by Dick Francis
I felt sick. How long…?
‘If it had hit you, you wouldn’t be here.’
‘I suppose not… I had this thumping headache… needed air…’ Why couldn’t I pass out, I thought. People always passed out, when it became unbearable. Or so I’d always believed.
‘Have you still got the headache?’ he asked clinically.
‘It’s gone off a bit. Just sore now.’ My mouth was dry. Always like that, after injuries. The least of my troubles.
Two porters came to wheel me away, and I protested more than was stoical about the jolts. I felt grey. Looked at my hands. They were quite surprisingly red.
X-ray department. Very smooth, very quick. Didn’t try to move me except for cutting the zip out of my trousers. Quite enough.
‘Sorry,’ they said.
‘Do you work all night?’ I asked.
They smiled. On duty, if called.
‘Thanks,’ I said.
Another journey. People in green overalls and white masks, making soothing remarks. Could I face taking my coat off? No? Never mind then. Needle into vein in back of hand. Marvellous. Oblivion rolled through me in grey and black and I greeted it with a sob of welcome.
The world shuffled back in the usual way, bit by uncomfortable bit, with a middle aged nurse patting my hand and telling me to wake up dear, it was all over.
I had to admit that my wildest fears were not realised. I still had two legs. One I could move. The other had plaster on. Inside the plaster it gently ached. The scream had died to a whisper. I sighed with relief.
What was the time? Five o’clock, dear.
Where was I? In the recovery ward dear. Now go to sleep again and when you wake up you’ll be feeling much better, you’ll see.
I did as she said, and she was quite right.
Mid morning, a doctor came. Not the same one as the night before. Older, heavier, but just as tired looking.
‘You had a lucky escape,’ he said.
‘Yes, I did.’
‘Luckier than you imagine. We took a blood test. Actually, we took two blood tests. The first one for alcohol. With practically negative results. Now this interested us, because who except a drunk would stop a car on a level crossing and get out and lean against it? The casualty doctor told us you swore you hadn’t been drinking and that anyway you seemed sober enough to him… but that you’d had a bad headache which was now better… We gave you a bit of thought, and we looked at those very bright scarlet stains on your shirt… and tested your blood again… and there it was!’ He paused triumphantly.
‘What?’
‘Carboxyhaemoglobin.’
‘What?
‘Carbon monoxide, my dear chap. Carbon monoxide poisoning. Explains everything, don’t you see?’
‘Oh… but I thought… with carbon monoxide… one simply blacked out.’
‘It depends. If you got a large dose all at once that would happen, like it does to people who get stuck in snow drifts and leave their engines running. But a trickle, that would affect you more slowly. But it would all be the same in the end, of course. The haemoglobin in the red corpuscles has a greater affinity for carbon monoxide than for oxygen, so it mops up any carbon monoxide you breath in, and oxygen is disregarded. If the level of carbon monoxide in your blood builds up gradually… you get gradual symptoms. Very insidious they are too. The trouble is that it seems that when people feel sleepy they light a cigarette to keep themselves awake, and tobacco smoke itself introduces significant quantities of carbon monoxide into the body, so the cigarette may be the final knock out. Er… do you smoke?’
‘No.’ And to think I’d regretted it.
‘Just as well. You obviously had quite a dangerous concentration of C.O. in any case.’
‘I must have been driving for half an hour… maybe forty minutes. I don’t really know.’
‘It’s a wonder you stopped safely at all. Much more likely to have crashed into something.’
‘I nearly did… on a corner.’
He nodded. ‘Didn’t you smell exhaust fumes?’
‘I didn’t notice. I had too much on my mind. And the heater burps out exhaust smells sometimes. So I wouldn’t take much heed, if it wasn’t strong.’ I looked down at myself under the sheets. ‘What’s the damage?’
