‘Nope. Cool eh?’
‘And where are you going?’
Suddenly, with a roar, the car pitched forwards. Rob crashed into third gear and they were hurtling blindly up the final third of the drive, between the trees, the suspension rocking and bouncing over the rutted surface. Rob gave a whoop like a cowboy, clinging on to the steering wheel, jerking it left and right as the trees leered into view on one side and then on the other. Finally they shot out between the stone gateposts and onto the tarmac road surface and Rob stepped hard on the brakes just before the low wall of a small house opposite the gates. There was a squeal of tyres and the ominous sound of grating on the front bumper.
‘That was awesome!’ Rob breathed. ‘Much better than the game, wasn’t it, Toby?’ There was a groan from the back seat.
‘I’m going to be sick,’ Toby gasped.
Rob scrambled out of the car. Mitch leaned over to make a grab for the keys but Rob snatched them away from him before yanking Toby out of the car. Mitch clambered out too. They both watched Toby as he lay on his front in the road and heaved spume after spume of brown liquid.
‘Look, Rob. Let me have the keys.’ Mitch said reasonably. ‘I’ll take responsibility for the bump if you like, only it’s a bit dangerous you know, in the fog and everything.’
Rob looked at him. His eyes were glittering, his pupils unnaturally enlarged. ‘You’re not insured to drive this car,’ he said smugly, as though making an extremely clever point.
‘Give me the keys, Rob. It’s been great but it’s time to go back now.’ They faced each other over Toby’s retching body. Mitch held his hand out for the keys but Rob put his hand behind his back.
‘Get lost. Fuck off,’ he shouted suddenly, backing a few steps away. ‘Who the fuck are you anyway? This is nothing to do with you.’ Mitch said nothing but continued to hold his hand out. Rob hesitated, and then withdrew a bottle from his deep jeans pocket and took a swig. The curtains at the window of the tiny cottage twitched. The sound of the tyres, or possibly of them hitting the wall, plus the continuing thud of the music, had evidently disturbed the residents.
‘Time we weren’t here.’
Toby felt himself being lifted back into the seat behind the driver and somebody strapped on his seatbelt. The two front doors slammed shut and the engine restarted with a roar. There was some manoeuvring, backwards and forwards, with quick, jerky leaps and sudden harsh braking. Since he’d been sick his head felt clearer although the abrupt backwards-forwards motion of the car made his stomach contract and his mouth fill with spit. Music was playing - head-splittingly loud - from the speakers at the back of the car. The words were garbled, the voice shrill and knife-like. ‘Killer-thriller-killer-thriller,’ was all he could make out. Then the car was off, with an enormous surge, the engine screeching, wheels spinning, the chassis bouncing off down the drive into the murk. The whiteness of it lit up like a curtain, it was like driving through a cloud so that Toby wondered if they were flying instead of driving. Down they hurtled, pell-mell between the spectral trees, like falling, his stomach lifting into his throat. Then suddenly he was thrown violently forwards in his seatbelt so that the edge of it grazed his neck. The interior of the car was briefly illuminated by savage yellow-white lights.
Somebody shouted, ‘Shit, shit, shit.’
There was a violent veering, off to the left, (‘string, no string,’ came inconsequentially into his head, his father’s voice shouting across the water, from a very great distance away), the left hand side of the car seemed to rear up as though mounting a cliff. Toby was thrown, in spite of his belt, against his door. His head smacked the window with a hollow thud. Then the car went dark again and very close, on the other side of the door something enormous and solid ripped past them in the darkness. He felt the drag of it as it passed alongside. There was an ugly, metallic tearing noise as the beast pressed them up against the cliff and then a sigh as it released them. They crashed back on to the level, the savage forward motion of the car scarcely halted by the encounter. The boys in the front were twisting and shouting.
Somebody said, ‘He’s gone over.’
Another voice screamed, ‘Watch out! Watch out!’
And Rob said, ‘Ellie.’
