There was another bed by the window. I stripped a blanket from it and dropped the blanket over the corrupt little body.
‘Say so if you’d rather walk. If you don’t feel up to it, I’ll carry you.’
She stared blankly at me, her smile slipped, and she had to make a conscious effort to hitch it into place again. She hadn’t any comments to make.
I bent over her and slid my hands under her knees and shoulders. As I lifted her she suddenly came alive. She grabbed me around the neck and flung herself back on to the bed, throwing me off balance so I fell on top of her. She was all arms and legs now, and I couldn’t get away from her.
I didn’t want to hurt her, but there was something pretty horrible in the way she was holding me, and I hated the feel of her hot, soft body. She was giggling in an insane way, and clung to me, her legs round my back and her finger-nails digging into my neck.
I seized her wrists and tried to break her hold, but she was surprisingly strong and I couldn’t get enough leverage to free myself. We rolled off the bed on to the floor and she butted me with her head and tried to bite me in the face.
We wrestled around on the floor, knocking the furniture over, and after I had taken a couple of socks in the face that hurt I sank one into her midriff and winded her. She rolled away from me, gasping, and I got to my feet. I had lost my collar; one of my coot lapels had been ripped, and I was bleeding from a long scratch down the side of my face.
There was still plenty of fight left in her. She was squirming around on the floor, trying to get her breath back and trying to get at me when Barratt came into the room.
He came in quietly and cautiously, and there was a faded, fixed smile on his white face. In his right hand he carried a long-bladed knife that could be and probably was a carving knife.
The enlarged pupils of his eyes gave him a blind look, but he could see me all right, and he was looking and moving towards me.