by Dick Francis
His horror intensified. “I’ll get you a doctor.”
“Just shut up,” I said. “I’m all right. Talk if you like, but don’t do anything.”
“Well . . .” He gave in. “Do you want anything? Tea, or anything?”
“Find some champagne. Kitchen cupboard.”
He looked as if he thought I was mad, but champagne was the best tonic I knew for practically all ills. I heard the cork pop and presently he returned with two tumblers. He put mine on the stair by my left hand, near my head.
Oh well, I thought. May as well find out. The cramps would have to stop sometime. I stiffly moved the arm and fastened the hand round the chunky glass, and tried to connect the whole thing to my mouth; and I got at least three reasonable gulps before everything seized up.
It was Jeremy, that time, who was frightened. He took the glass I was dropping and had a great attack of the dithers, and I said “Just wait,” through my teeth. The spasm finally wore off, and I thought perhaps it hadn’t been so long or so bad that time, and that things really were getting better.
Persuading people to leave one alone always took more energy than one wanted to spend for the purpose. Good friends tired one out. For all that I was grateful for his company, I wished Jeremy would stop fussing and be quiet.
The front doorbell rang yet again, and before I could tell him not to, he’d gone off to answer it. My spirits sank even lower. Visitors were too much. The visitor was Clare, come because I’d invited her.
She knelt on the stairs beside me and said, “This isn’t a fall, is it? Someone’s done this to you, haven’t they? Beaten you up?”
“Have some champagne,” I said.
“Yes. All right.”
She stood up and went to fetch a glass, and argued on my behalf with Jeremy.
“If he wants to lie on the stairs, let him. He’s been injured countless times. He knows what’s best.”
My God, I thought. A girl who understands. Incredible.
She and Jeremy sat in the kitchen introducing themselves and drinking my booze, and on the stairs things did improve. Small exploratory stretchings produced no cramps. I drank some champagne. Felt sore but less ill. Felt that some time soon I’d sit up.
The front doorbell rang.
An epidemic.
Clare walked through the hall to answer it. I was sure she intended to keep whoever it was at bay, but she found it impossible. The girl who had called wasn’t going to be stopped on the doorsteps. She pushed into the house physically past Clare’s protestations, and I heard her heels clicking at speed towards me down the hall.
“I must see,” she said frantically. “I must know if he’s alive.”
I knew her voice. I didn’t need to see the distraught beautiful face seeking me, seeing me, freezing with shock.
Dana den Relgan.
17
“Oh my God,” she said.
“I am,” I said in my swollen way, “alive.”
“He said it would be . . . a toss up.”
“Came down heads,” I said.
“He didn’t seem to care. Didn’t seem to realize . . . If they’d killed you . . . what it would mean. He just said no one saw them, they’d be arrested, so why worry?”
Clare demanded, “Do you mean you know who did this?”
Dana gave her a distracted look. “I have to talk to him. Alone. Do you mind?”
“But he’s . . .” She stopped, and said, “Philip?”
“It’s all right.”
“We’ll be in the kitchen,” Clare said. “Just shout.”
Dana waited until she had gone, and then perched beside me on the stairs, half sitting, half lying, to bring her head near to mine. I regarded her through the slit of my vision, seeing her almost frantic and deadly anxiety and not knowing its cause. Not for my life, since she could now see it was safe. Not for my silence, since her very presence was an admission that could make things worse. The gold-flecked hair fell softly forward, almost touching me. The sweet scent she was wearing reached my perception even through a battered nose. The silk of her blouse brushed my hand. Her voice was soft with its cosmopolitan accent . . . and beseeching.
“Please,” she said. “Please . . .”
“Please . . . what?”
“How can I ask you?” Even in trouble, I thought, she had a powerful attraction. I’d only seen it before, not felt it, but now, with the full wattage switched my way, I found myself thinking that I would help her, if I could.
She said persuadingly, “Please give me . . . what I wrote for George Millace.”
I lay without answering, closing the persevering eye. She misread my inaction, which was in truth born of ignorance, and rushed into a flood of impassioned begging.
