by Carmen Reid
The connection took for ever, the rings were in slow motion, then the clink-clunk of the voice-mail coming on. She hung up and dialled Directories, all the time watching the smallest trickle of blood seep from her son’s head.‘Put me through, yes, put me through!’ she screamed at the operator.
The machine repair shop answered and didn’t seem to have a clue what she was talking about.
‘Lachlan Murray? In here today? No. Don’t think so. Shall I ask around?’
‘No, no, I haven’t got time.’
She felt the hysteria rising in her. The nearest A& E was over an hour’s drive away. She NEEDED LACHLAN. She didn’t have the car . . . how would they get there? She couldn’t handle this by herself.
She dialled 999.
The age it took. Getting through to the ambulance service, describing the accident, giving all Pete’s details, giving the farm’s address, trying to explain to the imbecile on the other end of the phone that an ambulance would take too long, that the farm was too hard to find, that they would meet the ambulance on the way.
‘No, I’m sorry, madam, we have to advise you to stay put with your child. We will find you. We’ll send out an emergency crew right now.’
‘Please stay calm,’ this imbecile kept telling her. But Pete was about to die in the middle of the bloody countryside, an hour from any sort of help and her husband who had the car was out shagging his mistress.
She hung up.
She put her hand under Pete’s neck and moved right in towards him. Her tears fell on his face.
She could hear footsteps. Other people were running up the drive now. Ursula and Andrea came into view. They ran onto the lawn to take a look at her child.
Ursula crouched down beside him and asked in her halting English: ‘He is hit?’
‘Yes,’ Rosie whispered.
Ursula gently took his hand and felt for a pulse. At least she seemed to know what she was doing.
‘He fainting,’ she said. Then touching very gingerly near the dent, she added: ‘Need hospital.’
‘I know, I know, but we’ve no car. It’s very far away for an ambulance. They’ll get lost.’ Her voice broke.
Ursula turned to Andrea and began to speak speedily in Polish.
‘Farm van?’ Ursula asked.
Christ, the farm van. Could they take Pete to hospital in the farm van? ‘Can you drive?’ she asked Ursula.
‘No, Andrea,’ was Ursula’s answer.
Rosie did not need to wait to discuss the pros and cons. If they could even get to the dual carriageway, the service station, they could meet the ambulance there. Leaving Pete and Willy with the two girls, she ran faster than she’d ever thought she could, heart screaming, to the shed and fired up the big blue Transit, screeched into reverse, rammed it onto the road, over potholes, up the drive, gravel spraying all over the place.
They would lay Petie across the front seat, she would cradle him, try and keep his head as still as possible.
Ursula would have to stay here with Willy. No, Willy would want to come. No, Willy shouldn’t . . . God, Manda. She hadn’t even thought of Manda, still in the field in her buggy. Ursula would stay with Willy and Manda.
Andrea slid onto the driver’s side of the long front bench. Very, very carefully, Rosie and Ursula lifted Pete up onto the front seat so his head and shoulders were in his mother’s lap. He uttered a gentle groan, which reassured and terrified Rosie in equal measure.
‘The baby,’ Rosie remembered to tell the girl at the last moment.‘The baby is in the field. She’ll need a new nappy – some food. It’s all in the house. Willy will show you. The door is open. My husband should be home soon.’
Ursula nodded reassuringly to everything, then slammed the door shut and they set off. Andrea drove an agonizingly slow and careful five miles an hour down the drive.
Rosie didn’t take her eyes off the white face lying in her arms and began to pray that her boy was going to be OK.
They shook off the drive and the farm’s road, then were on the long, twisting B road, which would meander for a full twenty minutes – longer at this speed – before they hit the dual carriageway.
Andrea’s hands were gripped around the big, thin wheel. Occasionally she would grapple with the long gearstick, but mainly she stuck to driving in third, letting the van stutter as she slowed for corners.
The phone in Rosie’s pocket began to ring. She unlocked the fingers clinging round Pete’s shoulders and fished for it.
