by Dick Francis
There was a sudden tug as if some fisherman had us hooked. I felt us change direction slightly and then a tug again, stronger and continuing and stronger still. No miraculous rescue. It was the water had us, gripping tighter, sucking us fast, inexorably, into the weir. The sheer overwhelming weight and power of it made nonsense of human strength, reduced my efforts to the fluttering of a moth in a whirlwind. The seizing speed suddenly accelerated further still, and we hit. Or rather, Teller hit, with a jar which nearly wrenched him away from me. We spun in the current and my shoulder crashed into concrete and we spun again and crashed, and I couldn’t get hold of any surface with my free hand. The tumbling and crashing went on, and the pain in my chest went deeper, and I knew I wasn’t going to be climbing up any weir, I could only find it when it hit me, and when I reached for it it hit me somewhere else.
The crashing stopped, but the tumbling went on. My ears were roaring to bursting point. There was a sword embedded in my chest. The searing temptation came back more strongly just to open my mouth and be finished with it. But by my own peculiar rules I couldn’t do that, not with someone else involved, not when what I was doing was in a way what I’d been trained for. Some other time, I thought lightheadedly, some other time I’d drown myself. This time I’ll just wait until my brain packs up from lack of oxygen, which won’t be long now, and if I haven’t any choice in the matter, then I haven’t any guilt either.
The tumbling suddenly died away and the clutching current relaxed and loosened and finally unlocked itself. I was only seconds this side of blackout and at first it didn’t register: then I gave a feeble kick with legs half entwined round Teller and we shot upward as if on springs. My head broke the surface into the sun and air went down into the cramp of my lungs like silver fire.
The weir, the killing weir, was fifty yards away. Fifty yards upstream. We had come right through it under the water.
I took my freezing, stiffened fingers off Teller’s face, and held his head up to mine, and blew into his flaccid mouth. The current, gentle again and comparatively warm, carried us slowly along, frothy bubbles bursting with little winks against our necks. I trod water with my legs, and held Teller up, and went on pushing into him all my used-up breath. He showed no response. It would be exceedingly inconsiderate of him, I thought resignedly, if he had died right at the beginning and I had gone to all that trouble for nothing.
There were shouts from the banks suddenly and people pointing, and someone came after us in a dinghy with an outboard motor. It puttered noisily by my ear and hands stretched over the side to grasp.
I shook my head. ‘A rope,’ I said, and breathed into Teller. ‘Give me a rope. And pull slowly.’
One of the two men argued, but the other did as I asked. I wound the rope round my arm twice and held it, and when I nodded they let the boat drift away until we were a safe distance from its propeller and slowly began to pull us towards the bank. Teller got ten more of my ex-breaths on the way. They didn’t seem to be doing him a bit of good.
The dinghy towed us out of the weir stream side of the river and landed on the same side as the lock. People appeared in a cluster to help, and there was little doubt it was needed, but even so I was loth to part with Teller until one large calm man lay on his stomach on the grass and stretched his arms down under the American’s armpits.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘We’ll go straight on with the breathing.’
I nodded, took my mouth away from Teller’s and transferred his weight into the stranger’s arms. He began to pull him out of the water as fast as he could. I put a steadying hand on Teller’s chest and felt it heave suddenly under the clinging blue shirt. I hadn’t enough breath left myself to tell the man who was lifting him, and while I was still trying to, Teller, half out, gave a choking cough and opened his eyes. There was some water in his lungs, racking him. The stranger pulled him even more quickly out on to the grass, and as his ankles bumped over the edge his returning consciousness flooded into a stark sort of awareness which had nothing to do with a release from drowning. Somewhere between a cough and a groan he said ‘Jesus,’ and again went completely limp.
Another couple of strong wrists hauled me up on to the bank in his wake, and I knelt there beside him feeling the reassuringly small swelling on the side of his head but anxiously listening to the dragging breath bubbling in his throat.
‘Roll him over,’ I said. ‘Carefully … just so his tongue isn’t choking him.’
