Here Be Monsters

She almost helped him, but then didn't. If he was so clever he could get himself out of the car, she thought savagely.

The square of the old coaching yard was a mixture of English hostelry styles, from what might be half-timbered seventeenth century - or more like eighteenth century, because Fordingwell would have been nowhere until the coaching age - to Dickensian brick and mock-Tudor additions -

But then she thought as she headed for the hotel entrance … in fifteen minutes - how the hell am I going to kindle Major Turnbull, with David Audley beside me?

Horse-brasses, post-horns, old prints (or not-so-old) of hunting and coaching - reception desk ahead, unoccupied - dining room on the right, tables laid for dinner, nice-and-cosy, beams overhead and candles on the tables, ready for the inevitable pate maison and prawn cocktail and whitebait -

Bar, or maybe lounge, on the left -

Broken teacup on the floor, with spreading spilt tea across the dark-red Cardinal-polished tiles -

There was a small crowd of people in the bar, but they were not drinking. And now a waitress from her right, blank-faced and unseeing and unwelcoming, crossing ahead of her, into the lounge -

Elizabeth stopped, partly because she was uncertain, but mostly because the waitress was quite obviously not going to give way to her - was pushing past her even now, even before she had decided to stop - so that her attention was pulled in the girl's wake.

The crowd split apart as the waitress reached it, allowing Elizabeth to take a split-second memory-photograph of it: the ruddy-faced young man in shirt-sleeves, the archetypal young farmer on his knees - the man in well-cut tweeds - the man in an ordinary shapeless dummy2

suit - the youth in sweat-shirt-and-jeans - grouped around a man lying flat on his back on the glistening tiles.

'What did the doctor say?' The young farmer half-shouted at the waitress urgently, on the edge of panic.

'Is 'e breathing?' The waitress joined him on the same edge, breathlessly.

'God Almighty - what did 'e say?' The young man stared at the girl for an instant, then switched back to Major Turnbull irresolutely, and then looked up to the girl again. 'Sandra

- for God's sake - what the 'ell did 'e say?'

The man-in-tweeds blocked off Elizabeth's view momentarily, as he knelt beside the Major.

'I think he's stopped breathing,' he announced.

Adrenaline flowed in Elizabeth as she pushed forward. 'Can I help?'

They look at her.

'Are you a nurse?' asked the man-in-tweeds.

'The doctor said, is 'e breathing?' said Sandra. 'Because - '

Elizabeth knelt beside the Major, feeling for his carotid pulse.

'Give her room!' commanded the man-in-tweeds. 'Is he alive?'

Four minutes to brain-damage - but how long had they been arguing over him?

Her own brain was trying to work. She put down her bag and chopped him hard on the sternum - once, twice - as she remembered the St John Ambulance man do to the dummy in the sixth-form First Aid class.

'Get him flat.' The Major's false teeth were awry; she had seen them a few hours ago, unsmiling at her, but now she had to get them out of the way, to do what must be done, however hopelessly. 'Help me get him flat!'

Hands everywhere flattened the Major. 'Arch his back - support his neck.' The hands continued to obey her unquestioningly, as she remembered how the girls had tittered when plain Miss Loftus had kissed the dummy, mouth-to-mouth. But no one was tittering now.

dummy2

Someone took the teeth from her. He had looked a dreadful greyish-white before, but recognizable. Now he was a complete stranger as she held his nose shut and sealed his mouth with hers, to try to bring him back from wherever he had gone.

Her own hope expanded as she felt his chest rise beneath her. But then, as she paused and counted silently, and tried again, and then again, she knew that it was her breath of life inside him, not his.

Keep trying, the St John's man had said -

The tweed-man touched her shoulder and she saw that he was holding the Major's wrist as though he knew what he was doing. 'There's still no pulse, nurse.'

'The doctor's coming,' said Sandra to no one in particular and everyone in general. 'And he said he'd call for the ambulance.'

Elizabeth looked down at Major Turnbull - at what had been Major Turnbull, but wasn't any more. The doctor and the ambulance could come now, but the Major would have no use for them. And, by the same token, she knew exactly what she must do, according to the rules.

'Hold his neck up again - and his back.' These weren't the rules. And maybe she'd done everything wrong anyway, by the St John's man's rules. But she had to try once more, rules or no rules.

Again the sickeningly slack mouth, and the stubbly cheek, and the faint smell of after-shave. Father's rare evening peck-on-the cheek had been brandy-flavoured, and old Major Birkenshawe's moustache always smelled of tobacco and whisky; and Paul's mouth, that one and only night -