He hit the bottom of the trench with tremendous force, his legs twisting under him. The shock and violence of the fall stunned him, and for a few moments he blacked out, then a sharp, sickening pain in his right leg made him cry out. He caught his breath, tried to sit up, but the pain pounced on him again. Frightened, he lay still, sweat pouring off his face. He waited, trying to regain his breath, horrified at the possibility of a serious injury. He stared at his right leg. It was bent back at an awkward angle, and he knew then that it was broken. Black despair seized him. It was all up with him now. He was finished — trapped like a snared rabbit, stuck here until they came for him. He cursed at the top of his voice, in English and then in German. His face was dark with frustrated rage and fear, his eyes wild, the veins in his neck like thick cords. He pounded the sandy soil with his clenched fists, and then dug his fingers into the ground until tiny particles of sand, wedged under his finger-nails, drew blood.
To be caught like this! To be pinned down in this damp trench until someone stumbled across him. They’d find the broken window and they’d know he had done it. They’d send for the police and he’d be recognised. Then he’d be finished — kaput!
After a few moments he exhausted his rage, and gained control of himself. Sitting up, he gingerly touched his leg. It was painful and was already beginning to swell. In a link while, it would be bad. The thought of lying in this trench all night, the pain getting worse, flung him into a panic. He began to shout for help, not caring now if they did catch him so long as he wasn’t left alone in the dark with the pain getting worse and the leg swelling as each hour crept past.
His shouts, dwarfed by the great stretch of open ground around him, were snatched uselessly away into space by the rising wind. No one heard him.
He took hold of his broken leg and tried to straighten it. The moment he moved it pain bit into his body like the teeth of a savage animal, making him cry out. He fell back against the side of the trench, sick with pain and fear, and lay still, the sweat of exertion growing cold on his face and neck, and the pain sucking away his strength. He felt himself dragged down, helpless, through a cold, silent darkness.
“Are you hurt?” Grace called down to him.
He heard her voice, and for a moment could not believe that she had returned. He made a great effort to keep himself on the edge of consciousness, and raising his head, he looked up. He saw her; a small dark shape against the night sky, standing on the edge of the trench, peering down at him. The relief that he wasn’t going to be left alone, that she was going to help him, was almost too much for him. As she clambered into the trench he caught hold of her hands and pulled her down by his side.
“Don’t leave me,” he implored, too anxious to realise that in the darkness of the trench she could not read his lips. “I’ve broken my leg. You’ve got to help me. I gave you food. I saved you from that woman. You can’t leave me here. They’ll catch me.” He clung to her hands. “If you don’t help me I’ll tell them it was you who killed Mrs Wheeler.”
CHAPTER FIVE
The wind had stiffened and great swollen clouds came up from the west, blotting out the clear sky, the stars and the moon. A few minutes after ten o’clock it began to rain.
Lying in the trench, Ellis cursed the rain. It fell lightly at first, but as more clouds climbed the horizon it began to pour: sheet after sheet of grey, cold water, chased by the wind, soaking into the open ground.
He wished he hadn’t let Grace go. Now it was raining she would probably stay under cover and leave him out in the open to get on as best he could. She had been calm and tender when she realised that his leg was broken. It was odd that she should have behaved like that, Ellis thought. Now that she had him at her mercy she seemed to lose her fear of him, and instead of jeering at him and leaving him as he would have done in her place, she had actually made him comfortable and had straightened his broken leg so efficiently that he had scarcely felt any pain.
“I’ll go to the clubhouse,” she had said. “Perhaps I can find something I can use as a splint.”
He couldn’t understand how a girl of her type knew anything about broken limbs, and when he asked her, she explained that she had been a nursing orderly in the W.A.A.F. and had passed a number of tests in first aid.
He didn’t want her to go, but he knew something had to be done. He couldn’t stay in the trench. Before long he would have to make an effort to climb the steep bank, and to crawl somehow or other to the wood. At the moment he was too frightened to move, but if she set the bone and strapped it up, he might be able to make the attempt.
