by Joe McNally
‘Open your legs.’
I did. I was now half bent over the radiator, arms and legs spreadeagled. He started pushing down on the back of my head with the gun. ‘Bend.’
When I realised what he was going to do I felt nauseous.
A man must have instincts to help him survive, especially when the brain is caught by surprise or unable to function and as my face was forced nearer and nearer to the boiling radiator surface, Instinct tried to take over from Brain. But although my ears were clanging every alarm bell in my body as they listened to the bubbling, spitting water Brain knew the consequence of resistance was a bullet in the head.
The gun barrel pressed against the protruding bone at the base of my skull now, hurting. My face was ten inches from the hot grey metal.
A bead of sweat fell from my forehead onto the radiator and I watched from six inches as it sizzled into vapour. I felt my fingers grip the wings of the car as my feet slid wider on the loose gravel.
My eyes were three inches away. They were already burning. I closed them. Gritting my teeth I tried to turn my head sideways so my left cheek would make contact first. He stopped pressing down. He held steady. I was looking at the radiator cap an inch away. The steam inside was under terrible pressure, hissing and bubbling, it seemed deafening.
He spoke. ‘Stay away from Harle and Roscoe.’ His voice was still calm. I had not heard mine for a minute. Mine would not be calm. I thanked God or whoever was up there that they were settling for a warning and not frying my face. I thought of Harle and how far away from him I’d be staying in future. I wondered when he would let me straighten up, things were pretty uncomfortable.
Then I saw a hand. The other man’s hand.
It was moving slowly, very slowly toward my face at eye-level. It was inside a thick grey industrial glove and it crept over the top of the radiator and came to rest on the cap. The sickness returned quickly.
An inch from my eyes the hand pressed down on the cap. I watched as it slowly unscrewed it. The captive steam sensed freedom and the hiss became a roar in my left ear. I was a rabbit. The hand was a snake. I was transfixed with horror.
The final seconds were a blur. On the last turn of the cap the hand disappeared. The cap burst off and steam and boiling water rushed upwards as my face was pushed over the scalding eruption. I opened my mouth to scream but I don’t remember hearing any sound. I don’t remember anything else except the moments of searing pain before I blacked out.
17
Consciousness returned as dawn broke. I was lying on the road. It was cold. I lay there staring at the tyre a foot from my face. Small pips of gravel were stuck in the tread. I didn’t move. Just my eyes. I became aware I was on my side under the front bumper, my right arm beneath my body. My eyes moved again and I saw under the car the frosty spiky grass at the roadside. It was higher than my head.
Funny.
It was cold.
I tried to remember the season. It was spring. I was sure. Must be a cold snap.
The pain came back to my face. My eyelids felt like dried, wrinkled leaves. My left cheek and nose throbbed and stung like someone had shaved me with a dry razor after my skin had been cooked.
My lips felt puffed. I prodded them with my tongue and regretted it immediately. They were tender, raw-flesh tender.
The sky was getting lighter. I lay still. It wasn’t the first time I’d lain injured on the ground. I had fallen from horses at speed more times than I could count.
I’d seen the green earth coming at me fast, felt it pound the wind from my body. I’d heard the crack of my own bones at impact. I’d shut my eyes and rolled my head on a pillow of mud and wet grass counting out the pain with each turn of the head till the ambulance arrived.
And they always had arrived. Sometimes they took longer than others but they had always come. I wished they were coming to get me now.
Pick me up from this road. Wrap me in warm blankets. Morphine the pain away.
Help me.
I moved. I lifted my right cheek and felt the gravel stick to my skin. Rolling onto my back I looked at the sky. It was still grey but getting bluer. Slowly I tried to flex my arms and legs. A crow sat in the tree above me, watching as I moved like a dying spider.
My limbs were stiff and though they weren’t sore the slightest movement anywhere in my body seemed to increase the pain in my face.
