by Dick Francis
He had to be there. Time was short. I stood up for a gasp of air, ducked down again, searching with fingers, with feet, with urgency turning to appalling alarm. I could feel things, pieces of metal, sharp spiky things, nothing living.
Another gasp of air. I looked for bubbles rising, hoping to find him that way, and saw not bubbles but a red stain in the water a short way off, a swirl of color against drab.
At least I’d found him. I dived towards the scarlet streaks and touched him at once, but there was no movement in him, and when I tried to pull him to the surface, I couldn’t.
Shit ... Shit ... Stupid word kept repeating in my brain. I felt and slid my arms under Harry’s and with my feet slipping on the muddy bottom yanked him upwards as fiercely as I could and found him still stuck and yanked again twice more with increasing desperation until finally whatever had been holding him released its grasp and he came shooting to the surface, only to begin falling sluggishly back again as a deadweight.
With my own nose barely above water I held him with his head just higher than mine, but he still wasn’t breathing. I laced my arms around his back, under his own arms, letting his face fall on mine, and in that awkward position I blew my own breath into him, not in the accepted way with him lying flat with most things in control, but into his open nostrils, into his flaccid mouth, into either or both at once, as fast as I could, trying to pump his chest in unison, to do what his own intercostal muscles had stopped doing, pulling his rib cage open for air to flow in.
They tell you to go on with artificial respiration forever, for long after you’ve given up hope. Go on and on, I’d been told. Don’t give up. Don’t ever give up.
He was heavy in spite of the buoyancy from the water. My feet went numb down on the mud. I blew my breath into him rhythmically, faster than normal breathing, squeezing him, telling him, ordering him in my mind to take charge of himself, come back, come back ... Harry, come back ...
I grieved for him, for Fiona, for all of them, but most for Harry. That humor, that humanity; they couldn’t be lost. I gave him my breath until I was dizzy myself and I still wouldn’t accept it was all useless, that I might as well stop.
I felt the jolt in his chest as I hugged it in rhythm against mine and for a long second couldn’t believe it, but then he heaved again in my arms and coughed in my face and a mouthful of dirty water shot out in a spout and he began coughing in earnest and choking and gasping for air ... gasping, gulping air down, wheezing in his throat, whooping like whooping cough, struggling to fill his functioning lungs.
He couldn’t have been unconscious for long, looking back, but it seemed an eternity at the time. With coughing, he opened his eyes and began groaning, which was at least some sign of progress, and I started looking about to see how we were going to get out of what appeared to be uncomfortably like a prison.
Another door, Harry had said, down by the river’s edge: and in fact, when I looked I could see it, a once-painted slab of wood set in brickwork, its bottom edge barely six inches above the water.
Across the whole end of the building, stretching from the ceiling down into the river, was a curtain of linked metal like thick oversized chicken wire, presumably originally installed to keep thieves away from any boat in the dock. Beyond it flowed the heavy main stream, with small eddies curling along and through the wire on the surface.
The dock itself, I well understood, was deeper than usual because of the height of the river. The door was still six inches above it, though ... it didn’t make sense to build a door high if the water was usually lower ... not unless there was a step somewhere ... a step or a walkway even, for the loading and unloading of boats ...
Taking Harry gingerly with me, I moved to the left, towards the wall, and with great relief found that there was indeed a shelf there at about the height of my waist. I lifted Harry until he was sitting on the walkway and then, still gripping him tightly, wriggled up beside him so that we were both sitting there with our heads wholly above water, which may not sound a great advance but which was probably the difference between life and death.
Harry was semiconscious, confused and bleeding. The only good thing about the extreme cold of the water, I thought, was that whatever the damage, the blood loss was being minimized. Apart from that, the sooner we were out of there, the better.
The hole through which Harry had fallen was in the center of the ceiling. If I stood up on the walkway, I thought, I could probably stretch up and touch the ceiling, but wouldn’t be able to reach the hole. Might try jumping ... might pull more of the floor down. It didn’t look promising. There seemed to be part of a beam missing in the area. Rotted through, no doubt.
Meanwhile I had to get Harry well propped so that he wouldn’t fall forward and drown after all, and to do that I reckoned we needed to be in the corner. I tugged him gently along the walkway, which was made of planks, I discovered, with short mooring posts sticking up at intervals, needing me to lift his legs over one at a time. Still, we reached the end in a while, and I stood up and tugged him back until he was sitting wedged in the corner, supported by the rear and side walls.
He had stopped coughing, but still looked dazed. The blood streaking scarlet was from one of his legs, now stretched out straight before him but still not in view on account of the clouded water. I was debating whether to try to stop the bleeding first or to leave him in his uncertain state while I found a way out, trusting he wouldn’t totally pass out, when I heard the main door creak open directly above our heads; the way Harry and I had come in.
My first natural impulse was to shout, to get help from whoever had come: and between intention and voice a whole stream of thoughts suddenly intruded and left me silent, openmouthed to call out but unsure of the wisdom.
