Desperately I scanned the seething surface for another glimpse of the boy and suddenly saw him thrust upwards again a mere two or three yards ahead. This time it was the torso that appeared, turning in the water like a log, apparently lifeless.
I launched myself after it, arms outstretched to make a grab. The cold water struck me like a charging rhino and forced me down. I went under, swallowing copiously. My ears roared. I was turned over, buffeted and disoriented. My head glanced against something solid. But I succeeded in getting a hold on the boy. I had him by the thigh.
I drew the limb to me and clung to it with both hands. The conflicting currents tossed us about as if we were cork. We were dragged down, hauled along the bottom, thrust upwards, spun around and slapped in the face. But I continued to hold the boy. And by degrees I was conscious of a lessening in the force of the buffeting. Now, when we came to the surface, there was time to inhale. I glimpsed foliage overhead, which meant that we were being carried to the outer extremity of the weir where the current was less strong.
My shoulder scraped against the stone embankment. I found a foothold. I took a gulp of air and adjusted my hold on the boy, drawing a hand under his back, lifting the face clear of the water. It was lily-white and lifeless. The head lolled back.
With this limp burden in my arms, I battled against the flow until I stumbled on to the lowest level of the weir at the outermost edge, just below the point where the boys had stood. I might as well say it, even if it sounds like something out of the Boy's Own Paper: the urge to do whatever I could to save this young life was giving me more strength than I knew I possessed. First I was kneeling. Then I managed to draw my right leg into a position where I could force myself fully upright. I staggered across the structure and climbed upwards to a place where the end of the weir had been built up to form the wall of the sluice. It was wide enough to have been planted with trees.
Crouching, I rested the small body on the ground, and the daunting realization came to me that if the boy was to have any chance of survival, some life-saving technique was crucial. I had only the vaguest notion of what was necessary. As if prompted by my thoughts, a child's voice beside me said, 'Kiss of life. Try the kiss of life, sir.'
It was one of the boys from the weir.
I struggled to remember what one has to do. Resting a hand on the forehead of the unconscious boy, I tilted back his head. A trickle of water seeped from the edge of the mouth, so I turned the head, but no more was emitted. The mouth and nostrils appeared to be clear of weed or other obstructions.
The kid at my side said, 'You have to pinch his nose and blow into his mouth.'
I tried it. His lips felt clammy and gave no promise of life. I expelled several breaths, and saw the chest rise as the air penetrated the lungs. Nothing else happened. I seemed to be making no progress, so I tried pressure on the chest, pressing repeatedly on the lower half of the breastbone.
Without taking my eyes off the pale face, I asked the boy, 'Did you go for help?'
'Nelson went. The boy that threw the wood.'
The significance of the identity of the wood thrower was wasted on me. I was fast losing confidence in my ability to restore consciousness.
I stopped kneading the chest and put my fingers to the pulse beside the boy's Adam's apple. If there was any life there, it was too faint to detect. I lifted the left eyelid. No movement. I pinched the nostrils closed again and clamped my mouth over the boy's.
It was difficult to tell at such close proximity, but it seemed to me that as I blew the second breath into the boy's lungs, the eye that I had examined gave a twitch. It remained shut, but the muscles around it appeared to flex. I could not be certain that it had happened. And I was not sure whether I had caused the effect myself with the pressure of my hand against the nose.
I stopped the blowing and drew back to get a better look. As I was putting my hand towards the eye, it opened and the iris moved. Both eyes opened fully.
The moment was profoundly moving. It was a deliverance. An acquittal. A life had been given back.
I murmured, 'Thank God!' I am not religious, but no other words could encapsulate my feelings.
The boy coughed and spluttered.
'I'm going to turn you on your side,' I told him, and the joy of communicating was never so exquisite.
The boy took several short breaths and then vomited some water. I massaged his back.
'He's all right! You saved his life!' The other boy knelt close to his friend. 'Are you all right, Mat?'
'Is that his name - Mat?' I asked.
'Matthew. And I'm Piers.'