Lachlan’s number was not flashing up.
‘Hello,’ she answered.
It was the imbecile ambulance woman. An ambulance was on its way, they were going to put the driver on the line for directions.
Rosie tried to summon calmness from somewhere. Yes, she was on the road, she tried to explain. She named the service station, the junction, the road number where she would meet them, but they didn’t seem to want to understand.
‘We need you to wait with the child, madam,’ the driver kept repeating.
She was trying not to scream: ‘You won’t find the farm. Meet me at the service station. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Meet me there.’
She had to hang up. Pete was groaning again.
In her mind she tried to argue that he was going to be fine, that small children were tough, recovered from all sorts of knocks and scrapes, but still came the panic thought, that he was going to die. She felt tears squeeze from the corners of her eyes.
Long minutes until they were finally approaching the main road.‘Left or right?’ Andrea asked.
‘Right,’ Rosie told her, which meant crossing the dual carriageway and waiting in the central reservation for a break in the traffic on the other side.
They waited and waited. A small gob of vomit oozed out of Pete’s mouth. Rosie saw the remains of the strawberries he must have eaten in the field.‘Now! Go now!’ she urged the girl, who was obviously too frightened to pull out into the road.
The van juddered out in first and cranked up painfully slowly through second and third.
But at last, she could see the service station and, thank God, an ambulance there in the forecourt.
She pointed it out to Andrea, unable to find the words.
Andrea slowed down and stuttered into the garage, manoeuvring the Transit right beside the ambulance. She turned off the ignition and jumped out to alert the crew.
A paramedic came to Rosie’s door and popped it open.
Not even any form of greeting, his first words to her were: ‘You should have waited with the boy. Head injuries should not be moved.’
This was too much. Rosie’s grip tightened on her poor baby, she swallowed down the sob that was threatening to break from her now and, entirely uncharacteristically, told the ambulance man to fuck off.
There was a moment of silence, then everyone went all British and pretended it hadn’t happened.
They fired questions at her as they eased Pete onto a stretcher, strapped him in, put blocks around his head and buckled them tight. An oxygen mask went over his face. He looked tiny on the six-foot stretcher. She ached at the sight of it.
‘How old is he?’ she was asked.
‘Five . . . just five.’
She was helped out of the van and led towards the ambulance. Glancing back at Andrea, who was standing beside the van, Rosie scrabbled in the pocket of her jeans and found two pound coins, change from the cup of coffee she’d had during her Ikea spending spree.
‘Here—’ she held them out to the girl.‘Have some tea, then drive home. You’ll be fine.’ She managed to smile at Andrea and add a ‘Thank you.’
Huddled under the rough grey blanket one of the crewmen had draped round her, she put her hand over Pete’s and tried to be calm for him. She heard the siren and felt the vehicle pick up speed. Looking out of the darkened window, she could see they were hurtling along the outside lane. On the hard passenger’s bench in the back, she found the ride surprisingly bumpy.
Head in her hands
, Rosie sat in the small room they’d directed her into and wept, quietly and steadily, shoulders shaking, tears pooling in her palms. There was nothing else she could do. The medical staff had been as reassuring as they could, but Pete had been taken in for immediate exploratory surgery. They would know more once they’d ‘had a look’ – she couldn’t stop picturing what that meant – but the doctor had told her Pete ‘looked pretty good’.‘Very resilient, these little boys,’ he’d added, giving her a smile.‘Try not to worry too much.’
She heard the swing door and glanced up – hoping it would at last be the doctor – but instead, her husband walked into the room. Her husband, the other reason she couldn’t stop crying. Then his arms were around her, holding her tightly.
‘He’s going to be OK,’ Lachlan told her.‘I know it. He’s small but he’s very tough.’
‘Is the doctor coming?’ she sobbed into his shoulder.
‘Very soon, they said.’
