by Dick Francis
The firemen sweated and put jacks from floor to ceiling wherever they could.
There were three men working, moving circumspectly, taking no sudden unpremeditated steps. One of them, I slowly realised, seemed to be operating a video camera, of all things. The whirring came and went. I twisted my head round to check and found the busy lens pointing straight at my face, which I found deeply embarrassing but could do nothing about. A fourth man arrived, again in yellow, again with a rope to his waist, and he too brought a camera. Too much, I thought. He asked the first three for a progress report and I read his identification – ‘Police’ – in black on his yellow chest.
The building creaked.
The men all stopped moving, waiting. The sounds ceased and the firemen with extreme caution moved again, cursing, dedicated, brave, prosaically taking risks.
I lay gratefully inert on my stomach and thought I hadn’t had a bad life, if this should prove to be the end of it. The firemen had no intention of letting me come to the end of it. They brought up and slid a harness under my chest and fastened it round my arms and across my shoulders so that if I slid I wouldn’t go down the gaping hole and, bit by bit, they levered the extensive chunks of brick and plaster slightly off me and freed me from splintered beams until, by pulling on the harness, they could move me a couple of feet up the sloping floor towards the threshold of the Stewards’ box. The footing was more solid there, they said.
I wasn’t of much help to them. I’d lain squashed for so long that my muscles wouldn’t move properly on demand. Many of them developed pins and needles and then throbbed as if released from tourniquets, which I didn’t much mind. The cuts caused by spears of wood felt worse.
A man in a fluorescent green jacket came through the window, crossed the safe walkway and, pointing to the information lettered in black across his chest, told me he was a doctor.
Dr Livingstone? No, Dr Jones. Oh, well.
He bent down by my head, which I’d tired of holding up.
‘Can you squeeze my hand?’ he asked.
I squeezed his hand obligingly and told him I wasn’t much hurt.
‘Good.’
He went away.
It wasn’t until much later, when I watched one of the video tapes, that I learned he hadn’t totally believed me because, except for the collar and sleeves, my white shirt showed scarlet and had been ripped here and there like bits of skin underneath. In any case, when he returned it wasn’t to expect me to stand up and walk out: instead he brought what looked to me like a sled, not a flat stretcher that one could easily fall off, but with raised rails down the sides, better for carrying.
One way or another, with one of the fireman levering the last chunk of timber off my legs and the other two pulling me forwards by the harness, with me tugging myself forward handhold by handhold, I slithered along face down onto the offered transport. When my centre of gravity was more or less onto the safe walkway, and I was supported from the thighs up, the ominous creaking started again in the building, this time worse, this time with tremors.
The fireman behind my feet said ‘Christ’ and leaped onto the walkway, edging past me with infectious urgency. As if rehearsed, he and the others abandoned slow care, caught hold of the side rails of my sled-stretcher and yanked it with me hanging on like a limpet across the narrow path to the windows.
The building shuddered and shook. The rest of the Press room – by far the largest part – toppled up high, broke loose, smashed down lethally through what was left of the ceiling right onto the place where I’d been lying, and with its weight tore the whole landing away from its walls and, roaring and thundering, plunged horribly downwards. Grit, dust, bricks, chunks of splintered plaster and slivers of glass fog-filled the air. Mesmerised, I glanced back over my shoulder and saw Toby’s hiding place, the small sideboard, topple over forwards and slide to oblivion. The floor of the Stewards’ box subsided and left the cantilevered safe walkway protruding inward from the sill of the window, life-saving still but now with nothing beneath. My legs, from above the knees, stuck out over space.
Incredibly, the policeman, now just outside the window, went on filming.
I gripped the rails of the stretcher, my hands fierce with the elemental fear of falling. The firemen clutched the harness round my shoulders, lifted the stretcher, hurled themselves and me towards safety, and the whole lot of us popped out into sunshine, an untidy group, disorganised, coughing from dust, but alive.
