Dick Francis: In the Frame

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.’

‘How’re the stitches?’

‘Intact.’

‘Bully for them.’

‘You’ll both get pneumonia, sitting there,’ Sarah said.

I took off the remnants of sling. All in all, I thought, it had served me pretty well. The adhesive rib-supporting cummerbund was still more or less in place, but had mostly come unstuck through too much immersion. I pulled that off also. That only left the plasters on my leg, and they too, I found, had floated off in the mêtée. The trousers I’d worn over them had windows everywhere.

‘Quite a dust-up,’ Jik observed, pouring water out of his shoes and shivering.

‘We need a telephone,’ I said, doing the same.

‘Give me strength,’ Sarah said. ‘What you need is hot baths, warm clothes, and half a dozen psychiatrists.’

‘How did you get here?’ I asked.

‘How come you aren’t dead?’ Jik said.

‘You first.’

‘I came out of the shop where I’d bought the shampoo,’ Sarah said, ‘and I saw Greene drive past. I nearly died on the spot. I just stood still, hoping he wouldn’t look my way, and he didn’t... The car turned to the left just past where I was... and I could see there were two other people in the back... and I went back to our car and told Jik.’

‘We thought it damn lucky he hadn’t spotted her,’ Jik said, dabbing at persistent scarlet trickles. ‘We went back to the hotel, and you weren’t there, so we asked the girl at the desk if you’d left a message, and she said you’d gone off in a car with some friends... With a man with a droopy moustache.’

‘Friends!’ Sarah said.

‘Anyway,’ Jik continued, ‘Choking down our rage, sorrow, indignation and what not, we thought we’d better look for your body.’

‘Jik!’ Sarah protested.

He grinned. ‘And who was crying?’

‘Shut up.’

‘Sarah hadn’t seen any sign of you in Greene’s car but we thought you might be imitating a sack of potatoes in the boot or something, so we got out the road map, applied our feet to the accelerator, and set off in pursuit. Turned left where Greene had gone, and found ourselves climbing a ruddy mountain.’

I surveyed our extensive grazes and scratches. ‘I think we’d better get some disinfectant,’ I said.

‘We could bath in it.’

‘Good idea.’

I could hear his teeth chattering even above the din of my own.

‘Let’s get out of this wind,’ I said. ‘And bleed in the car.’

We crawled stiffly into the seats. Sarah said it was lucky the upholstery was plastic. Jik automatically took his place behind the wheel.

‘We drove for miles,’ he said. ‘Growing, I may say, a little frantic. Over the top of the mountain and down this side. At the bottom of the hill the road swings round to the left and we could see from the map that it follows the coastline round a whole lot of bays and eventually ends up right back in Wellington.’

He started the car, turned it, and rolled gently ahead. Naked to the waist, wet from there down, and still with beads of blood forming and overflowing, he looked an unorthodox chauffeur. The beard, above, was undaunted.

‘We went that way,’ Sarah said. ‘There was nothing but miles of craggy rocks and sea.’

‘I’ll paint those rocks,’ Jik said.

Sarah glanced at his face, and then at me. She’d heard the fervour in that statement of intent. The golden time was almost over.

‘After a bit we turned back,’ Jik said. ‘There was this bit of road saying “no through road”, so we came down it. No you, of course. We stopped here on this spot and Sarah got out of the car and started bawling her eyes out.’

‘You weren’t exactly cheering yourself,’ she said.

‘Huh,’ he smiled. ‘Anyway, I kicked a few stones about, wondering what to do next, and there were those cartridges.’

‘Those what?’

‘On the edge of the road. All close together. Maybe dropped out of one of those spider-ejection revolvers, or something like that.’

‘When we saw them,’ Sarah said, ‘we thought...’

‘It could have been anyone popping off at seabirds,’ I said. ‘And I think we might go back and pick them up.’

‘Are you serious?’ Jik said.

‘Yeah.’

We stopped, turned again, and retraced our tyre-treads.