3

I heard the gun being cocked as I followed her into the dark hallway. The click of a well-oiled ratchet, pulled past its setting point, then resting. Ready for release. Waiting for the trigger. The sequence repeated. Two clicks. A double--barrelled shotgun, well maintained by its owner.

Not too late for me to dart backwards, out of the door. But that would leave Mrs Leckie alone with the gunman. I could drop to the floor, use the second gained to look for the source of the noise, but my eyes were still adjusting to the gloom of the hallway after the bright summer morning outside. The sound had come from my right, through the doorway that presumably led to a snug. So I stepped forwards, between Mrs Leckie and the doorway, into harm’s way. I’d come here to protect her. Time to live up to my ideals.

‘Put the bloody gun away, Stan,’ Mrs Leckie snapped. ‘It’s Johnny Cook, he’s given me a lift home.’

‘Cook?’ came a voice from the snug.

‘You remember,’ she said. ‘Bess and George’s lad. Always had a cricket ball in his hand.’

Mrs Leckie hung up her coat and hurried forwards into the kitchen.

‘Now you’re here, you may as well make yourself useful,’ she called back to me. ‘You can get my sterilising pans down from the top shelf. Still time to get the jam made before the Boche get here. Waste not, want not.’

It was brave talk, but the tension in her voice was audible. I heard her opening drawers in the kitchen, making noise, warding off the fear.

Stan was sitting in an armchair, a blanket over his knees. His thin neck and small head disappeared into the starched collar of his shirt, like a tortoise poking its head out for a quick look around. The shotgun extended towards me, long and heavy, wobbling as he struggled to keep it aimed. He looked at me carefully.

‘They said you died at the Somme.’

He uncocked the gun and carefully leant it against the side of the chair, his hands shaking with the effort.

‘That was my dad,’ I said.

‘What happened to your brother? Nob, wasn’t it?’

‘My uncle. He came back, just about. Shell-shock.’

Stan grunted. ‘Sounds about right,’ he said, as if returning from the war irreparably damaged was a character defect.

As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I got a better look at Stan. The left side of his face was swollen, bruises extended down his neck. The way he was sitting, it looked like he was in pain, holding himself still.

‘What happened?’ I asked.

His eyes flicked towards the kitchen, then back to me.

‘You’ll be wanting to get on your way,’ he said, loud enough for his voice to carry.

The room stank of dog shit and mould. Every surface was covered with stacks of Wisden magazines and newspapers. Not much evidence of a woman’s touch. Division of territory perhaps. I take the kitchen, you take the snug. One way to get through the years together at the end of a country lane where you’re trapped every time it rains.

‘Where are the dogs?’ I asked.

‘Back garden,’ he said, nodding that way. ‘Put them down last year. In case of gas attacks.’

They’d told us to expect gas the first day of the war. The country had been in a panic. There’d been a fuss about gas masks for pets, but the government said they couldn’t spare the raw materials. People had their animals put down to spare them the unspeakable death that gas would deliver.

A car slowed as it drove past the house. Stan reached for his gun.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked.

We heard the car crunch on stones as it turned off the road, pulling in behind my van on the sandy layby. The -engine cut off with a shudder, the fuel mix too rich.

Stan picked up the gun and recocked it. Both chambers.

‘It’s the person who hurt you both,’ I said. ‘They threatened you. Hurt your wife. Thumped you around. But they didn’t get what they wanted. So now they’re back. Am I warm?’

‘A tactical error on their part,’ Stan said. ‘They’ve -misjudged the situation.’

A car door slammed, then another. Two people. The -garden gate slammed shut.

‘Wait in the kitchen,’ Stan said. ‘Don’t let them hurt her.’

A fist pounded on the front door.

Mrs Leckie opened a connecting door from the kitchen to the snug.

‘They’re back,’ she said.

‘Take Johnny,’ he said. ‘Lock yourselves in the kitchen and don’t come out until I give the all clear.’

I followed Mrs Leckie into the kitchen. Better to stay with the unarmed person, see what I could do.

The pounding on the front door repeated.

‘Are you going to tell me what’s going on?’ I asked her.

‘It’s too late now. Keep quiet and you’ll be all right.’

She thought I was scared. She was protecting me. Her and her husband, sitting in the snug with his shotgun, fighting their own fight.

‘I can help,’ I said.

She shushed me, putting her finger to her lips for emphasis. We listened. A third knock.

‘It’s not locked,’ Stan shouted.

The door creaked. Footsteps. Two men, stepping into the hall. Waiting. Eyes adjusting to the darkness.

‘In here,’ Stan said.

I pictured them looking right, as I had, through the door into the snug. Seeing an old man, wrapped up in his blankets. The long barrel of an antique shotgun wavering through the darkness towards them.

Mrs Leckie whispered to herself. I strained to hear.

‘Shoot,’ she said.

She did it again.

‘Shoot, you old bugger,’ louder this time. I got the feeling she wasn’t entirely happy with the division of labour – her hiding in the kitchen while her husband took point. If it had been her in the armchair with the shotgun, the intruders would be dead by now.

‘That’s the plan?’ I asked.

She nodded.

‘Stay here,’ I said.

I opened the door to the snug and stepped through, back into Stan’s domain, dog shit and mould.