And indeed when he looked at her again, fighting his way up out of his euphoric self-absorption, she did perhaps look rather a mess.
‘I’d better take you home. We’d better both go home.’ Lovely, blissful home, warm bed, comfortable dreams…
She was hugging together her ripped dress, trying to comb out her torn and tangled hair, scrabbling in her handbag for lipstick and little tubes of shiny eye make-up: spitting into an oblong box of mascara, thickening her lashes with great blobs of it, with some vague idea of getting back to normal, making herself ‘look good’.
‘What’ll I tell them? How’ll I explain to Mummy and Daddy? They’ll go mad.’
‘Tell them what happened,’ he said comfortably. ‘You couldn’t help it. Say he made a pass at you and, of course, you wouldn’t and he beat you up.’
‘They’ll say what was I doing here?’ Out of her anxiety, grew belligerence. ‘You should never have brought me to a place like this.’
He protested: ‘You made me bring you.’
‘You, my own cousin! What will my Pa say?’ Her father was a simple man: simple and gentle. But when he saw her like this, his little pet, his darling, his innocent flower…‘He’ll murder you,’ she said.
‘You went with the man. I told you not to.’
‘You should have stopped me.’
‘How could I?’ he said, simply. ‘I was stoned.’
‘Well, you shouldn’t have got stoned and let me.’ She sat hunched up beside him on the bench. Now and again, vaguely, curious glances swept over them and swept on. She looked a bit young for the Blue Bar—too young and too—well, different—to have been outside, having it rough with that sailor chap they called The Butcher; for that matter, both of them looked much too young, two silly kids out of place, from another world. Still, that was their affair. She, in her turn, looked back at them: dirty, raddled women, too remote from long-past youth and beauty to be of use to anyone but the rough, drunken, drug-soaked degenerates that would come to such a place.
‘Simon, if my father knew! Swear you won’t ever tell him I was here.’
‘What shall we say to them, then?’
‘Say that we—say that we were walking along, say we were coming home from the Singing Café, that’s harmless enough, along the river path. And just by that bench, the bench in front of Mardon’s hotel, say it was there; we must stick to the same story exactly—say there were these three boys and they jumped up and started making passes at me. And you fought them off—I’ll say you were terribly brave—but it was three to one and one of them got me away. Here, pull out your tie, mess up your clothes, look as if you’d been in a fight.’ But he’d have no scratches and bruises, no black eyes, he wouldn’t look a bit as if he’d been in a fight; and what was more, he didn’t look as though he were taking in a word she said. Anyone would see that he was stoned, even her innocent father would recognise that much. He’ll be at the zombie stage, she said to herself, he’ll never stick to anything. She said: ‘No, after all, skip it. I’d better go alone.’
Her light summer coat covered her ripped clothes. She got home at last, going the direct way, not along the river path. It was late, but the later she got home, the more likely her father would be anxiously waiting to see that she was safe. And, sure enough, at the first scrape of her key in the lock, the landing light went on and he was creeping downstairs so as not to wake her mother, wrapped in his old brown checked dressing-gown, the tassel of his cord following him with tiny muffled bumps from step to step.
‘Daffy? Where’ve you been? You’re awfully late.’
The coat covered her clothes but the pale, bruised face told its own story and the torn, tousled yellow hair. She had been thinking all the way home what best to say. His face, always so thin and worn, now turning to a bad colour she too well knew, gave her her cue. She tumbled into his arms. ‘Oh, Daddy!’
‘What is it, darling, what’s happened? Oh, my God—you haven’t been…? They haven’t…?’ He led her, as she sobbed and shuddered, into the sitting-room, lowered her on to the sofa, fell on his knees before the electric fire to switch it on, as though offering a prayer to it for warmth and comfort for her; came back to sit beside her on the sofa, circling her shoulders with a trembling arm.
‘Don’t cry, sweetheart. You’re safe now, sweetheart. Tell Daddy, darling, it’ll be better when you’ve told.’ But he left her again for a moment, ran to the door, called up the stairs: ‘Hester!’, darted back to the cupboard, found brandy and a glass. ‘Here, darling, try, just a sip. Then you can tell me.’