by Dick Francis
And so I had. The pie filling had been well marinaded in my special concoction of spices and herbs, with a little citrus fruit to add zest. Add a good dose or two of Scotch whisky and allow to soak for forty-eight hours or so to absorb the liquid and the flavors. Then cook slowly, at first in a moderate oven, before briefly placing it in a hot one to golden the pastry, and the results were delicious. Piece of cake-or pie.
Carl and I sat on stools in the kitchen and dozed. The summer puddings had been served, with whipped cream and the strawberry garnish, and, thankfully, the coffee was the regular caterer’s responsibility. I leaned on the countertop, rested my weary head on my arms and went to sleep.
“CHEF. CHEF. Mr. Moreton,” said a female voice. Someone shook my shoulder.
“Mr. Moreton,” said the voice again. “Wake up, Chef.”
I raised my head and opened an eye. It was Louisa.
“They want you in the dining room,” she said.
“OK,” I said with a sigh, “I’m coming.”
I dragged myself up, pulled my fingers through my hair to straighten it and went across the corridor.
They applauded. I smiled. Being a chef was being a showman, an entertainer. Taking one’s bow was what made it worthwhile. The heat of the kitchen is forgotten in the glow of appreciation from others.
Even Rolf Schumann smiled broadly. Elizabeth Jennings sat on his right and positively beamed. Reflected glory, I thought rather disingenuously. She stroked his arm and whispered in his ear in a manner that made me think that it was she who was the tease, not he.
Having milked the applause for all I could, I retreated to the kitchen to find Carl had stirred and was starting to clear up and load the wire cages for returning to Stress-Free. I really didn’t feel like I had the energy to help him, so I went back across the corridor to find myself some strong coffee.
The lunch party was breaking up, with some of the guests going to place their wagers on the first race, which was due off any minute. Many decided to sit out the race at the tables, drinking their coffee and watching the action on the television sets placed high in each corner of the room. Others drifted out onto the balcony to watch it live.
Louisa poured me some coffee, and I stood, drinking the hot black liquid, and hoped that it would wake me up a bit.
MaryLou came over. “That food sure was terrific,” she said.
“Thanks,” I said. “Glad you enjoyed it.”
“Certainly did,” she said. “Mr. Schumann really liked it too.”
I could tell that his approval was the most important thing. Mr. Schumann clearly intimidated her too. A successful lunch might mean her job was safe for a while longer.
The first race was over, and the guests drifted back from the balcony and many sat down again at the tables. I realized it would be some time before we could clear everything away and have a decent rest. Louisa and Robert, my other waiter, were busy refilling coffee cups and passing out chocolate mints. Everyone was in good humor and enjoying themselves.
THE 2,000 GUINEAS was the third race on the card, due off at three-fifteen. The excitement of the afternoon built towards the big event, with jazz bands and street entertainers helping to raise the pulse of the crowd. I could have done with a jazz band in the kitchen just to keep me awake.
As the time of the big race arrived, I went back to the boxes where Louisa and Robert were clearing the tables. Finally, all the guests had left their chairs and were crowding onto the balcony, or standing inside up against the windows, trying to get a good view of the horses as they approached along Newmarket’s famous Rowley straight mile.
I picked up some dirty coffee cups and glanced up at the television set on the wall. The horses were running down into the dip, and the jockeys were jostling for position, ready for their final effort up the rise to the finish. So tired was I that I decided not to stay and watch. I could always see it later on the replay. I turned to take the cups out to the kitchen.
That decision unquestionably saved my life.
3
T he bomb went off while I was crossing the corridor.
I didn’t understand immediately what had happened.
There was a great blast of heat on my neck, and it felt like someone had hit me in the back with a sledgehammer.
I crashed into the kitchen door upright and fell, half in and half out of the room.
