Whip Hand Part 66

'You'll get a bellyful of courtrooms anyway,' he said. 'With Nicholas Ashe, and Trevor Deansgate.'

'It's not so bad just being an ordinary witness.'

'You've done it a good few times, now.'

'Yes,' I said.

'What will Lucas Wainwright do after this, I wonder.'

'G.o.d knows.'

Charles glanced at me.

'Don't you feel the slightest desire to gloat?'

'Gloat?' I was astounded.

'Over the fallen enemy.'

'Oh yes?' I said. 'And in your war at sea, what did you do when you saw an enemy drowning? Gloat? Push him under?'

'Take him prisoner,' Charles said. After a bit I said, 'His life from now on will be prison enough.'

Charles smiled his secret smile, and ten minutes further on he said, 'And do you forgive him, as well?'

'Don't ask such difficult questions.'

Love thine enemy. Forgive. Forget. I was no sort of Christian, I thought. I could manage not to hate Lucas himself. I didn't think I could forgive: and I would never forget.

We rolled on to Aynsford, where Mrs Cross, carrying a tray upstairs to her private sitting room, told me that Chico was up, and feeling better, and in the kitchen. I went along there and found him sitting alone at the table, looking at a mug of tea.

'Hullo,' I said.

'Hullo.'

There was no need, with him, to pretend anything. I filled a mug from the pot and sat opposite him.

'b.l.o.o.d.y awful,' he said. 'Wasn't it?'

'Yeah.'

'And I was dazed, like.'

'Mm.'

'You weren't. Made it worse.'

We sat for a while without talking. There was a sort of stark dullness in his eyes, and none of it, any longer, was concussion.

'Do you reckon,' he said, 'they let your head alone, for that?'

'Don't know.'

'They could've.'

I nodded.

We drank the tea, bit by bit.

'What did they say, today?' he said. 'The bra.s.s.'

'They listened. Lucas resigned. End of story.'

'Not for us.'

'No.' I moved stiffly on the chair.

'What'll we do?' he said.

'Have to see.'

'I couldn't...' He stopped. He looked tired and sore, and dispirited.

'No,' I said. 'Nor could I.'

'Sid... I reckon... I've had enough.'

'What, then?'

'Teach judo.'

And I could make a living, I supposed, from equities, commodities, insurance, and capital gains. Some sort of living... not much of a life. In depression we finished the tea, feeling battered and weak and sorry for ourselves. I couldn't go on if he didn't, I thought. He'd made the job seem worthwhile. His naturalness, his good nature, his cheerfulness: I needed them around me. In many ways I couldn't function without him. In many ways, I wouldn't bother to function, if I didn't have him to consider.

After a while I said, 'You'd be bored.'

'What, with Wembley and not hurting, and the little bleeders?'

I rubbed my forehead, where the stray cut itched.

'Anyway,' he said, 'it was you, last week, who was going to give up.'

'Well... I don't like being...' I stopped.

'Beaten,' he said.

I took my hand away and looked at his eyes. There was the same thing there that had suddenly been in his voice. An awareness of the two meanings of the word. A glimmer of sardonic amus.e.m.e.nt. Life on its way back.

'Yeah.' I smiled twistedly. 'I don't like being beaten. Never did.'