by Colin Dunne
In despair, I flopped against her. She stood there, willingly enough. Then a thought occurred to me. Whatever the Pony Club might think, there's no law that says you have to have a leg on either side.
I put my arms over her back. Then, with a small hop, I draped myself stomach-down across it. At first I felt dizzy and couldn't get my breath because of the weight on my stomach. But gradually I got used to it. I reached out my hand and took hold of the tie and gave it three sharp tugs. At the same time I tapped on either side of her ribs with my knee and hand, to impersonate the rider's leg action.
'Walk on,' I said. 'Walk on, old girl.'
Now I don't suppose Icelandic horses speak English, but the tones you use to animals are universal. Doris, not in the least unsettled by this flopped-out wreck on her back, lifted her head and began to amble down the track.
My face was full of her coarse scratchy hair and the sweaty stink of her and I could feel her strong warmth rising up through my own body. She reminded me of a girl I once knew in Aberdare. 'I know I got a big bum,' Hazel used to say, 'but it's only so I can roll nice for you, see.'
Doris rolled on.
I counted every time her front right hoof rose and fell. When it got to a hundred, I began again. Time after time after time. I watched the rough lava and the green moss rise and fall beneath my eyes. I rocked and rolled with Doris, love of my life, and I'd have been going still if she hadn't pressed the ejector button.
One minute I was hanging there, like a western baddie being taken back to town. The next, I was flat on my back on the floor looking up at the sky.
It wasn't malice that had done it. It was hunger. Doris just
chanced to see a tempting clump of grass, put her head down to grab it, and I was fired down the chute.
Well, I'd done it before, I could do it again. I pushed myself into a sitting position and I was reaching out for the cricket club tie, when Doris threw up her head, pricked her ears and with a swerve and kick of her fat haunches tore off back up the track.
I looked towards the road. It wasn't more than four hundred yards away. From where I was, I could see two coaches and one car curving their way slowly up the hill. Even I could make that, somehow.
If it hadn't been for the Triumph Trophy that came kicking and skidding towards me. Oscar Murphy had come back to tidy up after all.
And everywhere you looked, on either side of the track, there were gulleys, ravines, sinks, potholes and craters - a hundred places where you could discreetly tuck away the remains of a discarded journalist.
40
With a plummeting heart, I watched the bike come nearer and nearer. He slowed and used his feet to get around the potholes and the craggy chunks of outcrop. There was no hurry. I wasn't going anywhere. Five yards from me he stopped, bracing the bike on either side with his legs. He pushed up the stocking mask. The wide smile on his black face was the smile of a happy man.
'You know, you really are cute,' he said, in tones of some admiration. If I’d had doubts before, that cleared them up: he was bats. 'How'n hell you get so far?'
'I got a lift.'
'A lift?'
As his confidence wavered he began to look around, so I told him: 'From a pony. Called Doris.'
'A pony called Doris. I don't get that. English jokes, huh? One of those wild ponies?'
I nodded. I was lying back on my elbows. The day I thought I'd never see had come to life all around me. Above me the sky was a lively blue, the sea wind was as clean as a razor on my face, and I could see humanity hauling its cameras up the road to see the wonders of nature. I'd fought my way back to within sight and sound of the world, but they weren't going to let me get on board. The sooner he shot me the better.
Then my eyes half-focused on a shape somewhere behind him and I knew I had to keep talking. Whatever happened I had to keep him talking, listening, anything except shooting.
I pushed myself up on one elbow and tried to look like a good listener.
'You know, Oscar, I don't think Solrun was ever serious about that Russian.'
'You don't?' Even he gave me an odd look - it wasn't a situation for cocktail-party gossip.
'No, not really. Like she wasn't serious about me. She was having a last fling before she got married to you. That's the way I'd see it.'
I'd always thought that Marje Proops stuff was rubbish. But it certainly didn't come easy off the top of my head in a one-to one situation with a man who was about to make it a one-to none.
