I watched her at the door, scratching at the lock with her key. Not a practised manoeuvre. Not the way you’d do it if you’d unlocked the door every day of a long life. I looked around. Good visibility in every direction. Probably one or two houses further along the lane, or wherever the lorry had come from, then a dead end. No strangers. Probably lived here for decades without locking the door. Never needed to. Until now.
Put the locked door together with her nervous threat
assessment as we’d approached the house, and I had to consider I’d been wrong. Perhaps Stan wasn’t the problem.
I opened the gate and strode to the front door. She got it open and hurried inside, but I got my boot in before she could slam it shut.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked.
She looked at me, blocking her door. She was terrified, her eyes darting past me to the lane.
She thought she had a decision to make. Ask me to help, or turn me away. But there was no decision required. She needed my help, so she was going to get it.
3
I heard the gun being cocked as I followed her into the dark hallway. The click of a well-oiled ratchet, pulled past its setting point, then resting. Ready for release. Waiting for the trigger. The sequence repeated. Two clicks. A double-barrelled shotgun, well maintained by its owner.
Not too late for me to dart backwards, out of the door. But that would leave Mrs Leckie alone with the gunman. I could drop to the floor, use the second gained to look for the source of the noise, but my eyes were still adjusting to the gloom of the hallway after the bright summer morning outside. The sound had come from my right, through the doorway that presumably led to a snug. So I stepped forwards, between Mrs Leckie and the doorway, into harm’s way. I’d come here to protect her. Time to live up to my ideals.
‘Put the bloody gun away, Stan,’ Mrs Leckie snapped. ‘It’s Johnny Cook, he’s given me a lift home.’
‘Cook?’ came a voice from the snug.
‘You remember,’ she said. ‘Bess and George’s lad. Always had a cricket ball in his hand.’
Mrs Leckie hung up her coat and hurried forwards into the kitchen.
‘Now you’re here, you may as well make yourself useful,’ she called back to me. ‘You can get my sterilising pans downfrom the top shelf. Still time to get the jam made before the Boche get here. Waste not, want not.’
It was brave talk, but the tension in her voice was audible. I heard her opening drawers in the kitchen, making noise, warding off the fear.
Stan was sitting in an armchair, a blanket over his knees. His thin neck and small head disappeared into the starched collar of his shirt, like a tortoise poking its head out for a quick look around. The shotgun extended towards me, long and heavy, wobbling as he struggled to keep it aimed. He looked at me carefully.
‘They said you died at the Somme.’
He uncocked the gun and carefully leant it against the side of the chair, his hands shaking with the effort.
‘That was my dad,’ I said.
‘What happened to your brother? Nob, wasn’t it?’
‘My uncle. He came back, just about. Shell-shock.’
Stan grunted. ‘Sounds about right,’ he said, as if returning from the war irreparably damaged was a character defect.
As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I got a better look at Stan. The left side of his face was swollen, bruises extended down his neck. The way he was sitting, it looked like he was in pain, holding himself still.
‘What happened?’ I asked.
His eyes flicked towards the kitchen, then back to me.
‘You’ll be wanting to get on your way,’ he said, loud enough for his voice to carry.
The room stank of dog shit and mould. Every surface was covered with stacks ofWisdenmagazines and newspapers. Not much evidence of a woman’s touch. Division of territory perhaps. I take the kitchen, you take the snug. One way to get through the years together at the end of a country lane where you’re trapped every time it rains.
‘Where are the dogs?’ I asked.
‘Back garden,’ he said, nodding that way. ‘Put them down last year. In case of gas attacks.’
