Marjorie said.’ I nodded. ‘It’s stopped by now, I should think.’
‘But…’ He fell silent.
‘I’ll go back for running repairs,’ I promised. ‘Though God knows when. They keep one waiting so long.’
He said diffidently, ‘One of the racecourse doctors would be quicker. I could ask him for you, if you like. He’s very obliging.’
‘Yes,’ I said tersely.
Roger reached for his telephone and reassured the doctor that racing was still going ahead as planned on Monday. Meanwhile, as a favour, could a casualty be stitched? When? At once, preferably. Thanks very much.
‘Come on, then,’ he said to me, replacing the receiver. ‘Can you still walk?’
I could and did, pretty slowly. The police protested at my vanishing again. Back in an hour or so, Roger said soothingly. The Strattons were nowhere in sight, though their cars were still parked. Roger aimed his jeep towards the main gates, and Mr Harold Quest refrained from planting his obsessions in our path.
The doctor was the one who had attended the fallers at the open ditch, businesslike and calm. When he saw what he was being asked to do, he didn’t want to.
‘GPs don’t do this sort of thing any more,’ he told Roger. ‘They refer people to hospitals. He should be in a hospital. This level of pain is ridiculous.’
‘It comes and goes,’ I said. ‘And suppose we were out in the Sahara Desert?’
‘Swindon is not the Sahara.’
‘All life’s a desert.’
He muttered under his breath and stuck me together again with what looked like adhesive tape.
‘Haven’t I seen you before?’ he asked, puzzled, finishing.
I explained about the fence.
‘The man with the children!’ He shook his head regretfully. ‘They saw a horror, I’m afraid.’
Roger thanked him for his services to me, and I also. The doctor told Roger that the racing authorities had received a complaint from Rebecca Stratton about his professional competency, or lack of it. They wanted a full report on his decision to recommend that she should be stood down for concussion.
‘She’s a bitch,’ Roger said, with feeling.
The doctor glanced my way uneasily.
‘He’s safe,’ Roger assured him. ‘Say what you like.’
‘How long have you known him?’
‘Long enough. And it was Strattons that kicked his wounds open again.’
It had to be hellish, I thought, being in even the smallest way reliant on the Strattons for employment. Roger truly lived on the edge of an abyss: and out of his job would mean out of his home.
He drove us carefully back to the racecourse, forbearing from lecturing me about the hand I clamped over my face, or my drooping head. As far as he was concerned, what I chose to do about my troubles was my own affair. I developed strong feelings of friendship and gratitude.
Big-beard stepped in front of the jeep. I wondered if his name was really Quest, or if he’d made it up. Not a tactful question to ask at that time. He barred our way through the main gates peremptorily, and Roger, to my surprise, smartly backed away from him, swung the jeep round and drove off down the road, continuing our journey.
‘It just occurred to me,’ he said judiciously, ‘that if we go in by the back road we not only avoid words with that maniac, but you could call at your bus for clean clothes.’
‘I’m running out of them.’
He glanced across doubtfully. ‘Mine aren’t really big enough.’
‘No. It’s OK.’
I was down to a choice between well-worn working jeans and race going tidiness. I opted for the jeans and a lumberjack-type wool checked shirt and dumped the morning’s bloodied garments in a washing locker already filled with sopping smaller clothes.
The boys had finished sluicing both the bus and themselves. The bus looked definitely cleaner. The boys must be dry, even though nowhere in sight. I descended slowly to the ground again and found Roger walking round the home-from-home, interested but reticent, as ever.
‘It used to be a long-distance touring coach,’ I said. ‘I bought it when the bus company replaced its cosy old fleet with modern glass-walled crowd-pleasers.’
‘How… I mean, how do you manage the latrines?’
I smiled at the army parlance. ‘There were huge spaces for suitcases, underneath. I replaced some of them with water and sewage tanks. Every rural authority runs pump-out tankers for emptying far-flung cesspits. And there are boatyards. It’s easy to get a pump-out, if you know who to ask.’
‘Amazing.’ He patted the clean coffee-coloured paintwork, giving himself another interval, I saw again, before having to go back to the distasteful present.
He sighed. ‘I suppose…’
I nodded.
We climbed