At least I'd got his interest. He was standing over me and, where his camo-jacket fell open, I could see the big Colt stuck in his belt.
'Once you get her back to the States ...' As I talked I narrowed my eyes so he wouldn't be able to see where I was looking. My sight was wavering from all I'd been through and at first I thought it might be a mirage. This was no mirage. Bright blue anorak. Vast white floppy hat. Baggy shorts. Striding towards us like some ungainly long-legged knobbly kneed old bird ...
Outside an ostrich farm, there was only one other pair of knees like that. Bottger, the Esperanto-speaking German, from the flight out.
'That don't bother me,' Oscar was saying. 'I don’t give a fuck about her no more. All I want is the kid.'
Then, even as salvation came nearer, he had my attention.
'Kid? What kid?'
The kid in the photo?
'Mine, who else's? They kept it from me when they ran me
out of the country. These friends of mine let me know. That's why I came back.'
'You mean she's had your child?'
'That's what I said. She ain't fit to have no kid of mine. Tell you something, it's strange to find you're a father. Makes you feel part of things.'
He'd dropped down on his haunches now and there was a glow of enthusiasm in his eyes as he spoke. Over his shoulder I could see the tall German lumbering over some rocks.
'It changes everything. The whole idea of it. I mean, you wake up every day thinking there's a little bit of you out there. Makes you think about your own parents, and their parents, and instead of feeling like just one person standing in one place during the whole history of the world, you feel more like apart of a stream, a moving stream.'
I felt sorry for this man who was going to kill me. 'Take the kid and go, Oscar.'
His knowing grin came back. 'I'll do that, don't worry. But I ain't leaving witnesses around to talk about it when I'm gone.' In a kind voice, he added: 'Don't be scared, cutie, you won't feel a thing.'
He pulled the big Colt out and snapped back the slide, and it slipped contentedly into his pink palm.
'Not just yet,' I said. 'I don't think the injection's working.'
'Injection?'
'A thing we used to say at the dentist.' I pushed myself up on to my elbows. He shuffled quickly back on his toes in case- I was going to try to jump him. Jump him - I couldn't even have leaned him.
'Excuse me a moment, will you? Over here,' I called out, in a feeble shout. 'Over here quickly, please.'
He glanced over his left shoulder and so didn't see Bottger advancing behind his right. 'Don't fool yourself. They can't hear you down there. They won't hear a thing.'
'Ah, my friend from the plane. Why are you shouting?' When he heard Bottger's voice, Oscar was on his feet in a second, his face wide open with astonishment. Bottger was then about thirty yards away, waving one arm as he called out and using the other to help him slither down a bank. He was so intent on that he didn't notice the gun. By the time he looked up again, it had gone.
'You have had an accident?' He looked from one to the other.
If he's pushed, I thought, Oscar will shoot down both of us. He had the camo-jacket closed over the gun in his belt and his face was lined with concentration as he tried to work out what was happening. I had to give him a way out.
'Broke my leg. This young American here was going to try to get me on his bike, but I was just explaining, I couldn't manage that.'
That was the door. The question wa
s, would he go through it. I saw him look quickly towards the traffic on the road.
He was wondering how many more Bottgers there were and what it would take to bring them all up here.
Bottger, thank God, didn't seem to find anything odd in this lugubrious young black man standing there not speaking. Happily he went on: 'That is out of the question, young man. We must get proper transport. You were lucky this man spoke English.'
'Why?' I didn't care what he said. I only wanted to keep the air filled with normal, unexciting sounds.
'Why? It is obvious, is it not? If you spoke Esperanto you could have shouted for help. Helpu! That is the word if you need it again. Helpu!'
Without speaking, Oscar backed towards his bike, mounted it and kicked it into life.
'Young man.' Oh no. Bottger was actually calling him back.
'Young man, would you ask someone with a Land Rover or similar to come and help us. Thank you.'
We watched him roar and slither away down the track.
'He will not remember,' Bottger said. 'Young people today. No manners. It is the same everywhere.'