‘Not much now,’ he said cheerfully. ‘You were lucky there too. You had multiple dislocations… hip, knee and ankle. Never seen all three before. Very interesting. We reduced them all successfully. No crushing or fractures, no severed tendons. We don’t even think there will be a recurring tendency to dislocate. One or two frayed ligaments round your knee, that’s all.’
‘It’s a miracle.’
‘Interesting case, yes. Unique sort of accident, of course. No direct force involved. We think it might have been air impact… that it sort of blew or stretched you apart. Like being on the rack, eh?’ He chuckled. ‘We put plaster on your knee and ankle, to give them a chance to settle, but it can come off in three or four weeks. We don’t want you to put weight on your hip yet, either. You can have some physiotherapy. But take it easy for a while when you leave here. There was a lot of spasm in the muscles, and all your ligaments and so on were badly stretched. Give everything time to subside properly before you run a mile.’ He smiled, which turned half way through into a yawn. He smothered it apologetically. ‘It’s been a long night…’
‘Yes,’ I said.
I went home on Tuesday afternoon in an ambulance with a pair of crutches and instructions to spend most of my time horizontal.
Poppy was still sick. Tony followed my slow progress up the stairs apologising that she couldn’t manage to have me stay, the kids were exhausting her to distraction.
‘I’m fine on my own.’
He saw me into the bedroom, where I lay down in my clothes on top of the bedspread, as per instructions. Then he made for the whisky and refreshed himself after my labours.
‘Do you want anything? I’ll fetch you some food, later.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Could you bring the telephone in here?’
He brought it in and plugged the lead into the socket beside my bed.
‘O.K.?’
‘Fine,’ I said.
‘That’s it, then.’ He tossed off his drink quickly and made for the door, showing far more haste than usual and edging away from me as though embarrassed.
‘Is anything wrong?’ I said.
He jumped. ‘No. Absolutely nothing. Got to get the kids their tea before evening stables. See you later, pal. With the odd crust’ He smiled sketchily and disappeared.
I shrugged. Whatever it was that was wrong, he would tell me in time, if he wanted to.
I picked up the telephone and dialled the number of the local garage. Its best mechanic answered.
‘Mr Hughes… I heard… Your beautiful car.’ He commiserated genuinely for half a minute.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Look, Derek, is there any way that exhaust gas could get into the car through the heater?’
He was affronted. ‘Not the way I looked after it. Certainly not.’
‘I apparently breathed in great dollops of carbon monoxide,’ I said.
‘Not through the heater… I can’t understand it.’ He paused, thinking. ‘They take special care not to let that happen, see? At the design stage. You could only get exhaust gas through the heater if there was a loose or worn gasket on the exhaust manifold and a crack or break in the heater tubing and a tube connecting the two together, and you can take it from me, Mr Hughes, there was nothing at all like that on your car. Maintained perfect, it is.’
‘The heater does sometimes smell of exhaust. If you remember, I did mention it, some time ago.’
‘I give the whole system a thorough check then, too. There wasn’t a thing wrong. Only thing I could think of was the exhaust might have eddied forward from the back of the car when you slowed down, sort of, and got whirled in through the fresh air intake, the one down beside the heater.’
‘Co
uld you possibly go and look at my car? At what’s left of it…?’
‘There’s a good bit to do here,’ he said dubiously.
‘The police have given me the name of the garage where it is now. Apparently all the bits have to stay there until the insurance people have seen them. But you know the car… it would be easier for you to spot anything different with it from when you last serviced it. Could you go?’
‘D’you mean,’ he paused. ‘You don’t mean… there might be something… well…wrong with it?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘But I’d like to find out.’
‘It would cost you,’ he said warningly. ‘It would be working hours.’
‘Never mind. If you can go, it will be worth it.’
‘Hang on, then.’ He departed to consult. Came back. ‘Yes, all right. The Guvnor says I can go first thing in the morning.
‘That’s great,’ I said. ‘Call me when you get back.’
‘It couldn’t have been a gasket,’ he said suddenly.
‘Why not?’