Very slowly I sat up. My eyes reached the level of the radiator grille. Gripping the bumper I pulled myself up ... oh so slowly trying to keep my head perfectly still.
Every movement seemed to send shock waves into my skull to bounce around on the inside walls of my face like some kid’s computer game. Direct hits every time. No electronic beeps, just agony. Agony. Agony. Agony.
I held on to the front of the car for a long while. I stared down at last night’s instrument of torture ... the cap was nowhere to be seen. Just a dark hole rimmed on the inside by, of all things, ice.
The journey from the front of the car to the driving seat must have taken ten minutes. Moving in tiny steps, stopping till the pain was bearable for the next few inches, I heard the crow fly off. Bored, I suppose. If he’d been a vulture I think he might have stayed.
The final small movements had to be made in bursts of held breath, squatting to sit on the side of the seat, sliding backwards, hauling my legs in and turning round to face the front. Each an individual stage. Each, a dive from high cliffs, preceded by a deep breath. Each breath held till the stage was complete.
Finally I sat. On the softness, the warm velour. No more gravel.
No more cold.
I was sweating now. The drops ran out of my hair and carved paths down the burned skin. More and more of them. A big field. Many runners. Racing down my face ... cutting it up.
I passed out again.
The sound of an engine woke me. My eyes opened slowly. It was a horsebox, coming to a halt in front of my car. It stopped. The engine stayed on. I heard a door slam shut and boots hitting gravel. I began to panic and I was ashamed of my terror. If they’d come back for another session over the radiator ... I suddenly felt very badly in need of a toilet.
I saw the boots running alongside the box. They were small boots. They were beautiful small undangerous boots. Their owner came into view ... it was a girl. A loud involuntary sigh of relief groaned out of my body.
She came to the door which still lay open and she bent and looked in. ‘Have you broken down?’ she asked in a lovely soft Irish accent.
I turned slowly to look at her and when she saw the full frontal her brown eyes seemed to double in size in her beautiful freckled face. Her head went back with the speed of a rifle recoil. ‘Fuckin hell!’ she said, her hand going to her mouth to hush it and cover her horror.
‘Hello,’ I said. Moving my lips was a big mistake. I resolved not to do it again.
‘What in the name of God happened to you?’ she asked.
‘Accident,’ I said without moving my lips.
‘How, what happened?’
‘Later,’ I said, again through still lips.
‘Will I fetch a doctor?’
There was nothing in the world I wanted more but doctors meant police and police meant, eventually, Cranley who would gloat and taunt.
‘No,’ I said.
‘But why? You’re in an awful state. Have you seen your face?’
I hadn’t. If it looked as bad as it felt I didn’t want to see it.
‘You’ll have to have a doctor.’ She was pleading now.
‘Please ... no,’ I managed to say. If I’d been able to use my facial muscles to help express how much I didn’t want a doctor perhaps she would have been more easily convinced. She was getting angry, maternal.
‘Not here.’ The pain was in my voice now. She softened and moved in closer, squatting. ‘I see how sore it is for you to talk.’ She puzzled for a few seconds then looked at my hands in my lap.
‘Can you move your fingers?’
A cinc
h. I drummed on my thigh.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘I’ll just ask you questions and you can answer with your fingers. Right hand for yes, left for no.’
I raised my right forefinger.
‘Are you hurt anywhere else except your face?’
Left hand.
‘Can you move?’
I hesitated.
‘With my help?’
Deep breath. Right hand.
‘Can your car be driven?’
Left hand.
‘If we go very slowly can you make it to the horsebox?’
Right hand.
‘Okay, I’ll take you back with me, then we’ll get a doctor.’
After a million years we reached the door of the horsebox. It was high, offering only two steel footholds. I looked at them. She looked at me. I was sweating again.
She climbed up and opened the door then jumped down. ‘Wait,’ she told me. Running round the front of the box she climbed in the other side. Appearing above me in the doorway she reached to help me up. Breath-holding time again.
