‘It’s either go now or stay altogether. I can’t stop here. That’s clear enough. If you and me are going together we must go now.’
‘Abner, my dear, I can’t face it. Not after this. Abner, I’m too frightened to move a step. And if he died . . .’
‘I tell you he’s all right. He’ll come round sober. If I was to wait for that there’d be no end to it. It’d begin all over again.’
She gazed at him, anguished.
‘Abner, my love, I daren’t. Don’t you understand? They’ll follow us. They’re bound to. The police . . .’
‘It’s no good thinking of that,’ he said.
She began crying softly, there on the floor above the prostrate body. Her fingers mechanically stroked George’s hand. The action irritated Abner. He could not look at her. He took a cloth from the table and mopped the blood that was running into his eyes. He propped himself up with the table edge, for he was still giddy from George’s blow on his temple. A sudden vision came to him of another kitchen, another man lying on the floor, another woman crying. The room swam before him. He steadied himself and sank down into a chair. The sense of time left him. He could not be certain where he was or in what period of his life. A shrill singing noise was in his ears. Through it, distantly, he heard the clear tone of a clock striking eight; and this recalled him to life, to the room that he had lost in a blur of confused memories, to the sound of Mary’s sobbing. He remembered that he had been speaking, but could only repeat the last words that had left an echo in his memory: ‘It’s no good . . .’
‘What?’ he heard her ask.
‘Wasting time over this. If you’re coming you must come now. Now or never.’
She neither moved nor answered him. He felt sorry for her: bent over her, pressed her to him. She turned her face away.