I still couldn’t understand what was going on. Everything seemed to be in silence. I couldn’t hear. I tried to speak, but I couldn’t hear myself either. I shouted. Nothing. All I could hear was a high-pitched hissing that seemed to be in my head; it had no direction, and was unchanged when I turned my head from side to side.
I looked down at my hands, and they seemed to be all right. I moved them. No problem. I clapped. I could feel my hands coming together, but I couldn’t hear the sound. It was very frightening.
My left knee hurt. I looked down and noticed that my black-and-white checked trousers had been torn where they had hit the doorframe. The white checks were turning red with my blood. What’s black and white and red all over…? My brain was drifting.
When I felt with my hands, my knee appeared to be in the right place, and I could move my foot without any increase in pain. It seemed that the blood was from superficial damage only.
My hearing came back with a rush, and suddenly there was a mass of sound. Someone close by was screaming. A female, high-pitched scream that went on and on, breaking only occasionally for a moment as the screamer drew a breath. An alarm bell was ringing incessantly somewhere down the corridor, and there were shouts from some male voices, mostly pleading for help.
I lay back, and rested my head on the floor. It seemed that I was like that for ages, but, I suppose, it was only for a minute or two at most. The screaming went on; otherwise, I might have gone to sleep.
I became aware that I wasn’t very comfortable. As well as the pain in my left knee, my right leg was aching. I was lying on my foot, which was tangled up underneath my rear end. I straightened the leg and was rewarded with pins and needles. That’s a good sign, I thought.
I looked up and could see daylight between the walls and the ceiling where a large crack had opened up. That was not such a good sign. Water was pouring through the crack, I thought lazily, probably from some burst pipe above. It was running down the wall and spreading across the concrete floor towards me. I turned my head and watched it approach.
I decided that, lovely as it was to lie there and let the world get on without me, I didn’t fancy lying in a puddle. The floor was cold enough without being wet as well. Reluctantly, I rolled over and drew my knees up under me so that I was kneeling. Not a good idea, I thought. My left knee complained bitterly, and the calf muscle below it began to cramp. I pulled myself up to a standing position using the doorframe and surveyed the kitchen.
Not much seemed to have changed, except everything was covered in a fine white dust that also still hung in the air. I was wondering what had happened to Carl when he appeared next to me.
“Bloody hell,” he said, “what happened?”
“Don’t know,” I replied. “Where were you?”
“Having a pee in the gents’.” He pointed down the corridor. “Nearly shit myself when that bang went off.”
I clung on to the kitchen door and felt unwell. I didn’t particularly relish going to see what had become of my other two staff and the guests in the boxes, but I knew I must. I couldn’t just stand here all day while others might need help. The screaming had lessened to a whimper, as I gingerly made my way across the corridor and looked in.
I hadn’t expected there to be so much blood.
Bright, fresh, scarlet red blood. Masses of the stuff. It was not only on the floor but on the walls, and there were even great splashes of it on the ceiling. The tables had been thrown up against the back wall by the explosion, and I had to pick my way over broken chairs to get through the door and into the room that I had so recently vacated with ease.
When I had been a child, my father had regularly complained that my bedroom looked like a bomb had gone off in it. Like every other little boy, I had tended to dump all my stuff on the floor and happily had lived around it.
However, my bedroom had never looked like the inside of the two glass-fronted boxes at Newmarket that day. Not that the boxes had remained glass-fronted. The glass in the windows and doors had now completely vanished, and, along with it, large chunks of the balconies and about a third of the end wall from the side of box number 1.
I thought that if the blast could do such damage to concrete and steel, the occupants must have stood no chance.
Carnage was not too strong a word for the scene.
There had been thirty-three guests at lunch, two others having unexpectantly failed to appear, much to MaryLou’s frustration and displeasure. Then there were my two staff. So there must have been at least thirty-five people either in that room or on the balconies when the bomb exploded, not counting any people who may have been invited in to watch the race after lunch.
Most of them seemed to have disappeared altogether.
A whimper to my left had me scampering under the upturned tables to find the source.