‘You’d have heard it. Very noisy. Unless you had the radio on?’
‘No.’
‘You’d have heard a blown gasket,’ he said positively. ‘But there again, if the exhaust was being somehow fed straight into the heater… perhaps not. The heater would damp the noise, same as a silencer… but I don’t see how it could have happened. Well… all I can do is take a look.’
I would have liked to have gone with him. I put down the receiver and looked gloomily at my right leg. The neat plaster casing stretched from well up my thigh down to the base of my toes, which were currently invisible inside a white hospital theatre sock. A pair of Tony’s slacks, though too long by six inches, had slid up easily enough over the plaster, decently hiding it, and as far as looks went, things were passable.
I sighed. The plaster was a bore. They’d designed it somehow so that I found sitting in a chair uncomfortable. Standing and lying down where both better. It wasn’t going to stay on a minute longer than I could help, either. The muscles inside it were doing themselves no good in immobility. They would be getting flabby, unfit, wasting away. It would be just too ironic if I got my licence back and was too feeble to ride.
Tony came back at eight with half a chicken. He didn’t want to stay, not even for a drink.
‘Can you manage?’ he said.
‘Sure. No trouble.’
‘Your leg doesn’t hurt, does it?’
‘Not a flicker,’ I said. ‘Can’t feel a thing.’
‘That’s all right then.’ He was relieved: wouldn’t look at me squarely: went away.
Next morning, Roberta Cranfield came.
‘Kelly?’ she called. ‘Are you in?’
‘In the bedroom.’
She walked across the sitting-room and stopped in the door-way. Wearing the black and white striped fur coat, hanging open. Underneath it, black pants and a stagnant pond coloured sweater.
‘Hullo,’ she said. ‘I’ve brought you some food. Shall I put it in the kitchen?’
‘That’s pretty good of you.’
She looked me over. I was lying, dressed, on top of the bedspread, reading the morning paper. ‘You look comfortable enough.’
‘I am. Just bored. Er… not now you’ve come, of course.’
‘Of course,’ she agreed. ‘Shall I make some coffee?’
‘Yes, do.’
She brought it back in mugs, shed her fur, and sat loose limbed in my bedroom armchair.
‘You look a bit better today,’ she observed.
‘Can you get that blood off your dress?’
She shrugged. ‘I chucked it at the cleaners. They’re trying.’
‘I’m sorry about that…’
‘Think nothing of it.’ She sipped her coffee. ‘I rang the hospital on Saturday. They said you were O.K.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Why on earth did you stop on the railway?’
‘I didn’t know it was the railway, until too late.’
‘But how did you get there, anyway, with the gates down?’
‘The gates weren’t down.’
‘They were when we came along,’ she said. ‘There were all those lights and people shouting and screaming and we got out of the car to see what it was all about, and someone said the train had hit a car… and then I saw you, lying spark out with your face all covered in blood, about ten feet up the line. Nasty. Very nasty. It was, really.’
‘I’m sorry… I’d had a couple of lungfuls of carbon monoxide. What you might call diminished responsibility.’
She grinned. ‘You’re some moron.’
The gates must have shut after I’d stopped on the line. I hadn’t heard them or seen them. I must, I supposed, have been more affected by the gas than I remembered.
‘I called you Rosalind,’ I said apologetically.
‘I know.’ She made a face. ‘Did you think I was her?’
‘No… It just came out. I meant to say Roberta.’
She unrolled herself from the chair, took a few steps, and stood looking at Rosalind’s picture. ‘She’d have been glad… knowing she still came first with you after all this time.’
The telephone rang sharply beside me and interrupted my surprise. I picked up the receiver.
‘Is that Kelly Hughes?’ The voice was cultivated, authoritative, loaded indefinably with power. ‘This is Wykeham Ferth speaking. I read about your accident in the papers… a report this morning says you are now home. I hope… you are well?’
‘Yes, thank you, my Lord.’
