Diana! Episode 10

Diana and Jonathan descended the damp steps from upper Forbes Street. They crossed William Street, which was bright and wide and busy. A bunch of boys in peaked caps and white muscle-shirts passed by them, off clubbing. Diana watched as they headed up hill. "Why do they wear their caps backwards?"

"It confuses the predators," and they edged through Woolloomooloo, along Forbes and Cathedral, into lower Kings Cross. Diana walked beside him, with the escarpment rising on her right. "So, that would be the harbour end of Victoria Street?"

"Yes," and Diana ran her fingers along the sandstone containing-wall. "I normally take the second stairs."

"Victoria Street. You go for the development sites then." Jonathan brushed back his fringe, which was obscuring his view of Diana's neck, the ridge of muscle along her shoulder. "At least no-one was murdered defending Macquarie Lighthouse." In the Seventies, he told her, Victoria Street was graced with terraces and an avenue of trees. When developers moved in, the locals put on a stink. It was quite a show for a while: headlines, pickets, evictions. The developers had won, easily in the end, and publisher and local hero, Juanita Nielsen, disappeared: kidnapped, murdered. In those days the term was 'Underworld Figures'. The Victoria Street Development Project now stretched in big red-roofed clumps the length of the escarpment, clotted in knots, like old blood. "No wonder," he said, "you want to leave."

The ridge of the Cross rose on their right, the sandstone cliff reinforced by slabs of convict stone cut and lugged from who knows where. Their shadows slid across a mass of graffiti. In white paint, someone had written: 'God hates homos'. In green paint beneath read the reply: 'But does he like tabouli?' A little further ahead a set of stairs sliced through the sandstone. As they turned up into it, a man barred their way, asking for one dollar. Then they were aware of two others, standing behind them. Jonathan felt his hands tingle and sweat. He looked towards Diana, but in the darkness her face was obscure.

"Money, quick!" said the first man in a hoarse whisper that was urgent and confident. Jonathan tried to take up space. He spread his elbows as dug for his wallet, opened it to show the notes inside, then handed the money over. "You too!" Diana stepped back. Jonathan turned. Diana pressed herself flush against the wall, and now the light revealed her cool, still face. Full of mobility, the man's face smiled. "Pretty!" His voice changed as he examined his knife's naked blade. Diana did not move. "Give us your money, bitch!" She pressed her back against the damp, cold stone.

One of the others joked about credit. The third said, through wide-spaced teeth: "Maybe we'll have to take the hairy cheque book." All three laughed as the first man moved in on Diana.

Jonathan's lunge did not even get started. The robber at his back kicked his leg out, the crook of his knee. Collapsing onto the steps, he copped another in the face which knocked him flat and left him struggling with consciousness.

Time drifts. Through the smoky haze that seems to surround him, he hears: "Jonathan." Jonathan hears Diana say: "You did not need to do that," all in a whisper, soft with breathing, quiet and controlled. He is vaguely surprised to see her standing there on the far side of the stairway as three men, in a purse-string arc, draw closer.

The first man came forward, stepping out of the line. He sucked a sharp breath and launched his knife at Diana's face. But his bright eyes moved more than his bright steel did. Diana had him caught at the wrist. His arm was stuck mid-air. The others laughed, paying Jonathan no more attention: they were spectators to something new.

The man bared his teeth with a kind of growl. His knife, this time, would cut deep.

It. At his command his forearm only shuddered. He looked at her, wondering. It. Her grip tightened. Hurts.

He could not comprehend, this man, as his knees callapsed under a wave of pain. And Diana did not let go.

From behind the two who stood by enthralled and motionless, Jonathan saw the robber on the ground, his raised arm still held at the wrist, and Diana, in light and darkness, standing over him. He saw the man's face lose its blood. His growl, again between clenched teeth, was now sick, and sickening, with pain. There followed two distinct cracks: one, and in a second, another. The man's head jerked. Spew slopped through his rubber lips. He passed out, sliding on his belly down the stairs. Diana shot a glance, knife-bright, at the other two, and they bolted.

"I am sorry, Jonathan." Her voice was rich and dark with care. "Are you well?"

"I'll live." Jonathan knew his words sounded weak and slurred, and he felt humiliated that just two syllables could come out wrong. His eyes began to focus. "I'll live." Better.

Jonathan held out his hand and Diana grasped him by the arm. She raised him, straightened him against the wall. Blood trickled from his mouth. She wiped it away with her thumb, pressed her thumb against her lips.

"Yes," she said, now that her lips were free, "I think you will." Diana waited while Jonathan gained his feet. She retrieved his wallet from the mouldy step, and together they resumed their climb to Victoria Street. Jonathan had forgotten about the man below, but as they reached the top he heard a moan from the darkness, and remembered. "Shouldn't we ring an ambulance or the police or something?"

Diana turned to him. "Why?"