Sheer Abandon

by Penny Vincenzi

  Well, what about the early cuttings? Would that be better?

  “This is what I actually did when I got back from travelling. I was too afraid to tell you.” How would that make them feel? Or “You’ve got another granddaughter. She’s called Kate and she’s sixteen.”

  “Fuck,” said Martha aloud. And this was only the beginning. There was Paul Quenell to inform, and Jack Kirkland. Her friends. What friends? They seemed very few in number suddenly. But they all had to be told and within the next few days, possibly the next few hours, if Janet went to another paper.

  Janet e-mailed:

  There can’t be that many loose ends. And what do you think family tree means? Use your common sense. Might speak to Chris myself to push it forward. Terrible waste, if he won’t run it. He would have done last Friday I’m sure, with our subject hot off the TV. Maybe you could let me have a draft? Janet

  Shit. Now what did he do? Suppose she did talk to Pollock? Nick began to panic. Better call him himself, warn him. But then he’d want to know what it was about. Shit. He began typing.

  Janet: What??!! You know we never show drafts. Talk to Chris if you want to, but he’s entertaining heavily this weekend, never welcomes interruptions.

  This was true; he was. He always was, he took his Saturday nights very seriously. He and the current Mrs. Pollock, a television executive, gave famously large and starry dinner parties, followed by even larger brunches the following day. Only the kind of headline that took over the whole of the front page was allowed to interrupt them; and however much they all cared about Baby Bianca, she didn’t justify seventy-two point. So quite a clever move there.

  I’m really doing my best. Obviously family tree interesting.

  Speak maybe tomorrow. Nick

  Please God that would keep her quiet.

  But:

  OK. Let’s speak. I’ll call tomorrow lunchtime, check on progress. Maybe you could confirm this is OK.

  This was getting very difficult. Maybe he was going to have to run the story after all. To save Martha and Kate from something much worse.

  Martha knew it was crazy, but she rang Ed. She felt so lonely, so besieged by fate; losing him now when she had found him again, albeit briefly, was almost unbearable. She was beginning to wonder why she was being protective of—of him. She certainly didn’t owe him anything. But—she did. It was ripples in the pond: the wider they went, the worse it got, the more people were hurt. “Hi, Ed, it’s me. Just wondered how you were. Give me a call if you can, I’m in the car.”

  It was horribly reminiscent of his endless, caring calls to her, when he must have known that there was little chance of a response: or the response he wanted, anyway. It was a measure of how low she was feeling that she was prepared to put herself at such risk. Martha Hartley didn’t do risk.

  She was getting sleepy again: very sleepy. She was going to have to stop. Only there were fewer motels out here, and it was too late to go off the road, find a B&B. She put a Stones CD on and turned the volume right up. That often helped.

  Then the phone went. Ed’s name came up on the screen. Her heart lurched.

  “Hi, Ed.”

  “Hi. Where are you?”

  “About an hour from Binsmow.”

  “Yeah?” The voice was polite, no more. “Going to see your parents?”

  “Yes. And to—well, to tell them.”

  This was awful. She had only heard his voice this hard once before and that had been the night of their terrible row, when he had gone for her, told her how cold and controlling she was. She threw caution not just to the winds but into outer space.

  “I’m scared, Ed. So scared.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of hurting them. That’s the main thing, you know. That’s how it all began.”

  “Yeah. Well, I’m sure you’ll manage.”

  “Ed…”

  “Yes, Martha?”

  “I’m missing you.”

  This was unbelievable: that she was talking to him like this, throwing herself on him.

  “Well, I miss you too. But like I said, there are limits. I can’t cope with all this shit, you know? About the father.”

  “I know, but—”

  “Are you going to tell me or not?”

  “No, Ed, I’m not. Not yet anyway. I wish you could understand—”

  “Sorry, but I can’t, not at the moment. You never change, do you, really? You just call me in when you need me, focussed entirely on yourself, you’re still doing it.”

  “I’m not!”