It was ridiculous, the way my heart had bumped. Sweating palms, too.
‘Are you in any shape to come to London?’
‘I’m… I’ve got plaster on my leg… I can’t sit in a car very easily, I’m afraid.’
‘Hm.’ A pause. ‘Very well. I will drive down to Corrie instead. It’s Harringay’s old place, isn’t it?’
‘That’s right. I live in a flat over the yard. If you walk into the yard from the drive, you’ll see a green door with a brass letter box in the far corner. It won’t be locked. There are some stairs inside. I live up there.’
‘Right,’ he said briskly. ‘This afternoon? Good. Expect me at… er… four o’clock. Right?’
‘Sir…’ I began.
‘Not now, Hughes. This afternoon.’
I put the receiver down slowly. Six hours’ suspense. Damn him.
‘What an absolutely heartless letter,’ Roberta exclaimed.
I looked at her. She was holding the letter from my parents, which had been under Rosalind’s photograph.
‘I dare say I shouldn’t have been so nosy as to read it,’ she said unrepentantly.
‘I dare say not.’
‘How can they be so beastly?’
‘They’re not really.’
‘This sort of thing always happens when you get one bright son in a family of twits,’ she said disgustedly.
‘Not always. Some bright sons handle things better than others.’
‘Stop clobbering yourself.’
‘Yes ma’am.’
‘Are you going to stop sending them money?’
‘No. All they can do about that is not spend it… or give it to the local cats’ and dogs’ home.’
‘At least they had the decency to see they couldn’t take your money and call you names.’
‘Rigidly moral man, my father,’ I said. ‘Honest to the last farthing. Honest for its own sake. He taught me a lot that I’m grateful for.’
‘And that’s why this business hurts him so much?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve never… Well, I know you’ll despise me for saying it… but I’ve never thought about people like your father before as… well…people.’
‘If you’re not careful,’ I said, ‘Those chains will drop right off.’
She turned away and put the letter back under Rosalind’s picture.
‘Which university did you go to?’
; ‘London. Starved in a garret on a grant. Great stuff.’
‘I wish… how odd… I wish I’d trained for something. Learned a job.’
‘It’s hardly too late,’ I said, smiling.
‘I’m nearly twenty. I didn’t bother much at school with exams… no one made us. Then I went to Switzerland for a year, to a finishing school… and since then I’ve just lived at home… What a waste!’
‘The daughters of the rich are always at a disadvantage,’ I said solemnly.
‘Sarcastic beast.’
She sat down again in the armchair and told me that her father really seemed to have snapped out of it at last, and had finally accepted a dinner invitation the night before. All the lads had stayed on. They spent most of their time playing cards and football, as the only horses left in the yard were four half broken two year olds and three old ’chasers recovering from injuries. Most of the owners had promised to bring their horses back at once, if Cranfield had his licence restored in the next few weeks.
‘What’s really upsetting Father now is hope. With the big Cheltenham meeting only a fortnight away, he’s biting his nails about whether he’ll get Breadwinner back in time for him to run in his name in the Gold Cup.’
‘Pity Breadwinner isn’t entered in the Grand National. That would give us a bit more leeway.’
‘Would your leg be right in time for the Gold Cup?’
‘If I had my licence, I’d saw the plaster off myself.’
‘Are you any nearer… with the licences?’
‘Don’t know.’
She sighed. ‘It was a great dream while it lasted. And you won’t be able to do much about it now.’
She stood up and came over and picked up the crutches which were lying beside the bed. They were black tubular metal with elbow supports and hand grips.
‘These are much better than those old fashioned under-the-shoulder affairs,’ she said. She fitted the crutches round her arms and swung around the room a bit with one foot off the floor. ‘Pretty hard on your hands, though.’
She looked unselfconscious and intent. I watched her. I remembered the revelation it had been in my childhood when I first wondered what it was like to be someone else.
Into this calm sea Tony appeared with a wretched face and a folded paper in his hand.
