right, even something as simple as leaving an outhouse door open?
‘Well done,’ said Tim warmly. ‘Good old Mum.’ He gave her a comforting kiss, and she nearly wept.
He had stopped her from closing the back door either. And she noticed he was now wearing his dark sweater and dark trousers, and had soot smeared across his face.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘You start lighting the oil-lamps. Keep them as near the windows as possible. Kitchen first. That’ll give the bastards something to watch.’
She went to the kitchen windowsill where the oil-lamps were kept. Began taking off shades and chimneys, with quivering hands. Then struck a match and went along the row, lighting them one after the other.
‘Is that right?’ she asked humbly.
But her son was no longer there. Startled, she looked around. ‘Tim?’
‘Shush,’ said Jane. ‘He’s wriggling down the hedge. Don’t look, Mum, for hell’s sake.’ Then she added, ‘Good, he’s made it.’
‘What’s he doing?’ Rose felt her panic rise again.
‘You know the outhouse,’ said Jane. ‘Well, when Mr. Gotobed came to see to us, he didn’t carry it out through the garden, where it might offend us. He took it out of the outhouse through a hatch in the back wall. Which leads straight out into the next field. If Tim can get the hatch open, one of us can get out that way. Into the hedge.’
Jane was putting on Tim’s red anorak now, over the top of her own blue one. Zipping it up, pulling up the hood so it hid her face completely.
She looked out of the dimming window.
‘There’s Tim signalling. Time to go. Bye-bye, Mum. Love you.’
And then she was strolling down the garden, giving nervous looks around, in Tim’s anorak.
The outhouse door closed behind her.
Rose waited for she knew not what. Then a figure in a red anorak was coming up the path, head down and hood up against the rain.
‘Jane?’
The door closed behind the figure. The hood was pushed back, and the grinning face of Tim appeared.
‘She’s away through the hatch, Mum. Into the hedge and on her way. It’ll take her a couple of hours, but they won’t get her now. It’s getting dark, and she’s the best hider I know. I blacked her face and closed the hatch, so they won’t spot anything. All we have to do now is wait.’
Eleven
They waited till it was very nearly dark. Half an hour had passed, without a sign or shout from the outside. Jane must be well away by this time. Heading for the minister, the police, civilisation. It was a warming thought, and she hugged it to herself. Whatever happened through this dreadful night, her daughter was safe.
She was at the upstairs back window, keeping watch, while Tim kept watch at the front. There was still a little pink light in the sky to the west; the last of day. The last of any day she might ever see. She shivered and hugged her anorak round her; but she still could not quite make herself believe that anybody was going to kill anybody. Oddly it was still the villagers’ power to kill she doubted. Not Tim’s. Tim was lost, quietly exalted in some dream of war. Every upstairs window was wide open. There was a little neat shining row of air-pistol slugs arranged along every windowsill in the house. Carefully spaced an inch apart, for speedy picking up. All the movies had come home to Tim. Dirty Harry, Lethal Weapon II, Full Metal Jacket, Rambo, The Exterminator. Barred from the cinema, forbidden them at home, Tim had watched them all at friends’ houses. Over and over. They had started their graduation in killing a year early . . .
‘Mum?’ Tim’s voice was low and urgent, but not at all panicky. ‘Mum, they’re coming. About four of them. Come and hold the torch for me. Don’t switch it on till they’re really close, and then let them have it full in the face. It’ll blind them.’
She took the big torch from him; aware that her hands were shaking, and that his hand was merely . . . tensed, thrumming.
‘Don’t stand right in the window, Mum!’ Mild exasperation had crept into his tone. ‘Stand to one side, so they can’t see you.’ He himself was standing next to the window, back to the wall, gun pointing upwards gracefully, professionally. How often had she seen that pose on TV? Cagney and Lacey, Dempsey and Makepiece, Miami Vice . . . It was more familiar than the England team