Then the car swerved sharply right, the back wheels drifted on the leaves and loose gravel. There was a soft thud, as though an angel had landed on the bonnet, and a lurch as the car plummeted down a steep bank, scraping past the hacked off branches of the trees and bushes and jolting over rocks. Toby was once more thrown viciously forwards against his belt and then just as brutally backwards, then forwards again as though he were being shaken. Then they were still, the car pointing downwards at a sharp angle. The engine cut out and there was a soft pop and hiss as the front airbags inflated. Then the only noise was the eerie laughter on the CD, shouting into the night.
✽✽✽
Elliot’s departure sucked away the electric charge of anger and violence which had ignited the family. They reeled in its after-shock as it eddied and flowed, traumatised - as they might have been had an earth-quake or tsunami overwhelmed them - but alive. James was the first to recover, putting his arm round Belinda, lifting his big hand to touch, with infinite tenderness, the whitened skin of her cheek and the raised red weals. She did not cry; she seemed for the moment to have exorcised her distress and simply leaned against him, spent and trembling. James was careful to look his wife squarely in the eye while he comforted Belinda. ‘Now,’ he said, in his penetrating gaze, ‘now do you see?’ In response Ruth stepped towards them, and took her sister’s hand. The sudden revelation of Belinda’s burden made her feel chastened, ashamed of her own utter narcissism
‘You poor, poor thing,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know. I didn’t know.’
Heather held Jude tightly. He was bleeding from cuts on his back inflicted by shattered glass of the cabinet. Heather tried to pick the shards from his body, wincing at each one as though they were being plucked from her own skin. ‘None of us knew,’ she said forcefully, shaking her head, and then, more quietly, wonderingly, ‘I didn’t know. I didn’t know.’
‘None of us did,’ Jude said under his breath, to comfort her.
‘I think some of us did,’ Ruth gave James a look, reproachful, but not challenging. ‘How long has it been going on for, Lindy? For God’s sake? How long have you been putting up with this?’
‘I always thought you were a saint to put with him,’ Miriam said, ‘but it wasn’t my place to say anything.’ Practically, she had found a wad of napkins to stem the seep of blood from the back of Simon’s head. He remained on the rug, Tansy and Mary knelt beside him. Both were crying. ‘You mustn’t put up with it for another day,’ Simon said, trying to get up. ‘I’m alright. Really. I’m quite alright,’ he assured them, probing the wound. ‘I’m just winded, that’s all.’
Belinda could still see no alternative. ‘It doesn’t happen often. He must have had a very bad day.’
‘I can’t believe you’re defending him!’ Ruth cried.
The family rallied, closing ranks, their differences rendered insignificant against this larger threat.
‘It’s the price I pay,’ Belinda said quietly, into James’ comforting chest, ‘for you all.’
‘The price is too high,’ Heather wept. She scraped her hair out of her eyes, smearing Jude’s blood across her cheek.
‘There are no circumstances at all,’ Ruth said, stroking Belinda’s shoulder, ‘which would justify us permitting a person to harm a member of our family, no matter who he is. Why couldn’t you tell us?’
Simon hauled himself to his feet and staggered across to the settee. His collar and the back of his sweater were soaked with blood. He pressed a wedge of tissue to the back of his head. ‘Because she’s a McKay, of course! It’s in-bred; keeping up appearances, hiding the dirty laundry, keeping the skeletons in their cupboards.’
Belinda, at last, began to cry. She felt doubly attacked. ‘You’re very scathing, Simon,�
� she said bitterly, ‘and you make me feel guilty, Ruth, for trying so hard... for trying so hard... to do the right thing...’ James fished a large handkerchief from his pocket and Belinda cried into it for a few moments before blowing her nose and saying, ‘...but what choice did I have? Tell me that! There are the children, and the family, and the business. Too many consequences! And anyway,’ she looked down at her hands helplessly, ‘what would people say?’
Simon spread his hands, holding the blood-sodden napkins out in grisly evidence, ‘I rest my case,’ he said, bitterly smug. ‘Nothing will change in this family until we start to tell each other the truth.’
‘Be careful,’ Mary spoke from the hearthrug where she had remained on her knees. ‘There’s only so much truth a family can stand.’
Muriel and Les arrived, carrying Starlight. She was hiccoughing from too much crying, blinking in the light, and when she saw Heather she held out her arms, ‘Mummy,’ she said, clearly. The word provoked more tears from Heather.
