Survival of Thomas Ford, The (2 page)

Jimmy flung his door open and got out. Robert fumbled with the handle on his side and stepped onto the steeply angled thick grass.

“We’re the first car up here for years, Robert. Maybe the first vehicle to ever get this high up here without exploding eh?”

Robert stared over at Jimmy. From this angle Jimmy’s face had that bird-like essence. Robert often looked at Jimmy and saw in the combed-up black hair and long nose the impression of something parrot or budgie-like. Now Jimmy was walking back down the rough hill, to the rear of the Volvo. He opened the back of the car and raised it. Robert stayed where he was until Jimmy’s face popped round the edge of the car, grinning. Jimmy didn’t speak, he just gestured with a flick of his head, for Robert to come down to him. Robert arrived beside Jimmy and looked into the back of the car at what Jimmy wanted to show him. It was a big pair of thigh-length leather boots, lying there, violent-looking five-inch heels coming to sharp dagger points. Robert looked at Jimmy. Jimmy just nodded at the boots, twice, not looking at Robert. Jimmy’s eyes were screwed down to tiny slits of mirth, his white teeth gleamed in the refreshed sunlight that was following the short fall of rain. Robert looked back at the boots.

“Aye,” said Jimmy, “they’re Lorna’s.”

“Why’s Lorna let you have them?”

“No man, she doesn’t know I’ve got them. Sound boots eh?”

Jimmy reached into the back of the car, grabbed each boot by the thigh-end of the leather. He withdrew them from the car and dangled them like they were animals he had just caught. The toes and heels swung in the sunlight.

“Lorna’s a big girl,” said Robert.

“Aye.”

Jimmy held out the boots to Robert.

“Want a shot?” said Jimmy.

“Eh?”

“You could lick them or put them on or something. I won’t tell her.”

Robert shook his head. Jimmy sniffed, put the boots back in the car, slammed down the rear door.

“Come on,” Jimmy said.

He started walking up the rough track, past the Volvo. Robert wondered if he should try walking up here without his medication. He needed to get home, eat something, sleep, but he knew better than to suggest that to Jimmy yet. Robert imagined that man and woman in their car, falling through the air, hitting the water, sinking. He felt sick suddenly. But he started walking up the hill, fast, to catch up with Jimmy.

“Aye,” said Jimmy, “no-one comes up here. My dad bought the two acres up here in 1988, well, his dad gave him the money. When I was a boy we lived up here, for two years, in an old fucked-up caravan. But it was alright man. My dad was going to build a house here for us, it just never worked out that way. But he put bricks under the caravan, all round the bottom, and he left a space there, and that’s where our cats lived man, under there, under the caravan. Insulated us through the winter, a whole big gang of cats, breeding and purring under us.”

Robert’s heart was pounding with the effort to keep walking up the steep, rough ground. Now he was seeing Lorna, wearing those boots, her big feline face looking back at him from darkness. They turned another corner, passing the low ruins of an ancient building on the right. Robert could hear the rushing flow of some stream near-by. All around, the trees were thickly packed, high and silver. The huge hill of forest stretched up ahead of them, seemingly limitless.

“Aye,” said Jimmy, “there’s the caravan, see? A wreck now, like, but still here.”

Through the trees Robert saw some white and blue form, in the rear of an area that had once been cleared and levelled. They walked past trees, over rough clumps of earth, then Jimmy reached out with a long-fingered hand. He touched the rotted aluminium shell of the caravan.

“Two years we lived in there,” said Jimmy.

He spat on the grass and leaf-covered earth. Robert looked down, saw the bricks carefully laid beneath the caravan, and the gap there like Jimmy had said, for cats to go in and out. Jimmy sniffed.

“They might be looking for the Volvo,” he said. “That lorry driver might have seen the license plate clear, or maybe not. But there’s lots of red Volvos on the road eh?”

Robert looked at Jimmy, then back at the caravan.

“We better stay here tonight,” said Jimmy.

“No Jimmy, I’m no well enough man.”

“Not in the caravan,” said Jimmy. “No, the car. We’ll be alright. I’ve got some cans of Coke and Mars Bars and that. I’ll get you home in the morning. No too early, but half eight or something, when folk are headed for work.”

“I need my medication, Jimmy.”

“Fuck, you’ll last ’til morning.”

Jimmy walked away, back towards the car. Robert felt hollow, very light, as he stood alone in the clearing by the wrecked caravan. None of it felt real. Not since that man and woman went into the water. The doctor had told Robert to avoid stress. Robert’s mother had told him to avoid Jimmy. But it was boring, at the house, just watching TV or on the computer. Robert put his hands deep in his coat pockets, started walking down the hill behind Jimmy.

They sat together silently in the car, facing the wrong way, their backs to the stunning view of the water below. Robert chewed a Mars Bar and watched the surface of the loch, reflected in Jimmy’s driver’s mirror. He tried not to picture the blue car, the man and the woman who Jimmy said must be dead now at the bottom of the water. Jimmy sipped Coke and watched Robert out of an eye’s sly edge.