'All right, Piers, let's have the shirt. We'll put it around his shoulders.' And as the boy on the ground started to turn his head, I told him, 'We'll get you home soon, Matthew.'
Piers announced, 'Here comes Nelson with the Old Bill.'
I turned to look. Not merely Nelson with the Old Bill, but up to twenty people were strung out along the river bank, running towards the weir. First they would have to climb a flight of steps and cross over the sluicegate. I took the opportunity to put in a word on Nelson's behalf. 'Piers, if I were you, I wouldn't say any more about the piece of wood that was thrown. Matthew walked along the weir and fell in. That's all you need to tell anyone.' fell in. That's all you
'I suppose it is.'
'I'm certain of it.'
'Right you are, sir.'
Matthew himself managed to speak in a croaking voice. 'It wasn't deliberate.'
I glanced down at the pale face, the red-lidded eyes and the dark hair flat to the forehead. He looked a bright kid. 'That's right, son,' I told him. 'Some time in our lives we've all done daft things we'd like to be overlooked.' The 'son' came naturally to my lips although I had neither son nor daughter. At the marvellous moment when Matthew had opened his eyes, I had experienced something not unlike the joy and relief a father must feel at the miracle of childbirth.
Piers said, 'The gentleman saved your life, Mat.'
I said, 'I think Mat needs to rest.'
It wasn't a policeman Nelson had found, but a traffic warden. He led the rescue party up the steps and over the platform. They had to climb over a railing and let themselves down.
Someone had thoughtfully picked up my jacket and shoes. While I was putting them on, the boys gave their version of what had happened. The siren of an approaching ambulance cut the explanation short. A blanket was handed down. Matthew protested that he would rather go home, but he was wrapped in it and hoisted up.
It was my opportunity to slip away. The role of gallant rescuer didn't appeal to me. I'd rather be known as the obstreperous fellow who winds up the dean.
Chapter Four
LATE THE SAME AFTERNOON, I was drinking coffee in the kitchen of my house on Bathwick Hill, when the drum-roll sound of the rollers on the garage doors signalled Geraldine's return from her pub lunch. In quick succession came the thump of the Metro door, the clatter of heels across the concrete floor and the rasp of the door handle. She flung open the door. All those years in television and she still couldn't resist making an entrance.
This one was perfectly set up for her. 'Christ,' she said when she saw the white bathrobe I was wearing. 'What's going on - infidelity?'
I smiled. If she was being humorous - and I couldn't be sure these days - it was worth encouraging. 'Want a coffee?'
She nodded. She was pink from the Pimm's she'd been putting away. Her skin was drawn tight from cheek to jaw. For almost a decade the BBC make-up department preserved the peachy softness of her youth. Now it was gone. She had been written out of the series for two years, yet the image of Candice was impossible to forget when you looked at her. She was still a strikingly attractive woman, but the changes were striking, too - a poignant illustration of why the framed wedding photo in most homes gets consigned to a drawer after a few years.
She told me, 'For a moment just now I thought you were dead.'
'Dead?'
'I saw the suit hanging up in th
e garage. At first glance I thought you were in it. What on earth is it doing there?'
'It got wet, or at least the trousers did. I had a ducking today. My things smell of river water so I hung them out there.'
'River water? Are you serious?'
I spooned instant coffee into a cup, poured on the boiling water and told her about the boy in the weir. When I had finished, she said, 'You could have drowned doing that. You could really have been dead.'
There wasn't the depth of concern in her voice that the statement warranted. On the contrary, there seemed to be a note of wistfulness.
I let it pass. As a literary man I know the mind's limitless facility for flights of imagination. 'Unlikely,' I said cheerfully. 'I have a charmed life, like the pigeon in Great Russell Street.'
'That:
'You haven't entirely forgotten, then?'
'I'm not likely to.'