‘We had something to tell you,’ Les said. ‘But it can wait. What can we do to help?’
‘Daddy,’ Tansy spoke up at last. ‘Daddy,’ she said, ‘there’s something I need to tell you, and it can’t wait. It’s about Toby.’
✽✽✽
Toby pushed open the front door. Everyone was in the hall. All the aunties were crying and he wondered how they already knew what had happened. Aunty Muriel was pouring cups of tea out on the hall table. Her jumper was torn and she was limping. His daddy was struggling into his big coat. It was difficult for him because he held a big white bandage pad thing onto the back of his head with one hand while he tried to get this coat on. Uncles Jude and James also had their coats on. They had big torches. Tansy saw him and shouted his name and they all turned round to look at him. Then his daddy rushed across the hallway and picked him up, and even though he was much too big to cry, he did do, just for a little while. Aunty Belinda looked anxiously past him, towards the door.
‘I was just coming to look for you boys,’ Daddy said, squeezing him tightly. ‘Had a little adventure, have you? Don’t worry; nobody’s cross. Where are the others? Are they coming?’
Toby shook his head. ‘You need to come,’ he said, his mouth quivering.
Simon and Jude and James went, and Belinda. The others waited anxiously behind. Toby was made to stay with them. He was shaking and white and had a bump on his head. Les lifted him up to sit on the table next to the first aid kit and Aunty Muriel gave him a mug of sweet tea and a large slice of cake, ‘for the shock.’ He wondered if they would pester him with questions but nobody did. It was as though they did not really want to know. Which was fine. He couldn’t really be sure what had happened and the little he did know he didn’t really want to tell them.
✽✽✽
A little breeze had sprung up causing the mist to eddy and churn; it swirled and floated like angel wings across their eyes as they climbed the drive. Their torches probed the night and the thicketed undergrowth. It was a steep climb. They were about halfway up the driveway when, muffled through the fog, they heard voices.
The first car they found was Belinda’s. It was propped up almost on its front bumper down a steep incline off to the left of the drive, its tail lights still glowing like demonic eyes through the clinging gloom of the trees in the hollow. It had smashed through half a dozen of the rhododendron bushes and wrapped its bonnet around the bole of a stout tree. Steam hissed from underneath the buckled hood, adding itself to the vaporous air. Belinda slid on her bottom down the steep incline, through the leaves and tilth. Jude and Simon slithered down after her, James lighting their way with his torch from the elevated driveway. But the car was empty, its doors yawning wide, its interior weirdly illuminated by the lights of the dash.
They could still hear disembodied voices from further up the drive and they scrambled back up the banking and hurried on up.
Elliot’s car was also down the drop to the left of the drive, but it was on its side. The underside of the car faced up the slope, the roof was caved in against a tree. It faced towards Hunting Manor having somehow described a hundred and eighty degree arc to end up facing the way it had come. Its front windscreen was shattered into a mosaic of tiny fragments but its airbags had failed to inflate. The back window had also been smashed. Rob and Mitch were frantically trying to lever open the passenger door. It was badly buckled and misshapen - on its journey down the incline the car must have rolled. They were using a coppiced branch picked up from the ground, an inadequate tool for the job but the only one at their disposal. June hung from her seatbelt in the passenger seat across the central console and was shouting and thrashing around, inarticulate with hysteria. Ellie’s frenzied voice could also be heard from inside the car, calling her dad’s name, crying and shouting and begging him to respond. As James, Jude and Simon arrived at the scene Rob and Mitch got the door open. Mitch hoisted himself onto the side of the car and reached in past the flailing arms and legs of the trapped woman to release her belt. At first she flopped, with an anguished cry, onto the driver. Ellie, wedged between the two front seats was also momentarily crushed and also cried out. Jude joined Mitch and the two of them grasped June’s clothing. They pulled her from behind, like a squalling baby in a breach birth. She was cut and bruised and in a paroxysm of agitation, but seemed otherwise unhurt.
