Still in shock, he was assailed by a new and worse terror. Freya. Incredibly, her eyes were still shut. His heart raced – how often had he thought of her sleep as a small death? How many times a day – and night – had he and Annet checked that she was still alive, then prayed she wouldn’t wake? Fumbling with fear, unable properly to focus, he undid first his own safety belt, then her straps, with nightmare clumsiness. The engine had stalled, but the music, idiotically, played on in waltz-time.
He released her and held her cradled in his arms, her face cupped between his fingers and thumb.
‘Freya?’
Her skin felt warm, and she was unmarked, but her eyes remained resolutely closed. Her babyhood suddenly made her an alien – foreign, distant, incommunicado. He had literally no idea if she were injured or not. Utterly dependent but utterly separate, she kept her secrets from him.
Fighting down panic, clutching her, he got out of the car. The air was cool and still. Every sound – his shoes on the grass, the rustle of his clothes, the muted bump of the car door swinging back on its hinges, even his breathing – was magnified. Eerily, he had not seen one other car on the ridgeway before or since the incident.
Lifting Freya against his shoulder he walked up the road, in the same direction he had been driving. To break what seemed like some sort of spell he began to sing, at first under his breath and then more loudly: ‘ ‘‘I’ll sing you one-oh, Green grow the rushes-oh, What is your one-oh? One is one and all alone and ever more shall be so! I’ll sing you two-oh …’’ ’ He didn’t know where this particular song had sprung from, his schooldays probably, since when it must have waited, perfectly if unwillingly assimilated, to be brought forth when occasion demanded. By the time he reached seven-oh, he was singing so loudly and walking so fast that he didn’t at once notice that Freya was moving. But when her head lurched unsteadily backwards he caught it in his palm and stared at her as he had earlier that morning, for signs and portents. She blinked and blenched, dazzled by even this muted light after the darkness of sleep.
‘Freya?’ he said again, almost ecstatic with relief, and was rewarded by a series of the small gutteral clicking sounds that preceded complaint. Let her complain, he thought, let her cry, let her bawl her eyes out – she’s alive!
As he turned to go back to the car it became clear how out of it he had been. For one thing, he had covered several hundred yards, and was as far from the Volvo now as it was from the original collision point. Also, a blue van had pulled up alongside and a man, the driver presumably, was standing on the verge between the two vehicles. He was looking towards David and now he called something, held up an arm as if to advertise his presence.
David quickened his pace and as he did so felt weak and nauseous. The strong, seismic shuddering of a few minutes ago, part of the impulse to survive, had been replaced by a sick trembling that threatened to take his knees from under him. It was as if he’d been sucked momentarily into another dimension where every atom of energy had been focused on his daughter, and had now been hurled brutally back into the real world with depleted resources. By the time he got to the van he was staggering, and his face and hands were ice-cold.
‘This yours, mate?’ asked the man. ‘Nasty, you all right? How’s the littl’un – want to give her to me? There you go … You sit down, get your head down, that’s it … Go on, that’s right, I’m a family man too.…’
David didn’t know whether he answered this stream of kindly platitudes or not. The man smelled of paint. One shovel-like hand scooped Freya away from him, the other grabbed him under the armpit as he subsided on to the grass. It then applied a comforting pressure to the back of his neck, and rubbed him between the shoulder blades as he first gagged, then retched and threw up. When he’d finished the man moved away and came back with a bundle of white material in one arm. Still holding Freya, who was perfectly quiet, he shook this out and spread it over David’s shoulders, applying little thoughtful tweaks and adjustments like a mother putting a child to bed.
‘Sorry about the dustsheets … You’re in shock, mate. Anyone called an ambulance?’
David shook his head. ‘ Not necessary.…’
‘Okey dokey, no worries, I got the mobile in the van …’ David could tell the Samaritan was thinking fast, whereas he himself could barely think at all.
