concentrated on those feelings to make them a shield.
I ended as Chico had done, stumbling and swaying and crawling and finally lying motionless on the soft floor. Not so far from the door… but a long way from help.
They'll stop now I'm still, I thought: they'll stop in a minute: and they did.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I lay with my face in the wood shavings and listened to them panting as they stood over me, both of them taking great gulps of breath after their exertions.
Peter Rammileese apparently came across to them, because I heard his voice from quite close, loaded with spite, mumbling and indistinct.
'Kill him,' he said. 'Don't stop there. Kill him.'
'Kill him? said the man who'd been with Chico. 'Are you crazy?' He coughed, dragging in air. 'Yon laddie…'
'He's broken my jaw.'
'Kill him yourself then. We're not doing it.'
'Why not? He's cut your ear half off.'
'Grow up, mon.' He coughed again. 'We'd be grassed inside five minutes. We've been down here too long. Too many people've seen us. And this laddie, he's won money for every punter in Scotland. We'd be inside in a week.'
'I want you to kill him,' Peter Rammileese said, insisting.
'You're not paying,' said the Scot, flatly, still breathing heavily. 'We've done what was ordered, and that's that. We'll go into your house now for a beer, and after dark we'll dump these two, as arranged, and then we're finished. And we'll go straight up north tonight, we've been down here too long.'
They went away, and rolled the door open, and stepped out. I heard their feet on the gritty yard, and the door closing, and the metal grate of the outside bolt, which was to keep horses in, and would do for men.
I moved my head a bit to get my nose clear of the shavings, and looked idly at the colour of them so close to my eyes, and simply lay where I was, feeling shapeless, feeling pulped, and stupid, and defeated.
Jelly. A living jelly. Red. On fire. Burning, in a furnace.
There was a lot of romantic rubbish written about fainting from pain, I thought. One absolutely tended not to, because there was no provision for it in nature. The mechanics were missing. There were no fail-safe cut-offs on sensory nerves: they went right on passing the message for as long as the message was there to pass. No other system had evolved, because through millennia it had been unnecessary. It was only man, the most savage of animals, who inflicted pain for its own sake on his fellows.
I thought: I did manage it once, for a short time, after very much too long. I thought: this isn't as bad as that, so I'm going to stay here awake, so I may as well find something to think about. If one couldn't stop the message passing, one could distract the receptors from paying much attention, as in acupuncture; and over the years I'd had a lot of practice.
I thought about a night I'd spent once where I could see a hospital clock. To distract myself from a high state of awfulness I'd spent the time counting. If I shut my eyes and counted for five minutes, five minutes would be gone: and every time I opened my eyes to check, it was only four minutes; and it had been a very long night. I could do better than that, nowadays.
I thought about John Viking in his balloon, and imagined him scudding across the sky, his blue eyes blazing with the glee of breaking safety regulations like bubbles. I thought about Flotilla on the gallops at Newmarket, and winning the Dante Stakes at York. I thought about races I'd ridden in, and won, and lost; and I thought about Louise, a good deal about Louise and fourposter beds.
Afterwards I reckoned that Chico and I had lain there without moving for over an hour, though I hadn't any clear idea of it at the time. The first sharp intrusion of the uncomfortable present was the noise of the bolt clicking open on the outside of the door, and the grinding noise as the door itself rolled partially open. They were going to dump us, they'd said, after dark; but it wasn't yet dark.
Footsteps made no sound on that soft surface, so that the first thing I heard was a voice.
'Are you asleep?'
'No,' I said.
I shifted my head back a bit and saw little Mark squatting there on his heels, in his pyjamas, studying me with six-year-old concern. Beyond him, the door, open enough to let his small body through. On the other side of the door, out in the yard, the Land Rover.
'Go and see if my friend's awake,' I said.
'O. K.'
He straightened his legs and went over to Chico, and I'd got myself up from flat to kneeling by the time he returned with his report.
'He's asleep,' he said, looking at me anxiously. 'Your face is all wet. Are you hot?'
'Does your Dad know you're down here?' I said. 'No he doesn't. I had to go to bed early, but I heard a lot of shouting. I was frightened, I think.'
'Where's your Dad now?' I said. 'He's in the sitting room with those friends. He's hurt his face and he's bloody angry.'
I practically smiled. 'Anything else?'
'Mum was saying what did he expect, and they were all having drinks.'
He thought a bit. 'One of the friends said his ear-drum was burst.' 'If I were you,' I said, 'I'd go straight back to bed and not let them catch you out here. Otherwise your Dad might be bloody angry with you too, and that wouldn't be much fun, I shouldn't think.'
He shook his head.
'Goodnight, then,' I said.
'Goodnight.'
'And leave the door open,' I said. I'll shut it.'
'All right.' He gave me a trusting and slightly conspiratorial smile, and crept out of the doorway to sneak back to bed. I got to my feet and staggered around a bit, and made it to the door. The Land Rover stood there about ten feet away. If the keys were in it, I thought, why wait to be dumped? Ten steps. Leant against the grey-green bodywork, and looked through the glass.
Keys. In the ignition.
I went back into the riding school and over to Chico, and knelt beside him because it was a lot less demanding than bending.
'Come on,' I said. 'Wake up. Time to go.'
He groaned.
'Chico, you've got to walk. I can't carry you.'
He opened his eyes. Still confused, I thought, but a great deal better.
'Get up,' I said urgently. 'We can get out, if you'll try.'
'Sid…'
'Yeah,' I said. 'Come on.'
'Go away. I can't.'
'Yes, you damned well can. You just say 'Sod the buggers,' and it comes easy.'
It came harder than I'd thought, but I half lugged him to his feet, and put my arm round his waist, and we meandered waveringly to the door like a pair of drunken lovers.
Through the door, and across to the Land Rover. No furious yells of discovery from the house: and as the sitting room was at the far end of it, with a bit of luck they wouldn't even hear the engine start.
I shovelled Chico onto the front seat and shut the door quietly, and went round to the driving side. Land Rovers, I thought disgustedly, were made for left-handed people. All the controls, except the indicators, were on that side: and whether it was because I myself was weak, or the battery was flat, or I'd damaged the machinery by using it as a club, the fingers of my left hand would scarcely move.