MaryLou Fordham lay on her back close to the rear wall. I could only see her from the waist up, since she was half covered with a torn and rapidly reddening tablecloth. The blood that was soaking into the white starched cotton was an exact color match with her bright scarlet chiffon blouse that had fared rather badly and now hung as a tattered mass around her neck.
I knelt down beside her on my right knee and touched her forehead. Her eyes swiveled round in my direction. Big, wide, frightened brown eyes in a deathly pale face, a face cut and bleeding from numerous shards of flying glass.
“Help will be on the way,” I said to her, somewhat inadequately given the circumstances. “Just hang on.”
There was a lot of blood below her waist, so I lifted the tablecloth a little to see what damage had been done. It was not easy to see. There was not much light under the blood-soaked cloth, and there was a tangle of broken chairs and tables in the way. I shuffled down to get a better look and only then did my confused brain take in the true horror. Both of MaryLou’s lovely legs were gone. Blown away.
Oh my God, what do I do now?
I stupidly looked around me, as if I could find her missing legs and snap them back into place. Only then did I see the other victims. Those who had lost not only their legs and feet but arms and hands too, and their lives. I began to shake. I simply didn’t know what to do.
Suddenly, the room filled with voices and bustling people in black-and-yellow coats and big yellow helmets. The fire brigade had arrived. None too soon, I thought. I started to cry. It was unlike me to cry. My father had been one of the old school who believed that men shouldn’t. “Stop blubbing,” he would say to me when I was about ten. “Grow up, boy. Be a man. Men don’t cry.” And so I had been taught. I hadn’t cried when my father had been killed by the brick truck. I hadn’t even cried at his funeral. I knew that he wouldn’t have wanted me to.
But now the shock, the tiredness, the feeling of inadequacy and the relief that the cavalry had arrived was just too much, and so the tears streamed down my face.
“Come on, sir,” said one of the firemen into my ear as he held my shoulders, “let’s get you out of here. Are you in any pain?”
My tongue felt enormous in my mouth, stifling me. “No,” I croaked. “Well, my knee hurts a bit. But I’m fine…But she…” I pointed at MaryLou, unable to say anything further.
“Don’t worry, sir,” he said to me, “we’ll look after her.”
He helped me to my feet and turned my shoulders away. My gaze remained on where MaryLou’s legs should have been until the fireman turned me so far that my head just had to follow. He held me firmly and pushed me towards the door, where a second fireman put a bright red blanket over my shoulders and led me out. I wondered if they used red blankets so that the blood didn’t show.
The fireman guided me down the corridor towards the stairwell. I looked into the kitchen as we passed by. Carl was leaning over the sink, throwing up. I knew how he felt.
A man in a green jacket with DOCTOR written large across the back pushed past me. “Is he all right?” he asked my escort.
“Seems so,” was the reply.
I wanted to say that no, I wasn’t all right. I wanted to tell him that I had glimpsed an image of hell and that it would surely live with me forever. I wanted to shout out that I was far from all right and that I might never be all right again.
Instead, I allowed myself to be led to the stairwell, where I obeyed instructions to go down. I was assured that others would be waiting at the bottom to help me. But can they erase the memory? Can they give me back my innocence? Can they prevent the nightmares?
HAVING BEEN INSTRUCTED by the fireman, I obediently descended to ground level and, as promised, was met by helping hands and soothing voices. A brief assessment of my physical injuries left me, still wrapped in my red blanket, sitting on a row of white plastic chairs for what seemed like a very, very long time. Several times a young man in a bright green outfit with PARAMEDIC emblazoned in white letters across his shoulders came over to ask if I was OK. He said that they were sorry about the delay, but there were others in greater need. I nodded. I knew. I could still see them in my mind’s eye.
“I’m fine,” I said. But I didn’t really mean it.
Ambulances came and went, their sirens wailing, and a line of black body bags, laid out close to the back of the grandstand, grew longer as the afternoon sunlight slowly faded towards evening.