So she had gone. He had listened to her speeding footfalls as she ran lightly across the grass, but when the sound of her running had died away, he immediately lost confidence and cursed himself for letting her go.
She wouldn’t come back. After the way he had treated her, she would be a fool to come back. In her place he wouldn’t have hesitated. It would have been a perfect opportunity to have ditched her. Ditched in a ditch, he thought, and thumped the moist soil, furious and fearful.
It was now cold and wet in the trench. Rain poured down on his head, cold against his feverish skin. It would rain, he thought bitterly: this ghastly country and its treacherous weather. You never knew. He could have stood the pain and the worry if it had been dry and warm, but this insinuating wet and cold unnerved him.
Minutes ticked by. He had taken off his wrist-watch and stowed it in his wallet to protect it from the wet. Unable to resist looking at it, he brought it out once more and saw she had been away twenty minutes. Twenty minutes! What was she doing? Was she coming back? He tried to raise himself to look over the top of the trench but pain forced him to lie still. All he could see was the dark sullen sky overhead and feel the rain on his face.
A new sound came to him as he lay there. The sound of an approaching train. It rattled along the track, slowed down, and finally stopped at the station. He immediately imagined the girl waiting on the platform, getting into the train and settling in a corner seat. He could picture her white, anxious face as she peered through the window to make sure that no one had seen her. The train began to move again. He imagined her being carried away from him, and he clawed at the wet soil, trying to pull himself up, fearful of being left on his own.
He heard a distant signal thump down as the train moved off. Somehow the sound reminded him of the noise the trap would make when they hanged him. He shivered, his hand going to his throat.
Then, just as he was about to give up hope, he heard her coming, and saw a light flickering over the edge of the trench.
“Put it out, you fool!” he raved. Was the girl crazy to wave a light like that for anyone to see? But, of course, she couldn’t hear him, and when she climbed down into the trench, he knocked the torch violently out of her hand.
“It’s all right,” she said quietly, picking up the torch and kneeling in the wet beside him. “No one can see us. I had to have a light. It’s dark and wet out there.”
The torch lit up the trench, and he saw the sand, dark with rain, his twisted leg, his wet trousers, the girl also wet through, her hair like rats’ tails, the awful little hat wilting.
“I’ll try and fix your leg,” she said.
She had with her a big suitcase and two brightly-coloured golfing umbrellas. Although she was breathing hard, she was calm, and he felt more confident now she was with him.
“It would rain, wouldn’t it?” she said as she opened one of the umbrellas. Unconsciously she had adopted the cheerful tone a nurse has in a sickroom.
He nodded, watched her. She wasn’t such a fool, he decided. He doubted if even he would have thought to look for an umbrella.
She fixed the big umbrella across the sides of the trench so that it formed a roof over his head. It was a relief not to feel the rain, and he nodded approvingly when she opened the second umbrella and set it up beside the first. The two umbrellas formed a gay and complete roof to the trench, shutting out the rain and making the tre
nch almost cosy. It was now just the kind of place a child would have loved to have been shut up in; and lying there, the rain and the sullen sky blotted out, the light from the torch on the brilliant colours of the umbrellas, Ellis went back into his childhood, and for a moment or so was actually moved.
Grace was unpacking the suitcase. She produced two large mackintosh sheets which she spread out on the wet soil.
“You’ll have to move on to that,” she said, “or you’ll get rheumatism.”
He pointed to his leg. “Fix my leg,” he said impatiently. “Never mind about rheumatism. Do you think I want to stay here all night?”
But she was busy unpacking the suitcase and she wasn’t looking at him so she did not know he was speaking. This threw him into another rage. (To be at the mercy of this deaf bitch, he raved.) He tried to touch her, but she was just beyond his reach and he was forced to lie still, hating her, waiting for her to turn.
“Can you help yourself?” she asked, coming to him and kneeling over him. He smelt the wet flannel of her skirt and drops of water fell from the stupid little flower in her hat on to his face.
