Elizabeth said with effortful calm, ‘Ty, you aren’t fit to drive.’
‘Never know what you can do till you try.’
‘Wait a little while. Wait till you’re better.’
‘Won’t be better for hours.’ My tongue slipped on the words, fuzzy and thick. It sounded terrible. I opened my eyes, focussed carefully on the floor in front of me. The swimming gyrations in my head gradually slowed down to manageable proportions. Thought about the things I still had to do.
‘Got to get the shoot... suitcases.’
‘Wait, Ty. Wait a while.’
She didn’t understand that waiting would do no good. If I didn’t keep moving I would go to sleep. Even while I thought it I could feel the insidious languor tempting me to do just that. Sleep. Sleep deadly sleep.
I climbed out of the van, stood holding on to it, waiting for some sort of balance to come back.
‘Won’t be long,’ I said. Couldn’t afford to be long. She couldn’t be left alone. In case.
Co-ordination had again deteriorated. The stairs proved worse than ever. I kept lifting my feet up far higher than was necessary, and half missing the step when I put them down. Stumbled upwards, banging into the walls. In the flat, propped up the note for Mrs Woodward so she couldn’t miss it. Tucked Elizabeth’s hot water bottle under my arm, carried the suitcases to the door, switched off the light, let myself out. Started down the stairs and dropped the lot. It solved the problem of carrying them, anyway. To prevent myself following them I finished the journey sitting down, lowering myself from step to step.
I picked up the hot water bottle and took it out to Elizabeth.
‘I thought... Did you fall?’ She was acutely anxious.
‘Dropped the cases.’ I felt an insane urge to giggle. ‘S’all right.’ Dropped the cases, but not the pump, not Elizabeth. Old man alcohol could stuff it.
I fetched the bags and put them on the floor of the van. Shut the doors. Swayed round to the front and climbed into the driving seat. Sat there trying very hard to be sober. A losing battle, but not yet lost.
I looked at Elizabeth. Her head was relaxed on the pillows, her eyes shut. She’d reached the stage, I supposed, when constant fear was too much of a burden and it was almost a relief to give up hope and surrender to disaster. She’d surrendered for nothing, if I could help it.
Eyes front. Method needed. Do things by numbers, slowly. Switched off the light inside the van. Suddenly very dark. Switched it on again. Not a good start. Start again.
Switched on the side lights. Much better. Switch on ignition. Check fuel. Pretty low after the run to Berkshire, but enough for five miles. Pull out the choke. Start engine. Turn out light inside van.
Without conscious thought I found the gear and let out the clutch. The van rolled forward up the mews.
Simple.
Stopped at the entrance, very carefully indeed. No one walking down the pavement, stepping out in front of me. Turned my head left and right, looking for traffic. All the lights in the road swayed and dipped. I couldn’t see anything coming. Took my foot off the clutch. Turned out into the road. Gently accelerated. All clear so far.
Part of my mind was stone cold. In that area, I was sharply aware that to drive too slowly was as obvious a giveaway as meandering all over the road. To drive too fast meant no margin for a sudden stop. My reaction times were a laugh. Hitting someone wouldn’t be.
As long as I kept my head still and my eyes front, it wasn’t impossible. I concentrated fiercely on seeing pedestrian crossings, stationary cars, traffic lights. Seeing them in time to do something about them. I seemed to be looking down a small cone of clarity: everything in my peripheral vision was a shimmering blur.
I stopped without a jerk at some red lights. Fine. Marvellous. They changed to green. A sudden hollow void in my stomach. I couldn’t remember the way. Knew it well, really. The man in the car behind began flashing his headlights. Thought of the old joke... What’s the definition of a split second? The interval between the lights going green and the man behind hooting or flashing. Couldn’t afford to sit there doing nothing. Let in the clutch and went straight on, realising that if I strayed off course and got lost I would be sunk. The small print on my maps was for other times. Couldn’t ask anyone the way, they might turn me over to the police. Breathalysers, and all that. I’d turn the crystals black.
Ten yards over the crossing I remembered the way to Welbeck Street. I hadn’t gone wrong. A vote of thanks to the unconscious mind. Hip hip hooray. For God’s sake mind that taxi... U-turns in front of drunken drivers ought to be banned...
Too much traffic altogether. Cars swimming out of side roads like shiny half-seen fish with yellow eyes. Cars with orange rear direction blinkers as blinding as the sun. Buses charging across to the kerb and pulling up in six feet at the stops. People running where they shouldn’t cross, saving the seconds and risking the years.
Fight them all. Defeat the inefficiency of crashing. Stamp on the enemy in the blood, beat the drug confusing the brain... Stop the world spinning, hold tight to a straight and steady twenty miles an hour through an imaginary earthquake. Keep death off the roads. Arrive alive. Fasten your safety belts. London welcomes careful drivers...
I wouldn’t like to do it again. Apart from the sheer physical exertion involved in keeping control of my arms and legs there was also a surging recklessness trying to conquer every care I took. An inner voice saying, ‘spin the wheel largely, go on, you can straighten out fine round the bend’ and an answering flicker saying faintly, ‘careful, careful, careful, careful...’
Caution won. Mainly, I imagine, through distaste at what would happen to me if I were caught. Only pulling up safely at the other end could possibly justify what was to all intents a crime. I knew that, and clung to it.
Welbeck Street had receded since I went there last.
15
Tonio must have been looking out for us, because he opened the front door and came out on to the pavement before I had climbed out of the van. True, I had been a long time climbing out of the van. The waves of defeated intoxication had swept in as soon as I’d put on the brakes. Not defeated after all. Just postponed.
I finally made it on to the road, put one foot in front of the other round the front of the van, and leaned against the near side wing.
Tonio peered at me with absolute incredulity.
‘You’re drunk.’
‘You’re so right.’
‘Elizabeth...’ he said anxiously.
I nodded my head towards the van and wished I hadn’t. Hung on to the wing mirror. Still liable for drunk in charge, even on his pavement.
‘Ty,’ he said, ‘for God’s sake, man. Pull yourself together.’
‘You try,’ I said. ‘I can’t.’
He gave me a withering look and went round to the back of the van to open the doors. I heard him inside, talking to Elizabeth. Tried hard not to slither down the wing and fold up into the gutter. Remotely watched a man in a raincoat get out of a taxi away down the street and cross into a telephone box. The taxi waited for him. Knew I couldn’t drive any further, would have to persuade Tonio to do it, or get someone else. No use thinking any more that one could remain sober by will power. One couldn’t. Old bloody man alcohol sneaked up on you just when you thought you’d got him licked.
Tonio reappeared at my elbow.
‘Get in the passenger seat,’ he said. ‘And give me the keys, so that you can’t be held to be in charge. I’ll drive you to the nursing home. But I’m afraid you’ll have to wait ten minutes or so, because I still have that patient with me and there’s a prescription to write... Are you taking in a word I say?’