Rob folded suddenly into a heap on the forest floor. His limbs trembled uncontrollably. He wept, the sobs racking him, his teeth chattering. Belinda could get no comprehensible word from him. His tongue and lips seemed only to be able to repeat the same syllable over and over again, ‘Li, li, li.’ He shrank from her, grinding his head like an animal maddened by pain, in the soil.
Ellie seemed to have squirmed into the car via the shattered rear window. Still, she shouted her dad’s name, her voice shrill. Mitch turned to the others with helpless hands, ‘He won’t reply. She can’t get him to say anything.’ Suddenly Belinda understood what Rob wanted.
‘Ellie! Ellie!’ she shouted, ‘come out of the car. Rob needs you.’ Ellie wriggled back out through the window and Jude took her place, squirming in the same way as she had got out. James hoisted himself up into the passenger door. They shone their torches and made a quick assessment of Elliot’s condition. There was blood - a great deal of it - on his face, from his mouth perhaps, or his ear. One eye was closed up, soft and spongy. His jaw was twisted out of shape so that his mouth gaped in a perpetual yawn. There was a lump the size and shape of an avocado stone on his forehead. James checked his airway, his breathing and his pulse.
‘Call an ambulance,’ he called over his shoulder to Simon. Simon dialled 999 on his mobile telephone but almost immediately the wailing siren of an ambulance could be heard permeating the thick night.
‘That’ll be the one I called for Robert,’ James said. ‘Tell them we’ll need another.’
Ellie slithered through the leafy tilth of the floor and clung briefly onto her mother.
‘Yes, yes,’ she assured her, ‘I’m ok. Not hurt at all. You’d better see to June.’
Her dad was in a mess. It had been dark and disorientating in the overturned car and she had had to use the tiny torch on her mobile to get her bearings. Aunty June hadn’t helped, moaning and thrashing around. But now that the others were here she didn’t need to worry about him anymore. There was somebody else who needed her more. Being needed was a new sensation and one she felt she could rise to. She squirmed her way into the ball which Rob had made of himself on the ground, his arms over his head, burrowing her head down so that she could whisper into his ear.
‘We’ve got to find her, Rob.’ Her voice was calm, amazingly level. She was surer of this than she had ever been of anything in her life. Rob felt it too. He lifted his head up. It was difficult, in the darkness, to see his face and she lifted her hands to it and felt the filthy, dry soil and wet tears and waxy mucus. She used her thumbs to wipe his grimy face and, in spite of everything, they laughed a little. Then they
held one another for a long moment while the men were busy in the car and their mother tried to calm June.
At last they struggled to their feet.
‘Yes,’ he whispered to her, picking up Jude’s discarded torch. ‘Come on, we have to find her.’
They gained the driveway once more, their feet heavy as they laboured up the slope. The last of the mist cleared, like a gauzy curtain being swept aside, and above them a million stars pricked the inky sky. The palest of moons shed a milky light. They turned down the drive, back towards the place where they had last seen her.
She was some few yards from the driveway, nestled against the trunk of a coppiced bush, curled almost as though in a nest, amongst the old leaves and the mulch. She looked as though she was asleep, like a forest child, a woodland being, all covered with loam, with leaves in her hair. It was as though the forest had absorbed her into itself, or that she was transforming into it; they were entwined and connected by the splintered branch which sprouted out of her abdomen. Red flowers blossomed across her body, bright scarlet berries cascading onto the ground. Her face, in the pale moonlight, was winter-white. She curled around her precious bough, like a mother with her baby, as it protruded, not quite born, from her womb. They knelt down beside her, quiet, trembling. It was easier to believe that they had stumbled across a faerie nymph than that this was Rachel, their Rachel. Then Rob spoke her name very quietly, as you would to awaken a sleeping child, or your lover. She opened her eyes and turned her head a little towards them.
‘Rob,’ she said, and her voice sounded dry and rasping, ‘and Ellie.’
In the distance the wailing siren of an ambulance or a police car - or both - came nearer and nearer.
‘We found you,’ Ellie said. She was crying again. ‘Help is coming.’
Rachel let go of her baby-bough. It hurt her to do it and she winced as she grasped their hands. Rob’s tears were in spate; they would not let his words come. He shook his head, helpless.
Relative Strangers Page 51