He pulled the door towards him, to shut it, and switched off the light.
Human bodies were not designed to remain for hours in one position. Even in sleep, they regularly shifted. Joints bent and unbent, muscles contracted and relaxed.
No human body was designed to lie as I was lying, with constant strain already running up through legs, stomach, chest, shoulders and arms. Within five minutes, while they were still there, it had become in any normal way intolerable. One would not have stayed in that attitude from choice.
When they had gone, I simply could not visualise the time ahead. My imagination short-circuited. Blanked out. What did one do if one couldn’t bear something, and had to?
The worst of the spit slid slowly off my face, but the rest remained, sticky and itching. I blinked my eyes wide open in the dark and thought of being at home in my own quiet bed, as I’d hoped to be that night.
I realised that I was having a surprising amount of difficulty in breathing. One took breathing so much for granted; but the mechanics weren’t all that simple. The muscles between the ribs pulled the ribcage out and upwards, allowing air to rush down to the lungs. It wasn’t, so to speak, the air going in which expanded the chest, but the expansion of the chest which drew in the air. With the ribcage pulled continuously up, the normal amount of muscle movement was much curtailed.
I still wore a collar and tie. I would choke, I thought.
The other bit that breathed for you was the diaphragm, a nice hefty floor of muscle between the heart-lung cavity and the lower lot of guts. Thank God for diaphragms, I thought. Long may they reign. Mine chugged away, doing its best.
If I passed the night in delirium, I thought, it would be a good idea. If I’d studied Yoga... mind out of body. Too late for that. I was always too late. Never prepared.
Stabs of strain afflicted both my shoulders. Needles. Swords.
Think of something else.
Boats. Think of boats. Big expensive boats, built to high standards in top British boat yards, sailing away out of Britain to ship-brokers in Antibes and Antigua.
Huge floating assets in negotiable form. None of the usual bureaucratic trouble about transferring money abroad in huge amounts. No dollar premiums to worry about, or other such hurdles set up by grasping governments. Just put your money in fibreglass and ropes and sails, and float away on it on the tide.
The man at Goldenwave had told me they never lacked for orders. Boats, he said, didn’t deteriorate like aeroplanes or cars. Put a quarter of a million into a boat, and it would most likely increase in value, as years went by. Sell the boat, bank the money, and hey presto, all nicely, tidily, and legally done.
There were frightful protests from my arms and legs. I couldn’t move them in any way more than an inch: could give them no respite. It really was, I thought, an absolutely bloody revenge.
No use reflecting that it was I who had stirred up Powys and Ownslow and Glitberg. Poke a rattlesnake with a stick, don’t be surprised if he bites you. I’d gone to find out if it was they who’d abducted me, and found out instead what they’d done with all the missing money.
Paid for boats. The mention of boats had produced the menace, not the mention of abduction. Boats paid for by the taxpayers, the electronics firm, and the Nantuckets of New York. Gone with the four winds. Exchanged for a pile of a nice strong currency, lying somewhere in a foreign bank, waiting for the owners to stroll along and collect.
Trevor linked them all. Maybe the boats had originally been his idea. I hadn’t thought of William Finch knowing Connaught Powys: certainly not as well as he clearly did. But through Trevor, along the track from embezzlement to ship building... along the way, they had met.
The pains in my arms and legs intensified, and there was a great shaft of soreness up my chest.
I thought: I don’t know how to face this. I don’t know how. It isn’t possible.
Trevor, I thought. Surely Trevor wouldn’t have left me like this... not like this... if he had realised. Trevor, who had been so distressed at my dishevelled appearance in the police station, who as far as I could see had really cared about my health.
Ye Gods, I thought, I’d go gladly back to the sail locker... to the van... to almost anywhere one could think of.
Some of my muscles were trembling. Would the fibres simply collapse, I wondered. Would the muscles just tear apart; the ligaments disconnect from the bones? Oh for God’s sake, I told myself, you’ve got enough to worry about, without that. Think of something cheerful.
I couldn’t, off-hand. Even cheerful subjects like Tapestry were no good. I couldn’t see me being able to ride in the Whitbread Gold Cup.
Minutes dragged and telescoped, stretching to hours. The various separate pains gradually coalesced into an all pervading fire. Thought became fragmentary, and then, I reckon, more or less stopped.
The unbearable was there, inside, savage and consuming. Unbearable... there was no such word.
By morning I’d gone a long way into an extreme land I hadn’t known existed. A different dimension, where the memory of ordinary pain was a laugh.
An internal place; a heavy core. The external world had retreated. I no longer felt as if I were any particular shape: had no picture of hands or feet, or where they were. Everything was crimson and dark.
I existed as a mass. Unified. A single lump of matter, of a weight and fire like the centre of the earth.
There was nothing else. No thought. Just feeling, and eternity.
A noise dragged me back.
People talking. Voices in the house.
I saw that daylight had returned and was trickling in round the edge of the curtains. I tried to call out, and could not.
Footsteps crossed and recrossed the hall, and at last, at last, someone opened the door, and switched on the light.
Two women came in. I stared at them, and they stared at me: on both sides with disbelief.
They were Hilary Pinlock, and Jossie.
Hilary cut through the red checked table napkins with a small pair of scissors from her handbag.
I tried to sit up and behave with sangfroid, but my stretched muscles wouldn’t respond to directions. I ended somehow with my face against her chest and my throat heaving with unstoppable half-stifled groans.
‘It’s all right, Ro. It’s all right, my dear, my dear.’
Her thin arms held me close and tight, rocking me gently, taking into herself the impossible pain, suffering for me like a mother. Mother, sister, lover, child... a woman who crossed the categories and left them blurred.
I had a mouthful of blouse button and was comforted to my soul.
She put an arm round my waist and more or less carried me to the nearest chair. Jossie stood looking on, her face filled with a greater shock than finding me there.
‘Do you realise,’ she said, ‘that Dad’s gone?’
I didn’t feel like saying much.
‘Did you hear?’ Jossie said. Her voice was tight, unfriendly. ‘Dad’s gone. Walked out. Left all the horses. Do you hear? He’s cleared half the papers out of the office and burned them in the incinerator, and this lady says it is because my father is an embezzler, and you... you are going to give him away to the Nantuckets, and the police.’
The big eyes were hard. ‘And Trevor, too. Trevor. I’ve known him all my life. How could you? And you knew... you knew on Sunday... all day... what you were going to do. You took me out, and you knew you were going to ruin all our lives. I think you’re hateful.’
Hilary took two strides, gripped her by her shoulders, and positively shook her.
‘Stop it, you silly girl. Open your silly eyes. He did all this for you.’
Jossie tore herself free. ‘What do you mean?’ she demanded.