“I know you’ll be thinking . . . how can I ask you, when Ivor’s done this to you . . . how can I expect the slightest favor . . . or mercy . . . or kindness.” Her voice was a jumble of shame and despair and anger and cajoling, every emotion rising separately like a wave and subsiding before the next. Asking a favor from someone her father . . . husband? . . . lover? . . . had mauled halfway to extinction, wasn’t the easiest of errands, but she was having a pretty good stab at it. “Please, please, I beg of you, give it back.”
“Is he your father?” I said.
“No.” A breath; a whisper; a sigh.
“What, then?”
“We have . . . a relationship.”
You don’t say, I thought dryly.
She said, “Please, please give me the cigarettes.”
The what? I had no idea what she meant.
Trying not to mumble, trying to make my slow tongue lucid, I said, “Tell me about your . . . relationship . . . with den Relgan . . . and about . . . your relationship with . . . Lord White.”
“If I tell you, will you give it to me? Please, please, will you?”
She took my silence to mean that at least she could hope. She scurried into explanations, the words falling over themselves here and there, and here and there coming in faltering pauses: and all of it, apologetic and self-excusing, a distinct flavor of “poor little me, I’ve been used, none of it’s my fault.”
I opened the slit eye, to watch.
“I’ve been with him two years . . . not married, it’s never been like that . . . not domestic, just . . .”
Just for sex, I thought.
“You talk like him,” I said.
“I’m an actress.” She waited a shade defiantly for me to dispute it, but indeed I couldn’t. A pretty good actress, I would have said. Equity card? I thought sardonically, and couldn’t be bothered to ask.
“Last summer,” she said, “Ivor came one day spilling over with a brilliant idea. So pleased with himself . . . if I’d cooperate, he’d see I didn’t suffer . . . I mean, he meant . . .” She stopped there, but it was plain what he meant. Won’t suffer financially . . . A neat euphemism for a hefty bribe.
“He said there was a man at the races wanting to flirt. He used not to take me to the races, not until then. But he said, would I go with him and pretend to be his daughter, and see if I could get the man to flirt with me. It was a laugh, you see. Ivor said this man had a reputation like snow, and he wanted to play a joke on him . . . Well, that’s what he said. He said the man was showing all the signs of wanting a sexual adventure . . . looking at pretty girls in that special way that they do, patting their arms, you know what I mean.”
I thought, how odd it must be to be a pretty girl, to find it normal for middleaged men to be on the lookout for sex, to expect them to pat one’s arms.
“So you went,” I said.
She nodded. “He was a sweetie . . . John White. It was easy. I mean . . . I liked him. I just smiled . . . and liked him . . . and he . . . well . . . I mean, it was true what Ivor had said, he was on the lookout, and there I was.”
There she was, I thought, beautiful and not too dumb, and trying to catch him. Poor Lord White, hooked because he wanted to be. Fooled by his foolish age, his
nostalgia for youth.
“Ivor wanted to use John, of course. I saw it . . . it was plain, but I didn’t see all that harm in it. I mean . . . why not? Everything was going fine until Ivor and I went to St. Tropez for a week.” The pretty face clouded with remembered rage. “And that beastly photographer wrote to Ivor . . . saying lay off Lord White, or else he’d show him those pictures of us . . . Ivor and me . . . Ivor was livid, I’ve never seen him so angry . . . not until this week.”
Each of us, I supposed, thought of the fury we’d witnessed that week in den Relgan.
“Does he know you’re here?” I said.
“My God, no.” She looked horrified. “He doesn’t know . . . He hates drugs . . . It’s all we have rows about . . . George Millace made me write that list . . . said he’d show the pictures to John if I didn’t . . . I hated George Millace . . . but you . . . you’ll give it back to me, won’t you? Please . . . please . . . you must see . . . it would ruin me with anyone who matters. I’ll pay you. I’ll pay you . . . if you’ll give it to me.”
Crunch time, I thought.
