I swore to myself and did everything with my right hand, which meant twisting, which would have hurt if I hadn't been in such a hurry.
Started the engine. Released the brake. Shoved the gear lever into first. Did the rest thankfully with my feet, and set off. Not the smoothest start ever, but enough. The Land Rover rolled to the gate, and I turned out in the opposite direction from London, thinking instinctively that if they found we'd gone and chased after us, it would be towards London that they would go in pursuit. The 'sod the buggers' mentality lasted me well for two or three miles and through some dicey one-handed gear changing, but suffered a severe set-back when I looked at the petrol gauge and found it pointing to nearly empty.
The question of where we were going had to be sorted out, and immediately: and before I'd decided, we came round a bend and found in front of us a large garage, still open, with attendants by the pumps. Hardly believing it, I swerved untidily into the forecourt, and came to a jerking halt by the two-star.
Money in right hand pocket, along with car keys and handkerchief. I pulled all of them out in a handful and separated the crumpled notes. Opened the window beside me. Gave the attendant who appeared the money and said I'd have that much petrol.
He was young, a school kid, and he looked at me curiously. 'You all right?'
'It's hot,' I said, and wiped my face with the handkerchief. Some wood shavings fell out of my hair. I must indeed have looked odd. The boy merely nodded however, and stuck the petrol nozzle into the Land Rover's filling place, which was right beside the driver's door. He looked across me to Chico, who was half lying on the front seats with his eyes open.
'What's wrong with him, then?'
'Drunk,' I said.
He looked as if he thought we both were, but he simply finished the filling, and replaced the cap, and turned away to attend to the next customer. I went again through the tedious business of starting right-handedly, and pulled out onto the road. After a mile I turned off the main road into a side road, and went round a bend or two, and stopped.
'What's happening?' Chico said. I looked at his still wuzzy eyes. Decide where to go, I thought. Decide for Chico. For myself, I already knew. I'd decided when I found I could drive without hitting things, and at the garage which had turned up so luckily, and when I'd had enough money for the petrol, and when I hadn't asked the boy to get us help in the shape of policemen and doctors.
Hospitals and bureaucracy and questions and being prodded about; all the things I most hated. I wasn't going near any of them, unless I had to for Chico.
'Where did we go, today?' I said.
After a while he said, 'Newmarket.'
'What's twice eight?'
Pause. 'Sixteen.'
I sat in a weak sort of gratitude for his returning wits, waiting for strength to go on. The impetus which had got me into the Land Rover and as far as that spot had ebbed away and left room for a return of fire and jelly. Power would come back, I thought, if I waited. Stamina and energy always came in cycles, so that what one couldn't do one minute, one could the next.
'I'm burning,' Chico said.
'Mm.'
'That was too much.'
I didn't answer. He moved on the seat and tried to sit upright, and I saw the full awareness flood into his face. He shut his eyes tight and said 'Jesus', and after a while he looked at me through slits, and said, 'You too?'
'Mm.'
The long hot day was drawing to dusk. If I didn't get started, I thought vaguely, I wouldn't get anywhere.
The chief practical difficulty was that driving a Land Rover with one hand was risky, if not downright dangerous, as I had to leave go of the steering wheel and lean to the left every time I changed gear: and the answer to that was to get the left hand fingers to grip the knob just once, and tightly, so that I could switch off the current, and the hand would stay there on the gear lever, unmoving, until further notice.
I did that. Then I switched on the side-lights, and the headlights, dipped. Then the engine. I'd give anything for a drink, I thought, and set off on the long drive home.
'Where are we going?' Chico said.
'To the Admiral's.'
I had taken the southern route round Sevenoaks and Kingston and Colnbrook, and there was the M4 motorway stretch to do, and the cross at Maidenhead to the M40 motorway just north of Marlow, and then round the north Oxford ring road and the last leg to Aynsford.
Land Rovers weren't built for comfort and jolted the passengers at the best of times. Chico groaned now and then, and cursed, and said he wasn't getting into a mess like that again, ever. I stopped twice briefly on the way from weakness and general misery, but there wasn't much traffic, and we rolled into Charles's drive in three and a half hours, not too bad for the course.
I switched the Land Rover off and my left hand on, and couldn't get the fingers to move. That was all it needed, I thought despairingly, the final humiliation of that bloody evening, if I had to detach myself from the socket end and leave the electric part of me stuck to the gears. Why, why, couldn't I have two hands, like everyone else.
'Don't struggle,' Chico said, 'and you'll do it easy.'
I gave a cough that was somewhere between a laugh and a sob, and the fingers opened a fraction, and the hand fell off the knob.
'Told you,' he said.
I laid my right arm across the steering wheel and put my head down on that, and felt spent and depressed… and punished. And someone, somehow, had got to raise the strength to go in to tell Charles we were there.
He solved that himself by coming out to us in his dressing gown, the light streaming out behind him from his open front door. The first I knew, he was standing by the window of the Land Rover, looking in.
'Sid?' he said incredulously. 'Is it you?'
I dragged my head off the steering wheel and opened my eyes, and said, 'Yeah.'
'It's after midnight,' he said.
I got a smile at least into my voice. 'You said I could come any time.'
An hour later, Chico was upstairs in bed and I sat sideways on the gold sofa, shoes off, feet up, as I often did.
Charles came into the drawing room and said the doctor had finished with Chico and was ready for me, and I said no thanks very much and tell him to go home.
'He'll give you some knock-out stuff, like Chico.'
'Yes, and that's exactly what I don't want, and I hope he was careful about Chico's concussion, with those drugs.'
'You told him yourself about six times, when he came.' He paused. 'He's waiting for you.'
'I mean it, Charles,' I said. 'I want to think. I want just to sit here and think, so would you please say goodbye to the doctor and go to bed.'
'No,' he said. 'You can't.'
'I certainly can. In fact, I have to, while I still feel…' I stopped. While I still feel flayed, I thought: but one couldn't say that.
'It's not sensible.'
'No. The whole thing isn't sensible. That's the point. So go away and let me work it out.'
I had noticed before that sometimes when the body was injured the mind cleared sharply and worked for a while with acute perception. It was a time to use, if one wanted to; not to waste.
'Have you seen Chico's skin?' he said.
'Often,' I said flippantly.
'Is yours in the same state?'
'I haven't looked.'
'You're exasperating.'
'Yeah,' I said. 'Go to bed.'
When he'd gone I sat there deliberately and vividly remembering in mind and body the biting horror I'd worked so hard to blank out.
It had been too much, as Chico said.
Too much.
Why?
Charles came downstairs again at six o'clock, in his dressing gown, and with his most impassive expression.