Nothing even then proved simple. The concrete viewing steps of the stands reached only as far as a storey below the Stewards’ box, and to bring the rescue equipment up the last nine or ten feet had demanded many struts ingeniously bolted together. Below near the racecourse rails, where crowds on race days cheered the finishes, the asphalt and grass viewing areas were packed with vehicles – fire appliances, police cars, ambulances – and, worst, a television station’s van.
I said that it would be much easier and less embarrassing if I simply stood up and walked down, and no one paid any attention. The doctor reappeared talking about internal injuries and not giving me any chance to make things worse, so rather against my will I got covered with a dressing or two and a blanket and was secured to the stretcher with straps and slowly carried step by careful step to the ground and across to where the emergency vehicles waited. I thanked the firemen. They grinned.
At the end of the journey five boys stood in a row, frightened and terribly strained.
I said, ‘I’m fine, chaps,’ but they seemed unconvinced.
I said to the doctor, ‘They’re my children. Tell them I’m OK.’
He glanced at me and at their young distressed faces.
‘Your father,’ he said with commonsense, ‘is a big strong fellow and he’s quite all right. He has some bruises and cuts which we’ll stick a few plasters on. You don’t need to worry.’
They read the word ‘Doctor’ on the front of his bright green jacket and they decided, provisionally, to believe him.
‘We’re taking him to the hospital,’ the man in green said, indicating a waiting ambulance, ‘but he’ll be back with you soon.’
Roger appeared beside the boys and said he and his wife would look after them. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said.
Ambulance men began feeding me feet first into their vehicle.
I said to Christopher, ‘Do you want your mother to come and take you home?’
He shook his head. ‘We want to stay in the bus.’
The others nodded silently.
‘I’ll phone her,’ I said.
Toby said urgently, ‘No, Dad. We want to stay in the bus.’ His anxiety level, I saw, was still far too high. Anything that would reduce it had to be right.
‘Play marooned, then,’ I said.
They all nodded, Toby, looking relieved, included.
The doctor, writing notes to give the ambulance men to take with me asked, ‘What’s play marooned?’
‘Making do on their own for a bit.’
He smiled over his notes. ‘Lord of the Flies?’
‘I never let it get that far.’
He gave the notes to one of the ambulance men and glanced back at the boys. ‘Good kids.’
‘I’ll look after them,’ Roger said again. ‘Be glad to.’
‘I’ll phone you,’ I said. ‘And thanks.’
The busy ambulance men shut the door on me, and Mrs Gardner, I found later, made fruit cake for the boys until they couldn’t face another slice.
Judged solely as a medical casualty I was fairly low in priority in the hospital’s emergency department but all too high on the local media’s attention list. The airwaves were buzzing, it seemed, with ‘terrorist bombing of racecourse’. I begged the use of a telephone from some half-cross, half-riveted nurses and got through to my wife.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ she demanded, her voice high. ‘Some ruddy newspaper just phoned me to ask if I knew my husband and sons had been blown up. Can you believe it?’
; ‘Amanda…’
‘You obviously haven’t been blown up.’
‘Which paper?’
‘What does it matter? I can’t remember.’
‘I’ll complain. Anyway, just listen. Someone with a grudge put some explosive in Stratton Park racecourse, and yes, the stands did slightly blow up –’
She interrupted. ‘The boys. Are they all right?’
‘Unharmed. Totally all right. Only Toby was anywhere near, and some fireman carried him out. I promise you, none of them has a scratch.’
‘Where are you now?’
‘The boys are with the racecourse manager and his wife –’
‘Aren’t they with you? Why aren’t they with you?’
‘I’ve just… um. I’ll be back with them in no time. I’ve got a couple of grazes that the local hospital’s putting stuff on, then I’m going back to them. Christopher will phone you.’
Every evening, from the mobile phone in the bus, the boys talked to their mother; family routine on expeditions.
Amanda took a bit of placating as well as reassuring. It was obviously my fault, she said, that the children had been put in danger. I didn’t deny it. I asked her if she wanted them home.
‘What? No, I didn’t say that. You know I’ve a lot of things planned this weekend. They’d better stay with you. Just take more care of them, that’s all.’
