Greene was standing there, aiming the pistol, shooting to kill.
15
Thirty to thirty-five yards is a long way for a pistol; but Greene seemed so close.
I could see his drooping moustache and the lanky hair blowing in the wind. I could see his eyes and the concentration in his body. He was standing with his legs straddled and his arms out straight ahead, aiming the pistol with both hands.
I couldn’t hear the shots above the crash of the waves on the rocks. I couldn’t see him squeeze the trigger. But I did see the upward jerk of the arms at the recoil, and I reckoned it would be just plain silly to give him a stationary target.
I was, in all honesty, pretty frightened. I must have looked as close to him as he to me. He must have been quite certain he would hit me, even though his tenderness with the pistol in the car had made me think he was not an expert.
I turned and stumbled a yard or two onwards, though the going became even rougher, and the relentless fight against current and waves and rocks was draining me to dish-rags.
There would have to be an end to it.
Have to be.
I stumbled and fell on a jagged edge and gashed the inside of my right forearm, and out poured more good red life. Christ, I thought, I must be scarlet all over, leaking from a hundred tiny nicks.
It gave me at least an idea.
I was waist-deep in dangerous green water, with most of the shore-line rocks now submerged beneath the surface. Close to one side a row of bigger rock-teeth ran out from the shore like a nightmarish breakwater, and I’d shied away from it, because of the even fiercer waves crashing against it. But it represented the only cover in sight. Three stumbling efforts took me nearer; and the current helped.
I looked back at Greene. He was reloading the gun. Wexford was practically dancing up and down beside him, urging him on; and Beetle-brows, from his disinclination to chase me, probably couldn’t swim.
Greene slapped shut the gun and raised it again in my direction.
I took a frightful chance.
I held my fast-bleeding forearm close across my chest: and I stood up, swaying in the current, visible to him from the waist up.
I watched him aim, with both arms straight. It would take a marksman, I believed, to hit me with that pistol from that distance, in that wind. A marksman whose arms didn’t jerk upwards when he fired.
The gun was pointing straight at me.
I saw the jerk as he squeezed the trigger.
For an absolutely petrifying second I was convinced he had shot accurately; but I didn’t feel or see or even hear the passing of the flying death.
I flung my own right arm wide and high, and paused there facing him for a frozen second, letting him see that most of the front of my shirt was scarlet with blood.
Then I twisted artistically and fell flat, face downwards, into the water; and hoped to God he would think he had killed me.
The sea wasn’t much better than bullets. Nothing less than extreme fear of the alternative would have kept me down in it, tumbling and crashing against the submerged razor edges like a piece of cheese in a grater.
The waves themselves swept me towards the taller breakwater teeth, and with a fair amount of desperation I tried to get a grip on them, to avoid being alternately sucked off and flung back, and losing a lot more skin.
There was also the problem of not struggling too visibly. If Wexford or Greene saw me threshing about, all my histrionics would have been in vain.
As much by luck as trying I found the sea shoving me into a wedge-shaped crevice between the rocks, from where I was unable to see the shore. I clutched for a hand-hold, and then with bent knees found a good foothold, and clung there precariously while the sea tried to drag me out again. Every time the wave rolled in it tended to float my foot out of the niche it was lodged in, and every time it receded it tried to suck me with it, with a syphonic action. I clung, and see-sawed in the chest-high water, and clung, and see-sawed, and grew progressively more exhausted.
I could hear nothing except the waves on the rocks. I wondered forlornly how long Wexford and Greene would stay there, staring out to sea for signs of life. I didn’t dare to look, in case they spotted my moving head.
The water was cold, and the grazes gradually stopped bleeding, including the useful gash on my forearm. Absolutely nothing, I thought, like having a young strong healthy body. Absolutely nothing like having a young strong healthy body on dry land with a paintbrush in one hand and a beer in the other, with the nice friendly airliners thundering overhead and no money to pay the gas.
Fatigue, in the end, made me look. It was either that or cling like a limpet until I literally fell off nervelessly, too weak to struggle back to life.
To look, I had to leave go. I tried to find other holds, but they weren’t as good. The first out-going wave took me with it in no uncertain terms; and its incoming fellow threw me back.
In the tumbling interval I caught a glimpse of the shore.
The road, the cliffs, the quarry, as before. Also the car. Also people.
Bloody damn, I thought.
My hand scrambled for its former hold. My fingers were cramped, bleeding again, and cold. Oh Christ, I thought. How much longer.
It was a measure of my tiredness that it took the space of three in and out waves for me to realise that it wasn’t Wexford’s car, and it wasn’t Wexford standing on the road.
If it wasn’t Wexford, it didn’t matter who it was.
I let go again of the hand-hold and tried to ride the wave as far out of the crevice as possible, and to swim away from the return force flinging me back. All the other rocks were still there under the surface. A few yards was a heck of a long way.
I stood up gingerly, feeling for my footing more carefully than on the outward flight, and took a longer look at the road.
A grey-white car. A couple beside it, standing close, the man with his arms round the girl.
A nice quiet spot for it, I thought sardonically. I hoped they would drive me somewhere dry.
They moved apart and stared out to sea.
I stared back.
For an instant it seemed impossible. Then they started waving their arms furiously and ran towards the water; and it was Sarah and Jik.
Throwing off his jacket, Jik ploughed into the waves with enthusiasm, and came to a smart halt as the realities of the situation scraped his legs. All the same, he came on after a pause towards me, taking care.
I made my slow way back. Even without haste driving like a fury, any passage through those wave-swept rocks was ruin to the epidermis. By the time we met we were both streaked with red.
We looked at each other’s blood. Jik said ‘Jesus’ and I said ‘Christ’, and it occurred to me that maybe the Almighty would think we had been calling for His help a bit too often.
Jik put his arm round my waist and I held on to his shoulders, and together we stumbled slowly to land. We fell now and then. Got up gasping. Reclutched, and went on.
He let go when we reached the road. I sat down on the edge of it with my feet pointing out to sea, and positively drooped.
‘Todd,’ Sarah said anxiously. She came nearer. ‘Todd.’ Her voice was incredulous. ‘Are you laughing?’
‘Sure.’ I looked up at her, grinning. ‘Whyever not?’
Jik’s shirt was torn, and mine was in tatters. We took them off and used them to mop up the grazes which were still persistently oozing. From the expression on Sarah’s face, we must have looked crazy.
‘What a damn silly place to bathe,’ Jik said.
‘Free back-scratchers,’ I said.
He glanced round behind me. ‘Your Alice Springs dressing has come off.’