LITMIR.BIZ

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agile hands, with their acute flexion at the wrists, were already tracing out the contours of a face. Like the two boys, she seemed to cross reality at an angle. I lifted her and held her against my chest, partly to confirm that her small hands could not have bruised my ribs. Her thin breath panted into my face as her fingers raced like excited moths over my cheeks and forehead, poked into my mouth and nostrils. I almost enjoyed the sharp pain as she touched my lips. I held her tightly, squeezing her hips against my abdomen.

      The mongol was tugging at my wrists, alarmed eyes under his overloaded forehead. The girl cried out, shaking her blind face away from my lips.

      ‘Blake! Put her down!’ Dr Miriam pulled the child from my arms. She stared at me in a shocked way, unsure whether this was how I ordin- arily behaved. Fifty yards away, Father Wingate was crossing the park. He had stopped under the trees, the canvas chair and wicker hamper in his strong hands, watching me as if I were some kind of escaped criminal. I knew that he had seen me seize the girl.

      Dr Miriam lowered the child to the ground. ‘David, Jamie – take Rachel with you.’

      The girl tottered away from me, safe within the mongol’s protective gaze. Clearly he was unable to decide whether Rachel had really been frightened by me. They ran off into the park together. Rachel’s hands were tracing out the profiles of some extraordinary face.

      ‘What did she see?’

      ‘By the looks of it, a kind of bizarre bird.’

      Dr Miriam stood between me and the children, making sure that I did not take it into my head to run after them. My arms were still shaking from the effort of embracing the child. I knew that Dr Miriam was well aware of the brief sexual frenzy that had gripped me, and half-expected me to wrestle her into the back seat of the nearest car. How fiercely would she have fought me off? She stayed close to me when we entered the clinic, wary that I might assault one of the elderly patients shuffling into the waiting room.

      But once we were in her office she deliberately turned her back to me, almost inviting me to hold her waist. She was still confused by the excitement of my crash-landing. For all her modesty, as she listened to my heart and lungs her hands never left me. I watched her in an almost dream-like way while she pressed my shoulders against the X-ray machine. The exquisite mole like a beautiful cancer below her left ear, the handsome black hair swept back out of harm’s way, the unsettled eyes ruled by her high forehead, the blue vein in her temple that pulsed with some kind of erratic emotion – I wanted to examine all these at my leisure, savour the scent of her armpits, save for ever in a phial hung around my neck the tag of loose skin on her lip. Far from being a stranger, I felt that I had known her for years.

      She brought me the spare suit she had promised and watched me while I changed, staring frankly at my naked body and half-erect penis. I pulled on the black worsted trousers and jacket, the dry-cleaned suit of a priest or funeral mute, fitted with unusual pockets designed to conceal a secret rosary or the bereaved’s tips.

      When she returned with the developed X-ray plates she handed me a pair of tennis shoes.

      ‘I’ll look like an undertaker out for a quiet run.’ I waited as she examined these photographs of my skull. ‘For a year I was a medical student. Who owns the copyright? They may be valuable.’

      ‘We do. They probably are. Thank God there’s nothing there. Will you come back for the aeroplane?’

      I paused at the door, glad that she wanted to see me again. Avoiding my eyes, she was gently rubbing her fingers, stroking the faint traces of my skin. But was all this some kind of unconscious ruse? I knew that I had identified this young doctor with my safe escape from the Cessna. How far was my attraction to her self-serving, the grave’s-love of an infatuated patient? All the same, I wanted to warn her of the danger threatening this small town. However grotesque, my vision of the imminent holocaust had gained a powerful conviction in my mind. Perhaps in moments of extreme crisis we stepped outside the planes of everyday time and space and were able to catch a glimpse of all events that had ever occurred in both past and future.

      ‘Miriam, wait. Before I go … has there ever been a major disaster in Shepperton? A factory explosion, or a crashing airliner?’

      When she shook her head, looking at me with a suddenly professional interest, I pointed through the window at the calm sky, at the park filled with bland summer light where the crippled children played, circling each other like aircraft with outstretched arms. ‘After the crash I had a premonition that there was going to be some kind of disaster – perhaps even a nuclear accident. There was an enormous glow in the sky, an intense light. Come with me …’ I tried to take her arm. ‘I’ll look after you.’

      She placed her hands on my chest, her fingers overlaying the bruise-marks. She had not revived me. ‘It’s nothing, Blake, nothing unusual. It’s common for the dying to see bright lights. At the end the brain tries to rally itself, to free itself from the body. I suppose it’s where we get our ideas of the soul.’

      ‘I wasn’t dying!’ Her fingers stung my ribs. I was tempted to seize her by the neck, force her to take a long look at my still erect penis. ‘Miriam, look at me – I swam from the aircraft!’

      ‘Yes, you did, Blake. We saw you.’ She touched me again, reminding herself that I was still with her. Confused by her feelings for me, she said: ‘Blake, while you were trapped in the cockpit I actually prayed for you. We weren’t sure you were alone. Just before you escaped there seemed to be two people there.’

      I remembered the deep light that suffused the air above the town, as if some fiercely incandescent vapour had been about to ignite. Had there been someone else in the Cessna’s cockpit? Just beyond the margin of my vision there seemed to be the figure of a seated man.

      ‘I swam from the aircraft,’ I repeated doggedly. ‘Some fool gave me artificial respiration. Who was it!’

      ‘No one. I’m certain.’ She straightened the clutter of pens on her desk, so many confusing pointers, watching me with the same expression I had seen on her mother’s face. I realized that she was attracted to me but at the same time almost disgusted, as if fascinated by something in an open grave.

      ‘Miriam …’ I wanted to reassure her.

      But in a sudden access of lucidity she came towards me, buttoning her white coat.

      ‘Blake, haven’t you grasped yet what happened?’ She stared into my eyes, willing a dull pupil to get the point. ‘When you were trapped in the cockpit you were under water for more than eleven minutes. We all thought you’d died.’

      ‘Had I?’

      ‘Yes!’ Almost shouting, she angrily struck my hand. ‘You died …! And then came alive again!’

       6

       Trapped by the Motorway

      ‘The girl’s mad!’

      I slammed the clinic door behind me.

      Across the park a white flag signalled an urgent message. The section of the Cessna’s tailplane hung from the upper boughs of the dead elm, whipped to and fro by the wind. Fortunately the police had still failed to find me, and none of the tennis players was showing any interest in the downed aircraft. I drummed my fists on the roofs of the parked cars, annoyed with Miriam St Cloud – this likeable but confused woman doctor showed all the signs of turning into a witch. I decided to lose myself among the afternoon housewives and catch the first bus back to the airport.

      At the same time I found that I was laughing out loud at myself – the abortive flight had been a double fiasco. Not only had I crashed and nearly killed myself, but the few witnesses who might have tried to save me had developed a vested interest in believing that I had died. The notion of my death in some deranged way fulfilled

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