Дик Фрэнсис - Banker

Before I’d even finished the thought his forelegs came crashing down with a hoof so close it brushed my hair; and then again, as if driven beyond endurance, he reared dementedly on his hind legs, the head going up like a reverse thunderbolt towards the sky, the skull meeting the ceiling with the force of a ram. The whole building shook with the impact, and the horse, his voice cut off, fell in a huge collapsing mass across my legs, spasms shuddering through his body, muscles jerking in stiff kicks, the air still ringing with the echoes of extremity.

He was dying in stages, unconscious, reluctant, the brain finished, the nerve messages still passing to convulsing muscles, turmoil churning without direction in stomach and gut, the head already inert on the straw.

An age passed before it was done. Then the heavy body fell flaccid, all systems spent, and lay in perpetual astonishing silence, pinning me beneath.

The relief of finding him dead and myself alive lasted quite a long time, but then, as always happens with the human race, simple gratitude for existence progressed to discontent that things weren’t better.

He had fallen with his spine towards me, his bulk lying across my legs from my knees down; and getting out from under him was proving an impossibility.

The left ankle, which felt broken, protested screechingly at any attempted movement. I couldn’t lift my arm for the same reason. There was acute soreness in my chest, making breathing itself painful and coughing frightful; and the only good thing I could think of was that I was lying on my back and not face down in the straw.

A very long time passed very slowly. The crushing weight of the horse slowly numbed my legs altogether and transferred the chief area of agony to the whole of my left arm, which I might have thought totally mangled if I hadn’t been able to see it dimly lying there looking the same as usual, covered in blue sweater, white cuff slightly showing, hand with clean nails, gold watch on wrist.

Physical discomfort for a while shut out much in the way of thought, but eventually I began to add up memories and ask questions, and the biggest, most immediate question was what would Calder do when he came back and found me alive.

He wouldn’t expect it. No one could really expect anyone to survive being locked in with a mad horse, and the fact that I had was a trick of fate.

I remembered him giving the horse an apple while I’d struggled within the spinning walls to stand up. Giving his apple so routinely, and patting the horse’s neck.

I remembered Calder saying on my first visit that he gave his remedies to horses in hollowed-out apples. But this time it had been no remedy, this time something opposite, this time a drug to make crazy, to turn a normal steel-shod horse into a killing machine.

What had he said when he’d first found me conscious? Those bizarre words... ‘I thought you’d be out. I thought you wouldn’t know...’ And something else... ‘I wish I’d hit you harder, but it seemed enough.’

He had said also that he was sorry, that he wished I hadn’t come... He hadn’t meant, I thought, that I should be aware of it when the horse killed me. At the very least, he hadn’t meant me to see and hear and suffer that death. But also, when he found me awake, it hadn’t prevented him from then giving the apple, although he knew that I would see, would hear, would... suffer.

The horse hadn’t completed the task. When Calder returned, he would make good the deficit. It was certain.

I tried, on that thought, again to slide my legs out, though how much it would have helped if I had succeeded was debatable. It was as excruciating as before, since the numbness proved temporary. I concluded somewhat sadly that dragging a broken ankle from beneath a dead horse was no jolly entertainment, and in fact, given the state of the rest of me, couldn’t be done.

I had never broken any bones before, not even skiing. I’d never been injured beyond the transient bumps of childhood. Never been to hospital, never troubled a surgeon, never slept from anesthetic. For thirty-four years I’d been thoroughly healthy and, apart from chicken-pox and such, never ill. I even had good teeth.

I was unprepared in any way for the onslaught of so much pain all at once, and also not quite sure how to deal with it. All I knew was that when I tried to pull out my ankle the protests throughout my body brought actual tears into my eyes and no amount of theoretical resolution could give me the power to continue. I wondered if what I felt was cowardice. I didn’t much care if it was. I lay with everything stiffening and getting cold and worse, and I’d have given a good deal to be as oblivious as the horse.

The oblong of window at length began to lighten towards the new day; Saturday, June 2nd. Calder would come back and finish the job, and no reasonable pathologist would swear the last blow had been delivered hours after the first. Calder would say in bewilderment, ‘But I had no idea Tim was coming to see me... I was in London for the television... I have no idea how he came to shut himself into one of the boxes... because it’s just possible to do that, you know, if you’re not careful... I’ve no idea why the horse should have kicked him, because he’s a placid old boy, as you can see... the whole thing’s a terrible accident, and I’m shattered... most distressed...’, and anyone would look at the horse from whose bloodstream the crazing drug would have departed and conclude that I’d been pretty unintelligent and also unlucky, and too bad.

Ian Pargetter’s veterinary case had gone to a securer hiding place or to destruction, and there would be only a slight chance left of proving Calder a murderer. Whichever way one considered it, the outlook was discouraging.

I couldn’t be bothered to roll my wrist over to see the time. The sun rose and shone slantingly through the bars with the pale brilliance of dawn. It had to be five o’clock, or after.

Time drifted. The sun moved away. The horse and I lay in intimate silence, dead and half dead; waiting.

A car drove up fast outside and doors slammed.

It will be now, I thought. Now. Very soon.

There were voices in the distance, calling to each other. Female and male. Strangers .

Not Calder’s distinctive, loud, edgy, public voice. Not his at all.

Hope thumped back with a tremendous surge and I called out myself, saying ‘Here... Come here,’ but it was at best a croak, inaudible beyond the door.

Suppose they were looking for Calder, and when they didn’t find him, drove away... I took all possible breath into my lungs and yelled ‘Help... Come here.’

Nothing happened. My voice ricocheted off the walls and mocked me, and I dragged in another grinding lungful and shouted again... and again... and again.

The top half of the door swung outward and let in a dazzle of light, and a voice yelled incredulously, ‘He’s here . He’s in here...’

The bolt on the lower half-door clattered and the daylight grew to an oblong, and against the light three figures appeared, coming forward, concerned, speaking with anxiety and joy and bringing life.

Judith and Gordon and Pen.

Judith was gulping and so I think was I.

‘Thank God,’ Gordon said. ‘Thank God.’

‘You didn’t go home,’ Pen said. ‘We were worried.’

‘Are you all right?’ Judith said.

‘Not really... but everything’s relative. I’ve never been happier, so who cares.’

‘If we put our arms under your shoulders,’ Gordon said, surveying the problem, ‘We should be able to pull you out.’

‘Don’t do that,’ I said.

‘Why not?’

‘One shoulder feels broken. Get a knacker.’

‘My dear Tim,’ he said, puzzled.