Longshot

by Dick Francis

  “Hell!” Mackie exclaimed, and slammed her foot on the brake.

  The vehicle slid inexorably on the ice and although Mackie released the brakes a moment later it did as much harm as good.

  The horse, terrified, tried to plunge out of the lane into the field alongside. Intent on missing him, and at the same time fighting the skid, Mackie miscalculated the curve, the camber and the speed, though to be fair to her it would have taken a stunt driver to come out of there safely.

  The jeep slid to the side of the lane, spun its wheels on the snow-covered grass shoulder, mounted it, ran along and across as if making for the open fields under its own volition and tipped over sideways into an unseen drainage ditch, cracking with noises like pistol shots through a covering sheet of ice.

  We’d been going slowly enough for it not to be an instantly lethal crunch, though it was a bang hard enough to rattle one’s teeth. The curbside wheels, both front and back, finished four feet lower than road level, the far side of the ditch supporting the length of the roof of the vehicle so that it lay not absolutely flat on its side. I was opening my door, which was half sloping skyward, and hauling myself out more or less before the engine had had time to stall.

  The downland wind, always on the move, stung my face sharply with a freezing warning. Wind-chill was an unforgiving enemy, deadly to the unwary.

  Bob Watson had fallen on top of his wife. I reached down into the car and grasped him, and began to pull him out.

  He tried to free himself from my hands, crying “Ingrid” urgently, and then in horror, “It’s wet... she’s in water.”

  “Come out,” I said peremptorily. “Then we can both pull her. Come out, you’re heavy on her. You’ll never get her out like that.”

  Some vestige of sense got through to him and he let me yank him out far enough so that he could stretch back in for his wife. I held him and he held her, and between the two of us we brought her out onto the roadway.

  The ditch was almost full of muddy freezing water under its coating of ice. Even as we lifted Ingrid out, the water deepened fast in the vehicle, and in the front seat Fiona was yelling to Harry to get her out, and Harry, I saw in horror, was underneath her and in danger of drowning.

  The one headlight which had still been shining suddenly went out.

  Mackie hadn’t moved to save herself. I pulled open her door and found her dazed and semiconscious, held in her place by her seat belt.

  “Get us out,” Fiona yelled.

  Harry, below her, was struggling in water and heaving, whether to save her or himself was impossible to tell. I felt around Mackie until I found the seat-belt clasp, released it, hauled her out bodily and shoved her into Bob Watson’s arms.

  “Sit her on the shoulder,” I said. “Clear the snow off the grass. Hold her. Shield her from the wind.”

  “Bob,” Ingrid said piteously, standing helplessly on the road and seeming to think her husband should attend to her alone, “Bob, I need you. I feel awful.”

  Bob glanced at his wife but took Mackie’s weight and helped her to sit down. She began moving and moaning and asking what had happened, showing welcome signs of life.

  No blood, I thought. Not a drop. Bloody lucky. My eyes became accustomed to the dark.

  Fiona, halfway panic-stricken, put her arms up to mine and came out easily into the air, lithe and athletic. I let go of her and leaned in for Harry, who now had his seat belt unfastened and his head above water and had got past the stage of abject fright. He helped himself to climb out and went dripping over to Mackie, showing most concern for her, taking her support from Bob Watson.

  Ingrid stood in the road, soaked, thin, frightened, helpless and crying. The wind was piercing, relentless ... infinitely dangerous. It was easy to underestimate how fast cold could kill.

  I said to Bob Watson, “Take all your wife’s clothes off.”

  “What?”

  “Take her wet clothes off or she’ll freeze into a block of ice.”

  He opened his mouth.

  “Start at the top,” I said. “Take everything off and put my jacket on her, quickly. It’s warm.” I unzipped it and took it off, folding it together so as to keep the warmth of my body in it as much as possible. The cold bit through my sweater and undershirt as if they were invisible. I was infinitely grateful to be dry.

  “I’ll help Ingrid,” Fiona said, as Bob still hesitated. “You don’t mean her bra as well?”

  “Yes, everything.”