‘Tell you what we’ll do,’ said the man, ‘In a tick when you’re up to it, you take the little lady and I’ll move the car back on the road. Then I’ll give the police a tinkle, better tell them it’s here, then I can run the both of you over to the hospital.’
The word ‘hospital’ worked on David like a cold douche. He’d had an accident! No sooner had Annet walked out of the door than he’d crashed the car. One second’s lapse of concentration and he’d risked his daughter’s life – and everyone was going to know it.
With a superhuman effort he marshalled the strength to say: ‘Really there’s no need for that. I just need a couple of minutes.…’
‘I know, I know,’ the man was soothing but firm. ‘But you ought to get checked out. Especially the baby. After all she can’t talk, can she – can’t tell us about it, can you, mate?’
With difficulty, David raised his head to look at her. ‘ My daughter … does she seem all right to you?’
‘Oh yeah.’ The man crouched down next to him to spare him further effort. ‘ But better safe than sorry – best to let the experts take a look, right?’
David nodded miserably.
‘How you feeling?’
‘So-so. I’m sorry about all this.’
‘No worries. You up to taking her while I move the car?’
‘Of course.’
‘Back up a bit and you can lean on the van.’
‘Thank you.’
He allowed himself to be repositioned, and took Freya, conscious that the man placed her in his arms with great care and deliberation.
‘Thank you,’ he said again.
‘Keys in there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Won’t be a tick.’
He was aware, now, of a car passing, slowing down fractionally to take a look. How many others had there been in the past few minutes, that he hadn’t noticed? How many people from Newton Bury who would go back and say ‘You’ll never guess what I saw on the ridgeway this morning …’?
The minute he had hold of her Freya began to squirm and grunt. He didn’t have the van driver’s soothing touch, or perhaps – a nightmare scenario of internal injuries and delayed reactions filled his head. He kissed her repeatedly, in desperation, but the kissing only made her worse. The sudden noise of the car engine startled both of them – he burst into a sweat, and Freya’s arms jerked upwards. The noise rose and intensified as the wheels failed to get a purchase in the mud. He closed his eyes and rocked the crying Freya back and forth, more for his comfort than for hers.
‘Sorry about this …’ The driver stood at the side of the road, just in front of them, and flagged down the next car that passed. With a humiliating sense of his own helplessness David listened as ‘a bit of a push’ was elicited, and given, the engine switched off at last, and an exchange took place sotto voce in which he sensed he himself featured.
‘OK, cheers!’ The second car drove off and the van driver returned.
‘All done. How you doing?’
‘Not bad, but she’s beside herself.’
‘Pissed off, can’t say I blame her. Here—’
He took Freya again, hooked his arm under David’s and pulled him slowly to his feet. ‘All right?’
David’s head swam. ‘I will be, give me a second.’
‘All the time in the world, mate.’
The man was an exemplar of patience and kindness. To hell with Lara, David found himself thinking, this chap had missed his vocation. Now he helped him over to the van.
‘You be all right in the back? You can lie down. Only she ought to go in her seat.’
‘Of course.’
The b
ack of the van had, he guessed, been hastily reordered to accommodate him, with plastic crates full of brushes and paint tins moved to the side, and the dustsheets spread out.
‘Stretch limo it isn’t,’ said the driver.
‘Please – I really can’t thank you enough.’
‘Won’t take us more than fifteen minutes, just sing out if you want to stop.’
He strapped Freya’s seat in, and tested its secureness, with a series of enviably brisk, decisive movements.
‘Right then,’ he said, rolling down the window and pulling out. ‘Let’s get this show on the road.’
They seemed to go at breakneck speed, but this may have been because David couldn’t see. Freya had gone quiet again, but he told himself that she always did in cars.
‘By the way, I got your car keys,’ said the driver into his mirror. ‘Don’t let me forget to give them back.’
‘I won’t.’
‘You’re not legal in there, but if we’re stopped it’s an emergency, I reckon, yeah?’
‘Certainly.’
They hurtled in silence for a while, before the driver asked: ‘Mind the radio?’
