Constantine had pretended not to be mortified, and had cheered up considerably when his horse beat Wilton Young’s in the Cesarewitch.
Eddy Ingram asked to have the On Safari filly after all as he had discovered on his own account that she was undamaged, but I had already passed her on to another client and felt regrettably unsympathetic when I told him so.
On the business side I had had quite a good week in spite of all Vic’s threats, but I drove away down the A. 11 to London with a deep sigh of relief.
The relief lasted until I turned down towards the village at home.
The village was in a turmoil with all the people out of the houses, and the street blocked with cars, bicycles, prams and kids. The time was ten past eight. The cause of the upheaval was a bright glow in the night sky with leaping flames and flying sparks, and I knew at once and without hope that the place on fire was mine.
It was impossible to drive there. I left my car and went forward on foot, competing it seemed to me with every man, woman and wheelchair in the parish. The nearer I got the more I had to push, and it was a six-deep seething mass which was being held back by a portable barrier placed across the gateway. I squeezed round one end of it to get into the yard and was roughly told to get out by a busy fireman.
‘It’s my bloody house,’ I snapped. ‘I’ve just got home.’
‘Oh.’ He paused fractionally. ‘The wind’s against us, I’m afraid. We’re doing our best.’
I looked around me and took stock.
The stables were alight and gone. Bright orange from end to end. Flames shot up high from what had been the roof, roaring and crackling like thunder and lightning shaken together in some demoniacal cocktail. The heat was incredible. Smoke swirled everywhere, stinging the eyes. It was like being on the wrong side of a giant bonfire, and I could see what he had meant by the wind. It was blowing showers of bright splintery sparks like rain onto the still black bulk of the house.
Half the firemen were trying to damp down the stables. The rest, back to back and cramped for room, were focusing on what might still be saved. Silver jets of water swept the tiles and the back face of the house and poured through my bedroom window, which was broken.
There were two fire engines, both of them through the other side of the yard, out in the paddock. I wondered stupidly what they were doing there, and then realised they were pumping water directly from the brook, which ran along one side. Not a very big brook, I thought uneasily.The long narrow yard itself was a sea of puddles and hoses and men in black helmets doing a difficult job efficiently, part time firemen who’d left their Saturday night beer in the local and come out enthusiastically to try to save my house. It was crazy to think of their beer at a time like that, but I did.
The fireman I’d spoken to before said sympathetically that I’d had a hell of a homecoming. He said that there was never much hope for places like stables and farms, once they caught fire, not if there was any hay or straw stored there. Burned like tinder, he said.
‘We sent for another appliance,’ he said. ‘It ought to have been here by now.’ He had almost to shout for me to hear.
‘The road’s blocked right back into the village,’ I said.
He looked resigned, which was not what I felt.
‘Sorry about your car,’ he shouted.
‘What car?’
He swept an arm round to the garage at the end of the stable block and pointed. The remains of Crispin’s car were burning in there like a skeleton.
I caught the fireman by the arm.
‘Where’s my brother?’ I shouted. ‘He’s here... Where is he?’
He shook his head. ‘The place was empty. We checked. The fire hadn’t got such a hold when we came and there was no danger inside the house then.’
‘He might be asleep.’
‘No one could have slept through this lot, mate,’ he shouted, and looking and listening to the disaster, one could see his point.
‘I’ll have to make sure.’
‘Come back,’ he yelled. ‘You can’t go in there now. You’ll suffocate.’
He fielded me forcibly on my way to the kitchen door. I said we must find my brother.
He began to tell me again that he wasn’t there.
‘He might be dead drunk.’ It was no time to save Crispin’s face. ‘Unconscious.’ And he might have walked down to the pub and be sitting there obliviously over his sixth double gin; but I couldn’t waste time finding out.
‘Oh.’ The fireman pulled me through the scrum of men and hoses to the nearest fire engine and thrust a breathing pack into my arms.
‘Put it on,’ he said. “The lights will be shot to hell by now and you can find him quicker than I can, if he’s there.’ He gave me a helmet and gloves and we ran over to the house, with me struggling to fasten everything on.
The house was unbelievably full of smoke, dark, pungent, hot and oily. The only light was from the flames outside, which meant that all the far rooms were filled with black fog. It stung in my eyes worse than ever and made them water. I straightened the breathing mask over them and tried to see where I was going.
‘Where would he be?’ yelled the fireman.
‘Maybe the sitting-room. This way.’
We blundered down the passage and into the pitch black room. Impossible to see. I felt all over the sofa, the armchairs, and the floor around, which was where he usually passed out.
No Crispin.
‘No good.’
We went upstairs. Everything was very hot indeed up there and the smoke was if anything denser. Patches of woodwork round the doors were charred, as if they had already burnt, but there were no actual flames.
I couldn’t find him anywhere in his bedroom, which was dark, or in mine, which glowed vividly orange through the smoke and was as drenching as a tropical rainstorm from the water pouring through the window.
‘He isn’t here,’ shouted the fireman.
‘Bathroom...’ I said.
‘Hurry. The roof’s smouldering.’
The bathroom door was shut but not locked. I opened it, took one step, and tripped over Crispin’s feet.
The air in there was clearer. The fireman pushed past me, threw Crispin over his shoulder as if he were a child, and went out of the house faster than I could with no burden.
He laid Crispin on a patch of wet grass because there was nowhere else to put him. I pulled off the breathing mask and looked down at him anxiously.
‘Is he alive?’
‘Don’t know. Put your mask on him.’
He started at once giving Crispin artificial respiration by the method of pulling his arms backwards over his head, while I clipped on the mask and checked the air flow.
Without pausing the fireman glanced up at the staring crowd at the gate and at the rows of faces looking over the hedge for as far down the road as the flames lit them, and I could read his mind as if he’d spoken. The third appliance, an ambulance, doctor, police... no other vehicle was going to reach us until the village went home.
The roof down the half of the stables nearest us fell in with a roar and a sudden out-gushing of sizzling heat. The fireman raised his eyes from his exertions on Crispin and said encouragingly, ‘Now if the rest of that roof falls in quickly, the house has more of a chance.’
I looked up. The incendiary shower of sparks had diminished, but the house looked more than ever as if it would burst all over into flames in explosive spontaneous combustion. Despite all their efforts the eaves at the far end were blackly burning.
Crispin showed not the slightest sign of life, but when I felt for his pulse, it was there. Faint and slow, but there.
I nodded to the fireman in relief, and he stopped the respiration. He watched Crispin’s chest. There was no perceptible movement. The fireman slid his hand inside Crispin’s clothes, to feel his ribs. Nothing. He shook his head, and went back to pumping.