We put him on his side and his breathing eased immediately, but I wouldn’t let them pick him up and carry him up to the lock. Almost any injury was bound to be made worse by moving, and he’d been moved too much already. The calm man agreed and went briskly off to fetch a doctor.
The lock-keeper arrived along the towpath, followed at a rush by Keeble and all his family. Their faces were all strained with shock, and Lynnie had been crying.
‘Thank God,’ Keeble said, crouching beside me. ‘You’re both all right.’ His voice held almost more incredulity than relief.
I shook my head. ‘He’s hurt, somewhere.’
‘Badly?’
‘Don’t know … He crashed into the weir.’
‘We didn’t see you go over. We were watching …’
‘They must have gone under,’ said the lock-keeper. ‘Through one of the gates. Those gates wind upwards, same as a sash window. We’ve got two of them a couple of feet open at the bottom today, with the river a bit full after all that rain.’
I nodded. ‘Under.’
Dave Teller choked and woke up again, coughing uncontrollably through the puddle in his lungs, every cough jerking him visibly into agony. From his fluttering gesture it was clear where the trouble lay.
‘His leg,’ Keeble said. ‘He’s not bleeding … could he have broken it?’
The jar when he had hit the weir had been enough. I said so. ‘We can’t do anything for him,’ said Keeble, watching him helplessly.
The crowd around us waited, murmuring in sympathy but enjoying the disaster, listening to Teller coughing, watching him clutch handfuls of grass in rigid fingers. Not a scrap of use begging them to go away.
‘What happened to the punt?’ I asked Keeble.
‘We towed it ashore. Lynnie got hold of the rope. Those kids were terribly shocked.’ He looked round for them vaguely, but they weren’t in the crowd. ‘I suppose they’ve stayed back at the lock. The girl was nearly hysterical when you and Dave didn’t come up.’ A remembering bleakness came into his face. ‘We towed them into the lock cut and moored there. Then we ran along to the lock to get the lock-keeper … and he was already down here.’ He looked up across the river to the pretty weir. ‘How long were you under the water?’
‘A couple of centuries.’
‘Seriously.’
‘Can’t tell. Maybe three minutes.’
‘Long enough.’
‘Mm.’
He looked me over objectively, boss to employee. One shoulder of my green jersey shirt was ripped in a jagged tear.
‘Bruised,’ he said matter-of-factly.
‘The weir,’ I agreed, ‘has knobs on.’
‘It’s like a flight of steps under there,’ said the lock-keeper solemnly. ‘Going down from the top level to this one, you see. The current would have rolled you right down those steps, I reckon. In fact, it’s a bleeding miracle you ever came up, if you ask me. There’s some every year fall in this river and never get seen again. Current takes them along the bottom all the way to the sea.’
‘Charming,’ Keeble said under his breath.
Dave Teller stopped coughing, rolled slightly on to his back, and put his wrist to his mouth. His strong beaky nose stuck uncompromisingly up to the sky, and the wetness on his face wasn’t from the Thames. After a while he moved his hand and asked Keeble what had happened. Keeble briefly explained, and the screwed-up eyes slid round to me.
‘Lucky you were with us,’ he said weakly, the smile in his voice making no progress on his face.
He moved his hand apprehensively behind his ear, and winced when it reached the bump. ‘I don’t remember a thing.’
‘Do you remember asking me to look for your horse?’
He nodded a fraction, slowly. ‘Yuh. You said no.’
‘I’ve changed my mind,’ I said. ‘I’ll go.’
In the cabin of the Flying Linnet Keeble watched me slowly strip off my sodden clothes. I had never, as far as I remembered, felt so weak. I’d left half my muscles under the weir. Buttons would no longer come out of their holes.
‘You heard what the man said,’ Keeble remarked. ‘It was lucky you were with us.’
I didn’t answer.
‘Make a note of it,’ Keeble said. ‘Stick around. You never know when you’ll be needed.’
‘Sure,’ I said, refusing to acknowledge that I understood what he was talking about.
He wouldn’t be deterred. ‘You’re like Dave’s horse. Irreplaceable.’
