by Francis - TO THE HILT

Tell him… you have to.

'Where is it?' he said.

I meant to tell him. I tried to tell him. But when it came to the point, I couldn't.

So I burned.

Some of the marks will be there always, but I can't see them unless I look in a mirror.

I could hear someone screaming and I remembered Surtees promising 'next time you'll scream', but it wasn't I, after all, who was screaming; it was Patsy.

Her high urgent voice, screaming.

'No. No. You can't. For God's sake, stop it. Oliver. Surtees. You can't do this. Stop it. For God's sake. Stop it…'

The noise I made wasn't a scream. From deep inside, like an age-old recognition of a primeval torment, starting low in my gut and ending like a growl in the throat, the sound I heard in myself, that was at one with myself, that was all there was of existence, that unified every feeling, every nerve's message into one consuming elemental protest, that noise was a deep sort of groan.

I could hear him repeating, 'Where is it? Where is it?'

Irrelevant.

It all lasted, I dare say, not much more than a minute. Two minutes, perhaps.

Half a lifetime, condensed.

I'd gone beyond speech when the scene blew apart.

With crashes and bangs and shrieking metal the driving cab and entire front half of a large travelling coach smashed down the fence and gate between the drive and the garden. Out of the bus and onto the lawn poured a half-drunk mob of football supporters, all dressed in orange (it seemed) with orange scarves and heavy boots and raucous shouting voices.

'Where's the beer, then? Where's the beer?'

Scrambling through the demolished fence came more and more orange scarves. Hooligan faces. 'Where's the beer?'

The four thugs who'd been pinning down my arms and legs decided to quit and took their weight off me so that I was blessedly able to roll off the grill and lie face down on the cool grass: and a pair of long legs in black tights appeared in my limited field of vision, with a familiar voice above me saying, 'Jesus Christ, Al,' and I tried to say, 'What took you so long?' but it didn't come out.

The brightly lit garden went on fining with noise and orange scarves and demands for beer. Surrealism, I thought.

Chris went away and came back and poured a container of cold water over me, and squatted down beside me and said, 'Your sweater was smouldering , for God's sake,' and I agreed with him silently that water was better than fire any day.

'Al,' he said worriedly, 'are you OK?'

'Yuh.'

A goldfish flapped on the grass. Poor little bugger. A goldfish out of the pond. Pond water, that Chris had used.

Goldfish pond. Cold water.

Great idea.

I made an attempt to crawl and stagger there, and Chris, seeing the point, unwound the ropes from my arms and legs and neck and hooked an arm under my armpit and gave me a haul, so that somehow or other I crossed the short distance of grass and lay down full-length in the cold pond, my head using the surrounding stones like a pillow, leaves of waterlilies on my chest, the overall relief enormous.

'Did bloody Surtees do this?' Chris demanded with fury.

'Bloody Grantchester.'

He went away.

There were more people in the garden. Policemen. Uniforms. The monstrous front half of the coach rose over the scene like a giant incarnation of Chaos, yellow, white and silver with windows like eyes. I lay in the pond and watched the football fans scurry about looking for free beer and turning violent when they couldn't find any, and I watched the police slapping handcuffs on everyone moving, including the four thugs, who had over-estimated the window of escape, and I watched Patsy's bewilderment and Surtees's swings from glee to noncomprehension and back.

I heard one of the football crowd telling policemen that it was a girl who had stolen the coach from outside the pub where they had pulled up for some refreshment; a girl who had yelled that there was free beer at the party along the road, a girl - 'a bit of all right', 'a knock-out' - who'd said she was up for grabs for the quickest pair of boots after her into the garden.

When they'd drifted away, Chris came back.

'I caught bloody Grantchester trying to sneak out through the garage,' he said with satisfaction. 'He'll be going nowhere for a while.'

'Chris,' I said. 'Get lost.'

'Do you mean it?'

'The police are looking for the young woman who drove the bus.'

A shiny object splashed down onto my chest.

A set of brass knuckles, gleaming wetly. I swept them off my chest into deeper, concealing water.

Chris's hand briefly squeezed my shoulder and I had only one more glimpse of his dark shape as he passed from the lit side of the bushes into the shadows.

The farce continued. A large uniformed policeman told me to get out of the pond, and when I failed to obey he clicked a pair of handcuffs on my wrists and walked off, deaf to protests.

It gradually appeared that a couple of people in the garden were neither uniformed police nor uniformed fanatics but the law in plain clothes or, in other words, tweed jackets with leather patches on the elbows.

The artificial waterfall splashed cold water over my throbbing head. I lifted my handcuffed hands and steered the water delicately over my face.

A new voice said, 'Get out of the pond.'

I opened my closed eyes. The voice held police authority. Just behind him stood Patsy.

He was a middle-aged man, not unkind, but my occupancy of the pond, the length of my wet hair and the presence of the handcuffs could hardly have been encouraging.

'Get out,' he said. 'Stand up.'

'I don't know if he can,' Patsy said worriedly. "They were hitting him…'

'Who were?'

She looked over to where bunches of handcuffed figures sat gloomily on the grass. No beer. No fun at all.

'And they burnt him,' Patsy said. 'I couldn't stop them.'

The policeman looked at the barbecue with its glowing coals.

'No,' Patsy said, pointing, 'on that grill thing, over there.'

One of the uniformed policemen bent down to pick the grill up and snatched his hand away, cursing and sucking his fingers.

I laughed.

Patsy said as if shattered, 'Alexander, it's not funny .'

The policeman said, 'Mrs Benchmark, do you know this man?'

'Of course I know him.' She stared down at me. I looked expressionlessly back, resigned to the usual abuse. 'He's… he's my brother ,' she said.

It came nearer to breaking me up than all Grantchester's attentions.

She saw that it did, and it made her cry.

Patsy, my implacable enemy, wept.

She brushed the tears away brusquely and told the policeman she would point out my attackers among the football crowd, and when they moved off their place was taken by Surtees, who was very far from a change of heart and had clearly enjoyed the earlier entertainment.

'Where's the horse?' he said. He sneered. His feet quivered, I thought he might kick my head.

I said with threat, 'Surtees, any more shit from you and I'll tell Patsy where you go on Wednesday afternoons. I'll tell her the address of the little house on the outskirts of Guildford and I'll tell her the name of the prostitute who lives there, and I'll tell her what sort of sex you go there for.'

Surtees's mouth opened in absolute horror. When he could control his throat, he stuttered.

'How… how… how…? I'll deny it.'

I said, smiling, 'I paid a skinhead to follow you.'

His eyes seemed to bulge.

'So you keep your hands to yourself as far as I'm concerned, and your mouth shut, Surtees,' I said, 'and if you're still what Patsy wants, I won't disillusion her.'

He looked sick. He physically backed away from me, as if I'd touched him with the plague. I gazed up peacefully at the bright coloured lights in the trees. Life had its sweet moments, after all.