They had boxes with them and were wearing battledress rather than the dress uniform of the boys who had drilled, and they looked rakish and clearly pleased with themselves. Fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds, Hattie thought bitterly, liking to be seen strutting in camouflage battledress, wanting to shoot at cut-outs of human forms. Can’t they see what it means? Can’t they see how hateful it all is?
But clearly they had no thoughts at all apart from enjoying themselves, and she watched as they unloaded their boxes, pulling out rifles, loading them, settling themselves on their bellies behind stand-up baffles that were there to represent their hiding places as they played at being snipers.
There was a shout from the far end, where Staveley still stood on his dais, now with a pair of binoculars hanging importantly round his neck; then he lifted one arm and shouted the order to fire, and it began: the cracking of the shots; the shouts of some of the boys as they scored hits and knew it; the calls of the boys who had been set to collect the used sheets of target paper and replace them with new ones for the later-comers.
After about fifteen minutes of it, Hattie decided it was really rather boring. The boys came up to the butts in groups of four, and then retired to dig into their boxes to reload their guns, and she could just see them, for their place at the rear was within her line of vision. And she could also see that Dilly and Arse were watching them too, avidly, so she fixed all her attention on the same point that they did.
So much so that when it happened she wasn’t at first aware of it. There was another crack of guns being fired and further shouting, but this time it was more urgent, and then there were other louder cries, more like screams, and still Hattie stared at the boys reloading their guns, wanting to see whatever it was Dilly and Arse were waiting for; but then there was another cry and a piercing shriek, and she had to turn her head to see the direction it came from; and saw there was a knot of excited people milling around on the gravel where the masters had been standing. Someone was lying down flat on the grass on his or her front and as Hattie stared two more threw themselves down in the same way, and, puzzled, she began to move towards the group. There was another shout, this time from the other side of the field where the dais was, and a couple more almost dispirited shots from guns and then the firing stopped and she saw Michael Staveley come lumbering over, waving one arm over his head, and Harry, who had been walking up to one of the targets, lifted his head and came sprinting across the field too.
She moved automatically, not thinking at all, just letting events happen around her in an unsurprised sort of way; she wasn’t even particularly startled when she came up to the group of masters just as old Ian Bevan turned away from whatever it was he had been staring at and faced her, his cheeks mottled and blueish, and then with a sort of hiccup vomited. She just pushed past him and stared down at the ground like everyone else.
David Tully was lying on his back, with both arms flung above his head in the way that babies sometimes lay when they slept, and at first she thought absurdly that he was asleep. But something was wrong and she stared, and again, the thoughts that came into her head were ridiculous: his cherry-coloured jacket had slipped upwards and covered half his face. But of course it hadn’t. The cherry-red area was his face, not a covering at all, and she caught her breath as commonsense came back with a thump and she thought, He’s bleeding, got to stop bleeding, keep airway open, and found herself on her knees beside Tully without being quite aware of how she’d got there.
They stepped back, all of them, seeming to bow to a greater authority and to be grateful it was there. Even Staveley halted at the edge of the crowd and watched as she reached forwards and with one hand pulled down Tully’s jaw and with the other hooked one finger into his mouth to pull his tongue forward.
‘Handkerchief, someone,’ she muttered and one appeared over her shoulder and she used it to grab the tongue more firmly, because it was slippery with blood as well as saliva, and then lifted the chin so that the tongue couldn’t fall back again.
