Part 10 (1/2)

At that moment the tramp pushed open the garage door and fell into the yard.

I screamed.

I didn't actually leap for Toby's arms but he got them round me somehow.

'Christ Almighty!' breathed Toby. 'Where did that come from?'

That uncurled itself and staggered to its feet. One dirty claw was extended towards us while he s.h.i.+elded his eyes from the sun with the other. He was filthy; mud-caked and bloodied. His boots were enormous and without laces. His coat and trousers hung on him in concertina folds, patched and torn, allowing glimpses of brown skin here and there. He might be any age from twenty to sixty, a stunted, stick-like, mop-headed monstrosity.

I've always been terrified of tramps. I clung to Toby and begged him to protect me. 'Don't let him come near me!'

'Of course-I'll drive him away!' But he took his time about releasing himself.

The tramp's eye alighted on my car. To tell the truth, he acted as if he were uncertain where he was. He stared at my car as if he were seeing a ghost. From the back he looked even odder than from the front; he clutched at his trousers with one hand, so as to prevent them from falling down.

'The road's that way,' said Toby, advancing on him.

The tramp turned his head. He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came. His eyes swivelled, looking for an escape route. He looked like a trapped animal, awaiting the coup de grce.

'Wait a minute!' said Toby, in a hard, surprised voice.

The tramp began to run, lurching and slipping in his ludicrous boots. Toby overtook him without effort, and tried to stop him by grasping at his coat. The tramp lashed out with claw and boot, but only succeeded in infuriating his pursuer.

'Like that, eh?' Toby laughed, and disregarding the tramp's feeble attempt to dodge, dropped him flat on the cobblestones.

The tramp moved feebly and then lapsed into unconsciousness. The hens squawked and flapped away from us, disturbed.

'Why did you do that?' I cried.

'He was here to steal, wasn't he?'

Toby checked that the tramp was out for the count, and then went to the garage to fetch the chain and padlock which had been used years ago to restrain my grandfather's dog when she was on heat. He dragged the tramp, legs trailing, to where an iron boot-sc.r.a.per had been sunk into the flagstones at the side of the front door. He clipped the chain round the man's ankle, and secured it to the sc.r.a.per.

'Better check he didn't steal anything last night,' said Toby, going through the tramp's pockets. I looked away. Much as I hated tramps, I didn't like to see a man treated like a parcel of fish, to be trussed up and turned over and prodded like that. Toby was so big and the tramp was so small that my sympathies began, little by little, to alter direction. Now that he couldn't harm me, I began to see that the tramp was such a poor specimen of a man that if he had molested me, I would have been able to deal with him.

'That's enough!' I said, as Toby wrenched off the tramp's remaining boot, and stripped off his jacket. His torso was bare and brown, splotched with blood and mud. His right arm and the back of his leg were badly bruised. There was a pale, broad band of skin around his left wrist which argued the absence of a wrist-watch.

Toby agreed that it was indeed enough, but he stood looking down at the man for a long moment before he joined me indoors.

'He came to steal eggs I expect,' I said. 'The sooner I can get rid of those hens the better. If you'd mucked out the hen-house as you promised, you would have found him earlier, because the tools are in the garage.'

'I wish I had,' said Toby. He helped himself to a beer and sat down, drying his forehead with the back of his hand.

I was trembling, too. I don't like violence, and I don't like tramps. One had followed me on a country walk once, and I'd never forgotten him; a great shambling brute of a man with a vacant expression on his face. My adult mind knew that such men were more to be pitied than feared, but childhood fears die hard. I got out the telephone directory and looked up the number of the local police station, thinking that it was a blessing that Granny had insisted on having the phone put in.

'What are you doing?'

'Ringing the police. They'll deal with him.'

'Lock him up? No, don't!' He broke the connection. 'I've a better idea.'

I had never liked him so much as when he explained how he felt about locking up the unfortunates of this world. Toby believed that he, and other educated people ought to try to help those who were unable to help themselves, and not just hand them over to the authorities to be locked up. He said we ought to try to help them, instead.

'But it was you who knocked him out when he was trying to run away!'

'My first instinct was to protect you, and make sure he hadn't stolen anything. Then I got to thinking that I'd acted dead against my principles, and that if the tramp got into the garage for shelter, or needed to steal eggs because he was hungry, then we ought to help him. We have so much, and he has so little. He had no money on him, you see. Not a penny.'

'The police could give him a hand-out, couldn't they? They could give him better clothes, and a chit to the Labour Exchange ...'

'They'd probably jail him first for trespa.s.s and stealing eggs! You don't want to send a man to jail, do you?'

'N-no ...'

'Then let's keep him for a few days. We'll give him some work to do, and let him doss down in the garage at night. Then when he's earned some money, we can send him on his way with a few pounds so that he can get a fresh start. Without money he can't buy new clothes or obtain accommodation, and without new clothes he can't apply for a job. He's in a vicious circle of poverty, and he can't break out of it on his own. We could help him to do so.'

'But I don't like tramps, and although I know it's silly, I'd be afraid to have him around me.'