Out.
Now what?
I took three tottering steps towards the back of the car and leant against the rear wing. Funny, I thought, the moonlight wasn’t so bright any more.
The earth was trembling.
Stupid. Quite stupid. The earth didn’t tremble.
Trembling. And the air was wailing. And the moon was falling on me. Come down from the sky and rushing towards me...
Not the moon. A great roaring wailing monster with a blinding moon eye. A monster making the earth tremble. A monster racing to gobble me up, huge and dark and faster than the wind and unimaginably terrifying...
I didn’t move. Couldn’t.
The one thirty mail express from Paddington to Plymouth ploughed into my sturdy little car and carried its crumpled remains half a mile down the track.
Chapter Ten
I didn’t know what had happened. Didn’t understand. There was a tremendous noise of tearing metal and a hundred mile an hour whirl of ninety ton diesel engine one inch away from me, and a thudding catapulting scrunch which lifted me up like a rag doll and toppled me somersaulting through the air in a kaleidoscopic black arc.
My head crashed against a concrete post. The rest of my body felt mangled beyond repair. There were rainbows in my brain, blue, purple, flaming pink, with diamond bright pin stars. Interesting while it lasted. Didn’t last very long. Dissolved into an embracing inferno in which colours got lost in pain.
Up the line the train had screeched to a stop. Lights and voices were coming back that way.
The earth was cold, hard, and damp. A warm stream ran down my face. I knew it was blood. Didn’t care much. Couldn’t think properly, either. And didn’t really want to.
More lights. Lots of lights. Lots of people. Voices.
A voice I knew.
‘Roberta, my dear girl, don’t look.’
‘It’s Kelly!’ she said. Shock. Wicked, unforgettable shock. ‘It’s Kelly.’ The second time, despair.
‘Come away, my dear girl.’
She didn’t go. She was kneeling beside me. I could smell her scent, and feel her hand on my hair. I was lying on my side, face down. After a while I could see a segment of honey silk dress. There was blood on it.
I said, ‘You’re ruining... your dress.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
It helped somehow to have her there. I was grateful that she had stayed. I wanted to tell her that. I tried... and meant... to say ‘Roberta’. What in fact I said was...‘Rosalind’.
‘Oh Kelly...’ Her voice held a mixture of pity and distress.
I thought groggily that she would go away, now that I’d made such a silly mistake, but she stayed, saying small things like, ‘You’ll be all right soon,’ and sometimes not talking at all, but just being there. I didn’t know why I wanted her to stay. I remembered that I didn’t even like the girl.
All the people who arrive after accidents duly arrived. Police with blue flashing lights. Ambulance waking the neighbourhood with its siren. Bobbie took Roberta away, telling her there was no more she could do. The ambulance men scooped me unceremoniously on to a stretcher and if I thought them rough it was only because every movement brought a scream up as far as my teeth and heaven knows whether any of them got any further.
By the time I reached the hospital the mists had cleared. I knew what had happened to my car. I knew that I wasn’t dying. I knew that Bobbie and Roberta had taken the back roads detour like I had, and had reached the level crossing not long after me.
What I didn’t understand was how I had come to stop on the railway. That crossing had drop-down-fringe gates, and they hadn’t been shut.
A young dark haired doctor with tired dark-ringed eyes came to look at me, talking to the ambulance men.
‘He’d just come from a dance,’ they said. “The police want a blood test.’
‘Drunk?’ said the doctor.
The ambulance men shrugged. They thought it possible.
‘No,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t drink. At least...’
They didn’t pay much attention. The young doctor stooped over my lower half, feeling the damage with slender gentle fingers. ‘That hurts? Yes.’ He parted my hair, looking at my head. ‘Nothing much up there. More blood than damage.’ He stood back. ‘We’ll get your pelvis x-rayed. And that leg. Can’t tell what’s what until after that.’
A nurse tried to take my shoes off. I said very loudly, ‘Don’t.’
She jumped. The doctor signed to her to stop. ‘We’ll do it under an anaesthetic. Just leave him for now.’
She came instead and wiped my forehead.
‘Sorry,’ she said.
The doctor took my pulse. ‘Why ever did you stop on a level crossing?’ he said conversationally. ‘Silly thing to do.’
‘I felt... sleepy. Had a headache.’ It didn’t sound very sensible.
‘Had a bit to drink?’
‘Almost nothing.’
‘At a dance?’ He sounded sceptical.
‘Really,’ I said weakly. ‘I didn’t.’
He put my hand down. I was still wearing my dinner jacket, though someone had taken off my tie. There were bright scarlet blotches down my white shirt and an unmendable tear down the right side of my black trousers.
I shut my eyes. Didn’t do much good. The screaming pain showed no signs of giving up. It had localised into my right side from armpit to toes, with repercussions up and down my spine. I’d broken a good many bones racing, but this was much worse. Much. It was impossible.
‘It won’t be long now,’ the doctor said comfortingly. ‘We’ll have you under.’
‘The train didn’t hit me,’ I said. ‘I got out of the car... I was leaning against the back of it... the train hit the car... not me.’
I felt sick. How long...?
‘If it had hit you, you wouldn’t be here.’
‘I suppose not... I had this thumping headache... needed air...’ Why couldn’t I pass out, I thought. People always passed out, when it became unbearable. Or so I’d always believed.
‘Have you still got the headache?’ he asked clinically.
‘It’s gone off a bit. Just sore now.’ My mouth was dry. Always like that, after injuries. The least of my troubles.
Two porters came to wheel me away, and I protested more than was stoical about the jolts. I felt grey. Looked at my hands. They were quite surprisingly red.
X-ray department. Very smooth, very quick. Didn’t try to move me except for cutting the zip out of my trousers. Quite enough.
‘Sorry,’ they said.
‘Do you work all night?’ I asked.
They smiled. On duty, if called.
‘Thanks,’ I said.
Another journey. People in green overalls and white masks, making soothing remarks. Could I face taking my coat off? No? Never mind then. Needle into vein in back of hand. Marvellous. Oblivion rolled through me in grey and black and I greeted it with a sob of welcome.
The world shuffled back in the usual way, bit by uncomfortable bit, with a middle aged nurse patting my hand and telling me to wake up dear, it was all over.
I had to admit that my wildest fears were not realised. I still had two legs. One I could move. The other had plaster on. Inside the plaster it gently ached. The scream had died to a whisper. I sighed with relief.
What was the time? Five o’clock, dear.
Where was I? In the recovery ward dear. Now go to sleep again and when you wake up you’ll be feeling much better, you’ll see.
I did as she said, and she was quite right.
Mid morning, a doctor came. Not the same one as the night before. Older, heavier, but just as tired looking.
‘You had a lucky escape,’ he said.