  While the two women unbuttoned and tugged I went to the rear of the overturned vehicle and found to my relief that the luggage door would still open. I pushed up my sleeves and literally fished out my two bags, and Harry, close beside me, watched the water drip off them with gloom.

  “Everything will be wet,” he said defeatedly.

  “No.” Waterproof, sandproof, bugproof were the rules I traveled by, even in rural England. I found the aluminum camera case under the water and set it on the road beside the bags.

  “Which would you prefer,” I asked Harry, “bathrobe or dinner jacket?”

  He actually laughed.

  “Strip off,” I said, “in case the iceman cometh. Top half first.”

  They had all been dressed for a day in court, not for trudging about in the open. Even Mackie and Bob Watson, who were dry, hadn’t enough on for the circumstances.

  Bob Watson took over again with Mackie, and Harry began to struggle out of his sodden overcoat, business suit, shirt and tie, wincing with pain as the cold hit his wet flesh. His undershirt was sticking to him. I gave him a hand.

  “What did you say your name was?” he said, teeth clenched, shuddering.

  “John.”

  I handed him a navy-blue silk undershirt and long johns, two sweaters, gray trousers and the bathrobe. No one ever dived into clothes faster. My shoes were a size too big, he ironically complained, hopping around and pulling them on over dry socks.

  Fiona had changed Ingrid to the waist and was waiting to do the second half. I took off my boots and then my ski pants, which Fiona put on Ingrid after trying to shield her brief lower nakedness from my eyes, which amazed me. It was hardly the time for fussing. The boots looked enormous, once they were on, and Ingrid was nine inches shorter than my ski suit.

  For myself I brought out a navy blazer and jodhpur boots, feeling the ice strike up through wool to my toes.

  “My feet are squelching,” Fiona said, eyeing the boots with strong shivers, “and I’m wet to the neck. Is there anything left?”

  “You’d better have these.”

  “Well . . . I . . .” She looked at my bare socks, hesitating.

  I thrust the boots and blazer into her hands. My black evening shoes, which were all that remained in the way of footwear, would have fallen off her at every step.

  I dug into the bag again for jodhpurs, black socks and a sweatshirt. “These any good to you?” I asked.

  She took all the clothes gratefully and hid behind Ingrid to change. I put on my black shoes and the dinner jacket: a lot better than nothing.

  When Fiona reappeared her shivers had grown to shakes. She still had too few layers, even if now dry. The only useful thing still unused in my belongings was the plastic bag which had contained my dinner jacket. I put it over Fiona’s head, widening the hole where the hanger usually went, and if she didn’t care to be labeled “Ace Cleaners” at intervals front and back, at least it stopped the wind a bit and kept some body heat in.

  “Well,” Harry said with remarkable cheerfulness, eyeing the dimly seen final results of the motley redistribution, “thanks to John we should live to see Shellerton. All you lot had better start walking. I’ll stay with Mackie and we’ll follow when we can.”

  “No,” I said. “How far is it to the village?”

  “A mile or so.”

  “Then we all start now. We’ll carry Mackie. It’s too cold, believe me, for hanging about. How about a chair lift?”

  So Harry and I sat the semiconscious Mackie on
our linked wrists and draped her arms around our necks, and we set off towards the village with Bob Watson carrying all the wet clothes in one of my bags, Fiona carrying dry things in the other and Ingrid shuffling along in front in the moon boots with my camera case, lighting the way with the dynamo flashlight from my basic travel kit.

  “Squeeze it.” I showed her how. “It doesn’t have batteries. Shine it on the road, so we can all see.”

  “Thank God it isn’t snowing,” Harry said: but there were ominous clouds hiding the stars. What little natural light there was, was amplified by the whiteness of the snow, the only good thing about it. I was glad it wasn’t too far to the village. Mackie wasn’t draggingly heavy, but we were walking on ice.

  “Doesn’t any traffic ever come along this road?” I asked in frustration when we’d gone half a mile and still seen no one.

  “There are two other ways into Shellerton,” Harry said. “God, this wind’s the devil. My ears are dropping off.”

