It was the first of a repeating pattern.
Two disturbed nights in a row left me totally exhausted.
I SPENT MOST of Sunday morning lying down, first on the sofa and then on the floor, which was more comfortable. I watched the twenty-four-hour news channels to find out more about what was being dubbed “Terror at the Guineas.” There had been dozens of television cameras covering the races, but only one had, peripherally, captured the scene on the balcony Head On Grandstand box numbers 1 and 2 at the moment the bomb went off. The fleeting footage was played over and over again with every news bulletin. It showed a bright flash, with bits of glass, steel and concrete being flung outwards, along with bodies. Many of the Delafield Industries guests had been literally blown from the balcony, falling, rag doll like, onto the flat roof below and then onto the unsuspecting racegoers in the viewing areas below that. They, apparently, had been the lucky ones, injured but alive. It had been those inside the rooms, like MaryLou, who had suffered the worst.
I thought again about Robert and Louisa. I knew I should call someone to ask what had happened to them. I also knew that I didn’t want to make the call because I was afraid of the answer. I went on lying on the floor.
I discovered from the television that while I had been sitting obediently on my white plastic chair wrapped in my red blanket, there had been much activity at the racetrack. The police had moved in, en masse, and had taken the names and addresses of all the thousands in the crowd. I had somehow been missed.
The racing had been abandoned and the 2,000 Guineas had been declared void, as half the horses had stopped during the final furlong while others had been driven hard for the line, their jockeys concentrating so intently on the race that they were unaware of the explosion until they pulled up after the finish. The television pictures clearly showed how one young rider’s joy at winning his first Classic had quickly turned to despair as realization struck that he had won a race that wouldn’t be.
Speculation was rife as to who had caused such murder and why.
One television channel had a reporter situated near the Devil’s Dyke, with the racetrack clearly visible in the background, the front of boxes 1 and 2 now covered by a large blue tarpaulin. He claimed that a police source had indicated to him that the bomb may have struck the wrong target. The track manager, who was unavailable for comment due to ill health, had apparently confirmed to police that the occupants of box number 1 had been switched at the last minute. The reporter, who I thought was rather inappropriately dressed in an open-neck striped shirt with no jacket, went on to speculate that the real targets had been an Arab prince and his entourage who originally had been expected to be in box 1. The Middle East conflict has once again been brought to our shores, the reporter stated with confidence.
I wondered if MaryLou would feel better in the knowledge that she had lost her legs by mistake. I doubted it.
I called my mother, in case she was worrying about me.
She wasn’t.
“Hello, darling,” she trilled down the wire. “What an awful thing to have happened.”
“I was there,” I said.
“What, at the races?”
“No, I mean right there when the bomb exploded.”
“Really. How exciting,” she said. She didn’t seem the least bit concerned that I might have been killed.
“I am very lucky to be alive,” I said, hoping for some compassionate words from my parent.
“Of course you are, dear.”
Since my father died, my mother had become somewhat blasé about death. I think she really believed that whether one lived or died was preordained and out of one’s control. Recently, I thought that the collision with the brick truck had been, in my mother’s eyes, a neat way out of what was becoming a loveless marriage. Some time after his death, I had discovered that he had been having several minor affairs. Perhaps my mother believed that the accident was some sort of divine retribution.
“Well,” I said, “I thought I would let you know that I was OK.”
“Thank you, dear,” she said.
She didn’t ask me what had happened, and I decided not to share the horror. She enjoyed her quiet world of coffee mornings, church flower arranging and outings to visit well-tended gardens. Missing limbs and mutilated torsos didn’t have a place.
“Speak to you soon, Mum,” I said.
“Lovely, darling,” she said. “Bye.” She hung up.
We had never been very close.
As a child, it had always been to my father that I had gone for advice and affection. We had laughed together at my mother’s little foibles and joked about her political naivety. We had smiled and rolled our eyes when she had committed another faux pas, an all-too-regular occurrence.
I may not have actually cried when my father died, but I was devastated nevertheless. I worshipped him as my hero, and the loss was almost too much to bear. I remember clearly the feeling of despair when, a few weeks after his death, I could no longer smell him in the house. I had come home from boarding school for the weekend, and, suddenly, he wasn’t there anymore. The lack of his smell brought his demise into sharp reality-he wasn’t just out getting a newspaper, he was gone forever. I had rushed upstairs to his dressing room to smell his clothes. I had opened his wardrobes and drawers, and I had held his favorite sweaters to my nose. But he had gone. I had sat on the floor in that room for a very long time, just staring into space, totally bereft but unable to shed the tears, unable to properly grieve for his passing. Even now, I ached to be able to tell him about my life and my job, my joys and my sadnesses. I cursed him out loud for being dead and not being around when I needed him. I longed for him to be there to talk to, to soothe my hurting knee, to ease my troubled brain and to take away the horrors in my memory. But, still, I couldn’t cry for him.
THE ONE O’CLOCK news program started on the television, and I realized that I was hungry. Apart from a couple of pieces of French bread at the racetrack and a chocolate bar at the hospital, I hadn’t eaten since Friday night, and that meal hadn’t got past my stomach. Now that I thought about it, hunger was a nagging pain in my abdomen. It was one pain that I could do something about.
I limped gingerly into the kitchen and made myself a Spanish omelette. Food is often said to be a great comforter; indeed, most people under stress eat sugary foods like chocolate not only because it gives them energy but because it makes them feel better. I had done just the same at Bedford Hospital. However, for me, food gave me comfort when I cooked it.
I took some spring onions from my vegetable rack, diced them into small rounds, then fried them in a pan with a little extra-virgin olive oil. I found some cooked new potatoes hiding in the rear recesses of my fridge, so I sliced and added them to the onions with a splash of soy sauce to season and flavor. Three eggs, I thought, and broke them one-handed into a glass bowl. I really loved to cook, and I felt much better, in both mind and body, long before I sat down on my sofa to complete the experience by actually eating my creation.
Carl called sometime during the afternoon.
“Thank God you’re there,” he said.
“Been here all night,” I said.
“Sorry, should have called you earlier.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “I didn’t call you either.” I knew why. No news was better news than we feared.
“What happened to you?” he asked.
“Hurt my knee,” I said. “I was taken to Bedford Hospital, and then home by taxi late last night. And you?”
“I’m fine,” he said. “I helped people to get down at the far end of the stand. Police took my name and address, then they sent me home.”