These days, the Great Russell Street pigeon seemed to have become a bird of ill omen. Our marriage might have broken up already, were it not for the way we had chosen to conduct it. Although Geraldine no longer had professional commitments, we had kept to our pact to conserve a strong measure of independence. I would go abroad on courses without expecting Geraldine to tag along; and she took her own skiing holidays. We each had our own cars, beds, newspapers, books and records. She went to church; I didn't. We sometimes went separately to dinner parties. The theory was that when we did spend time together, the experience was more precious because it was by choice, not circumstance. And for the first few months it had worked, sexually and emotionally.
Given the free-ranging style of our marriage. Gerry's altered life after she lost her part in The Milners didn't threaten to spoil things too much. She had a pile of money from television and she spent it liberally. She soon linked up with a lively crowd from Bristol who were only too happy to hoist her on to the social merry-go-round she had missed before.
Now, two years on, our independence was about all we could agree on. Her erratic moods, the rages and the accusations, had turned the space we had created into a gulf. The sex had become perfunctory, and we both needed to be half plastered to perform it. Our conversations were strained even when Geraldine switched to her exultant, highly animated states, because our worlds hardly overlapped. She had friends I had never met. 'They would bore you,' she'd say, 'and, God, would you bore them!' There was an assumption in the way we treated each other that it would have to end in a separation.
However, I hadn't yet grasped that Geraldine's notion of separation was more absolute than mine.
And I still felt some responsibility towards her. I said casually as we sat drinking the coffee, 'I went for my medical this morning. I saw Bookbinder, your doctor.'
Geraldine gave me a sharp look. 'I didn't tell you Bookbinder was my doctor.'
'You didn't tell me you were being treated for insomnia, either.'
'Bloody hell!' The jar of coffee tipped over as she swept her arm outwards. 'That's private and confidential. You had no right to ask.'
'Hold on, Gerry,' I told her. 'Before you hit the ceiling, Bookbinder volunteered the information. He expected me to know all about it. I told him I didn't. It's news to me. I must say, I haven't noticed you lying awake.'
She didn't answer. She glared at me with her green eyes, threatening any minute to prove the truth of the axiom about redheads and their temper.
I said in conciliation, 'Gerry, I don't want to make an issue out of this. If you haven't been getting your sleep, I'm sorry. On the few occasions I've had a wakeful night myself lately, I've heard you breathing evenly and assumed you were out to the world. But I suppose the tablets have solved the problem.'
Her eyes widened and narrowed almost as quickly. 'You heard about those, too? What else did you bloody find out? Did you read my notes at the same time?'
After my attempt to take the heat out of the exchange, I found her response abusive. I rapped back, 'You'd better complain to your doctor, not me.'
She vented her fury m a piercing attack. 'Snake in the grass! You've been trying to find out things, haven't you? Prying into my treatment. What are you plotting? Going to my own doctor behind my back - it's disgusting!'
The usual tack. I said, 'Will you listen to me? I'm getting heartily sick of this persecution mania of yours. I was sent in to Bookbinder because my doctor - Marshall - is away. I went in to get the result of my medical.'
'You fixed a date when you knew Marshall was away.' She stabbed the space between us with her finger. 'You trumped up this medical just to get in to my doctor and find out what my medication is.'
'Give it a rest, will you?'
'It sticks out a mile! What are you up to, that's what troubles me. Are you trying to get something up with him behind my back? That's it, isn't it? You're in league with my doctor now, you bastard.'
'If this was behind your back, why do you think I told you about it?' I pointed out.
'Because you're bloody devious, that's why,' she shouted. 'You're covering your tracks, pretending it's all out in the open when it isn't. Why did you mention it at all if you knew it would upset me? You're up to something, there's no question of that.'
'Have you finished? You want to know why I mentioned this. I'll tell you. It's the reverse of what you're suggesting. The reason I spoke out is that I've always believed in being straight with you. And there's another reason: I'm damned sure you shouldn't be drinking or using the car if you're on phenobarbitone. A taxi might be sensible next time.'
'Go to hell.' She snatched up her bag and walked to the door.
I said, 'I mean it. You're going to kill someone if you carry on like this.'
She started to laugh.
I gave up trying to reason with her.