  My own head also was achingly cold. Mackie and Fiona had woolen hats, Ingrid was warmest in the hood of my ski suit, Bob Watson wore a cap. Ingrid had my gloves. Harry’s hands and mine were going numb under Mackie’s bottom. If I’d brought any more socks we could have used them as mitts.

  “It’s not far now,” Bob said. “Once we’re round the bend you’ll see the village.”

  He was right. Electricity twinkled not far below us, offering shelter and warmth. Let’s not have a power cut, I prayed.

  Mackie suddenly awoke to full consciousness on the last stretch and began demanding to know what was happening.

  “We skidded into a ditch,” Harry said succinctly.

  “The horse! Is the horse all right? Why are you carrying me. Put me down.”

  We stopped and set her on her feet, where she swayed and put a hand to the side of her head.

  “Did we hit the horse?” she said.

  “No,” Harry answered. “Better let us carry you.”

  “What happened to the horse?”

  “It buggered off across the Downs. Come on, Mackie, we’re literally freezing to death standing here.” Harry swung his arms in my bathrobe, then hugged his body and tried to warm his hands in his armpits. “Let’s get on, for God’s sake.”

  Mackie refused to let us lift her up again, so we began to struggle on towards the village, a shadowy band slipping and sliding downhill, holding on to each other and trying not to fall, cold to the bone. I should have brought the skis, I thought, and it seemed an extraordinarily long time since that morning.

  One reason for the dearth of traffic became clear as we reached the first houses: two cars lay impacted across the width of the lane, and certainly nothing was leaving the village that way.

  “You’d better all come to our house,” Fiona said in a shaking voice as we edged around the wreck. “It’s nearest.”

  No one argued.

  We turned into a long village street with no lighting, and passed a garage, darkly shut, and a pub, open.

  “How about a quick one?” Harry suggested, half serious.

  Fiona said with some of her former asperity, “I should think you’ve heard enough about drink for one day. And you’re not going anywhere dressed like that except straight home.”

  It was too dark to see Harry’s expression. No one cared to comment, and presently Ingrid with the flashlight turned into a driveway which wound around behind some cottages and opened into a snowy expanse in front of a big Georgian-looking house.

  Ingrid stopped. Fiona said, “This way,” and led a still-silent procession around to a side door, which she unlocked with a key retrieved from under a stone.

  The relief of being out of the wind was like a rebirth. The warmth of the extensive kitchen we filed into was a positive life-giving luxury; and there in the lights I saw my companions clearly for the first time.

  3

  Everyone except Ingrid was visibly trembling, myself included. All the faces were bluish-white, suffering. “God,” Fiona said, “that was hell.”

  She was older than I’d thought. Forties, not thirties. The Ace Cleaners bag reached nearly to her knees, covering her arms, bordering on farcical.

  “Take this damned thing off me,” she said. “And don’t bloody laugh.”

  Harry obligingly pulled the cleaner’s plastic bag up and over her head, taking her knitted hat with it, freeing heavy silver-blond hair and transforming her like a coup de théâtre from a refugee to an assured charismatic woman in jodhpurs and blue blazer with the turtleneck sweatshirt showing white at throat and cuffs.

  Although she was tall, the sleeves were all too long for her, which had been a blessing, it seemed, as she had been able to tuck her hands inside them, using them as gloves. She stared at me across her kitchen, looking with curiosity at the man whose clothes she wore, seeing I supposed a tallish, thinnish, youngish brown-eyed person in jeans, scarlet sweater and incongruous dinner jacket.

  I smiled at her and she, aware of the admiration in my expression, swept a reviving glance around her other unexpected guests and went over to the huge red Aga which warmed the whole place, lifting the lid, letting volumes of heat flow out. The bad temper of the journey had disappeared, revealing a sensible, competent woman.

  “Hot drinks,” she said decisively. “Harry, fill the kettle and get some mugs.”

  Harry, my height but fair and blue-eyed, complied with the instructions as though thoroughly accustomed to being bidden and began rootling around also for spoons, instant coffee and sugar. Swaddled in my blue bathrobe, he looked ready for bed; and he too was older than I’d thought. He and Fiona were revealed as well-off and perhaps rich. The kitchen was large, individual, a combination of technology and sitting room, and the manner and voices of its owners had the unself-conscious assurance of comfortable social status.