  “Martha, you are. You should listen to yourself. On and on, round and round like a bloody cracked record. Saying how you don’t want to hurt your parents, that was how it all began. Assuming I’ve got time for you, that I’ll just drop everything, to listen to you. Well, I can’t. I’m busy right now; I’m in the editing suite. Just give it a rest. OK? I’ll call you in a day or two.”

  She managed to say goodbye, and then started to cry, the tears blurring her eyes. She had to stop. Together with her tiredness, it was a fatal combination. She pulled across to the inside lane, meaning to pull over onto the hard shoulder. She missed the fact that a slip road was coming onto the A12 from her left; a large lorry, being driven only a little too fast, was coming down it, its driver momentarily distracted, himself, by a call from his girlfriend. He pulled out to try to avoid her, hit her anyway, and skidded right across the width of the road, taking the Mercedes with him.

  Chapter 37

  “Martha’s very late,” said Grace, switching off Michael Parkinson and moving into her bedtime ritual of cushion plumping, cat ejecting, and newspaper collecting. “I hope she’s all right.”

  “I’m sure she is,” said Peter. “I’ll just go and switch off my computer, read through that sermon again, and see if she’s called.”

  He came back, smiling. “She’s probably going to stop on the way. She was very tired, she said, so she might book into a motel and be here for breakfast.”

  “Well, I’m glad she’s so sensible. And we’re too tired ourselves to talk to her now. You go up, dear, and I’ll make the tea.”

  Because the accident had taken place on a curve in the road, it was hard to see it coming. Two more cars had piled into the wreckage before a man, driving slowly and carefully enough to spot it in time, stopped to turn on his hazard lights and phone the police. Then he pulled his fire extinguisher out of his own car and ran across to the mass blocking the road. He felt more than a little frightened.

  The cars at the rear were not too seriously affected; their bonnets were crushed, and in one case the front wheels were totally buckled, and the horn of the other appeared to be jammed on, but the drivers of both were conscious and had the presence of mind to switch off their engines. The driver of the less damaged car was bleeding from a gash in his head, but otherwise appeared completely unhurt. He climbed rather unsteadily out of his car and said he had no passengers.

  “Just getting home. You got a phone, mate?”

  “I’ve called the police. Do you want to phone home?”

  “Yeah, please. God, that lorry’s in a bad way.”

  “It does seem to be. What about this car, next to you?” There was the sound of a child crying; they ran over to it, peered in. A baby of about one was yelling lustily in its car seat; a young couple, presumably its parents, were rather dazedly trying to turn round and pacify it. Neither of them appeared hurt either, although the girl was crying.

  “Just shock,” said the father. He appeared quite shocked himself; he kept rubbing his eyes and blowing on his hands, but making no attempt to get out.

  The two men got the little family out, and helped them to the side of the road. By now a couple of other cars had arrived and were parked just short of the crash, all with their hazard lights flashing.

  “Best…best have a look in the lorry,” said the man with the cut head. He mopped it with his handkerchief; it had almost stopped bleeding. “Christ, I’ve been lucky. Thanks for that.” H
e held out his hand. “Derek Jones.”

  “Peter Morrison. Didn’t do anything.” He walked rather nervously round the great hulk of the lorry; the cab was half on its side, the engine still running. Morrison handed his fire extinguisher to Jones and said, “Cover me, there’s a good chap. First sign of trouble use this. I’ll just get the engine switched off.”

  It meant climbing up the steps, hauling open the door, leaning in, and switching off the ignition. He was, as he said on his return to his new friend, shitting himself pretty bloody hard. But it had been done.

  “Anyone in there?”

  “Yeah, driver. On his own. Unconscious. Breathing, though. Don’t want to move him. Might do more harm than good.”

  “Right. Well, we’d better look at the other car, I suppose. Blimey. It’s a fucking Mercedes. Bet he was drunk.”

  They looked almost dispassionately at the car. It seemed impossible that anyone could be in it and live. It was jammed beneath one of the lorry’s wheels, its roof entirely crushed, its windscreen smashed in.