Thoughts. Harry had come to this place to meet someone. He didn’t know who. He’d been given a meeting place he knew of. He’d gone there trustingly. He’d walked into the boathouse and tried to pick up an envelope and the floor had given way beneath him and a piece of beam was missing, and if I hadn’t been there with him he would certainly have drowned in the dock, impaled on something lurking beneath the surface.
Part of my later training had been at the hands of an ex-SAS instructor whose absolute priority for survival was evading the enemy; and with doubt but also awareness of danger I guessed at an enemy above our heads, not a savior. I waited for exclamations of horror from above, for someone to call Harry’s name in alarm, for some natural innocent reaction to the floor’s collapse.
Instead there was silence. Then the creak of a step or two, then the sound of the door being quietly closed.
Eerie.
All sounds from outside were muffled because of the dock being partly below ground level, set into the slope of the bank, but in a short while I heard the sound of a car door slamming and after that the noise of an engine starting up and being driven away.
Harry suddenly said, “Bloody hell.” A couple of sweet words. Then he said, “What the hell’s happening?” and then, “God, my leg hurts.”
“We came through the boathouse floor.” I pointed to the hole. “The floorboards gave way. You landed on something that pierced your leg.”
“I’m f-freezing.”
“Yes, I know. Are you awake enough to sit here on your own for a bit?”
“John, for God’s sake ...”
“Not long,” I said hastily. “I’ll not leave you long.”
As I stood on the walkway, the water level reached above my knees, and I waded along beside the wall in the direction of the lower door and the river. There were indeed steps by the door, three steps up and a flat landing along below the door itself. I went up the steps until the water barely covered my ankles and tried the doorlatch.
This time, no easy exit. The door was solid as rock.
On the wall beside the door there was a row of three electric switches. I pressed them all without any results from the electric-light bulbs along the ceiling. There was also a control box wit
h cables leading to the top of the metal curtain: I opened the box and pressed the red button and the green button to be found inside there but again nothing changed in the boathouse.
The arrangement for raising the curtain was a matter of gear wheels designed to turn a rod to wind the metal mesh up onto it like a blind. The sides of the curtain were held in tracks to help it run smoothly. Without electricity however it wasn’t going to oblige. On the other hand, because of its construction, the whole barrier had to be reasonably light in weight.
“Harry?” I called.
“God, John ...” His voice sounded weak and strained.
“Sit there and don’t worry. I’ll come back.”
“Where ... are you going?” There was fear in his voice but also control.
“Out.”
“Well ... hurry.”
“Yes.”
I slipped back into the water and swam a couple of strokes to the curtain. Tried standing up, but the water was much deeper there. Hung on to the wire, feeling the tug of the eddies from the river.
With luck, with extreme luck, the curtain wouldn’t go all the way down to the river’s bed. It had no practical need to reach down farther than the drought level of the river, which had to leave a gap of at least two or three feet. From the weight point of view, a gap was sensible.
Simple.
I took a breath and pulled myself hand over hand down the curtain, seeking to find the bottom of it with my feet: and there was indeed a gap between the bottom edge of the curtain and the mud, but only a matter of inches, and there was clutter down there, unidentifiable, pressing against the barrier, trying to get past it.
I came up for air.
“Harry?”
“Yes.”
“There’s a space under the metal curtain. I’m going out into the river and I’ll be back for you very soon.”
“All right.” More control this time: less fear.
Deep breath. Dived, pulling myself down the wire. Came to the end of it, felt the mud below. The bottom edge of the curtain was a matter of free links, not a connecting bar. The links could be raised, but only singly, not altogether.
Go under it, I told myself. The temptation to return safely back up where I’d come from was enormous. Go under ...
I swung down at the bottom, deciding to go headfirst, faceup, curling my back down into the soft riverbed, praying ... praying that the links wouldn’t catch on my clothes ... in my knitted sweater ... should have stripped ... head under, metal lying on my face, push the links up with hands, full strength, take care, don’t rush, don’t snag clothes, get free of the jumble of things on the mud around me, hold on to the wire outside, don’t let go, the current in the river was appreciable, tugging, keep straight, hang on, shoulders through, raise the links, back through, bottom through, legs ... links ... short of breath ... lungs hurting ... careful, careful ... unknown things around my ankles, hampering ... had to breathe soon ... feet catching ... feet ... through.
The river immediately floated my free legs away as if it would have them, and I had to grab the wire fiercely to avoid going with the current. But I was through and not stuck in the dreadful clutch of metal links, not grasped by debris, not drowning without any chance of rescue.
I came up into the air, gasping deeply, panting, aching lungs swelling, feeling a rush of suppressed terror, clinging on to the curtain in a shaky state.
“Harry?” I called.
The dock looked dark beyond the curtain and I couldn’t see him, but he could indeed see me.
“Oh, John ...” His relief was beyond measure. “Thank God.”
“Not long now,” I said, and heard the strain in my own voice too.
I edged along the curtain in the upstream direction of the shut door and by hauling my way up the links at the side managed to scramble around the boathouse wall and up out of the water to roll at last onto the grassy bank. Bitterly cold, shivering violently from several causes, but out.
I stood up with knees that felt like buckling and tried to open the door into the dock; and it was as immovable from outside as from in. It had a mortise lock, a simple keyhole and no key.