  Mackie sat down uncertainly at the big central table, her fingers gingerly feeling her temple.

  “I was looking at the horse,” she said. “Must have hit my head on the window. Is the jeep all right?”

  “Shouldn’t think so,” Harry said without emotion. “It’s lying in water which will be frozen over again by morning. The door on my side buckled when we hit. Filthy ditchwater just rushed in.”

  “Damn,” Mackie said wearily. “That on top of everything else.”

  She huddled into her fawn-colored padded coat, still deeply shivering, and it was hard to tell what she would look like warm and laughing. All I could see were reddish curls over her forehead followed by closed eyes, pale lips and the rigid muscles of distress.

  “Is Perkin home?” Fiona asked her.

  “He should be. God, I hope so.”

  Fiona, recovering faster than anyone else, perhaps because she was in her own house, went across to a wall telephone and pressed buttons. Perkin, whoever he was, apparently answered and was given a variety of bad news.

  “Yes,” Fiona said repeating things, “I did say the jeep’s in a ditch... It’s in that hollow just over the top of the hill after you leave the A34 ... I don’t know whose horse, dammit... No, we had an abysmal day in court. Look, can you get down here and collect everyone? Mackie’s all right but she hit her head... Bob Watson and his wife are with us ... Yes, we did pick up the writer, he’s here too. Just come, Perkin, for God’s sake. Stop dithering.” She hung up the receiver with a crash.

  Harry poured steaming water onto instant coffee in a row of mugs and then picked up a milk carton in one hand and a bottle of brandy in the other, offering a choice of additives. Everyone except Ingrid chose brandy, and Harry’s idea of a decent slug cooled the liquid to drinking point.

  Although if we had still been outside, the alcohol wouldn’t have been such a good idea, the deep trembles in all our bodies abated and faded away. Bob Watson took off his cap and looked suddenly younger, a short stocky man with wiry brown hair and a returning glint of independence. One could still see what he must have looked like as a schoolboy, with rounded cheeks and a natural insolence not far fr
om the surface but controlled enough to keep him out of trouble. He had called Harry a liar, but too quietly for him to hear. That rather summed up Bob Watson, I thought.

  Ingrid, swamped in the ski suit, looked out at the world from a thinly pretty face and sniffed at regular intervals. She sat beside her husband at the table, unspeaking and forever in his shadow.

  Standing with his backside propped against the Aga, Harry warmed both hands around his mug and looked at me with the glimmering amusement that, when not under stress from giving evidence, seemed to be his habitual cast of mind.

  “Welcome to Berkshire,” he said.

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “I would have stayed by the jeep and waited for someone to come,” he said.

  “I thought someone would,” I agreed.

  Mackie said, “I hope the horse is all right,” as if her mind were stuck in that groove. No one else, it seemed to me, cared an icicle for the survival of the cause of our woes, and I suspected, perhaps unfairly, that Mackie kept on about the horse so as to reinforce in our consciousness that the crash hadn’t been her fault.

  Warmth gradually returned internally also and everyone looked as if they had come up to room temperature, like wine. Ingrid pushed back the hood of my ski suit revealing soft mouse-brown hair in need of a brush.

  No one had a great wish to talk, and there was something of a return to the pre-crash gloom, so it was a relief when wheels, slammed doors and approaching footsteps announced the arrival of Perkin.

  He hadn’t come alone. It was Tremayne Vickers who advanced first into the kitchen, his loud voice and large personality galvanizing the subdued group drinking coffee.

  “Got yourselves into a load of shit, have you?” he boomed with a touch of not wholly unfriendly scorn. “Roads too much for you, eh?”

  Mackie went defensively into the horse routine as if she’d merely been rehearsing earlier.

  The man who followed Tremayne through the door looked like a smudged carbon copy: same height, same build, same basic features, but none of Tremayne’s bullishness. If that was Perkin, I thought, he must be Tremayne’s son.