His parents had met at Cambridge. His father, a physical scientist, wanted to run an organic farm. His mother, a teacher, married him and the life he wanted to lead. They bought Burnt Fen in 1965 at auction. His mother provided the cheap labour they needed to pay the bills. Dryden, born within a year, was taught at home after a brief bureaucratic battle with the local education authority.
But his father’s death broke the slender thread of reason which had kept them on the land. The ten years in London were stable, streetwise and not unhappy. His mother retired in ‘98 and New Farm was ready by then. It stood within sight of Burnt Fen, across Sandy’s Cut. Close but unreachable. That’s how his mother wanted the past.
After dinner Dryden and Laura had talked about moving back There was room. But for him it was still too early. Perhaps if children came.
They’d waited too long before setting out, wanting to postpone the dismal journey back to London through the grey suburbs with their shambling Friday drunks. Laura was asleep in the back of the two-door Vauxhall. Hour and a half to London. Forecast: fog patches, ice later. Concentrate.
But the mind wanders on the railway-straight roads of the Fens. And then the headlights. They’d swung on to the Soham Road from a side track. The police had retraced the journey. A local, they said, cutting across country at speed. Zig-zagging on the drove roads. It was reckless, swinging out across both carriageways, meeting him head-on. He’d swerved right and felt the car bump over the low verge and then, for what can only have been hundredths of a second, it flew in a shallow flight between grass and water. He had always thought of water as being soft and yielding, even if it inspired in him an absolute fear. Since childhood and his fall through the ice he’d held its touch in his memory – clinging and soft, deadly but yielding. But the car met it with a juddering thump, its speed suddenly halted, and he felt the pain across his shoulders as the seat belt cut in, breaking first the collarbone and then a rib.
Until that impact he could recollect no noise: then it came in a distorted rush only to be muffled, swallowed by the enfolding water. He heard Laura scream, just once, as she strained against her seat belt. Through his body he heard another rib break. The engine raced and then with a backfire died. The dashboard lights flickered out. Shock, physical and mental, froze the world around him.
How long did they float? Laura, he was sure, had passed out in those few seconds. Then the car lurched to the left and slid down. He knew he panicked then. He remembered kicking his feet and finding water round his shoes. A thread of sanity tried to hold, telling him to search for the door handle, search for the window handle, pull back the seat for Laura. But it was no good. The terror rose and his consciousness retreated, blacking out.
Then he was back. Brought back. By what? A distant sound perhaps, a faint echo of rescue. He gulped for air but found water. The dull race of the river came to him, just heard behind the lurching beat of his heart. Gravity told him he hung from the seat belt facing down towards the engine. His thrashing hands found the seat-belt buckle and he flicked it open, setting himself into a slow fall. He gulped water in painkilling mouthfuls – stilling the scream of agony across his chest.
He sensed the sound again – a percussion through the water. Then someone broke into his dying moment. He felt the hands searching blindly in the dark. At first they repelled him, seeking him out, clutching, unseen. But he must escape, so he lunged towards them and they instantly contracted, catching his arms and pulling him with startling force across the front seat towards the semi-light beyond.
Did he think of Laura then? He tried to imagine he had. This was the single second he relived the most. The point when he willed himself to believe that he had tried to stay, or at least promised to return.
As the hands lifted him towards the open door his face broke free into an air pocket and he gulped, in a frenzy, filling his lungs. Then he was breathing water again, but rising, up towards the silver surface of the drain. He was unconscious by the time he reached it.
He came to on the forecourt of a hospital. He was in a wheelchair, just beyond the bright circle of light cast by a security lamp over the main doors, and slipping in and out of consciousness. But he had no idea if it was hours or seconds between each painful bout of reality. He thought he saw someone once, hurrying away from the light. Had he dreamed it? He was unable to shout or speak and the figure was gone in a second, like the hint of a sail at sea.
A canopy above the entrance was marked princess of wales hospital. Inside, he could see the low lighting of a reception desk where a nurse sat, her head dipped below the counter, rising only intermittently to answer the phone.
He passed out for what seemed like a very long time. When he came to it was with a jolt and a fresh surge of guilt and anxiety. For the first time he remembered the accident, the moment of impact was beyond recall, but he knew that he had escaped and that Laura was still there, now, below the black water of Harrimere Drain. He knew the water was filling the car but he also remembered the gulp of sweet air he had taken as he escaped.
He dropped a foot to the tarmac and felt the pain run down his nerves, a cold bolt of electric agony. He used the weight of his arms on the wheels to edge closer to the doors – four feet away the sensors picked him up, the glass swished back, the nurse looked up, and he passed out.
But as consciousness swam away that last time he saw one image from the night. He was lying in the back of a car, full-length across the back seat. The car was speeding, he felt the lurches, but no pain. Occasionally, and more frequently as the journey continued, they would pass under a street light. The back of the car was large, even spacious, and he recalled the smell of leather, real leather, not plastic imitation or leatherette. There was nothing on the back seat by his head except a blanket which had been furled up under his neck. He remembered the smell of it. A mixture of oil and dog. Beside his head on the floor behind the passenger seat lay a large parcel. It was one foot by two feet and wrapped in bright blue paper dotted with silver stars, and a single golden full moon.