One side of the face seemed to have collapsed. There was just a pool of red, lots of different reds; cherry like the jacket, but scarlet too, and rich crimsons, and bright shreds that seemed to have some blue in them, and she leaned forwards, hearing her lecturer’s voice in her mind’s ear: ‘Look first, don’t touch, look and assess; don’t rush to touch, you do more harm than good that way …’
The cheekbone was shattered and half the nose with it; the airway was going to be the major problem and again she checked that the mouth was clear and that the chest was moving. He was lying with his eyes half open, staring blankly upwards, as though all this was really rather boring and he was damned if he was going to pay any attention to it; and tentatively Hattie pinched his tongue through the handkerchief with which she held it, hoping for a reaction. If he responded to pain he wasn’t too deeply unconscious. The tongue jerked beneath her finger and she held on, hard, and thought, Not too bad, and then knew that was stupid. With an injury like this to the face the likelihood that he had escaped brain damage was small; there had to be some major injury there and that could mean — well, anything. That he would die; that he would survive, but mindlessly; that —
‘Steady on,’ she whispered inside her head, aware again of the people watching her so trustingly. ‘Think about what to do. Deal with the breathing, then deal with the bleeding …’
He seemed to be breathing well enough. The chest rose and fell evenly if rather rapidly and she reached for a pulse in the neck on the uninjured side. That too was very fast and a little thready, but steady, and she bit her lip. He had to be bleeding as well as shocked; was the blood running down inside into the bronchii and on into the lungs? Couldn’t be; his breathing would have been affected —
‘Can I help?’ She became aware that Steenman was kneeling beside her. ‘Done some first aid. Just tell me what you want done.’
‘I’m concerned about bleeding,’ she said. ‘There doesn’t seem to be any arterial loss, though there’s a lot of free blood there, of course, but no obvious pulsing. Has someone sent for help?’
‘Forster’s gone running. Fastest man we have. Shouldn’t be too long. Look, let me hold the tongue. You see to the wound.’
Someone had brought a first-aid box and set it open on the ground beside her. She looked at it and then reached in for a piece of lint, and moving with all the delicacy she had set it over the bloody mess that had been the right side of Tully’s face and watched as the redness blossomed against the fuzzy surface, spread and overtook the whole of the whiteness. It took several more pieces before she could see what was going on beneath and then she looked at the way the shreds of bone showed creamily in the depths, at the pulpiness of the whole area, and murmured, ‘Can’t put pressure on that,’ and beside her Steenman grunted.
‘It’s amazing it’s not an arterial bleed. Aren’t there any big arteries there?’
‘Can’t remember — Oh!’ She lifted her head as the sound came floating across the field. ‘Isn’t that a siren? It is, oh, thank God for that. I’m out of my depth here.’ And she looked over her shoulder at the people behind her. ‘Someone go and see where they are. Open the gates at the end of the field, maybe let them in that way. The quicker we get them here the better.’
Several people turned and started to run across the field and the others, seeming relieved by the action, began to talk, jabbering and exclaiming so that Hattie’s head seemed filled with it like cotton wool that was pressed hard against her ears and made her head ache.
‘What happened? I didn’t see — did you see?’ ‘I thought it was something that …’ ‘He just seemed to jump in the air and then go over on his back.’ ‘It must have been one of the guns, but they were firing way off from us, weren’t they?’ ‘Someone must have stepped on a gun or something.’ ‘I always said these boys shouldn’t have real ones …’ ‘It’s blanks they use though, isn’t it? Not real ones. Blanks, must be blanks …’
‘Quiet!’ she shouted,
unable to bear it any longer. ‘I can’t hear myself think. Shut up, please!’ And behind her the voices stopped, and someone coughed and a few people moved away. She could feel them go and was glad of it.
And then at last there were other people there, people who knew what to do, big men with loud voices who leaned over and took the lint piece she was still holding over Tully’s wrecked face from her fingers, and tutted loudly in her ear.
‘Oh, nasty, very nasty. How did that — Well, never mind that now. Let’s be having some space now, if you please, that’s it, well back there, if you please, you too, sir, if you don’t mind …’
Steenman got to his feet and one of the men reached over and with expert fingers slid an airway into Tully’s mouth and then the other one was there, with a stretcher, and they unfolded it and had Tully off the wet grass and strapped into it as deftly as she remembered ambulance men always did do things, and she was so intensely grateful to them she could have hugged them; and one of them turned and winked at her in the old familiar way and said, ‘Not to worry, miss. We’ll take over now. Anyone coming to Old East with him? Relatives or —?’