“What do you expect . . . me to give to you?” I said.
“The packet of cigarettes, of course. With the writing on it.”
“Yes . . . why did you write on a cigarette packet?”
“I wrote on the wrapping with the red felt pen . . . George Millace said write the list and I said I wouldn’t whatever he did and he said write it then with this pen on the cellophane wrapper round these cigarettes and you can pretend you haven’t done it, because how could anyone take seriously a scrawl on wrapping paper.” She stopped suddenly and said with awakening suspicion. “You have got it, haven’t you? George Millace gave it to you . . . with the pictures . . . didn’t he?”
“What did you write?”
“My God,” she said. “You haven’t got it. You haven’t and I’ve come here . . . I’ve told you . . . it’s all for nothing. You haven’t got it . . .” She stood up abruptly, beauty vanishing in fury. “You beastly shit. Ivor should have killed you. Should have made sure. I hope you hurt.”
She had her wish, I thought calmly. I felt surprisingly little resentment about den Relgan’s tit for tat. I’d clobbered his life, he’d clobbered my body. I’d come off the better, I thought, on the whole. My troubles would pass.
“Be grateful,” I said.
She was too angry, however, at what she had given away. She whisked off through the hall in her silks and her scent, and slammed out of the front door. The air in her wake quivered with feminine impact. Just as well, I thought hazily, that the world wasn’t full of Dana den Relgans.
Clare and Jeremy came out of the kitchen.
“What did she want?” Clare said.
“Something I . . . haven’t got.”
They began asking what in general was happening, but I said “Tell you . . . tomorrow,” and they stopped. Clare sat beside me on the stairs and rubbed one finger over my hand.
“You’re in a poor way, aren’t you?” she said.
I didn’t want to say yes. I said, “What’s the time?”
“Half past three . . . getting on for four.” She looked at her watch. “Twenty to four.”
“Have some lunch,” I said. “You and Jeremy.”
“Do you want any?”
“No.”
They heated some soup and some bread and kept life ticking over. It’s the only day, I thought inanely, that I’ve ever spent lying on the stairs. I could smell the dust in the carpet. I ached all over, incessantly, with a grinding stiff soreness, but it was better than the cramps; and movement was becoming possible. Movement soon, I thought, would be imperative. A sign that things were returning to order. I needed increasingly to go to the bathroom.
I sat up on the stairs, my back propped against the wall.
Not so bad. Not so bad. No spasms.
A perceptible improvement in function in all muscles. The memory of strength no longer seemed remote. I could stand up, I thought, if I tried.
Clare and Jeremy appeared enquiringly, and without pride I used their offered hands to pull myself upright.
Tottery, but upright.
No cramps.
“Now what?” Clare said.
“A pee.”
They laughed. Clare went off to the kitchen and Jeremy said something, as he gave me an arm for support across the hall, about washing the pool of dried blood off the floor.
“Don’t bother,” I said.
“No trouble.”
I hung onto the towel rail in the bathroom a bit and looked into the glass over the washbasin, and saw the state of my face. Swollen, misshapen landscape. Unrecognizable. Raw in patches. Dark red in patches. Caked with dried blood; hair spiky with it. One eye lost in puffy folds, one showing a slit. Cut, purple mouth. Two chipped front teeth.
Give it a week, I thought, sighing. Boxers did it all the time from choice, silly buggers.
Emptying the bladder brought an acute awareness of heavy damage in the abdomen but also reassurance. No blood in the urine. My intestines might have caught it, but not once had those feet, equine or human, landed squarely with exploding force over a kidney. I’d been lucky. Exceptionally lucky and thanked God for it.
I ran some warm water into the washbasin and sponged off some of the dried blood. Wasn’t sure, on the whole, that it was any improvement, either in comfort or visibly. Where the blood had been were more raw patches and clotted cuts. Gingerly I patted the washed bits dry with a tissue. Leave the rest, I thought.
There was a heavy crash somewhere out in the hall.
I pulled open the bathroom door to find Clare coming through from the kitchen, looking anxious.