As it turned out it wasn’t a hell of a lot worse than the walking; the pain level had come down or my tolerance had increased. I reached the seat without blacking out again.
‘I’ll drive slowly,’ she said. And she did, but the road was bad in places with ruts and holes. Every time we bounced I sensed her glancing across at me and felt her grimace for both of us. I wondered how far we had to go and she read my mind.
‘It’s not far, another two miles or so.’
We rumbled on, slower than an old carthorse.
‘The family are away just now though they may be back the morra,’ she said. ‘So you can have a bed till the doctor comes and maybe even stay overnight if he doesn’t want to put you in hospital.’
It wasn’t the doctor that wanted to put me in hospital but I knew what she meant.
‘Even if you’re still here when the guv’nor gets back, he won’t mind. He’s a decent sort, so he is.’
I was glad of that.
‘And Mrs Roscoe’s nice too.’
If she’d only known there was nothing in this world she could have said that would have made me feel sicker in my gut.
The little straw-clutcher inside said maybe it wasn’t the same Roscoe, but cold logic laughed him down. How common was the name? How many had horseboxes? How many had stables within two miles of where I’d been last night? Not many. Just one. Basil.
18
I wondered if Roscoe knew yet that I’d been to his house last night. The hit-men must have reported in to somebody and if that somebody was Roscoe there had to be a chance he was speeding down the A1 right now to find out how much damage had been caused.
I tried to imagine the look on his face when he walked in and found me being sympathetically tended to by his stable staff. It didn’t make for a pretty picture. The girl chatted on beside me, something about this not being their horsebox and how she’d have to take it back later that day, while I tried to figure out what I was going to do.
My main fear was passing out again and finding Roscoe there when I woke up.
When we reached the stables the girl drove to the rear of the buildings and turned in to the yard. She looked across at me. ‘I’ll get help,’ she said, and jumped to the ground. I watched her go into the house I’d crept out of less than twelve hours before.
My vision was limited by the area my swivelling eyes could cover without moving my head, but I could see that the yard was cobbled though many of the stones were worn almost flat. Some were missing and had been replaced by cement which had been painted the same slate grey colour.
The girl reappeared and ran toward the stables behind me.
Seconds later I saw her in the side mirror hurrying back to the horsebox. Following her was a lanky teenage boy. His lime-green sweater stopped halfway down his forearms and as he walked his hands dangled and swung as though his wrists were broken. His face was long and pointed and looked like it hadn’t seen soap and water since Christmas.
The girl climbed up and opened the door and I turned slowly and painfully and came out backwards. They guided my feet to the rungs and took most of my weight on the last big step to the ground.
Inside, they helped me to a chair in the kitchen, straight and high-backed, much easier to stand up from. The girl went to the sink and tore two yards of pale blue tissue from a roll fixed to the wall.
She soaked the tissue under the tap and came toward me, water dripping through her fingers as she cradled the soggy mass in both hands.
‘If I can dab some of this on your face it should soothe it.’
‘No,’ I said, fearing unconsciousness again if anything touched the skin.
‘But you need something on it till a doctor gets here!’ I could see she was beginning to get frustrated with this invalid with the poached face. Each time she’d offered help I’d stopped her. Wondering how long her patience would hold I decided to try one more request which I knew would not be popular but would at least go some way toward getting me out of her hair. I prepared myself for another session of talking through still lips.
‘Have you called the doctor?’ I asked.
‘Not yet,’ she said. The water still dripped, making a pool on the tiled floor. I looked at the boy. He was staring at my face with his mouth hanging open like someone had removed the bolt from his jaw. The girl saw me look at him and turned.
‘Thanks, Bobby. You’d better get back to the feed room and finish off that mash.’ It was an order and Bobby looked used to taking them.
He drifted slowly sideways toward the door, still staring at my face. I lost sight of him when he moved out of eye-swivelling range but I heard him speak for the first time.