“Aye,” said Jimmy, “there was a programme on about the loch the other day, on Freeview eh? You no see it?
The Loch Ness Monster and the Aliens
it was called. Going on about how Nessie might not be a dinosaur, but some creature left behind like, by aliens, to guard a space ship at the bottom of the loch eh? Maybe those two in the
Toyota
will get rescued by aliens like, at the bottom of the loch see? So no need to worry.”

Jimmy gripped a Mars Bar in his hands, ripped the wrapper open, broke it in half, put the half in his mouth. Robert looked away from the mirror as Jimmy said,

“Aye, or maybe the car just went right down Nessie’s throat at the bottom of the fall eh? Maybe the cunts never even hit the water…just…
gulp!

Robert watched Jimmy’s mouth open wide, the teeth and tongue all coated in Mars Bar nougat and chocolate. Then Jimmy snapped his jaws shut, chewed mightily once, swallowed. Robert looked away, out the windscreen. He sipped Coke.

Robert’s eyes opened on absolute darkness. He heard his shivering breathing. He was cold. He clenched his thighs and buttocks tight, trying to calm himself. He did not understand where he was or why his body was tilted at an angle. Then he remembered he was in the car on the steep hillside, with Jimmy. He understood that he must have fallen asleep and now it was late, it was night.

“Jimmy?” said Robert.

But he had already known somehow that he was alone in the car. He heard a rustling from somewhere ahead, up the hill, in the trees maybe. His heart started to pump hard. The breath was thin in his throat now. Everything was utter blackness, the most complete darkness that Robert could remember experiencing. It must be the trees that were doing it. No starlight, no moonlight, no light reaching this hill track from the village at the car’s back. Robert knew he was cut off from everything here, except Jimmy, but where was Jimmy? A twig or branch snapped loud, from ahead, up the hill. Jimmy must be out there. Now the real fear hit Robert, somewhere in the guts, a wave of chemical wizardry that cleared his brain in an instant. He reached out with his right hand, leaned over, fumbled with the console by the steering wheel, flicked a switch. He heard the windscreen wipers start up, making a dry, abrasive sweep of the glass. He flicked that switch back, felt to the left, found the headlight switch, pressed it up to full-beam.

The effect was instant and incredible. Unnatural white light flooded the rough hillside above the Volvo. There was Jimmy’s black hair and eyes, his parrot features, ten metres up the hill from the car. Robert blinked. Jimmy did not react to the sudden bath of light. He just kept on doing the circular dance he had been doing. Perhaps he had entered some deep trance where he did not even know he was illuminated by the Volvo headlights.

Robert stared up the hill. Jimmy was entirely naked apart from the thigh-high leather boots that were just a little too big for him, he didn’t have Lorna’s breadth of thigh. Jimmy raised each booted leg alternately, as he danced. The long, thin heels dug holes in the rough hillside as each leg came down. Robert saw Jimmy’s dart-like erection and looked away.

Just at that moment a white butterfly flashed through the air, half-way between the car headlights and Jimmy. Robert tried to follow it as it made its own dance through the air and light. It went up high, circled, dived at the grass, whirled and hovered, then flew directly at the Volvo’s right headlight. The butterfly swerved just before the headlamp, veered up crazily, skimmed the bonnet and pressed itself to the windscreen, inches from Robert’s staring eyes. It stayed there for a few heartbeats, wings splayed. Robert felt that it was watching him. Then it shifted, flew upwards and vanished.

“I thought he was awake earlier. Just after rounds. He did that thing where his eyes opened, you know?”

“Aye.”

“But I think he was just dry, so I gave him a suck on the lollipop. Then he was quiet.”

“Can you reach over to the bin with this, Jill?”

Thomas Ford heard a loud crashing sound near his head.

“Thanks. Well, you can never be sure, Jill. It’s the human body. Nothing is predictable.”

Thomas Ford opened his eyes on bright light, closed them again. The pain. Deep in his eyes. He couldn’t feel himself properly. Something disconnected.

“No, look, there’s his hand twitching. He hasn’t done it like that before.”

Thomas Ford felt a presence at his side, a soap-smell.

“Thomas. Thomas, are you awake? Can you hear me?”

Thomas Ford tried to speak. Nothing happened. He stuck his tongue out and licked at his lips.

“See?”

“Aye. Keep talking to him. I’ll get a doctor.”

Thomas Ford learned that he’d been unconscious in the Intensive Therapy Unit for six weeks and four days. The first few days he had done no breathing for himself, only the ventilator kept him alive. Dr Lennox told him that he’d started breathing on the morning of the fifth day, just before they would have had to send him to surgery for a tracheostomy, a tube from the ventilator into his neck, to replace the tube that had gone down his throat. Then there had been the problem of Thomas not waking up, not for six weeks, but he was awake now as Dr Lennox tested Thomas’ reflexes, asked him questions which Thomas could nod or shake his head to.

“Do you remember the accident Thomas? Would you rather I call you Mr Ford? Or Tom? Or is Thomas fine? Thomas? Alright then. Do you remember the accident Thomas?”