‘Not at all.’
He turned on Classic FM, Fledermaus sung by a soprano like a dentist’s drill on speed. David was reminded of Kenneth Tynan’s description of Anna Neagle, ‘shaking her voice at the audience like a tiny fist’, but the driver was enjoying it, and even turned the volume up slightly and tapped his fingers on the wheel.
The man’s prediction as to time proved correct, and they arrived at the entrance to the hospital just before eleven. David carried the sleeping Freya in in her car-seat. He hadn’t been near a casualty department in thirty years – not since he’d scalded himself with boiling milk in his shared flat in NWIO – and it was depressing to see how little things had changed. There were the rows of hard chairs, their cracked plastic seats sprouting occasional shoots of stuffing … the table littered with dog-eared magazines … the notice board warning grimly of everything from veruccas to meningitis and the detection of same … the tropical fish … the crate of grubby-looking children’s toys surrounded by a litter of Stick-a-bricks and wax crayons … the dozen or so unhappy patients … The only difference that he could see was a display unit in moving lights forbidding the use of mobile phones, and the fact that the nurse behind the desk wore trousers.
‘Now look,’ said the van driver as they waited their turn, ‘will you be OK?’
David was humbled by his kindness. ‘Absolutely. I can’t tell you how grateful I am.’
‘Only I’d better get along to my job.’
‘God, you must have lost hours, is there someone I can talk to you on your behalf?’
‘I’m self-employed. Anyway,’ the man looked at his watch, ‘ What – forty minutes, tops? I can make it up easy.’
‘I hope so.’
‘You’ll be able to sort out getting your car back? No damage as far as I could see. By the way, I never asked – was there anyone else involved?’
‘No.’ It was an auto-pilot lie, spoken before he thought of it. ‘No, I must have had a lapse of concentration. Entirely my fault. The person behind did have to swerve to avoid us but that wasn’t surprising.’
‘Never stopped, I suppose …?’ The man shook his head in gentle despair. ‘Never thought to see how you were?’
‘No, but you did, thank heavens.’ He fished in his pocket and took out his wallet. ‘ Please – will you let me reimburse you for your petrol?’
To his considerable relief, the man took the note without demur and made a small saluting gesture with it.
‘Cheers. Appreciate it.’
When he’d gone, David felt bereft. It was a long time – since childhood, probably – since he’d experienced such a solidly comforting presence. On the other hand the Samaritan’s departure had the salutary effect of making him think for himself. There was a process to be undergone. The nurse on the desk peered at Freya and asked if she’d been awake since the accident.
‘Well – naturally,’ he said.
‘Why naturally?’ She was on her mettle.
‘I mean, another car struck my car. It was a pretty disturbing experience.’
‘I see. So she’s been crying and so on, behaving normally?’
‘Yes, but obviously I can’t be sure—’
‘No, quite, we’ll take a look at her. And what about you?’
‘I was in shock. I felt faint, and I was sick, just afterwards, but left to my own devices I’d have gone straight home. I was persuaded to come here because of Freya.’
‘You did the right thing,’ conceded the nurse, scribbling on a form. ‘ How old is your granddaughter?’
‘My daughter actually.’
He had to hand it to the nurse, she thought on her feet. ‘You can’t tell these days with granddads getting younger all the time.’
David was still smarting from this when he sat down. It was true, grandparents were getting younger – you had only to look at Karen – so it was an understandable mistake. But the damage was done. Coming so soon after the accident, in his already weakened state, he felt stricken.
He studied the piece of paper he’d been handed. In the top left-hand corner was stuck a pink disc. Next to the disc was printed the information: ‘The coloured disc here indicates the approximate length of time you can expect to wait. Green = fifteen minutes, Pink = half an hour, Yellow = 1 hour, Red = possibly more than an hour.’
He debated going back to the desk and complaining about this prediction, but a cursory glance round revealed that several other patients had pink stickers, which suggested that it wasn’t an indication of perceived urgency or the lack of it, but simply the order of the day.