Chapter Five
THURSDAY AFTERNOON OF THAT WEEK found me standing in front of a television camera beside one of the seven marble fireplaces in the main Assembly Room in Bath, the location so recklessly nominated for the forthcoming Jane Austen exhibition. As it happened, this wasn't directly concerned with the exhibition. I had been invited there in another connection, to contribute to a BBC Points West item about the history of the building. Even so, my thoughts kept darting ahead to September. The place was even more vast than I remembered. My gaze travelled up a Corinthian column and across the ornate ceiling to the orchestra gallery.
'Professor, would you mind coming in closer to Sadie?'
'If Sadie can stand the excitement,' I answered.
'Enough. Hold it there.' The highly-strung New Zealander who was directing this interview asked the lighting man if he was happier and got a thumbs-up. 'Fine. Are we okay for sound?'
While they continued to set up the shot, I spoke confidentially to Sadie, who was to interview me. 'Before we start, I'd like to get one thing straight. Just now you mentioned the Jane Austen in Bath Exhibition. At this stage dear Jane is just a twinkle in my eye, and a faint one at that. I only heard about it myself a couple of days ago. You'd better not ask me what my plans are.'
'No problem,' she said. 'Didn't Dougie make this clear? I won't ask you anything about it. After we screen the interview we'll mention that you're planning to hold the exhibition in September. That's all - a little advance publicity. We can drop it if you like.'
'No, it ought to go in.'
Today's item is just about the uses the Assembly Rooms have been put to over the centuries. All we want from you, Professor, is something about what went on here in Jane's time.'
'You mean behind the pillars?'
A look of disquiet crept over Sadie's features. She said, 'We were rather expecting that you would stress the more formal aspects, the dress balls and so on. I'm recording two more interviews to bring out the slightly more disreputable uses it was put to in more recent times. Apparently it was used as a cinema between the wars.'
'A cinema?' Still with a straight face I said, 'I can't imagine anything more disreputable than that.'
Every television interviewer dreads a w
isecracker. Sadie eyed me without amusement and said firmly, 'Everything will be edited, by the way. It doesn't have to go out until Friday. Dougie wants at least two takes in case of a problem, so if you cough or anything, you needn't worry. It won't be transmitted.'
'My dear, I never worry.'
Sadie wetted her lips, turned away and said, on a lower note that I think was directed at the crew, 'You worry me, ducky.' She nodded to Dougie, the director.
'Quiet please,' he said. 'We're going for a take. Take one -and action.'
We didn't get past Sadie's first question before Dougie said, 'Cut'. Something was amiss with the sound. While they checked it, I awarded myself a short break. I left the firpelace, strolled across to a row of Chippendale chairs that the crew used between takes and picked up a newspaper someone had left there, the Bath Evening Chronicle. The headline ran: SHY HERO IN WEIR RESCUE.
I sat down and read on:
An unknown man plunged to the rescue of a drowning schoolboy at Pulteney Weir yesterday afternoon and hauled him to safety. The boy, Matthew Didrikson, twelve, of Lyncombe Rise, a day pupil at the Abbey Choir School, was unconscious when brought to the bank, but his rescuer revived him with the 'kiss of life' method of resuscitation. He was taken to the Royal United Hospital suffering from shock and water inhalation, but was not detained. , Matthew's rescuer, a well-dressed man of about thirty-five, left the scene without identifying himself.
Mr David Broadbent, a retired optician, saw the entire incident from Grand Parade. He said, 'The boy was playing with two others beside the weir and he started to walk out to the centre. The current was strong after all the rain we've had lately. The lad appeared to wobble and slip and the next thing he was in the water below the weir. The man must have seen it from Pulteney Bridge or thereabouts because he came running down the steps by the bridge and jumped straight in. He didn't hesitate. He swam to the weir and went in after the lad. It was heroic because people have drowned there in the past. Somehow he got a grip on the boy and they were washed to one side, and he climbed out and dragged the boy on to the bank and gave him the kiss of life. I think the Royal Humane Society should be informed, because that man deserves a medal.'
The Last Detective Page 9