My lips twitched. That was the crunch, all right. His job would be a little harder if he lost his head cook and bottle-washer. Personal regard didn’t come into it.
I struggled out of my jersey. He handed me a towel, glancing non-committally at the marks of this and previous campaigns.
‘I’m serious, Gene.’
‘Yeah,’ I sighed. ‘Well … I’m still here.’
It was too much of an admission, but at least it seemed to reassure him enough to change the subject.
‘Why are you going to the States?’
‘Maybe I owe it to him.’
‘Who? Dave?’
I nodded.
‘I don’t follow,’ he said, frowning. ‘Surely he owes you? If anyone owes anything.’
‘No. If I’d been quicker, he wouldn’t have gone in, wouldn’t now have a smashed thigh. Too much whisky and wine and sleeping in the sun. I was much too slow. Abysmally, shamefully slow.’
He made a gesture of impatience. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Gene. No speed on earth could have prevented an accident like that.’
I put the towel round my neck and started to take off my trousers.
‘That accident’, I said briefly, ‘was attempted murder.’
He gazed at me, eyes blinking slowly behind the mild spectacles. Then he turned, opened the cabin door, and stepped up into the cockpit. I heard him shouting to Peter.
‘Get out of that punt at once, there’s a good chap. And don’t let anyone else get in it. It’s important.’
‘Not even Lynnie?’
‘Not even Lynnie.’
‘I don’t want to,’ said Lynnie’s voice in a wail from the cockpit. ‘I never want to go in a punt again.’
She wasn’t much her father’s daughter. His mind was as tough as old boots. The chubby body which contained it came back into the cabin and shut the door.
‘Convince me,’ he said.
‘The boy and girl have scarpered.’
He raised his eyebrows and protested. ‘They were frightened.’
‘They didn’t stop to answer questions. They may quite possibly think Dave and I are dead, because they didn’t even wait to make sure. I should say they never even intended to appear at any inquest.’
He was silent, thinking about it. The boy and girl had gone from the lock when we had eventually returned to it: gone unnoticed, leaving the punt behind. No one had given them a thought until after the doctor had splinted Teller’s leg and seen him carried on a stretcher a hundred yards to an ambulance. When the doctor asked how the accident happened, the causes of it weren’t around.
‘We don’t know,’ Keeble said. ‘They may very likely have come down the towpath and seen you were all right, and they might have dozens of personal reasons for not wanting to stay.’
I finished kicking my legs out of the clammy cotton trousers and peeled off my socks.
‘The boy stood on the stern too long. He should have been helping with the rope.’
Keeble frowned. ‘Certainly he seemed unconcerned, but I don’t think he realized quite what a jam they were in. Not like the girl did.’
‘The first time he moved, he hit Dave straight on the head.’
‘Punt poles are clumsy if you aren’t careful … and he couldn’t have counted on Dave standing in so vulnerable a spot.’
‘He’d been standing there most of the way, seeing to the bow rope.’
‘The boy and girl couldn’t know that.’
‘He was certainly standing there when we approached the punt.’
‘And,’ Keeble said in a demolishing voice, ‘no one would deliberately put themselves into so much danger just to bait a trap.’
I dried my legs and wondered what to do about my underpants.
Keeble sighed down his nose and fluttered his fingers. ‘No one except you.’
He reached into a locker and produced a bundle of clothes.
‘Emergency falling-in kit,’ he explained, giving them to me. ‘I don’t suppose anything will fit.’
As there was a mixture of his own cast-offs, which were too wide, and Lynnie’s, which were too narrow, he was right. Everything, besides, was too short.
‘In addition,’ he went on, ‘how did the boy and girl know we were on the river at all and would be coming down through Harbour Lock? How long did you expect them to wait there clinging to the post? How did they know exactly which boat to hail, and how did they avoid being rescued by any other boat?’
‘The best accidents always look as if they couldn’t possibly be anything else.’
‘I grant you that,’ he said, nodding. ‘I just think that this one literally couldn’t be set up.’
