Off Minor Read Online Free

she has never learned to drive …” She looked sideways at Resnick and smiled. “I thought, never mind, I shall go on my own, I can still enjoy the play; I run my bath, continue to get ready, but all the time, here in the back of my mind, I know, Charles, that I can never go there alone.”
    “Marian.”
    “Yes?”
    “I’m not clear what you’re saying.”
    “Charles, which night is this? It is Saturday night; Friday, Saturday night, it is no longer safe to go into the city, a woman, a woman like myself, alone.”
    Resnick glanced at the glass and the Pilsner bottle alongside it: both were empty. “You could have ordered a taxi.”
    “And coming home? I telephoned the theater, the performance finishes at ten thirty-five, you know the only places I can get a taxi at that time of the evening, Charles. All the way down to the square, or by the Victoria Hotel. And every pavement, everywhere you go, there are these gangs of young men …” Two bright spots of color showed high on her cheekbones, accentuating the paleness of her face, her concave cheeks. “It is not safe; Charles, not any more. It is as if, little by little, they have taken over. Bold, loud, and we look the other way; or stay at home and bolt our doors.”
    Resnick wanted to contradict her, say that she exaggerated, it simply wasn’t so. Instead he sat quiet and toyed with his glass, remembering the senior officer at the Police Federation conference warning that the police were in danger of losing control of the streets; knowing that there were cities, and he did not just mean London, where bulletproof vests and body armor were routinely carried in police vehicles on weekend patrol.
    Marian touched his hand. “We do not have to think back so many years, Charles, to remember gangs of young men marauding the streets. It was right to be afraid then.”
    “Marian, that wasn’t us. It was our parents. Grandparents, even.”
    “And so we should forget?”
    “That wasn’t what I said.”
    “Then what?”
    “It isn’t the same.”
    Marian’s eyes had the darkness of marbled stone, of freshly turned earth. “Because of those young men, our families fled. Those who were not imprisoned, not in the ghetto, not already dead. If we do not remember, how can it not happen again?”
    Raymond had been sitting in the Malt House for the best part of an hour, two pints and a short, watching the women flocking in and out again, brightly colored and shrill voiced. Off to one side of the room, a DJ played songs Raymond half-remembered, without ever knowing either the singer or the words. Only now and again something would strike a chord, Eddie Van Halen, ZZ Top, one of those white bands that came straight at you with plenty of noise.
    Raymond was getting fidgety, trying not to notice the youths near the bar, putting the eye on him every so often, wanting him to stare them back, cock an eyebrow, respond. Oh, he knew they’d not start anything right there; wait till he got up to go and follow him out on to the street. A few shouted remarks as he turned down towards the Council House, jostling him then as they fanned out around him, pushing past. He’d seen another lad bundled into a dress-shop window just the week before, right there, that street. By the time they’d finished with him, both eyes were closing fast, his face like something Raymond might heft on to his shoulder at work, blood smearing his overalls.
    Not that they would deal with Raymond that easily; not like before. Not now he had something with which to strike back.
    He walked around to the far side of the bar; one more half, then time to make a move. A girl, laughing, swung her arm back into him as he passed and laughed some more, dance of permed blond hair as she swiveled her face towards him, eyes, quick and greedy, summing him up, dismissing him out of hand. Raymond waited to be served, half-watching the girl, blue dress with straps, finer than his own little finger, running tight along the pale