‘Yes.’
‘So what do I say if any other newspapers ring up?’
‘Say you talked to me and everything’s fine. You might see something about it on television, there were news cameras on the racecourse.’
‘Do take more care, Lee.’
‘Yes.’
‘And don’t phone this evening. I’m taking Jamie over to Shelly’s for the night. It’s her birthday dinner, remember?’
Shelly was her sister. ‘Right,’ I said.
We said goodbye; always polite. Acid, by effort, diluted.
The variety of gashes and grazes that I had minimised as much as possible eventually got uncovered and tut-tutted over. Dust and rubble got washed out, impressive splinters were removed with tweezers and rows of clips got inserted with local anaesthetic.
‘You’ll be sore when this wears off,’ the stitcher cheerfully told me. ‘Some of these wounds are deceptively deep. Are you sure you won’t stay here overnight? I’m certain we can find a bed for you.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, ‘but no thanks.’
‘Lie on your stomach for a few days then. Come back in a week and we’ll take the clips out. You should be healed by then.’
‘Thanks a lot,’ I said.
‘Keep on taking the antibiotics.’
The hospital dredged up an ambulance to take me back to Roger Gardner’s house (by the back road, at my insistence) and with a bit of help from a borrowed walking frame and dressed in a blue dressing gown/robe from the hospital shop, I made the end of the journey upright.
The bus, I gratefully noted, had been driven down and parked outside the tidied garage. Its five younger inhabitants were in the Gardners’ sitting room watching television.
‘Dad!’ they exclaimed, springing up, then, at the sight of the walking aid to the elderly, falling uncertainly silent.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘we will have no giggles about this, OK? A lot of bricks and ceiling fell on my back and legs and made a few cuts, which have now been stitched up. Some cuts were on my back and quite a lot on my legs and one cut is straight across my bottom so that I can’t very easily sit down, and we will not laugh about that.’
They did, of course, chiefly from relief, which was fine.
Mrs Gardner offered sympathy.
‘What can I get you?’ she asked. ‘Hot cup of tea?’
‘Treble scotch?’
Her sweet face creased. She poured the hard stuff generously and told me Roger had been busy all day along at the stands and was worn out by the police and by the news people and by most of the Stratton family, who had flocked to the place in fury.
The boys and Mrs Gardner were, it appeared, waiting for the television news to start, which presently happened, with the bombing of Stratton Park racecourse prominently featured. Various shots showed the rear of the stands, from where the central column of damage couldn’t be missed. A five-second interview with Conrad revealed his innermost thoughts (‘shocked and angry’). ‘Fortunately only one minor casualty’ said a voice over a shot of myself (luckily unrecognisable) being carried down the steps.
‘That’s you, Dad,’ Neil told me excitedly.
A brief shot of Toby walking down hand in hand with a fireman had the boys cheering. Next, ten seconds of Roger – ‘Colonel Gardner, racecourse manager’ – saying the Stratton family promised the Monday race meeting would be held as scheduled. ‘Important not to give in to terror tactics.’ Finally a shot of the woolly hats with their placards at the gates, leaving viewers with an unspoken but sinister implication. Unfair, I thought.
When the news slid away into a plethora of politicians, I told Mrs Gardner and the boys that I would go and put some clothes on, and I limped slowly with the frame over to the bus and winced without it up the steps, and although I’d meant to get dressed I lay down instead on the long sofa that was also my bed, and felt shivery and ill, and finally admitted to myself that I was a good deal more injured than I wanted to be.
After a while the outer door opened and I expected a child, but it was in fact Roger who had come.
He sat on the other long sofa opposite and looked weary.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ I said, not moving.
‘My wife says you look grey.’
‘You don’t look too rosy yourself.’
He smiled briefly and massaged his nose with a finger and thumb; a lean, neat, disciplined soldier allowing himself a gesture of tiredness after a long day’s manoeuvres.