‘I’ll go.’ It was Harry, and Hattie looked at him as he came over to look down on Tully’s face. ‘I’ll phone back to say what’s what.’ And then he followed the two men and Tully to the ambulance and they all stood and watched them get the stretcher in and follow it themselves and remained there as the white bulk of it went slowly lumbering across the field to the far gates, which someone was holding ready for them, and said nothing.
It wasn’t until the gates had been closed behind them that someone said to her, ‘Are you all right?’ And she looked up to see who it was and laughed aloud. Edward Wilton, his face so crumpled and concerned that he looked like a battered teddy bear, and she tried to regain her composure and only managed to hiccup.
‘It’s hysterics,’ a voice said behind her. ‘I’ve heard of that happening, hysterics afterwards, when people have been all right up to then, all very —’
‘No,’ she said aloud. ‘I’m fine. Thank you, Edward. I need a wash though.’ And she looked down at her hands and saw that her skirt had blood on it too, and felt sick. But an image of the way Ian Bevan had opened his mouth and vomited as she had come across to see what had happened somehow managed to stop the impulse and she swallowed and took a deep breath and said again, ‘I really must wash.’
‘I’ll take you over, Mrs Clements.’ It was Dilly. Hattie peered at her and nodded gratefully, and they turned and went, Dilly with one hand under Hattie’s elbow in a way which gave her no support and indeed was uncomfortable, but which for all that made her feel better. She needed some sort of direct physical contact.
She washed in the boys’ cloakroom, neither of them paying any attention to the sign on the door, neither of them seeing any need to cross half the school to reach the only girls’ cloakroom there was, and as Hattie rubbed at the blood on her skirt with wads of lavatory paper, leaving a great wet patch, Dilly knelt at her feet and did the same for her shoes, and Hattie let her, lacking the energy to protest. She felt very weak and shaky now.
Dilly seemed to become aware of that and went away to come back with a chair and Hattie sat down gratefully, letting her head droop forward to deal with the dizziness that had arrived now, and after a while she felt better and able to sit upright.
‘That was awful,’ she said. ‘What happened? It seemed to me to be — well, I didn’t realize anything was wrong at first.’
Dilly was very pale. ‘It was a gun, I think. I think he was shot.’
Hattie stared at her. ‘Shot? By one of the target-shooters?’
Dilly said nothing. Hattie frowned, trying to concentrate.
‘But they weren’t in line — no — I mean, to have hit him someone would have had to be shooting right off the target.’
‘Someone did,’ Dilly said and then closed her mouth as though she were afraid to say more and Hattie looked up at her and remembered.
‘What were you doing?’
‘Doing?’
Hattie closed her eyes wearily. ‘Not now, Dilly. He might be dead for all we know. It was a dreadful injury. You and Ar — Botham. What were you doing?’
Dilly took in a sharp little breath that seemed to echo in the quiet cloakroom and then she said, ‘It was pepper. I swear to you, only pepper.’
‘Pepper?’
‘It was me. First. I said how much I hated the Cadet thing every bit of it, and Arse said he did too and we thought, well, we thought pepper in one of the bullets so that when it fired it would go back in the gun and hit the chap who’d pulled the trigger. Don’t ask me how it worked. Arse did the science. He’s very clever like that. Me, I just got it into a box.’
‘Got what into what box?’
‘The kits they carry.’ Dilly sounded impatient, almost normal ‘The ones with the rifles. They’re called 303s and they have special ammunition. We got hold of some in a pub in Kilburr and Arse did things to it to make it fire pepper in the face of the person who pulled the trigger. It could have made them very — No one would have been killed or anything, or even blinded. I made sure of that. I told Arse I couldn’t do it if — anyway, he said it wouldn’t. Just be so horrible and like aversion therapy, no one it happened to would ever pick up a gun again. And peoph who saw it happen, they might get an aversion too. It was worth trying. It was our Open Day stunt, you see. The Cadets did theirs, and we did pepper. And now this …’
She was white and her eyes were wide and staring for the pupils were greatly enlarged and Hattie could almost smell the fear in her and reached out and took her hand.