And then, as if she’d just remembered, she pulled out of his arms abruptly: ‘You were with her,’ she accused him savagely, spitting the words out, ‘I know it now. You were with her!’
He brought his wife back into his arms, folded her against him, said into her hair: ‘It’s not what you think, Rosie.’
But she slid out of his grip and back into the position she’d been in when he’d entered the room: head in hands, weeping. Lachlan sat down beside her, his hands gripped tightly together, not daring to reach for her again.
Long minutes passed, with just her sobs breaking the silence, until she stood up and began to walk around the room: ‘I can’t bear this!’ she shouted at Lachlan.‘We have to find out what’s happening.’
At last the door opened and the doctor she recognized was standing there, asking them in words which seemed to come out too slowly and yet tumble over her so that she could hardly take them in, if they were Mr and Mrs Murray. Rosie felt a rush of panic, the terror that Petie was dead. Instead, she was trying to take in the news that he ‘had come off very lightly’, was ‘doing well’, was set to ‘make a full recovery’.
She heard it, she understood it, but the feeling of relief didn’t come: she’d been so frightened, her body still felt rigid, tense as a spring.
‘Can we see him?’ was all she wanted to know.
‘Of course,’ the doctor told them.‘He’s still out for the count, though.’
Chapter Twenty-eight
PAMELA HAD GONE to the cottage after her meeting with Lachlan, thought it would be best to try and get some more work done, take her mind off him. But, of course, it was stupid to go there, where she thought about him constantly, dripped tears as she wiped over surfaces, swept out the rooms, prepared them for the workmen due in on Monday.
It was late afternoon when she drove home, speeding down the farm’s road, desperate not to bump into Lachlan or his wife, or anyone at all. In fact, the farm seemed unusually quiet. She turned the radio on, tried to find something pop and cheerful but ended up shouting with frustration at the useless reception. So, she drove in silence, nudging up past 50 on the twisty roads, realizing how well she knew them now: where she could speed up, where she had to slow for the biggest bends. She was turning local, just at the point when she was going to leave.
Because wasn’t that the only option ahead now? She couldn’t stay on at the farm with Dave. She’d cheated on him twice now. She hadn’t slept with him for months, hadn’t really talked to him for months. They weren’t together any more. Just going through the motions. Maybe she wasn’t really upset about Lachlan at all, maybe it was this very big thing ahead – splitting from Dave – that was really causing her pain.
Thirteen years of her life had been spent with this man. So much past, so many shared memories, like trees which had grown together, entwined, the boundaries blurred, not sure where one ended and the other began. She couldn’t even pretend that this wouldn’t really hurt. Big pieces of her were going to be cut off in the process of disentangling herself from him.
When she pulled up at the farmhouse, the rain had stopped and a pink and gold sunset was spreading out over the sky, all the windows of the house shining with it. She locked the car and walked to the back door. Open, as usual. Dave had fallen into the country habit: the back door at least was always open whether he was in or out.
She turned the handle on the second door and went into the kitchen. And there he was, but sitting down at the kitchen table, as if he was waiting for her. The big room was strangely still, no radio on filling the space, nothing on the hob to fuss over.
Just Dave, in a smart black polo neck she hadn’t seen him wear since they moved up here, sitting at the kitchen table, looking up at her in a way that caused a wave of anxiety to break over her.
‘Is anything wrong?’ She was the first to speak.
‘Maybe you should tell me.’ She felt his eyes on her face, coolly appraising her reaction to these words.
‘What do you mean?’ She didn’t move from the doorway, aware of the sharp thudding in her chest.
‘We had an agreement, didn’t we?’ There was something a little strangled to this question.‘We came up here for a rest, a change . . . and to try and make our marriage work. Wasn’t that the agreement?’
‘Yes.’ Pamela heard the falter in her own voice. He knew. He knew. How the hell did he know? Here it was, coming down the motorway at her, 90 miles per hour, head on, unavoidable, her very own emotional car crash.
