He said, over his shoulder, to the box driver, 'He's been knocked out.' He turned back to me.
He said, 'You nosey bastard,' and he kicked me. I heard the ribs crack, and I felt the hot stab in my side. 'Perhaps that'll teach you to mind your own business.' He kicked me again. My grey world grew darker. I was nearly unconscious, but even in that dire moment some part of my mind went on working, and I knew why the attendant had not walked across with the wire. He had not needed to. He and his accomplice had stood on opposite sides of the course and had raised it between them.
I saw the foot drawn back a third time. It seemed hours, in my disjointed brain, until it came towards my eyes, growing bigger and bigger until it was all that I could see.
He kicked my face, and I went out like a light.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Hearing came back first. It came back suddenly, as if someone had pressed a switch. At one moment no messages of any sort were getting through the swirling, distorted dreams which seemed to have been going on inside my head for a very long time, and in the next I was lying in still blackness, with every sound sharp and distinct in my ears.
A woman's voice said, 'He's still unconscious.'
I wanted to tell her it was not true, but could not.
The sounds went on; swishing, rustling, clattering, the murmur of distant voices, the thump and rattle of water in pipes of ancient plumbing. I listened, but without much interest.
After a while I knew I was lying on my back. My limbs, when I became aware of them, were as heavy as lead and ached persistently, and ton weights rested on my eyelids.
I wondered where I was. Then I wondered who I was. I could remember nothing at all. This seemed too much to deal with, so I went to sleep.
The next time I woke up the weights were gone from my eyes. I opened them, and found I was lying in a dim light in a room whose fuzzy lines slowly grew clear. There was a wash-basin in one corner, a table with a white cloth on it, an easy chair with wooden arms, a window to my right, a door straight ahead. A bare, functional room.
The door opened and a nurse came in. She looked at me in pleased surprise and smiled. She had nice teeth.
'Hello there,' she said. 'So you've come back at last. How do you feel?'
'Fine,' I said, but it came out as a whisper, and in any case it wasn't strictly true.
'Are you comfortable?' she asked, holding my wrist for the pulse.
'No,' I said, giving up the pretence.
'I'll go and tell Dr Mitcham you've woken up, and I expect he will come and see you. Will you be all right for a few minutes?' She wrote something on a board which lay on the table, gave me another bright smile, and swished out of the door.
So I was in hospital. But I still had no idea what had happened. Had I, I wondered, been run over by a steam roller? Or a herd of elephants?
Dr Mitcham, when he came, would solve only half the mystery.
'Why am I here?' I asked, in a croaky whisper.
'You fell off a horse,' he said.
'Who am I?'
At this question he tapped his teeth with the end of his pencil and looked at me steadily for some seconds. He was a blunt-featured young man with fluffy, already receding, fair hair, and bright intelligent pale blue eyes.
'I'd rather you remember that for yourself. You will, soon, I'm sure. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about anything. Just relax, and your memory will come back. Not all at once, don't expect that, but little by little you'll remember everything, except perhaps the fall itself.'
'What is wrong with me, exactly?' I asked.
'Concussion is what has affected your memory. As to the rest of you,' he surveyed me from head to foot, 'you have a broken collar-bone, four cracked ribs and multiple contusions.'
'Nothing serious, thank goodness,' I croaked.
He opened his mouth and gasped, and then began to laugh. He said, 'No, nothing serious. You lot are all the same. Quite mad.'
'Which lot?' I said.
'Never mind, you'll remember soon,' he said. 'Just go to sleep for a while, if you can, and you'll probably understand a great deal more when you wake up.'
I took his advice, closed my eyes and drifted to sleep. I dreamed of a husky voice which came from the centre of a bowl of red and yellow crocuses, whispering menacing things until I wanted to scream and run away, and then I realized it was my own voice whispering, and the crocuses faded into a vision of deep green forests with scarlet birds darting in the shadows. Then I thought I was very high up, looking to the ground, and I was leaning farther and farther forward until I fell, and this time what I said made perfect sense.
'I fell out of the tree.' I knew it had happened in my boyhood.
There was an exclamation beside me. I opened my eyes. At the foot of the bed stood Dr Mitcham.
'What tree?' he said.
'In the forest,' I said. 'I hit my head, and when I woke my father was kneeling beside me.'
There was an exclamation again at my right hand. I rolled my head over to look.
He sat there, sunburnt, fit, distinguished, and at forty-six looking still a young man.
'Hi, there,' I said.
'Do you know who this is?' asked Dr Mitcham.
'My father.'
'And what is your name?'
'Alan York,' I said at once, and my memory bounded back. I could remember everything up to the morning I was going to Bristol races. I remembered setting off, but what happened after that was still a blank.
'How did you get here?' I asked my father.
'I flew over. Mrs Davidson rang me up to tell me you had had a fall and were in hospital. I thought I'd better take a look.'
'How long-' I began, slowly.
'How long were you unconscious?' said Dr Mitcham. 'This is Sunday morning. Two and a half days. Not too bad, considering the crack you had. I kept your crash-helmet for you to see.' He opened a locker and took out the shell which had undoubtedly saved my life. It was nearly in two pieces.
'I'll need a new one,' I said.
'Quite mad. You're all quite mad,' said Dr Mitcham.
This time I knew what he meant. I grinned, but it was a lopsided affair, because I discovered that half my face was swollen as well as stiff and sore. I began to put up my left hand to explore the damage, but I changed my mind before I had raised it six inches, owing to the sudden pain which the movement caused in my shoulder. In spite of the tight bandages which arched my shoulders backwards, I heard and felt the broken ends of collar-bone grate together.
As if they had been waiting for a signal, every dull separate ache in my battered body sprang to vicious, throbbing life. I drew in a deep breath, and the broken ribs sharply rebelled against it. It was a bad moment.
I shut my eyes. My father said anxiously, 'Is he all right?' and Dr Mitcham answered, 'Yes, don't worry. I rather think his breakages have caught up with him. I'll give him something to ease it, shortly.'
'I'll be out of bed tomorrow,' I said. 'I've been bruised before, and I've broken my collar-bone before. It doesn't last long.' But I added ruefully to myself that while it lasted it was highly unpleasant.
'You will certainly not get up tomorrow,' said Dr Mitcham's voice. 'You'll stay where you are for a week, to give that concussion a chance.'
'I can't stay in bed for a week,' I protested. 'I shouldn't have the strength of a flea when I got up, and I'm going to ride Admiral at Liverpool.'
'When is that?' asked Dr Mitcham suspiciously.
'March twenty-fourth,' I said.
There was a short silence while they worked it out.
'That's only a week on Thursday,' said my father.
'You can put it right out of your head,' said Dr Mitcham severely.
'Promise me,' said my father.
I opened my eyes and looked at him, and when I saw the anxiety in his face I understood for the first time in my life how much I meant to him. I was his only child, and for ten years, after my mother died, he had reared me himself, not delegating the job to a succession of housekeepers, boarding schools, and tutors as many a rich man would have done, but spending time playing with me and teaching me, and making sure I learned in my teens how to live happily and usefully under the burden of extreme wealth. He himself had taught me how to face all kinds of dangers, yet I realized that it must seem to him that if I insisted on taking my first tilt at Liverpool when I was precariously unfit, I was risking more than I had any right to do.