'You don't know a Mr Batty by any chance, do you?'
'Please?'
'Forget it. But if a sneezing man offers you a part-time job with history, tell him where he can nudge it.'
41
'I don't know how you stayed on,' Petursson said.
'That's what Hazel always used to say.'
'Hazel?'
'Sorry. Private joke. God save us!' I spluttered on a mug of soup that Hulda had brought me. She'd been having a lovely time with an invalid in the house. 'What's this - condensed polar-bear droppings?'
Even after ten hours' sleep I still felt groggy. As soon as Oscar had got out of sight, whatever it was that had kept me going had snapped, and I'd collapsed. I'd stayed that way while Bottger organised transport and had me shipped back to Reykjavik. The doctor and Hulda had battled over who got to play with my remains. Inevitably, Hulda won.
I'd come round for long enough to tell Petursson what had happened. In another lucid interval, I'd found Ivan and Christopher sitting beside my bed. Eyes brimming with tears, Ivan had gone all soppy: clasping my hand and saying whatever would he have told Sally ... he embarrassed half the island. Christopher, his gypsy face bright with relief, could only say how lucky I was to have chanced upon- or been chanced upon by- the ambassador for Esperanto.
The next time I slept a hot, troubled sleep shot through with dreams that were hardened with reality. I kept seeing Oscar's face, a hopeless mixture of sentiment and madness, as he talked about his baby. I could see the stream he'd talked about, with all the faces I knew- his and Palli's, Solrun's, the baby's, her mother's, even Petursson and the American, Dempsie - all floating in the water, mingling and drifting together, then parting again. And I couldn't get into the stream. I don't know how, but I was trying to dive in but one of those mysterious dream-powers held me back and I was crying as I watched it flow past. Next, I wasn't crying at all. I was being my usual arrogant self ( 'As a matter of fact,' I was saying, to Ivan of all people, 'I never join streams. I'm not a stream sort of person.' When I woke again, more rested this time, Petursson was back at my bedside.
'I could go for one of your pepper steaks.'
'Invite me to London and I'll make you one.'
'You're on.'
It was neatly done. For some reason, bachelor gents have problems with social preliminaries. I was absurdly glad to think we'd salvaged something from this meeting. I've always found friendship even trickier to manage than love because you don't have sex to fill in the blank bits.
'You must be quite a tough chap,' Petursson went on. 'That waterfall business wasn't just a whim, you know.'
'No, I don't. How'd you mean?'
'Sensory deprivation, dislocation of time and place, water, sudden physical shock . . . these are all established torture techniques.'
'That's okay, then. I wouldn't want him trying any un- established ones on me.'
'You held up very well.'
The truth was, I couldn't remember most of it.
'I wonder where they are,' I said. All that high wild country, a population the size of Southampton scattered in a country as big as England ... they could be anywhere.
'We are looking. He has always been one step ahead of us. At Palli's. And wherever he is now. Of course he is trained in survival techniques, he's got that bike, he's got a car and a van somewhere too. He got back to you so quickly we think he must've been keeping the bike at one of the summer-houses.'
Suddenly I remembered. 'That's where he thought Solrun was.'
Petursson shrugged. 'We're looking, but there are so many. Who's this?'
Dempsie, swearing several oaths not to tire, distress or upset me in any way whatsoever, was reluctantly ushered in by Hulda.
'Great security you've got here,' he said.
After saying all the usual things .you say to people who've been pushed off waterfalls, the big American turned to Petursson. He only had to raise his eyebrows. Pete only had to shake his head. There was only one question anyone cared about now.
'You're still watching the trawler?' he said to Petursson, and was answered with a curt nod.
He sat examining his shoes for a while. He was strangely festive in all the bright pastel shades of the golf course that seemed to be his style. Pete, stiff in his spotless tweeds, looked formal beside him. Then I suddenly realised. The Icelander hadn't got his hat.
'What's happened -your hat?'