He grabbed her arm, shook it. “My leg,” he shouted. “Get on with it! Never mind about the wet. Fix my leg!”
But she couldn’t have been watching his lips, for she said calmly: “Raise yourself. I’ll steady your leg while you get on to the mackintosh.”
He was going to argue, telling her he didn’t give a damn about the damp, but he suddenly hadn’t the strength. He hated to let her dominate him, but in his present condition it was so much easier to do what he was told.
He finally worked his way on to the mackintosh. She was remarkably efficient the way she handled his leg. Tenderly she held it just off the ground and she seemed to anticipate his movements so he managed to inch on to the mackintosh without great pain. But he was sweating by the time he was stretched on the sheet, and he felt he was going to be sick. She saw his deathly pallor and his glistening skin and she pressed him down, her small brown hand firm on his shoulder.
“I have some brandy here,” she said, twisting round to the suitcase.
He stared at her narrow arched back as she bent over the suitcase, at her beautifully shaped legs. It was a pity she was so plain, he thought. She had a beautiful body. A tiny spark of lust rose up inside him, but sparked out immediately as he felt a twinge of pain.
She came over to him, a tumbler containing brandy in her hand.
“Drink this,” she said, raising his head.
The brandy helped. He felt it going down inside him, spreading a comforting warmth, pushing away the deadly sickness, giving him courage.
She began to take off his shoes, and he suddenly wondered if his feet were clean. Hot shame ran through him: a feeling he hadn’t experienced since a child. This feeling angered him, and he tried to stop her, only he couldn’t reach her hands. So he lay still, staring up at the multi-coloured umbrellas, angry and ashamed, hating her unfairly, blaming her for his loss of pride. She took off his shoes and socks, and then she came closer and began to fumble at his trouser buttons.
He snatched at her hands, gripping her wrists and glaring at her.
“Leave me alone,” he snarled. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
She stared back at him, her small white face scared and a puzzled look in her eyes.
“It’s all right,” she said soothingly. “I’m going to set your leg. I’ll have to take your trousers off. It doesn’t matter . . . I was a nurse once . . . at least, almost a nurse.”
“Leave me alone,” he muttered, furious to find that he was blushing. He thought of his thin hairy legs and shrank from her seeing them. “You’re not to undress me.”
But she persisted with a kindly, anxious obstinacy. It was too much of an effort to stop her, and when she pulled away from him, he hadn’t the strength to hold on to her, and he lay still again, his eyes shut, his thin lips moving angrily. He let her remove his trousers, and he turned his face away.
But as she gently worked the trousers over his feet, she accidentally jarred him, sending pain shooting up his leg, making him cry out.
He called her an obscene name, but she did not know he had done so. He wanted to kick her, to make her suffer as he was suffering, but he was too afraid to make the necessary move in case he increased his own pain.
He raised his head and watched her, his eyes vicious. She had produced a blanket from the suitcase and was now covering his sound leg with it. The warmth from the blanket was comforting. She examined the broken leg in the light of the torch. Her smooth brown hand looked beautiful against his white hairy skin.
“It’s just below the knee,” she said. “I think I can set it.” She looked up at him, her eyes large and anxious. “It’ll hurt.”
“Get on with it,” he said, cringing in spite of himself. “Set it. I can stand pain. What do you think I am — soft?”
But before she even touched the broken place, he was sweating. As her hand hovered over the swollen limb he flinched, biting his lip, clenching his fists.
She seemed to sense his fear of pain, and she poured out more brandy and gave it to him.
“Try and bear it,” she implored, knowing how difficult it could be. “You won’t struggle, will you? I want to set it properly.”
“Get on with it, you slut,” he shouted, terrified. “Get on with it and stop drivelling.”
Again she missed his savagery as she had turned to bend over the suitcase again. He longed to kick her slim buttocks, to inflict indignity on her, feeling ashamed of his own cowardice and trying to blame her for it.