Perhaps the best thing to do, I thought despairingly, was to find a telephone and get professional help: the fire brigade and an ambulance. If I couldn’t find a telephone in Sam’s big workshop I could drive Harry’s car to the nearest house ...
Big snag.
Harry’s car had gone.
My mind started playing the shit tape monotonously.
Before I did anything, I thought, I needed to put on my boots. Went into the boathouse through the top door.
Another big snag.
No boots.
No ski-suit jacket either.
Harry’s voice came from below, distant and wavery. “Is anyone there?”
“It’s me—John,” I shouted. “Just hold on.”
No reply. He was weaker, perhaps. Better hurry.
There was now no doubt about murderous intention on someone’s part and the certainty made me perversely angry, stimulating renewed strength and a good deal of bloody-mindedness. I ran along the stony path to Sam’s large shed in my socks and hardly felt the discomfort, and found to my relief that I could get inside easily enough—no lock on the door.
The space inside looked as much like a junkyard as the space outside. The center, I saw briefly, was occupied by a large boat on blocks, its superstructure covered with lightweight gray plastic sheeting.
I spent a little precious time searching for a telephone, but couldn’t find one. There was no office, no place partitioned off or locked. Probably Sam kept good tools somewhere, but he’d hidden them away.
All around lay old and rusting tools and equipment, but among the junk I found almost at once two perfect aids: a tire lever and a heavy mallet for driving in mooring pegs.
With those I returned at speed to the boathouse and attacked the lower door, first hammering the toe of the tire lever into a nonexistent crack between the wooden doorframe and the surrounding brickwork at a level just below the keyhole, then bashing the far end of that iron, to put heavy leverage against the doorframe, then wrenching out the lever and repeating the whole process above the lock, this time with fury.
The old wood of the doorframe gave up the struggle and splintered, freeing the tongue of the lock, and without much more trouble I pulled the door open towards me, swinging it wide. I left the tire lever and mallet on the grass and stepped down into the boathouse, the shocking chill of the water again a teeth-gritter.
At least, I thought grimly, it was a calm day. No wind-chill to speak of, to polish us off.
I waded along to Harry, who was sagging back against the corner, his head lolling only just above the surface.
“Come on,” I said urgently. “Harry, wake up.”
He looked at me apathetically through a mist of weakness and pain and one could see he’d been in that water a lot too long. Apathy, like cold, was a killer. I bent down and turned him until I had my hands under his arms, his back towards me, and I floated him along in the water to the steps and there strained to pull him up them and out onto the grass.
“My leg,” he said, moaning.
“God, Harry, what do you weigh?” I asked, lugging.
“None of your bloody business,” he mumbled.
I half laughed, relieved. If he could say that, for all his suffering, he wasn’t in a dying frame of mind. It gave me enough impetus to finish the exit, though I dare say he, like me, felt only marginally warmer for being on land.
His leg seemed to have stopped bleeding, or very nearly, and he couldn’t have severed an artery or he’d have bled to death by then, but all the same there had to be a pretty serious wound under the cloth of his trousers and the faster I could get him to a doctor the better.
As far as I remembered from our arrival, the boatyard lay down a lane with no houses nearby: I’d have a fair run in my socks to find help.
On the other hand, among the genera
l clutter, only a few feet off, I could see the upturned keel of an old clinker-built rowboat. Small. Maybe six feet overall. A one-man job, big enough for two. If it weren’t full of holes ...
Leaving Harry briefly, I went to the dinghy and heaved it over right side up. Apart from needing varnish and loving care it looked seaworthy, but naturally there were no row-locks and no oars.
Never mind. Any piece of pole would do. Plenty lying about. I picked up a likely length and laid it in the boat.
The dinghy had a short rope tied to its bow: a painter. “Harry, can you hop?” I asked him.
“Don’t know.”
“Come on. Try. Let’s get you in the boat.”
“In the boat?”
“Yes. Someone’s taken your car.”
He looked bewildered, but the whole afternoon must have seemed so unbelievable to him that hopping into a boat would seem to be all of a piece. In any case, he made feeble efforts to help me get him to his left foot, and with my almost total support he made the few hops to reach the boat, though I could see it hurt him sorely. I helped him sit down on the one center thwart and arranged his legs as comfortably as possible, Harry cursing and wincing by turns.
“Hang on tight to the sides,” I said. “Tight.”
“Yes.”
He didn’t move, so I pulled his hands out and positioned them on the boat’s edges.
“Grip,” I said fiercely.
“Fine.” His voice was vague, but his hands tightened.
I tugged and lugged the dinghy until it was sliding backwards down the bank, and then held on to the painter, digging my heels in, leaning back to prevent too fast and splashy a launch. At the last minute, when the stern hit the swollen water and the dinghy’s progress flattened out, I jumped in myself and simply hoped against all reasonable hope that we wouldn’t sink at once.
We didn’t. The current took the dinghy immediately and started it on its way downstream, and I edged past Harry into the stern space behind him and retrieved my piece of pole.
“What’s that?” Harry asked weakly, trying to make sense of things.