after them. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said.
Ambulance men began feeding me feet first into their vehicle.
I said to Christopher, ‘Do you want your mother to come and take you home?’
He shook his head. ‘We want to stay in the bus.’
The others nodded silently.
‘I’ll phone her,’ I said.
Toby said urgently, ‘No, Dad. We want to stay in the bus.’ His anxiety level, I saw, was still far too high. Anything that would reduce it had to be right.
‘Play marooned, then,’ I said.
They all nodded, Toby, looking relieved, included.
The doctor, writing notes to give the ambulance men to take with me asked, ‘What’s play marooned?’
‘Making do on their own for a bit.’
He smiled over his notes. ‘Lord of the Flies?’
‘I never let it get that far.’
He gave the notes to one of the ambulance men and glanced back at the boys. ‘Good kids.’
‘I’ll look after them,’ Roger said again. ‘Be glad to.’
‘I’ll phone you,’ I said. ‘And thanks.’
The busy ambulance men shut the door on me, and Mrs Gardner, I found later, made fruit cake for the boys until they couldn’t face another slice.
Judged solely as a medical casualty I was fairly low in priority in the hospital’s emergency department but all too high on the local media’s attention list. The airwaves were buzzing, it seemed, with ‘terrorist bombing of racecourse’. I begged the use of a telephone from some half-cross, half-riveted nurses and got through to my wife.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ she demanded, her voice high. ‘Some ruddy newspaper just phoned me to ask if I knew my husband and sons had been blown up. Can you believe it?’
‘Amanda…’
‘You obviously haven’t been blown up.’
‘Which paper?’
‘What does it matter? I can’t remember.’
‘I’ll complain. Anyway, just listen. Someone with a grudge put some explosive in Stratton Park racecourse, and yes, the stands did slightly blow up –’
She interrupted. ‘The boys. Are they all right?’
‘Unharmed. Totally all right. Only Toby was anywhere near, and some fireman carried him out. I promise you, none of them has a scratch.’
‘Where are you now?’
‘The boys are with the racecourse manager and his wife –’
‘Aren’t they with you? Why aren’t they with you?’
‘I’ve just… um. I’ll be back with them in no time. I’ve got a couple of grazes that the local hospital’s putting stuff on, then I’m going back to them. Christopher will phone you.’
Every evening, from the mobile phone in the bus, the boys talked to their mother; family routine on expeditions.
Amanda took a bit of placating as well as reassuring. It was obviously my fault, she said, that the children had been put in danger. I didn’t deny it. I asked her if she wanted them home.
‘What? No, I didn’t say that. You know I’ve a lot of things planned this weekend. They’d better stay with you. Just take more care of them, that’s all.’
‘Yes.’
‘So what do I say if any other newspapers ring up?’
‘Say you talked to me and everything’s fine. You might see something about it on television, there were news cameras on the racecourse.’
‘Do take more care, Lee.’
‘Yes.’
‘And don’t phone this evening. I’m taking Jamie over to Shelly’s for the night. It’s her birthday dinner, remember?’
Shelly was her sister. ‘Right,’ I said.
We said goodbye; always polite. Acid, by effort, diluted.
The variety of gashes and grazes that I had minimised as much as possible eventually got uncovered and tut-tutted over. Dust and rubble got washed out, impressive splinters were removed with tweezers and rows of clips got inserted with local anaesthetic.
‘You’ll be sore when this wears off,’ the stitcher cheerfully told me. ‘Some of these wounds are deceptively deep. Are you sure you won’t stay here overnight? I’m certain we can find a bed for you.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, ‘but no thanks.’
‘Lie on your stomach for a few days then. Come back in a week and we’ll take the clips out. You should be healed by then.’
‘Thanks a lot,’ I said.
‘Keep on taking the antibiotics.’
The hospital dredged up an ambulance to take me back to Roger Gardner’s house (by the back road, at my insistence) and with a bit of help from a borrowed walking frame and dressed in a blue dressing gown/robe from the hospital shop, I made the end of the journey upright.
The bus, I gratefully noted, had been driven down and parked outside the tidied garage. Its five younger inhabitants were in the Gardners’ sitting room watching television.
‘Dad!’ they exclaimed, springing up, then, at the sight of the walking aid to the elderly, falling uncertainly silent.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘we will have