The components of this nightmare gradually sorted themselves out into depressing reality. Respectively, a hospital ward, a savage load of bruises, and an Emperor-sized hangover.
I dragged my arm up and squinted at my watch. Four-fifty. Even that small movement had out-of-proportion repercussions. I put my hand down gently on top of the sheets and tried to duck out by going to sleep again.
Didn’t manage it. Too many problems. Too many people would want too many explanations. I’d have to edit the truth here and there, juggle the facts a little. Needed a clear head for it, not a throbbing dehydrated morass.
I tried to sort out into order exactly what had happened the evening before, and wondered profitlessly what I would have done if I hadn’t been drunk. Thought numbly about Vjoersterod and Ross being pulled from the wreck. If they were dead, which I was sure they were, I had certainly killed them. The worst thing about that was that I didn’t care.
If I shut my eyes the world still revolved and the ringing noise in my head grew more persistent. I thought wearily that people who poisoned themselves with alcohol for pleasure had to be crazy.
At six they woke up all the patients, who shook my tender brain with shattering decibels of coughing, spitting, and brushing of teeth. Breakfast was steamed haddock and weak tea. I asked for water and something for a headache, and thought sympathetically about the man who said he didn’t like Alka-seltzers because they were so noisy.
The hospital was equipped with telephone trolleys, but for all my urging I couldn’t get hold of one until nine-thirty. I fed it with coins salvaged from my now drying trousers and rang Tonio. Caught him luckily in his consulting room after having insisted his receptionist tell him I was calling.
‘Ty! Deo gratia... where the hell have you been?’
‘Swimming,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell you later. Is Elizabeth O.K.?’
‘She’s fine. But she was extremely anxious when you didn’t turn up again last night... Where are you now? Why haven’t you been to find out for yourself how she is?’
‘I’m in University College Hospital. At least, I’m here for another few hours. I got scooped in here last night, but there’s not much damage.’
‘How’s the head?’
‘Lousy.’
He laughed. Charming fellow.
I rang the nursing home and talked to Elizabeth. There was no doubt she was relieved to hear from me, though from the unusual languor in her voice it was clear they had given her some sort of tranquiliser. She was almost too calm. She didn’t ask me what happened when Tonio had driven her away; she didn’t want to know where I was at that moment.
‘Would you mind staying in the nursing home for a couple of days?’ I asked. ‘Just till I get things straight.’
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Couple of days. Fine.’
‘See you soon, honey.’
‘Sure,’ she said again, vaguely. ‘Fine.’
After a while I disconnected and got through instead to Luke-John. His brisk voice vibrated loudly through the receiver and sent javelins through my head. I told him I hadn’t written my Sunday column yet because I’d been involved in a car crash the night before, and held the receiver six inches away while he replied.
‘The car crash was yesterday afternoon.’
‘This was another one.’
‘For God’s sake, do you make a habit of it?’
‘I’ll write my piece this evening and come in with it in the morning before I go to Heathbury for the Lamplighter. Will that do?’
‘It’ll have to, I suppose,’ he grumbled. ‘You weren’t hurt in the second crash, were you?’ He sounded as if an affirmative answer would be highly unpopular.
‘Only bruised,’ I said, and got a noncommittal unsympathetic grunt.
‘Make that piece good,’ he said. ‘Blow the roof off.’
I put down the receiver before he could blow the roof off my head. It went on thrumming mercilessly. Ross’s target area also alternately burned and ached and made lying in bed draggingly uncomfortable. The grim morning continued. People came and asked me who I was. And who were the two men with me, who had both drowned in the car? Did I know their address?
No, I didn’t.
And how had the accident happened?
‘The chauffeur had a blackout,’ I said.
A police sergeant came with a notebook and wrote down the uninformative truth I told him about the accident. I didn’t know Mr Vjoersterod welclass="underline" he was just an acquaintance. He had insisted on taking me in his car to the nursing home where my wife was at present a patient. The chauffeur had had a blackout and the car had run off the road. It had all happened very quickly. I couldn’t remember clearly, because I was afraid I had had a little too much to drink. Mr Vjoersterod had handed me something to smash our way out of the car with, and I had done my best. It was very sad about Mr Vjoersterod and the chauffeur. The man who had fetched them out ought to have a medal. The Sergeant said I would be needed for the inquest, and went away.
The doctor who came to examine me at mid-day sympathised with my various discomforts and said it was extraordinary sometimes how much bruising one could sustain through being thrown about in a somersaulting car. I gravely agreed with him and suggested I went home as soon as possible.
‘Why not?’ he said. ‘If you feel like it.’
I felt like oblivion. I creaked into my rough-dried crumpled shirt and trousers and left my face unshaven, my hair unbrushed and my tie untied, because lifting my arms up for those jobs was too much trouble. Tottered downstairs and got the porter to ring for a taxi, which took me the short distance to Welbeck Street and decanted me on Tonio’s doorstep. Someone had picked up the Leaning Tower and put it back in place. There wasn’t a mark on it. More than could be said for the Rolls. More than could be said for me.
Tonio gave me one penetrating look, an armchair, and a medicine glass of disprin and nepenthe.
‘What’s this made of?’ I asked, when I’d drunk it.
‘Nepenthe? A mixture of opium and sherry.’
‘You’re joking.’
He shook his head. ‘Opium and sherry wine. Very useful stuff. How often do you intend to turn up here in dire need of it?’
‘No more,’ I said. ‘It’s finished.’
He wanted to know what had happened after he had driven Elizabeth away, and I told him, save for the one detail of my having blacked out the chauffeur myself. He was no fool, however. He gave me a twisted smile of comprehension and remarked that I had behaved like a drunken idiot.
After that he fetched my jacket from his bedroom and insisted on driving me and the van back to the flat on the basis that Elizabeth needed me safe and sound, not wrapped round one of the lamp posts I had miraculously missed the night before. I didn’t argue. Hadn’t the energy. He put the van in the garage for me and walked away up the mews to look for a taxi, and I slowly went up the stairs to the flat feeling like a wet dishcloth attempting the Matterhorn.
The flat was stifling hot. I had left all the heaters on the night before and Mrs Woodward hadn’t turned them off. There was a note from her on the table. ‘Is everything all right? Have put milk in fridge. Am very anxious. Mrs W.’
I looked at my bed. Nothing on it but sheets. Remembered all the blankets and pillows were still downstairs on the stretcher in the van. Going down for them was impossible. Pinched Elizabeth’s. Spread one pink blanket roughly on the divan, lay down on it still dressed, pulled another over me, put my head down gingerly on the soft, cool pillow.
Bliss.
The world still spun. And otherwise, far too little to put out flags for. My head still manufactured its own sound track. And in spite of the nepenthe the rest of me still felt fresh from a cement mixer. But now there was luxuriously nothing more to do except drift over the edge of a precipice into a deep black heavenly sleep...