“I believe in the sanctity of life.”
I had laid him on the ground, a bed of leaves beneath. At first I took his spasm for a seizure of some kind, but he was laughing.
Laughing.
“That’s a good one,” he was able to say at last, blood bubbling from the corners of his mouth. Another car had stopped. I walked towards it, hoping the driver would own a mobile phone. There was an explosion of hot air from behind me. The crashed car was on fire. The heat was bearable. The injured man, I realized, had craned his neck so he could watch me rather than the explosion. His shoulders were still shaking. A young couple had emerged from their open topped sports car. I felt sure they would own phones; indeed, led lives which felt them necessary.
“You all right, pal?” the male said. He was wearing an earring. I nodded. His girlfriend was wide-eyed.
“Another minute, he’d’ve been toast,” she commented. Then, fixing her eyes on me: “You’re a hero.”
A hero?
The description would send me to the den that night, to consult any books I could find. I didn’t feel like I’d committed an act of bravery. I didn’t feel “heroic”. Heroes were for wartime, or belonged to the realm of mythology. I wished my father were still alive. We could have discussed the notion and its implications.
A police car had arrived first at the crash site, followed a few minutes later by the paramedics. The driver was sitting up by this time, arms wrapped around his chest. He was in his thirties, around the same age as me. His hair was thick, dark, and wavy, with just a few glints of grey. It had been a couple of days since he’d shaved. “Swarthy” was the description that came to mind. His eyes had dark rings around them. Tufts of chest-hair welled up from beneath his open-necked shirt. His arms were hairy, too. Even when I wasn’t looking at him, I sensed he was keeping a careful eye on me. He had been holding a white handkerchief — my handkerchief — to his scalp-wound.
“He was trying to kill himself,” I told one of the policemen. “That’s a crime, isn’t it?”
He nodded. “And we only prosecute the failures.” I think he meant this light-heartedly, but I spent part of the evening mulling his words over, reading meaning into them.
“Did he say as much?” he asked me. I nodded. But later that night a different policeman came to my door with what he termed “a few follow-up questions”. I learned that the man whose life I had saved was called Donald Thorpe, and that he was denying being suicidal. It was “just an accident”, caused by his lack of acquaintance with the route and some mulchy leaves on the road surface.
“But he told me,” I insisted. “He said he would do it again.”
The officer stared at me. His hands were in his pockets. Previously, he’d seemed interested only in his surroundings, but now he asked me if I lived alone. When I nodded, he asked if the house had been in my family a long time.
“It has,” I agreed.
“It’s almost like a museum,” he commented, looking around him again. “You could open it to the public.” I decided to ignore this. “Gashes and bruises, maybe some pelvic damage and a rib that’ll cause him gyp.” He turned his attention back to me. “He was dazed when you reached him; might explain what you heard him say.”
I made no reply.
“Papers’ll be after you for a picture.”
“Why?”
“They like the occasional feel-good story. You’re a hero, Mr Jamieson.”
“I’m not,” I was quick to correct him. “I only did what anyone would do.”
“Well, you were there. And that’s all that matters.”
Less than an hour after he left, the first reporter arrived. I started to let him into the house, but then thought better of it — which is why the word “recluse” appeared in his third or fourth version of the story.
“Just tell the readers what happened,” he explained. “In your own words.”
“Who else’s would I use?”
He laughed as though I’d made a joke. He was holding a tiny recording device, holding it quite close to my mouth. But he was looking past me at the hall’s “cramped furniture and outdated floral wallpaper” (as he himself put it later). I told him the story anyway, deciding to leave out the suicide bit.
“The other couple who stopped,” he said, “they saw you drag the victim clear as the car burst into flames...”
“That’s not quite how it happened.”
But it was how he wrote the story up. It didn’t matter that I’d told his recorder differently. I became the CRASH INFERNO HERO. When his photographer arrived on my doorstep, he asked me if I had any burns to my hands or arms, any blood-stained or charred clothing. I had already showered and changed into fresh clothes, so I shook my head. The bloodied handkerchief, discarded when the medics had arrived on the scene, was steeping in the sink.
“Any chance we can get a shot of you at the site?” he then asked. But he had second thoughts. “Car’s probably already been towed...” He rubbed at the line of his jaw. “The hospital,” he decided. “Bedside, how would that be?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
How could I tell him? Meeting Thorpe, the first question I would need to ask would be: why did you lie? Why keep the suicide attempt a secret? And then: will you do it again? (Of course, I would meet Thorpe again, at his hospital bed. But that was for later.)
After further negotiation, the photographer settled for me on my doorstep, then standing beside my car, arms folded.
“Don’t you feel a bit of pride?” he asked. “You’re a bloody lifesaver. What about a smile to go with it?”
I lost count of the number of pictures he took — well over twenty. And as he was finishing, another photographer arrived, five minutes ahead of his reporter. And so it went for much of the rest of the night. Even the neighbours became curious and emerged from their homes, to be collared and interviewed by the press.
Very quiet... private income... looked after both parents up to their death... no girlfriend... goes out in his car sometimes...
The Reluctant Hero.
Quick-Thinking Quiet Man.
Brave and Bashful.
Local Hero.
This last they used most often over the next few days. Faces I hadn’t seen for a while came calling — members of my father’s congregation, the ones who’d visited him during his illness. A neighbour over the back called to me one day and passed a home-baked cake across the fence. There were more requests from the media for bedside photos. Just a quick handshake. I appeared on two radio shows, and there was even talk of a civic reception, some sort of bravery award or medal. And then, just when it seemed to be quieting down, a call from the police.
“He’d like to see you. I said we’d pass on the message.”
Meaning Robert Thorpe; Robert Thorpe wanted to see me.
“But why?”
“To say thanks, I suppose.”
“I don’t need him to say thanks.” But then again, maybe I did. Maybe in saving his life I’d convinced him that life itself was worth living. And wouldn’t it be heartening to hear him say as much?
So I went.
And I wonder now — was that my fatal mistake?
There were only a couple of photographers this time. They were waiting in the corridor outside Thorpe’s ward. They had found a young nurse to stand next to the bed. She was to pretend to be changing a drip. I’d be shaking hands with the man I’d rescued. This was all being explained as we walked into the ward. Thorpe was sitting up. Part of his hair had been shaved, and the black stitches in his scalp looked fierce.
“Are you Mr Jamieson?” he asked, holding out a hand. I could only nod that I was. He gripped my hand and the cameras clicked. “As I keep telling them, I don’t remember too much.”