bumper. My head jerked, and I thought, Christ, I'm going to get killed, we've had it. We jerked forward, abruptly seemed to crunch against something massively inert, and spun round, halting almost nose down. Her headlights dowsed. People started shouting, car horns going everywhere. Her engine raced futilely. Olive was keening, 'No, no, no.'
For a long time I stayed put. I might have broken bones, my neck fractured at some vital spot. What if the car doors locked by some slick anti-theft mechanism so I couldn't get out? I heard somebody shout, 'There's somebody down there!' And another man call, 'I'll go down. Looks like a woman.'
'Is there anybody else?' a man yelled.
'Never mind that,' a bloke boomed in a deep bass. 'Give us a lift here.'
A cry for ambulances rose. Horns blared in a cacophony. The sound of engines was deafening. I worked out that Olive's car must be in a ditch beside the trunk road.
Olive, still whimpering, opened her door and climbed out. I heard her shoes slither on the sloping bank. Bracken crackled as she blundered. I felt myself for injuries. I should have helped her, but who was in a worse state, her or me? Survival of the fittest. She had a job to do. Now that events of the night had dictated their own grim logic, I guessed that Mel had simply instructed her to be a biased witness to a rigged accident.
It had all the hallmarks. I felt sick.
The door on which my head rested was down. Olive had climbed to get out. Therefore I had to go upwards. I had a sudden terror of explosion. I could smell petrol, and without worrying about broken bones I frantically scrabbled round, never mind who saw me, reeled the window down and heaved myself through into undergrowth.
Hawthorn bushes and sloes always go for my eyes. I was in a right state by the time I reached the road.
An ambulance was slowly trying to get through the array of wagons, pantechnicons, cars and vans crammed along the carriageway. An AA man's van was in the thick of it, having somehow come via the ditch. He was trying to get the traffic moving, signalling with lights, his reflective yellow jacket gleaming. Men were struggling with two motors that were concertinaed against trees. I couldn't see Olive. People were stooping over forms lying on the ground. I couldn't see, dazzled by the kaleidoscopic lights and the flashing ambers of security vehicles pressing in.
The noise was indescribable. Wnat the hell were all the engines revving for? Blokes in heavy goods vehicles leaned out calling questions. It was mayhem. I sat on the running board of a lorry. I had a bad headache.
I could have prevented this somehow. And hadn't. I could have lied to Mel that I knew what he was up to. I could have confronted Sandy, demanded what the hell. Or gone to the police. I could have seized Olive's wheel, flagged the mark motor down and warned them. I hadn't done a frigging thing.
A lorry driver came. 'You okay, mate?'
'Aye. Ta.'
'You look rough. In one of the motors, were you?'
'No. Thumbing a lift on the verge.'
'See anything, did yer? Here.' He gave me a swig of tea from his flask. Hot, thick, sweet.
'Ta. No, saw nowt. Anybody hurt?'
'Two people in a motor bought it. The other motor isn't too bad.'
He was a crew-cutted bruiser, but often they're the kindliest people on the road, do anything to help. He sounded Merseyside.
'This'll be a long time clearing,' he said. 'Get in my cabin and watch the telly if you like.'
'Ta,' I said, and did.
The plod came with their loudhailers, filling the night with questions.
They asked what I'd seen. I said I recalled seeing a motor driving past and swerving. I was trying to thumb a lift, but nobody seemed willing to stop in the darkness.
Something gave me a thump. I fell, heard tyres screeching, found myself down in the ditch.
'I climbed up the bank to the road,' I said.
'I gave him some tea and sat him down,' the lorry driver said. 'I wondered if he'd been thrown out of one of the motors. I've seen that happen.'
They let me go after an hour. I got a lift to civilization from the driver. I have an idea he knew my tale was made up, but that's the same for pope, poet, and peasant. We're all fibbers.
It took me a couple of hours to walk down to the river and up the footpath to my cottage. I made tea and pulled the divan down. I stripped and went to bed.
The tangled mass of Timothy Giverill's motor, crumpled against the tree in the lights, was with me as I closed my eyes and waited for the night to pass and bright day come with its new sequence of hauntings. I should have wept for what I'd done, but my senses wouldn't play my silly games any more. They just sat in me, eyes, hearing, touch, the rest, just knowing what a worm I really was.
In sad moments the past comes niggling, making you feel bad about things long forgot.
Melancholy blamed me for the tragedy. I remembered Trudy and Betcher.
It was all down to unrequited love.
Trudy was an accountant. 'I'm no oil painting,' she said jestingly. She did tax for antique dealers. Wisely she never learned the trade, or what dark deeds were done. Or, indeed, how much income flowed silently along the night hedgerows of East Anglia. I liked Trudy.
Enter Betcher. Extrovert, noisy, chatty, a caricature of the wartime spiv of old black and white films right down to the padded shoulders and natty trilby. He was called Betcher because of his gambling. 'The Derby's been run exactly for three hundred years, betcher ten quid,' and so on. He never owned a thing, simply gambled wildly.
