Come to Grief

by Dick Francis

  Events became unclear. I slid to the ground, face-down. I had a close view of gray, granite stones and short, dry, struggling blades of grass, more brown than green.

  “Where is it?”

  I didn’t answer. Didn’t move. Shut my eyes. Drifted. “He’s out,” a voice said. “Fat lot of help you are.”

  I felt hands roughly searching my pockets. Resistance, as an option, promised only more bruises. I lay still, not wholly conscious, inertia pervading, angry but willy-nilly passive, nothing coordinating, no strength, no will.

  After a time of floating, I felt their hands on me again.

  “Is he alive?” “No thanks to you, but yes, he is. He’s breathing.” “Just leave him.” “Chuck him over there.”

  “Over there” turned out to be the edge of the plateau, but I didn’t realize it until I’d been dragged across the stones and lifted and flung over. I went rolling fast and inexorably down the steep mountain slope, almost bouncing from rock to rock, still incapable of helping myself, unable to stop, dimly aware of flooding with whirling, comprehensive pain.

  I slammed down onto a larger rock and did stop there, half on my side, half on my stomach. I felt no gratitude. I felt pulverized. Winded. Dazed. Thought vanished.

  Some sort of consciousness soon came crazily back, but orderly memory took much longer.

  Those bastard hikers, I thought eventually. I remembered their faces. I could draw them. They were demons in a dream.

  The accurate knowledge of who I was and where I was arrived quietly.

  I tried to move. A mistake.

  Time would take care of it, perhaps. Give it time.

  Those bastards had been real, I realized, demons or not. Their fists had been real. “Where is it?” had been real. In spite of everything, I ruefully smiled. I thought it possible that they hadn’t known what they were actually looking for. “It” could have been whatever their victim valued most. There was no guarantee in any case that delivering up “it” would save one from being thrown down a mountain.

  It occurred to me to wonder what time it was. I looked at my left wrist, but my watch had gone.

  It had been about eleven o‘clock when I’d got back from the post office ...

  Hell’s teeth, I thought abruptly. Mother. Ivan. Heart attack. I was supposed to be going to London. Or the moon.

  The worst thing I might feel, I considered, was nothing.

  Not the case.

  With fierce concentration, I could move all my fingers and all my toes. Anything more hurt too much for enthusiasm. Outraged muscles went into breath-stopping spasms to protect themselves.

  Wait. Lie still. I felt cold.

  Bloody stupid, being mugged on one’s own doorstep. Embarrassing. A helpless little old lady I was not, but a pushover—literally—just the same.

  I found the casual callousness of the walkers extraordinary. They had appeared not to care whether I lived or died and had in fact left it to chance. I supposed they could truthfully say, “He was alive when we saw him lasl” They could dodge the word murder.

  The ebb tide in my body finally turned. Movement could at last be achieved without spasm. All I had to do from then on was scrape myself off the mountain and go catch a train. Even the thought was exhausting.