‘The police and all the safety-first people came out like bloodhounds. Oliver dealt with them – I phoned him at once to get over here – and he’s bloody marvellous with those sort of people, always. He had them agreeing immediately that, taking precautions, we could hold the races on Monday. Silver-tongued magician, he is.’ He paused. ‘The police have driven off to the hospital to interview you. Surely there was a bed for you there, in your state?’
‘I didn’t want to stay.’
‘But I told you we would look after your boys.’
‘I know. One or two might have been all right, but not five.’
‘They’re easy children,’ he protested.
‘They’re subdued, today. It was best I came back.’
He made no more demur but, as if unready yet to talk of the things uppermost in his thoughts, asked which was which. ‘To get them straight in my mind,’ he said.
I answered him in much the same way, postponing for a breathing space the questions that would have to be asked and answered.
‘Christopher, the tall fair one, he’s fourteen. Like most oldest children, he looks after the others. Toby, the one with me today in the stands, he’s twelve. Edward’s ten. He’s the quiet one. Any time you can’t find him, he’s sitting in a corner somewhere reading a book. Then there’s Alan –’
‘Freckles and a grin,’ Roger said, nodding.
‘Freckles and a grin,’ I agreed, ‘and a deficient sense of danger. He’s nine. Leaps first. Oops after.’
‘And Neil,’ Roger said. ‘Little bright-eyed Neil.’
‘He’s seven. And Jamie, the baby, ten months.’
‘We have two daughters,’ Roger said. ‘Both grown and gone and too busy to marry.’
He fell silent, and I also. The respite from gritty life slowly evaporated. I shifted with sharp discomfort on the sofa and Roger noted it but made no comment.
I said, ‘The stands were cleaned yesterday.’
Roger sighed. ‘They were cleaned. They were clean. No explosives. Certainly no det cord running round that staircase. I walked everywhere myself, checking. I make rounds c
ontinually.’
‘But not on Good Friday morning.’
‘Late yesterday afternoon. Five o’clock. Went round with my foreman.’
‘It wasn’t a matter of killing people ’ I said.
‘No,’ he agreed. ‘It was to kill one main grandstand, on one of the very few weekdays in the year when there are no race meetings anywhere in Britain. Precisely not to kill people, in fact.’
‘I expect you have a night watchman,’ I said.
‘Yes, we do.’ He shook his head frustratedly. ‘He makes his rounds with a dog. He says he heard nothing. He didn’t hear people drilling holes in the walls. He saw no lights moving in the stands. He clocked out at seven this morning and went home.’
‘The police asked him?’
‘The police asked him. I asked him. Conrad asked him. The poor man was brought back here soggy with sleep and bombarded with accusing questions. He’s not ultra-bright at the best of times. He just blinked and looked stupid. Conrad blames me for employing a thicko.’
‘Blame will be scattered like confetti,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘The air’s dense with it already. Mostly everything’s my fault.’
‘Which Strattons came?’ I asked.
‘Which didn’t?’ He sighed. ‘All of them except Rebecca that were here for the shareholders’ meeting, plus Conrad’s wife, Victoria, plus Keith’s wife Imogen who was squinting drunk, plus Hannah’s layabout son Jack, plus Ivan’s mousy wife, Dolly. Marjorie Binsham used her tongue like a whip. Conrad can’t stand up to her. She had the police pulverised. She wanted to know why you, particularly, hadn’t stopped the stands blowing up once your infant child had done the trouble-spotting for you.’
‘Dear Marjorie!’
‘Someone told her you’d damn nearly been killed and she said it served you right.’ He shook his head. ‘Sometimes I think the whole family’s unhinged.’
‘There’s some Scotch and glasses in that cupboard above your head,’ I said.
He loosened into a smile and poured into two tumblers. ‘It won’t make you feel better,’ he observed, placing one on the built-in table with drawers under it that marked the end of my bed. ‘And where did you get this splendid bus? I’ve never seen anything like it. When I drove it down here with the boys on board they showed me all round it. They seemed to think you built the interior with your own hands. I reckon you had a yacht designer.’