surely it was perfectly natural to go for aspirins if one’s wife was feeling groggy. One would do it for the dog. None of them knew each other well enough, that was the difficulty. They were all behaving in an unreal manner. He couldn’t count on their reactions under stress. One of them was potentially dangerous – it might even be himself.
    Simpson said, ‘Mussolini used to say, whenever I hear the word culture I reach for my gun.’
    ‘Exactly,’ cried Alma, though she didn’t know what he meant.
    ‘Be quiet,’ said Muriel. She was staring into the kitchen.
    They stopped breathing and looked fearfully at the woman by the sink. She had ceased to roll the pram and was now hunched over the shot gun, nursing her ribs.
    Binny felt she was taking part in some sort of documentary – one of those programmes that used members of the public and portrayed ordinary lives from a melancholy point of view. She