Injury Time Read Free Page A

the mirror. She couldn’t be sure if the swelling upon his forehead made him appear hideous, or distinguished in a Roman sort of way. She couldn’t tell at all now because, loving him as she supposed she did, she no longer saw him as he was. That first night he had spoken confusedly of his time at boarding school. Captain of the cricket team . . . head of his dormitory . . . That rotter Jonas . . . If it hadn’t been for Muldoon – what a stinker he’d turned out to be. He was obviously re-living the heyday of his prep school years. There was something too about his father and a pair of gloves, and a beastly rumpus over a prefect’s badge. She could make little sense of it. Having attended grammar school and forgotten all about it, Binny was touched by his continued preoccupation with those far off boyhood days.
    If she hadn’t been touched, she thought gloomily, she wouldn’t be out in this weather, catering for his friends.
    On the pavement outside the British Rail warehouse, lying in disorder across the rusted springs of a double bed, sprawled several elderly men and women drinking out of a communal bottle. Binny retraced her steps and caught hold of Alma’s arm.
    ‘It’s everywhere,’ she whispered. ‘Where are the police?’
    ‘Don’t talk nonsense,’ scolded Alma. ‘The last thing we need is a policeman.
    Smiling and nodding ingratiatingly, she led Binny forward. An old woman in a fur coat and a pair of tennis shoes, reclining on one elbow as though in a punt on a lake, stared at Alma in admiration. ‘My goodness,’ she shouted. ‘You’re a bonny girl. Will you look at that hair on her head?’ Alma’s hair, rinsed to an unusual shade of strawberry blonde, was blowing in all directions.
    Pleased, Alma stopped and confessed it wasn’t altogether natural. ‘I use a little something,’ she confided. ‘Hint of a Tint . . . every second or third wash.’
    Bouncing in excitement on the dilapidated bed, unsettling her geriatric companions wrapped in sacking, the old woman laughed and leered her approval. Two men struggled upright into a sitting position and spat violently into the gutter. Their eyes, half averted, were those of animals existing in darkness. Binny ran away, and emerged breathlessly on to the High Street looking for someone in authority.
    “You’re a bundle of nerves,’ decided Alma some moments later, coming across Binny leaning against the wall of a public house. ‘You should have had a little swiggie when I pressed you.’
    ‘I don’t know how you could talk to them,’ said Binny. ‘They looked dangerous.’
    ‘Silly girl. They were only enjoying themselves.’
    ‘She had iodine dabbed all over her face,’ said Binny.
    ‘Well, she had one or two cuts on her nose,’ defended Alma. ‘It’s natural. Old people are always falling over. Think of your own mother when she dislocated her hip.’
    ‘She stumbled getting out of a taxi,’ Binny said. ‘She wasn’t rolling about in the gutter with a bottle of meths.’
    In silence they walked down the street. Alma slowed her steps expectantly at each shop doorway, but Binny hurried on. She had no money.
    At last, made miserable by the chill wind and deafened by the roar of traffic, they fled inside the Wimpy bar for a cup of coffee. The waitress was affronted at the bold way they expected service. After five minutes of hostile inactivity she relented and left two cups of pale yellow liquid at the edge of the table.
    ‘I wouldn’t mind a doughnut,’ called Alma, but the waitress had better things to do.
    From where she sat in the window, Binny could see both the perambulator braked at the steps of the bank and the clock above the door of the shoe shop. It was ten minutes to three. If the bank closed before she had time to cash her cheque, she wouldn’t be able to afford cream for the baked apples, or Greek bread, or buy enough salad to make a splash. She was tempting fate. She wanted the dinner party to go well