‘Don’t panic. What happened to Tully was nothing to do with pepper. I saw that injury — that was a bullet. It had to be. I thought they only fired blanks …’
‘Not always,’ Dilly said drearily. ‘I found out. Asked people Anyway, you can get live bullets easy. Pubs. Irish pubs. There’s always someone who’ll — Honestly, it wasn’t meant to do big damage. It was just pepper, freshly ground black and some cayenne —’ She stopped then and giggled shrilly. ‘Sounds like a recipe for cooking chicken, and all we did was cook Tully. Oh, Christ —’
‘Shut up,’ Hattie said loudly and Dilly, who had started to breathe very fast, stopped, gasped and stared at her, and then very deliberately, clearly making a great effort, began to breathe more slowly and easily. Hattie nodded in approval.
‘No need to say anything to anyone about this at present About you and your pepper. I’ll let you know when and who to talk to. All right?’
‘Yes,’ Dilly said.
‘You trust me?’
‘I’ve got to,’ Dilly said drearily. ‘What else can I do? Oh, God, I wish I’d been shot. I wish it had been me.’
Nineteen
‘Have they gone?’ Hattie asked and Wilton looked over his shoulder for all the world like a conspirator and said, ‘I think so.’
‘No need for them to have been here in the first place,’ Steenman said. ‘Accident like that — no need for police. Not for accidents —’
‘Accidents with guns don’t happen too often,’ Sam Chanter said, and got to his feet and went over to the window to stare out. The last of the parents and boys were leaving now, moving slowly past the two uniformed policemen at the gates who were collecting names and addresses. ‘If Tully dies, it could get to be a very complicated business to sort out.’
‘Isn’t it complicated enough?’ Martin Collop said. ‘It certainly looked it to me. That face was —’
‘We don’t need any descriptions,’ Wilton said quickly. ‘Enough of us saw it. Hattie, will he survive?’
They all turned to look at her then and Hattie stared back, very aware of her own inadequacy, even more of the way they took it for granted she had knowledge they lacked. A major shift in the balance of power, that’s what this is, she thought absurdly, and, even more absurdly, wanted to giggle. But only for a moment.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I’m not
God.’
‘You can make a more informed sort of guess than most of us,’ Steenman said.
‘Much good it’ll do you, but all right, if you must. It depends on the amount of brain damage. If he gets his consciousness back then it’ll be a good sign. If he stays unconscious then it’s a matter of anybody’s guess. And even that’s not a very scientific assessment, only one of my own. It’s just that in my experience of the people I looked after, those with head damage who come round fairly soon do better than those who don’t. But he had awful injuries.’
‘Won’t be so pretty any more, will he?’ Steenman said abruptly and then turned away to the window. ‘Knowing Tully, he might prefer not to come round.’
‘I’ve seen worse,’ Chanter said unexpectedly, and then as they all looked at him added, ‘Dog bites. Last year. There were films and pictures all the time about facial injuries. They can put a lot of them right with the newer cosmetic techniques.’
‘I can’t see any sense in this conversation at all.’ Ian Bevan hauled himself from the depths of the big armchair where he’d been sitting with his eyes closed, but clearly not sleeping. His voice was shrill and petulant. ‘What happens to Tully is the least of it. It’s what happens to the rest of us that needs to be considered.’
‘The rest of us?’ Steenman looked at him and shook his head. ‘You’ve no need to worry, Bevan. No one saw you with a gun in your hand.’
‘Eh?’ Bevan looked puzzled and then shook his head as if to get rid of a tiresome buzzing wasp. ‘I’m not worried about that. No one would think I had anything to do with it, or you lot either. We were the targets, that’s the thing. If they’ve started shooting at us, then God help us all. Who’ll they get next? We won’t be safe anywhere.’
‘It was an accident,’ Steenman said loudly. ‘For Christ’s sake, man, an accident! You don’t think anyone did it deliberately, do you?’
Dangerous Things Page 20