‘What you gonna do with ‘im, Jackie?’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll get him a doctor, he’ll be all right,’ she said.
He didn’t reply. ‘Bobby,’ the girl said sternly, ‘go back and finish the feed. I’ll make sure he’s all right.’
The girl turned back to me. By the look of her she was approaching the border of anger. ‘Don’t tell me now you don’t want a doctor!’
I didn’t say anything but she could see from my look that that was exactly what I was about to tell her and she turned, strode back to the sink and dumped the saturated handful of tissue. It splodged and stuck by the sound of it. Back she came to me.
‘Maybe I should just let you sit there till you die! Maybe you’d be happier then!’ A flush spread under her freckles and her eyes sparkled. She was very attractive.
‘Jackie ...’ I said. The use of her name puzzled her till she remembered Bobby had used it.
‘Don’t you Jackie me with any soft talk!’
I tried to make my eyes look apologetic. ‘Just do one more thing for me.’ The m’s were not coming out, but she understood.
‘What?’ Hands on hips now, she was ready for an argument.
‘Call an ambulance.’ I said. Her eyes went up to heaven. ‘Thank God! You’re coming to your senses.’
On a shelf by the window was a white telephone and, picking up the receiver, she looked back at me over her shoulder. She was lovely as the sun caught her through the glass. Pity about my face. If they ever repaired it sufficiently I’d ask her to dinner.
‘999?’
‘Yes.’ I said.
She began dialling. ‘Tell them I had an accident in the boiler room.’
She stopped dialling and turned, still holding the receiver to her ear. ‘We don’t have a boiler room.’
‘They don’t know that.’
Shaking her head slowly she dialled the last digit. Pacing the kitchen in silence while we waited, she asked again what happened to me, but I persuaded her the story would be best kept till some other time.
I heard the siren faintly in the distance, but when the ambulance came within clear hearing range of the stables the noise stopped. It took me a few seconds to figure out they’d switched the siren off deliberately in case we end
ed up with terrified horses kicking down their box doors and careering all over Lambourn.
There were two ambulance-men and they breezed in cheery and efficient looking. One had a beautifully kept beard and when he saw me he whistled low and said, ‘Nice one.’
The other man gazed studiously at my face from about a foot away as though he were looking in an aquarium for a lost fish. ‘You won’t be shaving for a while, old son,’ he said. ‘What happened?’
Jackie answered. ‘The boiler blew.’
He straightened and looked at her. ‘These burns aren’t fresh.’
I watched her. She didn’t turn a hair. ‘It happened last night when he was here alone. I found him this morning when I came back from the races.’
He looked at me again. ‘Not the comfiest night you’ve ever spent, I’ll bet,’ he said. Then the bearded one said, ‘I’ll get the stretcher, John.’
‘Okay,’ John said. He smiled at me. ‘We’ll have you sorted out in no time, old son.’
He turned to Jackie. ‘What’s his name? He was blocking my view but I could imagine the look on her face. ‘Eddie Malloy,’ I said, using my lips so he wouldn’t ask for a repeat. It was very painful.
He turned his attention back to me. ‘You used to be a jockey, didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’ Back to still lips. I saw him reflect briefly on his use of the past tense. He must have remembered the circumstances of my warning-off because he looked uncomfortable. I wished I felt well enough to say something consolatory to fill the embarrassed silence.
His friend barged in with the stretcher saving further blushes. They stood, one at either end, holding the stretcher and Jackie helped me lie on it. The bearded one was facing me and John was at my head. ‘All right, Eddie?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Will you open the door, love?’ he asked Jackie.
‘Do you want to come with him?’ the bearded one asked her.
‘Not now, I’m expecting Mr Roscoe back soon. I’ll telephone the hospital to find out how he is. Newbury General, is that right?’
‘That’s it, love,’ John said. ‘The number’s in the book.’