In the end it was only twenty-five minutes before he and Freya were summoned, and shown into a curtained cubicle where they were at once shut in with a whisk and a rattle. While they sat there for a further ten minutes Freya finally woke up, but as she didn’t cry he decided against taking her out of the seat right away, on the spinning-things-out principle.
Eventually a frighteningly young Scottish intern swept in, aglow with brisk, no-nonsense bonhomie. He left the curtain open, as if to show that while waiting was a private activity, consultation was not.
‘So, bit of a bump on the roads? A bit shaken up, the two of you I have no doubt?’
David confirmed this. ‘I was, but I’m fine. It’s my daughter I’m concerned about,’ he added, to make the relationship clear from the outset.
The intern, whose badge proclaimed him to be Dr C. McPhail, folded his arms and stared down at Freya.
‘Quite right, very sensible. Nonetheless, since the young lady’s good as gold for now I think we’ll start with you.’
David answered questions, and then lay on the couch while his joints were flexed, his stomach kneaded, and a light shone into his eyes and ears, after which he was declared sound in wind and limb. He then sat on the edge of the hard chair while Freya, curiously unprotesting (McPhail seemed to have the same effect as the van driver) was subjected to the same process.
‘Is she always as good as this?’ McPhail asked.
‘No. She yells from time to time. She’s our first,’ David explained, ‘so we don’t have anything to compare it with.’
‘But she’s cried since the accident?’
‘Oh yes.’ He realised now what they were getting at. ‘Oh yes, she protested violently when – earlier on.’
‘Fine …’ McPhail tweaked Freya’s tights up and her dress down, and handed her over. ‘Fine. I’m going to chance my arm and say I don’t think there’s any need for either of you to hang around here.’
David wasn’t wholly reassured by the choice of words. ‘You’re sure? I mean about Freya? Because—’
McPhail shook his head, eyes closed. ‘I’m sure.’ He went to the entrance of the cubicle and stood there, seeing them out. ‘Though it goes without saying that if you’re worried about the least little thing you shou
ld consult your own doctor. And in fact even if all’s well, as I fully expect, make an appointment with your GP for, say, the end of the week or beginning of next just to get the rule run over her. And you, if necessary.’
As if to prove a point Freya started to grizzle while he rang for a cab. It didn’t seem appropriate to worry Annet with news of the accident on her first day back, and he didn’t feel that he knew anyone in the village well enough to summon them, especially as he didn’t wish this escapade to be common knowledge.
When he’d finally got through, and replaced the receiver he found a young nurse hunkered down by the car-seat in a squirrel-like attitude – a baby-lover if ever he’d seen one.
‘Ah …’ she said, ‘d’you think she’s hungry?’
He glanced at his watch. ‘She could be, but there isn’t much I can do, I didn’t know we were going to wind up here,’ he expained, ‘or I’d have brought the life-support systems.’
She looked up at him, holding Freya’s hand in hers. ‘ We’ve got some formula in the fridge, you know, we keep it in case it’s needed. It’s made up fresh every day.’
‘Really?’ He found himself thinking, what would Annet do? but banished the thought instantly. ‘That sounds like a good idea.’
‘I’ll get some.’ She stood up. ‘How long will your taxi be?’
‘Twenty minutes he said.’
‘Why don’t you go and get a coffee in the WVS shop and I’ll bring her a bottle?’
She was so keen and sweet, so unaffectedly eager to help, that he did as he was told. In the shop – he’d have called it a café – Freya’s yells were met with equal indulgence by the green-clad ladies behind the counter. As he paid for his coffee and Kit-Kat the woman at the till asked:
‘You don’t remember me do you?’
He looked up cautiously. This, like ‘how old do you think I am?’ and ‘have you stopped beating your wife?’ was a question to which there seemed no reply from which one could emerge with credit. But the moment he saw the speaker, he mercifully did recognise her.
‘I’m so sorry – I do apologise – I was in a world of my own.’
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