  “Poor bleeder,” said Derek Jones. “Must have copped it.”

  And then through the darkness, just before the blessed wailing of the police sirens, came the unmistakable sound of a mobile phone ringing from inside the car.

  “Fuck,” said Ed. She must have reached the vicarage, switched off her phone. There was no way he could call her there, at this time of night. He’d do it first thing in the morning. That was one of the great things about Martha, you couldn’t ring her too early; she was always awake by six, even on Sundays. Well, sometimes on Sunday it was half past.

  He switched his phone off; he felt bad. He’d been much too hard on her. He hadn’t meant to give her such an earful. She hadn’t deserved it. She was very upset and he should have been more…supportive. Trouble was, he was really rather tired of being supportive, and she absolutely didn’t seem to realise that, or be in the least grateful for what he did.

  Still—she’d had the sort of forty-eight hours that would have destroyed most people entirely. And in some ways he supposed he should admire her for not telling him who the father was. She obviously wanted to protect him. She must have been very fond of him, to be so bothered, though. That was what had been bugging him. Which was pretty childish really, since it had been sixteen years ago.

  Funny sort of bloke, if that had been the case, though, that she hadn’t been able to tell him at the time. Well, it was a funny thing, travelling: it did weird things, all those relationships, starting and ending without a backward or a forward glance. She probably didn’t know where to contact him; it must have been dead difficult in those days, before there were mobiles. Oh, well. He’d call her in the morning, say he was sorry, try and make it up to her. He went back to his editing.

  The police were fucking marvellous, Peter and Derek agreed. Calm, organised, setting up a road block in no time, so there was no danger of anyone else piling in—although they reckoned they’d done a pretty good job of that themselves with their hazard lights. Got the ambulance to the front, using the hard shoulder, and started with the poor bugger in the lorry.

  He was going to be OK, actually, the ambulance men said. He was clearly concussed, but he was breathing, and his pulse was steady; which probably precluded any serious internal injury. Every so often he came to and groaned. They were trying to get him out, but it was difficult; they had to cut out the steering wheel before they could free him. Both his arms were broken, they said, and some ribs, but his legs looked OK.

  “Bloody lucky,” one of them said. “Going to have a bit of a headache tomorrow, but it could be much worse.”

  Derek asked what the chances were for the other bloke, the one in the Mercedes, and they said God alone knew, they couldn’t do anything till the lifting equipment arrived, but it was a miracle it hadn’t exploded with the impact.

  “Part of this cab’s lying on top of him, that’s the trouble. He might be all right, might not. Can’t say—Ah, here they come. We’ll find out pretty soon now.”

  “You know,” said Clio, “I can’t stop thinking about Martha.”

  “Well, that’s very fine,” said Fergus, “and I admire your Christian spirit, but I can’t help feeling it’s me you should be thinking about. To the exclusion of anything else. I’ve brought you here to tell you how much I care about you, and what do you do but tell me you’re thinking about your best friend. Or whatever she is.”

  “Not my best friend,” said Clio. “I hardly know her. But I keep thinking what an awful situation she’s in, and no one there for her, to hold her hand.”

  “I thought she had a beautiful young man to hold her hand?”

  “She does, and my God he is beautiful, but it’s not the same, is it? Not quite.”

  “Not quite the same as what? A woman? I’m not sure I like that too much, either.”

  “Oh, Fergus!” She punched him gently on the arm. “Look, it’s only eleven thirty in England. She’s bound to be awake, she never sleeps, and she’ll be worrying and—all alone.”

  “And suppose she’s not all alone, suppose she has the beautiful young man in bed with her, then what?”

  “Well then, she won’t pick up the phone. Let’s just call her, Fergus, tell her we’re thinking about her. Come on.”

  “All right. Here’s my phone. You can use it, on condition we go straight back to the hotel and get on with what we were doing at lunchtime.”