'Don't worry,' he said, thinking I was pulling his leg. 'Hulda is keeping an eye on it for me.' Then I understood: it must be something of an office joke for him to catch on so quickly.
'You know that destroyer they've got sitting on the twelve mile limit?' Dempsie's voice wasn't much more than a growl.
'They've got two Helix choppers on board.'
'That is not so surprising.' Petursson looked uncomfortable.
'That means they can be on the island inside fifteen minutes and maybe that will be surprising,' Dempsie snapped. Then he sat back and slapped his belly twice. 'Look, Pete, for Christ's sake. I'm not sitting on your tail on this.'
'I hope not.'
'But these guys are going to pull a big stroke. It's all building up for one. There was the business of Kirillina and the girl, there's the trawler down in the harbour with those two ghouls on board, and now we've got a Soviet destroyer parked outside the front door with a couple of helicopters warmed up and ready to go. And all we know for sure is that Oscar Murphy's out there on the rampage and we don't know where.'
'He is an American,' Petursson reminded him, quietly.
They were into all that again, each furiously flying his own flag. I was glad that I'd never got around to developing team spirit.
That reminded me of my dream about the stream, and I was puzzling over that when I saw that Hulda had put all the contents of my pockets on the bedside-table while she tried to rescue the remains of my precious cord suit. And in amongst the pile- the keys I'd used to catch Doris and the rest- was a piece of paper with writing that didn't look like mine.
I picked it up. It was an Icelandic bar bill. The writing on the front, in ink, had gone into a blue smear where it had been soaked and dried. The writing on the back, in pencil, was almost legible. Then I remembered. I'd pushed it into my pocket when I was in the boot of the car.
It looked like two columns of figures, each one crossed out, and it was familiar in a way I couldn't place.
'Did you know about this kid?' Dempsie was asking Petursson.
'No. It was a very well-kept secret. Hulda tells me- now of course - that many people did know but they kept it from people like me, naturally.'
'For the same reason as the marriage?' I asked.
'Yes. They thought she wouldn't be allowed to become Miss World. Here, of course, there is no shame about that. It has been a custom for many years for girls to have babies before they marry. Her mother used to look after i
t. That's why she was tortured - by people looking for the child.'
Even the thought of that made me feel sick. 'By Murphy?' I asked. It had to be him, I supposed, but I still couldn't see it. In his heart he was still a soldier, and that wasn't soldier's work. I saw Petursson's eyes slide across to Dempsie, then back to me.
'No. Not Oscar. You've forgotten, haven't you?'
'What the neighbour said. The old lady with the brush. She said two men in dark clothes like uniforms, and a third man.' This time it did sink in. The two men in dark clothes had to be the military blokes off the Russian trawler. So who was the other man? The two of them sat looking at me as I repeated the question to them.
'We kinda hoped you might tell us,' Dempsie said, gently. Both their faces were turned to mine, waiting. I knew what they meant. I'd known all along. Only it was something I chose not to think about. People pick their own loyalties.
There were so many other things jumbled in my mind after the chaos of the last few hours. Trying to find them and haul them up into the daylight was like fishing in mud. And I was tired, tired. Even the sky's light flooding in through the unguarded window couldn't keep sleep away.
42
As they say in the Bible, she came to me in a dream.
The first I knew was the ice-hard touch of her cheek against my burning flesh, the cold marble of her hands against mine. I dragged my eyes half-open.
She was beside me, sitting on the bed. She was wearing- I think- a padded white jacket and a loose white scarf. I hardly noticed because I was fascinated by the way the lifeless light of the night had drawn all the colour and vigour from her, so that she was blanched to a bloodless beauty. She was the Ice Maiden.
Yet at the same time I knew that it was the gruelling ordeal I had been through, together with the doctor's drugs, that freed my imagination to see her in this form. I was back in the car boot, locked inside my own skull. I was pounded under the waterfall. I was rocking to the rhythms of Doris, the horse. Whether she was real or not was of no importance. She was here, at least in my mind she was here, and that was all that mattered.
