‘Roll him over,’ I said. ‘Carefully... just so his tongue isn’t choking him.’
We put him on his side and his breathing eased immediately, but I wouldn’t let them pick him up and carry him up to the lock. Almost any injury was bound to be made worse by moving, and he’d been moved too much already. The calm man agreed and went briskly off to fetch a doctor.
The lock-keeper arrived along the towpath, followed at a rush by Keeble and all his family. Their faces were all strained with shock, and Lynnie had been crying.
‘Thank God,’ Keeble said, crouching beside me. ‘You’re both all right.’ His voice held almost more incredulity than relief.
I shook my head. ‘He’s hurt, somewhere.’
‘Badly?’
‘Don’t know... He crashed into the weir.’
‘We didn’t see you go over. We were watching...’
‘They must have gone under,’ said the lock-keeper. ‘Through one of the gates. Those gates wind upwards, same as a sash window. We’ve got two of them a couple of feet open at the bottom today, with the river a bit full after all that rain.’
I nodded. ‘Under.’
Dave Teller choked and woke up again, coughing uncontrollably through the puddle in his lungs, every cough jerking him visibly into agony. From his fluttering gesture it was clear where the trouble lay.
‘His leg,’ Keeble said. ‘He’s not bleeding... could he have broken it?’
The jar when he had hit the weir had been enough. I said so. ‘We can’t do anything for him,’ said Keeble, watching him helplessly.
The crowd around us waited, murmuring in sympathy but enjoying the disaster, listening to Teller coughing, watching him clutch handfuls of grass in rigid fingers. Not a scrap of use begging them to go away.
‘What happened to the punt?’ I asked Keeble.
‘We towed it ashore. Lynnie got hold of the rope. Those kids were terribly shocked.’ He looked round for them vaguely, but they weren’t in the crowd. ‘I suppose they’ve stayed back at the lock. The girl was nearly hysterical when you and Dave didn’t come up.’ A remembering bleakness came into his face. ‘We towed them into the lock cut and moored there. Then we ran along to the lock to get the lock-keeper... and he was already down here.’ He looked up across the river to the pretty weir. ‘How long were you under the water?’
‘A couple of centuries.’
‘Seriously.’
‘Can’t tell. Maybe three minutes.’
‘Long enough.’
‘Mm.’
He looked me over objectively, boss to employee. One shoulder of my green jersey shirt was ripped in a jagged tear.
‘Bruised,’ he said matter-of-factly.
‘The weir,’ I agreed, ‘has knobs on.’
‘It’s like a flight of steps under there,’ said the lock-keeper solemnly. ‘Going down from the top level to this one, you see. The current would have rolled you right down those steps, I reckon. In fact, it’s a bleeding miracle you ever came up, if you ask me. There’s some every year fall in this river and never get seen again. Current takes them along the bottom all the way to the sea.’
‘Charming,’ Keeble said under his breath.
Dave Teller stopped coughing, rolled slightly on to his back, and put his wrist to his mouth. His strong beaky nose stuck uncompromisingly up to the sky, and the wetness on his face wasn’t from the Thames. After a while he moved his hand and asked Keeble what had happened. Keeble briefly explained, and the screwed-up eyes slid round to me.
‘Lucky you were with us,’ he said weakly, the smile in his voice making no progress on his face. He moved his hand apprehensively behind his ear, and winced when it reached the bump. ‘I don’t remember a thing.’
‘Do you remember asking me to look for your horse?’
He nodded a fraction, slowly. ‘Yuh. You said no.’
‘I’ve changed my mind,’ I said. ‘I’ll go.’
In the cabin of the Flying Linnet Keeble watched me slowly strip off my sodden clothes. I had never, as far as I remembered, felt so weak. I’d left half my muscles under the weir. Buttons would no longer come out of their holes.
‘You heard what the man said,’ Keeble remarked. ‘It was lucky you were with us.’
I didn’t answer.
‘Make a note of it,’ Keeble said. ‘Stick around. You never know when you’ll be needed.’
‘Sure,’ I said, refusing to acknowledge that I understood what he was talking about.
He wouldn’t be deterred. ‘You’re like Dave’s horse. Irreplaceable.’
My lips twitched. That was the crunch, all right. His job would be a little harder if he lost his head cook and bottle-washer. Personal regard didn’t come into it.
I struggled out of my jersey. He handed me a towel, glancing non-committally at the marks of this and previous campaigns.
‘I’m serious, Gene.’
‘Yeah,’ I sighed. ‘Well... I’m still here.’
It was too much of an admission, but at least it seemed to reassure him enough to change the subject.
‘Why are you going to the States?’
‘Maybe I owe it to him.’
‘Who? Dave?’
I nodded.
‘I don’t follow,’ he said, frowning. ‘Surely he owes you? If anyone owes anything.’
‘No. If I’d been quicker, he wouldn’t have gone in, wouldn’t now have a smashed thigh. Too much whisky and wine and sleeping in the sun. I was much too slow. Abysmally, shamefully slow.’
He made a gesture of impatience. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Gene. No speed on earth could have prevented an accident like that.’
I put the towel round my neck and started to take off my trousers.
‘That accident’, I said briefly, ‘was attempted murder.’
He gazed at me, eyes blinking slowly behind the mild spectacles. Then he turned, opened the cabin door, and stepped up into the cockpit. I heard him shouting to Peter.
‘Get out of that punt at once, there’s a good chap. And don’t let anyone else get in it. It’s important.’
‘Not even Lynnie?’
‘Not even Lynnie.’
‘I don’t want to,’ said Lynnie’s voice in a wail from the cockpit. ‘I never want to go in a punt again.’
She wasn’t much her father’s daughter. His mind was as tough as old boots. The chubby body which contained it came back into the cabin and shut the door.
‘Convince me,’ he said.
‘The boy and girl have scarpered.’
He raised his eyebrows and protested. ‘They were frightened.’
‘They didn’t stop to answer questions. They may quite possibly think Dave and I are dead, because they didn’t even wait to make sure. I should say they never even intended to appear at any inquest.’
He was silent, thinking about it. The boy and girl had gone from the lock when we had eventually returned to it: gone unnoticed, leaving the punt behind. No one had given them a thought until after the doctor had splinted Teller’s leg and seen him carried on a stretcher a hundred yards to an ambulance. When the doctor asked how the accident happened, the causes of it weren’t around.
‘We don’t know,’ Keeble said. ‘They may very likely have come down the towpath and seen you were all right, and they might have dozens of personal reasons for not wanting to stay.’
I finished kicking my legs out of the clammy cotton trousers and peeled off my socks.
‘The boy stood on the stern too long. He should have been helping with the rope.’
Keeble frowned. ‘Certainly he seemed unconcerned, but I don’t think he realized quite what a jam they were in. Not like the girl did.’
‘The first time he moved, he hit Dave straight on the head.’
‘Punt poles are clumsy if you aren’t careful... and he couldn’t have counted on Dave standing in so vulnerable a spot.’