I was finally taken to the hospital about seven o’clock. After so long sitting in the plastic chair, I was unable to stand properly on my left leg since my knee had swollen up and stiffened badly. My young paramedic friend helped me to an ambulance that then sedately drove off with no siren or flashing lights. It was as if the urgency of the crisis was passed. Those seriously injured and dying had been whisked away at speed. Those already dead were beyond help. We, the almost-walking wounded, could now be cared for with composure and calm.
The ambulance took me all the way to Bedford, as the hospitals more local to Newmarket had been overwhelmed by the seriously injured. At Bedford, an X-ray revealed no fractures in my swollen left knee. A doctor speculated that the collision with the door may have caused a temporary dislocation of my patella-my kneecap-which had resulted in some internal bleeding. A hematoma had formed in the joint, causing both the swelling and the pain. The blood loss that had stained my trousers was found to be due to a tear of the soft tissue of my lower thigh, also probably a consequence of the collision with the door. Although the flow had all but stopped, the doctor insisted on applying some adhesive strips to close the edges of the wound, which he then covered with a large white rectangular bandage. No such care was afforded to my trousers, which were unceremoniously cut off short on the left side. The hospital provided me with a tight blue rubberized sleeve for my knee to both provide support for the joint and to apply pressure to the hematoma to reduce the bruising. They also thoughtfully equipped me with a long white, closely woven cotton sock to wear on my left foot to reduce swelling in the lower leg and a supply of large white painkillers. I would be fine, they said, after a few days’ rest. Fine in body, I thought, although it would take longer to heal the emotional injury.
A taxi was ordered to take me home. So I sat waiting in the hospital reception, somewhat embarrassed at having caused such a fuss and feeling guilty that I had escaped so lightly while others had not. I was utterly drained. I thought about Robert and Louisa, my staff. Had they survived? What should I do to find out? Who should I ask?
“Taxi for Mr. Moreton,” said a voice, bringing me back to the present.
“That’s me,” I replied.
I realized I had no money in my pockets.
“That’s all right, the National Health Service is paying,” said the driver. “But
they don’t tip,” he added. He’s going to be unlucky, I thought, if he thinks he’s going to get a tip from me.
He looked me up and down. I must have been quite a sight. I still wore my chef’s tunic, but my black-and-white checked trousers now had one leg long and one short, with a blue knee brace and white stocking below.
“Are you some sort of clown?” asked the driver.
“No,” I said, “I’m a chef.”
He lost interest.
“Where to?” he asked.
“Newmarket.”
THE TAXI ARRIVED at my cottage on the southern edge of Newmarket at about eleven o’clock. I had slept the whole way from Bedford Hospital, and the driver had real difficulty waking me up to get me out of the vehicle. Eventually, I was roused sufficiently for him to help me hop across the small stretch of grass between the road and my front door.
“Will you be OK?” he asked as I put the key in the lock.
“Fine,” I said, and he drove away.
I hopped into the kitchen and took a couple of the painkillers with some water from the sink tap. The stairs were too much, I decided, so I lay down on the sofa in my tiny sitting room and went eagerly back to my slumbers.
I was lying on a hospital gurney that was moving slowly along a gray-colored, windowless corridor. I could see the ceiling lights passing overhead. They were bright rectangular panels set into the gray ceiling. The corridor seemed to go on forever, and the lights were all the same one after the other, one after the other. I looked up and back to see that I was being pushed by a lady in a red chiffon blouse with a mass of curly hair bouncing on her shoulders. It was MaryLou Fordham, and she was smiling at me. I looked down at her lovely legs, but she didn’t have any legs and seemed to be floating across the gray floor. I sat up with a jerk and looked at my own legs. The bedding was flat where my legs should have been, and there was blood, lots of blood, bright red pools of blood. I screamed and rolled off the gurney. I was falling, falling, falling…