“Are you all right?” she said. “You didn’t fall?”
“No . . . Must be Jeremy.”
Unhurriedly we went forward towards the front of the house to see what he’d dropped . . . and found Jeremy himself face down on the floor. Half in and half out of the darkroom door. The bowl of water he’d been carrying spilled wetly all around him, and there was a smell . . . a strong smell of bad eggs. A smell I knew. I . . .
“Whatever . . .” Clare began.
Dear Christ, I thought, and it was a prayer, not a blasphemy. I caught her fiercely around the waist and dragged her to the front door. Opened it. Pushed her outside.
“Stay there,” I said urgently. “Stay outside. It’s gas.”
I took a deep lungful of the dark wintry night air and turned back. Felt so feeble . . . so desperate. Bent over Jeremy, grabbed hold of his wrists, one in each hand, and pulled.
Pulled and dragged him over the white tiles, pulling him, sliding him, feeling the deadly tremors in my weak arms and legs. Out of the darkroom, through the hall, to the front door. Not far. Not more than ten feet. My own lungs were bursting for air . . . but not that air . . . not rotten eggs.
Clare took one of Jeremy’s arms and pulled with me, and between us we dragged his unconscious form out into the street. I twitched the door shut behind me, and I knelt on the cold road, retching and gasping and feeling utterly useless.
Clare was already banging on the house next door, returning with the schoolmaster who lived there.
“Breathe . . . into him,” I said.
“Mouth to mouth?” I nodded. “Right, then.” He knelt down beside Jeremy, turned him over, and without question began efficient resuscitation, knowing the drill.
Clare herself disappeared but in a minute was back.
“I called the ambulance,” she said, “but they want to know what gas. There’s no gas in Lambourn, they say. They want to know . . . what to bring.”
“A respirator.” My own chest felt leaden. Breathing was difficult. “Tell them . . . it’s sulphur. Some sort of sulphide. Deadly. Tell them to hurry.”
She looked agonized, and ran back into the schoolmaster’s house, and I leaned weakly on my knees against the front wall of my own house and coughed and felt incredibly ill. From the new troubles, not the old. From the gas.
Jeremy didn’t stir. Dear God, I thought. Dear Christ, let him live.
The gas in my darkroom had been meant for me, not for him. Must have been in there, waiting for me, all the hours I’d spent lying outside in the hall.
I thought incoherently: Jeremy, don’t die. Jeremy, it’s my fault. Don’t die. I should have burned George Millace’s rubbish . . . not used it . . . not brought us so near to death.
People came out from all the cottages, bringing blankets and shocked eyes. The schoolmaster went on with his task, though I saw from his manner, from glimpses of his face, that he thought it was useless.
Don’t die.
Clare felt Jeremy’s pulse. Her own face looked ashen.
“Is he . . . ?” I said.
“A flutter.”
Don’t die.
The schoolmaster took heart and tirelessly continued. I felt as if there was a constricting band round my ribs, squeezing my lungs. I’d taken only a few breaths of gas and air. Jeremy had breathed pure gas. And Clare . . .
“How’s your chest?” I asked her.
“Tight,” she said. “Horrid.”
The crowd around us seemed to be swelling. The ambulance arrived, and a police car, and Harold, and a doctor, and what seemed like half of Lambourn.
Expert hands took over from the schoolmaster and pumped air in and out of Jeremy’s lungs: and Jeremy himself lay like a log while the doctor examined him and while he was lifted onto a stretcher and loaded into the ambulance.
He had a pulse. Some sort of pulse. That was all they would say. They shut the doors on him, and drove him to Swindon.
Don’t die, I prayed. Don’t let him die. It’s my fault.
A fire engine arrived with men in breathing apparatus. They went round to the back of the cottage carrying equipment with dials, and eventually came out through my front door into the street. What I heard of their reports to the policemen suggested that there shouldn’t be any close investigation until the toxic level inside the cottage was within limits.
“What gas is it?” one of the policemen asked.
“Hydrogen sulphide.”