Distract his attention.
I said with as much clarity as my tongue would allow: ‘Vjoersterod and Ross. Vjoersterod and Ross.’
‘What?’ said Vjoersterod.
The shock to Ross resulted in a swerve across the road and a jolt on the brakes.
‘Go back to South Africa before the bogies get you.’
Vjoersterod had twisted round and was staring at me. Ross had his eyes too much on the mirror and not enough on the road. All the same, he started his indicator flashing for the right turn which led over the bridge across Regent’s Canal and then out of the Park. Which led straight past the nursing home, half a mile ahead.
‘I told the Stewards,’ I said desperately. ‘I told the Stewards... all about you. Last Wednesday. I told my paper... it’ll all be there on Sunday. So you’ll remember me too, you’ll remember...’
Ross turned the wheel erratically, sweeping wide to the turn. I brought my hands round with a wholly uncoordinated swing and clamped them hard over his eyes. He took both of his own hands off the wheel to try and detach them and the car rocked straight half way through the turn and headed across the road at a tangent, taking the shortest distance to the bank of the Canal.
Vjoersterod shouted frantically and pulled with all his strength at my arm, but my desperation was at least the equal of his. I hauled Ross’s head back towards me harder still, and it was their own doing that I was too drunk to care where or how the car crashed.
‘Brake,’ Vjoersterod screamed. ‘Brake, you stupid fool.’
Ross put his foot down. He couldn’t see what he was doing. He put his foot down hard. On the accelerator.
The Rolls leaped across the pavement and on to the grass. The bank sloped gently and then steeply down to the Canal, with saplings and young trees growing here and there. The Rolls scrunched sideways into one trunk and ricochetted into a sapling which it mowed down like corn.
Vjoersterod grabbed the wheel, but the heavy car was now pointed downhill and going too fast for any change of steering. The wheel twisted and lurched out of his hand under the jolt of the front wheel hitting another tree and slewing sideways. Branches cracked around the car and scraped and stabbed at the glossy coachwork. Vjoersterod fumbled on the glove shelf and found the truncheon, and twisted round in his seat and began hitting my arm in panic-stricken fury.
I let go of Ross. It was far too late for him both to assess the situation and do anything useful about it. He was just beginning to reach for the hand brake when the Rolls crashed down over the last sapling and fell into the Canal.
The car slewed convulsively on impact, throwing me around like a rag doll in the back and tumbling Vjoersterod and Ross together in the front. Black water immediately poured through the broken windscreen and began filling the car with lethal speed.
How to get out... I fumbled for a door handle in the sudden dark, couldn’t find one, and didn’t know what I had my feet on, didn’t know which way up I was. Didn’t know if the car was on its back or its nose... Didn’t know anything except that it was sinking.
Vjoersterod began screaming as the water rose up his body. His arm was still flailing about and knocking into me. I felt the truncheon still in his hand. Snatched it from him and hit it hard against where I thought the rear window must be. Connected only with material. Felt around wildly with my hand, found glass above my head and hit at that.
It cracked. Laminated and tough. Cursed Rolls-Royce for their standards. Hit again. Couldn’t get a decent swing. Tried again. Crunched a hole. Water came through it. Not a torrent, but too much. The window was under the surface. Not far under. Tried again. Bash, bash. Made a bigger hole but still not enough... and water fell through it and over me and from the front of the car the icy level was rising past my waist.
Great to die when you’re dead drunk, I thought. And when I die don’t bury me at all, just pickle my bones in alcohol... Crashed the truncheon against my hole. Missed. My arm went right up through it. Felt it up there in the air, out of the water. Stupid. Silly. Drowning in less than an inch of Regent’s Canal.
Pulled my arm back and tried again. Absolutely no good. Too much water, too much whisky. One outside, one in. No push in my battered muscles and not much comprehension in my mind. Floating off on the river of death... sorry, Elizabeth.
Suddenly there were lights shining down over me. Hallucinations, I thought. Hallelujah hallucinations. Death was a blinding white light and a crashing noise in the head and a shower of water and glass and voices calling and arms grasping and pulling and raising one up... up... into a free cold wind...
‘Is there anyone else in the car?’ a voice said. A loud urgent voice, speaking to me. The voice of earth. Telling me I was alive. Telling me to wake up and do something. I couldn’t adjust. Blinked at him stupidly.
‘Tell us,’ he said. ‘Is there anyone else in the car?’ He shook my shoulder. It hurt. Brought me back a little. He said again, ‘Is there anyone else?’
I nodded weakly. ‘Two.’
‘Christ,’ he muttered. ‘What a hope.’
I was sitting on the grass on the Canal bank, shivering. Someone put a coat round my shoulders. There were a lot of people and more coming, black figures against the reflection on the dark water, figures lit on one side only by the headlights of the car which had come down the path ploughed by the Rolls. It was parked there on the edge, with its lights on the place where the Rolls had gone. You could see the silver rim of the rear window shimmering just below the surface, close to the bank. You could see the water sliding shallowly through the gaping hole my rescuers had pulled me through. You could see nothing inside the car except darkness and water.
A youngish man had stripped to his underpants and was proposing to go through the rear window to try to rescue the others. People tried to dissuade him, but he went. I watched in a daze, scarcely feeling. His head came back through the window into the air, and several hands bent over to help him.
They pulled Vjoersterod out and laid him on the bank.
‘Artificial respiration,’ one said. ‘Kiss of life.’
Kiss Vjoersterod... if they wanted to, they were welcome.
The diver went back for Ross. He had to go down twice. A very brave man. The Rolls could have toppled over on to its side at any moment and trapped him inside. People, I thought groggily, were amazing.
They put Ross beside Vjoersterod, and kissed him too. Neither of them responded.
Cold was seeping into every cell of my body. From the ground I sat on it rose, from the wind it pierced, from my wet clothes it clung clammily to my skin. Bruises stiffen fast in those conditions. Everything started hurting at once, climbing from piano to fortissimo. The noises in my head were deafening. A fine time for the drink to begin dying out of me, I thought. Just when I needed it most.
I lay back on the grass, and someone put something soft under my head. Their voices sprayed over me, questioning and solicitous.
‘How did it happen?’
‘We’ve sent for an ambulance...’
‘What he needs is some good hot tea...’
‘We’re so sorry about your friends...’
‘Can you tell us your name?’
I didn’t answer them. Didn’t have enough strength. Could let it all go, now. Didn’t have to struggle any more. Old man alcohol could have what was left.
I shut my eyes. The world receded rapidly.
‘He’s out cold,’ a tiny faraway voice said.
It wasn’t true at that moment. But a second later, it was.
16
I was in a dim long room with a lot of bodies laid out in white. I too was in white, being painfully crushed in a cement sandwich. My head, sticking out of it, pulsed and thumped like a steam hammer.