‘Yes, it could. With a safe getout, in that if it didn’t work according to plan, if for instance Peter had been on the bows instead of Dave, they had no need to go into the act of yelling for help, because of course they wanted to make sure it was us before they started.’
‘They were in danger,’ Keeble protested.
‘Maybe. I’d like to take a closer look at that post.’
‘And there might have been other boats around, helping. Or watching.’
‘If Dave never came within range of the punt pole they lost nothing but an opportunity. If other boats had been watching there would simply have been more people to cry accident. The girl was screaming and splashing and dramatically dropping her rope when the boy hit Dave. We were all watching her, not him. Any sized audience would have been doing the same.’
‘And how could the boy and girl have known where Dave would be this Sunday, in the first place? And why on God’s earth should anyone want to kill him?’
I stepped into some aged grey trousers of Keeble’s and found them a foot too generous round the waist. My boss wordlessly held out a short striped elastic schoolboy belt, which took care of the problem by gripping like a tourniquet.
‘It was a simple accident, Gene. It had to be.’
The trousers ended four inches above my ankles, and the socks I slowly fumbled my way into made no effort to bridge the gap.
‘Gene!’ said Keeble, exasperated.
I sighed. ‘You’ll agree I’m a sort of specialist in arranging accidents?’
‘Not usually fatal ones,’ he protested.
‘Not often.’ And no more, if I could wriggle out of it. ‘Just a general stage managing of events, so the victim believes that what has happened to him is the merest mischance.’
Keeble smiled. ‘You’ve sprung more hares that way …’
‘So,’ I said reasonably, ‘I’m apt to spot a rig-up when I see one.’
The smile half faded and changed into speculation.
‘And no,’ I said, ‘I was not concussed in the recent boating party and I haven’t got water on the brain.’
‘Keep your telepathy to yourself,’ he said uncomfortably. ‘I just think you are mistaken.’
‘OK, then I’ll spend my holiday in Putney.’
He said ‘No,’ so vehemently, so explosively, that there was no subtlety left in the situation. From hi
s naked alarm I saw unmistakably how much he understood of my depressed mental state and how convinced he was that I wouldn’t survive three weeks of my own company. Shocked, I realized that his relief when I answered his telephone call had not been at finding me at home, but at finding me alive. He had dug me out on to the river to keep an eye on me and was prepared to send me off on any old wild goose chase so long as it kept me occupied. Then maybe, I supposed, he thought I would snap out of it.
‘The blues’, I said gently, ‘have been with me for a long time.’
‘Not like this.’
I had no answer.
After a pause he said persuasively, ‘Three world class stallions disappearing … isn’t that also the sort of accident you don’t believe in?’
‘Yes, it is. Especially when someone tries to get rid of the man who bought two of them.’
He opened his mouth and shut it again. I almost smiled.
‘It was a craftsman’s accident,’ I said. ‘It could hardly have been done better. All they didn’t bargain for was interference from someone like me.’
He still didn’t believe it, but as he was now happy that I should, since it meant that I would go to the States, he raised no more objections. With a shrug and a rueful smile he tossed me a darned brown sweater, which hung round me like a tent; and I picked up my own wet clothes and followed him out into the sunshine.
Peter and Lynnie both giggled at my baggy appearance, the nervous shock still sharp in their voices, especially Lynnie’s. I grinned at her and ruffled her hair, and made as if to kick Peter overboard, and some of the tension loosened in their eyes. In another half hour they would have reached the compulsive talking stage and an hour after that they would be back to normal. Nice, ordinary kids, with nice, ordinary reactions.
I climbed wearily up on to the cabin roof and spread out my clothes to dry. My shoes were still there where I had stepped out of them, and absentmindedly I put them on. Then, standing up, I looked across to the weir, and back to the hefty post with its notice; DANGER, and at the innocent empty punt tied up behind the Flying Linnet: and I found myself thinking about the legend of the Sirens, the sea nymphs who sat on a rock near a whirlpool and with their pretty voices drew passing sailors towards them, to lure them to their death.