She produced surgical splints and bandages from the suitcase. It seemed there was nothing she couldn’t produce. The suitcase reminded Ellis of a conjurer’s chest.
“There was a first aid box in the clubhouse,” she explained. “They have everything. Even a stretcher. If there was someone to help me I could get you under cover.”
“Oh, get on with it,” he said, and closed his eyes.
He knew it would be painful, but he had no idea it could hurt as much as it did. For a second or so he lay still, feeling her hands on the broken limb. Then pain shot through his veins and was transmitted in waves through his whole body. Sourness drained from his mouth and in its place was the dry faintness, rising in his face and condensing on his forehead in sweat. He dug his fingers into the mackintosh, stiffened.
“It’ll be all right,” he heard her say. She sounded far away; then suddenly real pain — something he had never before experienced. It was too much. He cried out, tried to sit up, hitting out blindly. The pain went on, biting into him, searing at his nerves. Suddenly he felt the contents of his stomach rush into his mouth and he had a horrible feeling of being drowned. Sickness broke acidly in his mouth, but in spite of this he heard distinctly a sharp click as the fractured ends of the bone locked together.
For a minute or so he lost consciousness. The slipping away into darkness terrified him, and he clutched feebly at nothing, feeling himself sinking over the edge of a bottomless chasm. He cried out, and then plunged down and down.
Then later, when he struggled back out of the darkness, saw the light reflected on the coloured umbrellas, felt the dull ache of his leg and smelt his sickness and tasted it in his mouth, he cried out again like a child waking from a nightmare.
He felt a cold, firm hand in his. He clung to it and it gave him courage. She was talking to him, but he couldn’t be bothered to listen to what she was saying. It was enough to know she was near him, that she hadn’t gone out into the wind and the rain and left him alone.
She held his hand for a long time until he fell asleep.
CHAPTER SIX
Towards five o’clock in the morning it stopped raining, and the sun, pale behind the mist, came up from the east. The air was fresh, and a mild breeze sprang up, poking holes in the mist to reveal blue sky.
Ellis stirred, uneasily, pulled the blanket up to his chin. The sunlight coming through the u
mbrella roof disturbed him, and he opened his eyes. For a long moment he didn’t know where he was, what he was doing in this hole in the ground. His hand went to his leg and he flinched. There was an extraordinary lightness inside his head and his mouth was dry. As his brain awakened, he remembered what had happened the previous night and he half sat up, his heart thumping unevenly. When he saw Grace curled up near his feet, asleep, he relaxed, reassured. So she was still with him, he thought, relieved, and he studied her for the first time, regarding her as a woman whose destiny was to be linked with his and not as a deaf nuisance who was to be used and discarded as soon as possible. He was surprised to see she had several unexpectedly good points. She wasn’t as plain as he had first thought. He was aware, too, that he was seeing her at her very worst. No one could look much if hungry and dirty. She had on no make-up, her hair was tangled, her clothes awful, but now he took the trouble to study her he saw she had a well-shaped nose and chin, soft full lips. Of course, she was nobody — lacked breeding, but then he was nobody and lacked breeding, too. He knew that. They were a pair. He was a traitor, the son of a reprieved murderer. She was a thief, an ex-jailbird. A fine pair, he thought bitterly, his eyes leaving her face to probe her body. It vaguely excited him. She could be made into something, he thought. If she had money, if someone took her in hand she mightn’t be half bad. Anyway, she had been unexpectedly useful. She had set his leg, and he was confident that she had made a good job of it.
She had made him comfortable, and whenever he had awakened during the long night, she had been there to comfort him.
He moved restlessly. There was no point lying here thinking about her. She was here — to be used. Plans had to be made. He took out his watch. It was twenty minutes past five.
He reached out and touched her. She awoke instantly. Her eyes snapped open, and her head lifted from the suitcase which served as her pillow. There was no dull, vacant look on her face that most people have when they wake suddenly. She sat up abruptly, shivered.
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