‘I don’t think . . .’ He paused, moved his shoulders up slightly as if to heave the words out . . .‘fucking the brains out of some local farmer was part of our agreement, was it?’
She had never seen him like this: so pale, so furious, but so terrifyingly controlled with it.
She took a step forward, meaning to put her hands on the back of the chair nearest to her, needing something to hold onto.
‘Don’t come anywhere near me, just stay right away.’ He was almost shouting now. But there was something broken in his voice that was hurting her chest terribly.
He watched her fold down into the kitchen chair and hoped she wasn’t going to ask how he knew. He didn’t think he could bear to tell her, say out loud that he had seen them. Seen her face as she . . . He tried to turn from the thought.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she was telling him, ‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t want you to know anything about this . . .’ That sounded so stupid, so obvious.‘I didn’t want to hurt you. It’s all over,’ stumbled out.‘It’s over between me and—’ it felt too harsh to say Lachlan’s name ‘him. It’s over. It wasn’t anything—’ she struggled for the words, the right words, knowing that every one of them was a slap in the face to this man, the one she had been with so long ‘important.’
‘Well, maybe not to you,’ he said, something close to amazement in his voice.‘But it’s pretty bloody important to me. My wife, sleeping with someone else and she tells me not to worry, it isn’t anything important.’
‘That’s not what I said, he’s not important to me. Of course all this—’ she put a hand to her forehead.‘All this is very important.’
Hardly daring to look at her, he asked her all the things he thought he wanted to know. How had it started? How long had it been going on for? Was it really finished?
The pain of her words was like probing a fresh wound, excruciating, yet somehow necessary.
When he had heard all her halting answers, seen her twist her fingers, twist her hair, felt her awkwardness and pain, he asked the question which was so hard to answer.
‘What do you want, Pamela? What do you want?’
The ghost of the real answer, the way she had always answered this question in the past – ‘A baby’ – was still there between them. But that wasn’t what she said now.
‘What do you want?’ she asked instead, wondering if she would be spared being the first to suggest that maybe there was nothing else left. That it was time to call it a day.
‘I’m so pissed off with you just now, I can’t
think straight,’ was his answer.‘I need to get out of here. I don’t want to see you.’
She could see how furious he was, but was still surprised when he added: ‘I’m going to London for a week or two. Think things over.’
‘London?’ This wasn’t what she’d imagined. Dave leaving her here.‘You can’t,’ she said.‘I’m going. I’m the one who’s going back to London.’
‘No, you are not.’ He was glad he sounded as angry as he felt.‘I’m going – I’m going right now. I’m packed. Ted’s meeting me off the last train.’
‘Ted?!’ This was even worse. He couldn’t leave her and then go and stay with her brother.‘Ted is my brother.’ As if this needed to be pointed out.
‘He’s also my friend.’
See? Entangled, entwined. Ending this would be more painful than either of them could imagine.
‘How am I going to manage all this on my own?’ she asked, wanting to shout too. But she didn’t have the right; she knew what he was going to say next.
‘You should have thought of that before you started your pathetic little affair.’ There, he’d gone and said it.
Should have thought of this . . . he was right: she’d never thought of this. Of him leaving her in charge here.
He was on his feet now, searching the kitchen for keys, mobile phone, his wallet.
‘I don’t know what to do.’ Even she didn’t like the whiny sound in her voice.
‘You’ll work it out,’ he snapped.‘Not much to do tomorrow, then I’ve arranged for George to come here on Monday, so you’ll have to get up early to pick with him. He’ll keep you right. I’ve written you out some instructions.’ He pointed at several sheets of paper on the table.
Pick? Deliver the vegetables? No, no. This was a mistake. She couldn’t be left in charge of the farm. She didn’t have a clue. She’d tried to have as little to do with it as she could. He could not be doing this to her.
‘You can’t go,’ she told him firmly.‘I won’t stay here and look after your precious vegetables and bloody cows. I’m not doing it. I’ve got to finish the cottages.’