Pat Barker: Border Crossing

Tom pushed his face through it, to reach the edge of the mud. Thick, black, oily, stinking mud, not the inert stuff you encounter in country lanes and scrape off your boots at the end of the day, but a sucking quagmire, God knows how many feet deep. Lauren reached out to him.

‘Don’t come in,’ he shouted.

A tree had been washed up on to the bank, and she clung to that, reaching out her hand. He began to inch his way towards her, keeping his weight evenly spread, dragging the boy behind him. The mud clutched at his elbows and knees. Lauren’s spread fingers seemed a mile away, and she wouldn’t have the strength to pull them out even if he managed to reach her. The stench and taste of the mud filled his nose and mouth. He was aware of not wanting to die and, quite specifically, of not wanting to die like this. Heart shaking his chest, he squirmed forward, and found the new ground firmer than he’d thought. Lauren, still clinging to the dead tree, had waded in to her knees. His outstretched fingers closed over hers, and slipped. ‘Get my sleeve,’ she said. He knew he should be keeping the boy’s mouth clear, but there was no way he could do that and drag him out at the same time. Another few inches and he was able to grab Lauren’s coat. The effort exhausted him and he lay still, panting for a while, then started to crawl across her until his hand closed round a branch of the tree. He tested it, found it locked fast in a groyne of the bank, and slowly stood up, hauling the boy behind him out of the mud, which surrendered him with a belch of protest. Tom lay gasping, head and shoulders on the grass, feet trailing in the slime. Then he told himself the job wasn’t done, and turned to look at the boy.

Black and glistening, he lay there, a creature formed, apparently, of mud. Lauren knelt beside him, supporting his head, while Tom raked an index finger round the inside of his mouth, checking that the airways were clear. Then he pressed two fingers against the slimy neck, but his hands were so numb with cold that he couldn’t feel anything. He shifted his hold, dug deeper.

‘Yes?’ Lauren said.

‘No.’

‘Shit.’

Immediately she placed her hands one on top of the other on the boy’s breastbone, and pressed down. Tom tilted the head back and — aware of a momentary frisson of distaste that surprised him — pinched the nose, fastened his mouth over the flaccid lips and blew. Through the spread fingers of his left hand he felt the ribcage rise, then he came up for breath, counted, went down again. The boy’s mouth jerked under his, as Lauren pressed again. He heard her grunt with effort. This time when he came up he looked at her. Her eyes were glazed, inward-looking. Like labour, Tom thought, the irony as sour as the mud on his tongue. The boy looked like a baby: purple face, wet hair, that drowned look of the newborn, cast up on to its mother’s suddenly creased and spongy belly. Distracted by thoughts and memories, Tom breathed too hard, detected from a struggle in the boy’s chest that the rhythm had been lost, checked himself, counted, went down again. His breath snagged in the boy’s throat. He pressed his fingers to the carotid again and thought he detected a flutter. ‘Got him.’

They waited, Lauren’s hands still clasped one on top of the other, ready to start again. One breath, then another. And another. No way of telling whether the colour was coming back. His face was masked by mud.

‘All right,’ Lauren said. ‘Let’s get him over.’

Together they heaved him into the recovery position. She stood up, brushing pebbles from her knees, and looked up and down the path, but the damp fog was enough to keep people indoors and there was nobody to send for help.

‘It’s probably quicker for me to run back to the house,’ she said.

‘No, I’ll go.’

‘I think you’d better stay where you are.’

Something in her voice startled him. He looked down and realized he was wearing a red glove. The blood had dried on his fingers, which felt tight and sticky. He had no memory of injuring himself, and felt no pain, but he must have seemed shaky, because Lauren said, ‘Are you sure you’ll be all right?’

‘Yes, go on.’

He watched her set off down the road, a tall, pale, blonde figure fading rapidly into the mist, which had thickened and lay over everything, smelling metallic, iron perhaps, unless that was the blood on his hand. The boy’s eyes were closed. Tom took his pulse, and then, hobbling over the sharp gravel, retraced his steps to the end of the jetty, and picked up his coat and the little heap of the boy’s clothes. Then he stood still for a moment, looking out over the water. The mud smelt sharp and strong. He was conscious of his skin chafing against his wet clothes, and he was filled with Joy.

The elation drained away as he walked back, tripping over dangling sleeves like a honeymooner in an old-fashioned farce. The cut on his arm had begun to ache. He knelt down beside the boy, wrapped the heavier of the coats round him, then huddled inside the other, muttering under his breath as he rocked to and fro: C’mon, Lauren. C’mon. He was too cold to think or feel anything.

After a few minutes he heard an engine, then voices. He looked up to see two black-clad paramedics negotiating a stretcher down the crumbling steps. They worked their way along the bank, elbowing branches of willow aside. Thank God, he could sign off now, have a hot bath, a whisky, two whiskies, climb back inside his own life.

A stocky woman with strongly marked eyebrows reached him first, followed by a bull-necked man with a ginger moustache, still breathless from the struggle to get the stretcher down the steps.

‘My God,’ the woman said, kneeling down. ‘Wasn’t your Saturday morning, was it, son?’

They worked quickly. Within minutes they’d removed the coat, checked his pulse and breathing, wrapped blankets round him, established that neither Tom nor Lauren knew who he was.

‘We were just going for a walk,’ Lauren said.

‘Lucky for him you were.’

Gently, they transferred him to the stretcher. The small procession filed along the bank. The boy’s head was hidden now, wrapped in the folds of a red blanket: a solitary splash of colour against the waste of black mud. When they reached the steps, Tom pushed his way forward and helped discreetly with the lifting. The mud on the boy’s face had begun to dry and crack, like a ritual mask or the worst case of psoriasis you could imagine.

The ambulance was parked a short way from the steps. They trudged over the gravel and set him down briefly on the ground while they opened the doors. At the last moment, just as they were preparing to slot the stretcher in, the boy stirred and groaned.

‘You’ll be all right,’ Tom said, touching his shoulder, but there was no sign that he’d heard.

‘You want to get that cut looked at,’ the woman said, gesturing at Tom’s arm. ‘We could take you in now, you know, if you liked.’

‘No, it’s all right, thanks. I’ll see my own doctor.’

‘Where are you taking him?’ Lauren asked.

‘The General.’

The engine was running. Tom bundled the boy’s clothes together and handed them up to the woman. The doors slammed shut. Tom and Lauren stood and watched as the ambulance jolted along the path, weaving from side to side to avoid the worst of the potholes, and then, reaching smooth tarmac, accelerated, and disappeared round a bend in the road.

After the ambulance had gone, Tom went back to the jetty and, kneeling at the far end, managed to scoop up enough water to wash off the worst of the mud. A smell came off the river: something cold, fishy and rotten — and then he realized it was coming, not only from the water, but from his clothes, his skin, his hair.