  “It’s a deal,” said Clio, leaning over the table to kiss him. She called the landline: Martha’s cool tones told her that she was busy right now, but that she would call her back.

  “Don’t worry, Martha. Hopefully that means there’s someone with you. Or you’re asleep. This is Clio. Fergus and I were just thinking about you, hoping you’re OK. We both send our love. Over and out. Now, Fergus, I’ll just try her mobile—Oh dear, horrible noise. Listen.”

  Fergus listened. “It’s out of range, or out of order, or something. I think we’ve done all we can. Now, how about the rest of the arrangement?”

  “Can’t wait. We can ring her again in the morning, can’t we?”

  “For God’s sake stop talking about Martha Hartley,” said Fergus, “and get your delicious little arse out of here. She’s fine. I’m absolutely certain of it.”

  “Well, she’s alive,” said the paramedic, “losing quite a lot of blood, and her chest is crushed, but she’s breathing. Blood pressure’s very low. Can’t say more till we get her to hospital. ’Scuse me, mate.”

  Derek looked at Peter. “Fucking hell. What a waste. A girl. Owning a car like that.”

  “Is that the Reverend Peter Hartley? I’m sorry to ring you in the middle of the night, sir. This is the police. I’m afraid there’s been an accident…”

  He put the phone down and looked at his wife. Her eyes were wide with fear. He didn’t need to tell her.

  “Is she alive?” she said. “And where is she?”

  “She’s alive. But in intensive care. In Bury St. Edmunds Hospital.”

  “Well, let’s go,” she said, climbing out of bed, very calm, reaching for the clothes she had laid out for the morning, as she always did. “Quickly, Peter. She needs us.”

  As he pulled on his own clothes (adding his clerical collar; it could be very useful, he had discovered), Peter Hartley started to pray silently. He could pray while he did anything: drove the car, did the supermarket shop, weeded the garden, tidied his study. He didn’t stop until they reached the hospital. And then prayed briefly that they were not too late.

  Janet Frean couldn’t sleep. She never could, after she had made a successful speech. She felt wired up, reliving the evening, the applause, the sense that she had the whole room with her—a lot of people, more than three hundred, you couldn’t beat a medical conference—and she really had felt she had convinced them of the rightness of the Centre Forward policy. They had clapped for what had seemed a long time, and then come to her table, an endless flow of medics, all telling her they hadn’t hea
rd so much sense talked for a long time. A lot of them had promised to vote for Centre Forward, to switch from their present parties.

  “At last,” said one rather arrogant surgeon—well, were any surgeons not arrogant?—“a politician who seems to understand our profession, doesn’t seem hell-bent on undermining it. Jolly good. Well done.”

  She saved that up to tell Jack next day; it was all grist for her mill.

  There had been a disco after that, for the younger contingent, and the older ones were settling down to some hard drinking. A lot of wives had slipped upstairs; Janet decided to follow their example.

  In her room, she kicked off her shoes, and looked at her handheld. Now, what from Nick Marshall? There had better be something. Something very tangible. Otherwise she wasn’t going to wait even till Monday.

  The worst thing, they had been told, was her abdominal injuries: her spleen was ruptured.

  “Which has resulted in considerable blood loss,” the hollow-eyed houseman told them. “We’re giving her transfusions, obviously, but we’re going to have to remove the spleen. She also has several fractured ribs, and her left arm is broken. But those are not serious.”

  “And the spleen is?”

  “I’m afraid so. That and the subsequent blood loss. But she has no head injuries, for which we can all be grateful. She was lucky to escape them. She was lucky to escape with her life.”

  “Can we…see her?”

  He hesitated. “You can. But it might be distressing for you.”

  “Why?” said Grace, her voice tremulous. “Is she…disfigured?”

  “No, no. Well, not permanently. She’s cut and bruised about the face and head, but she’s got drips up and God knows what else, and these bleeping machines we use.” He smiled at them rather wearily. “But you’ll have watched Casualty, I expect; no surprises for you there.”