There was a nurse standing at the other side of the bed and Thomas felt her eyes on him. He looked up at her. She smiled. It was a warm expression, involving her eyes and mouth and cheeks. Her cheeks seemed to perk and redden with the smile. Thomas swallowed and looked back at the doctor. He blinked again and saw the windscreen shattered like a coating of frost. Thomas already knew that Lea must be dead or she would be here, or at least they would have told him she was alright. He was trying to remember what had happened after the windscreen shattered and the cold water had come in. But his memory was frozen, as though by the water itself. He had no idea why he was alive here, how he had survived if Lea had not. Thomas opened his mouth wide, meaning to speak. He shook his head. With the doctor and the nurse staring at him, Thomas felt the hot tears come out of his eyes, pressure shoving them out and now they wouldn’t stop. He felt the doctor’s hand on his shoulder.

“It’s alright Thomas.”

The heavy metal clang near his head woke him up. It was the bin. His bed was beside the bin and the nurses would lift the lid, drop something in, and then let the lid go so it landed hard and woke Thomas regularly through the night. Night and day were indistinguishable under the fluorescent lighting in the ITU. No, it was night. The young red-haired man was on duty and he would sit on a high chair and read sometimes at night. Thomas had tried to read the cover of the book, the title, but it was too far away or else his eyesight had gone. It was night and he was alive and Lea was dead and none of them would ask outright how she had died and he had lived. He knew that it was perhaps the seatbelt. She had not undone her belt. She had slapped his hands away when he had tried to lean over and undo it for her. Then he had sat back, like a stupid bastard thinking he had all the time in the world, and he had undone his own belt just as the water had rushed in to prove that there was no time left at all. No time for Lea anyway.

When the doctor finally told Thomas formally that Lea was dead, the doctor seemed uneasy as Thomas only stared back, saying nothing, showing nothing.

The next morning the police arrived with questions. Thomas was surprised that Lea’s parents had not come here to ask him any. Surely they must have wanted to. Someone must have stopped them. Maybe the police had the right to ask questions first.

“I don’t remember leaving the car,” said Thomas. “I wouldn’t have left her.”

“Do you remember what happened just before the accident, Mr Ford?”

It was a detective in a tweed jacket, about forty. There was a younger woman in her thirties, watching and listening carefully.

“We were coming back from Drumnadrochit. I’d taken Lea to show her this old, abandoned track on the hill there, at Ardlarich. We turned the corner and there was a lorry there, and right beside it a car that was overtaking the lorry. The road was full. I could see the car was too far up to slow in time and get behind the lorry. There was nowhere to go. Except off the road. I steered to the right hard and accelerated and took us off the road.”

“Into the loch.”

“Aye.”

“And that would have been some drop first, before you hit the water?”

“Aye.”

“Then you were in the water.”

Thomas nodded. The woman was staring at him. Just doing her job, he told himself.

“We didn’t sink right away. I could see the sky through the windscreen. Lea, she was panicking. I tried to help her undo her seatbelt but she slapped my hands away.”

“She slapped you?”

“My hands. She didn’t mean to. She was terrified.”

The hot sensation was in Thomas’ stomach. His lungs and shoulders felt hot now too, itchy. Like some poisonous plant was stinging him there. Thomas swallowed and shook his head. He looked down.

“Mr Ford,” he heard the woman say.

Thomas looked up at her blue eyes.

“What colour was the car, Mr Ford?”

That’s right. The colour of the car. Thomas had never thought of that. He remembered the car, the two heads above the bonnet.

“The bonnet was red,” said Thomas. “The man in the passenger seat was young, his face sort of square. The driver had black hair I think. The car was red. I can’t remember what colour the lorry was.”

The man was writing furiously in a black notebook.

“That’s alright Mr Ford. We know the lorry colour,” said the woman.

The man sniffed and cleared his throat. The woman shifted suddenly, some odd flinch. The man said,

“Mr Ford, the fact of the matter is that the lorry driver died at the scene. He had a heart attack and fell by the roadside and died before anyone could reach him with assistance. Now, the problem that this creates for us, and in a way for your late wife’s family who have an awful lot of unanswered questions they want us to pursue with you, the problem now is that your account of the accident, the presence of this red car and two occupants, this is uncorroborated.”

Thomas leaned back in the bed, stared at the high white ceiling.

“It’s not that we in any way doubt your word, Mr Ford. It’s just a technical problem, with accounts and evidence. This sort of thing happens with us all the time.”

“I don’t trust my own memory,” said Thomas Ford. “It just seems like a dream. The red car bonnet and the two heads. I only saw them for a second, then we were falling to the water. The head in the passenger seat was sort of square, like a boxer, young. The driver was young too, very black hair and black eyes. Sort of like a bird.”

“What Mr Ford?”

It is the woman speaking. Thomas Ford looks at her eyes again.

“That’s what I see when I remember him, a black-eyed guy looking like a bird, driving a red car. It would probably be better if I hadn’t told you. It sounds crazy.”

“No, Mr Ford,” said the man. “Any detail might be important.”