Colin M. Johnson's Fiction - Novels

"ONE POTATO, TWO"

by Colin M. Johnson

CHAPTER 3


      Back in mid-October, it had all seemed strangely unreal to the four returning travellers as they trudged wearily down the long corridor towards the baggage-reclaim at Gatwick.   It was as if they were time-locked into a dream, though the bite of crisp autumn air told them they were wide awake and back once more in the damp climate of southern England.   Their watches still clung to American Eastern Time, claiming it was barely eleven in the morning - not yet time for lunch - whereas all the airport clocks confirmed it was nearly tea-time.

      After a sleepless night flight, and a departure delayed five hours by technical trouble, their jet-lagged digestive systems were in a state of turmoil.   They each felt as if the previous night and most of the day had been snatched away from them.   Despite the evident grey light of a rainy English afternoon, their bodies knew that it was long past bedtime.   It was very confusing and, now that it was all over, immensely sad.

      They filed slowly past a passport official, then waited to see which of eight carousels might contain their luggage - Hilary's enormous holdall, together with the Bradmores' six matching suitcases which had been all the way to Florida and back, for seventeen fun-packed days.

      Both Trudy and Allen had nagging doubts as to whether any of their belongings would miraculously reappear, but the two girls were young enough to believe in the infallibility of airlines, and yelped with glee as each recognisable item came into view.   When everything was safely stacked onto the trolley, they made their way past unconcerned customs officers, and emerged into the arrivals concourse.

      Hilary Billings was delighted to see her own parents standing among the welcoming crowd of onlookers.   She ran forward, gave them each a big hug, and told them what a wonderful place America was.   Then, as if impatient to be going, the Billingses thanked the Bradmores again for giving Hilary the chance to join them, and hurried away with a final cheery wave.

      Allen wheeled the remaining cases down a succession of ramps, paid the necessary parking dues, and queued for the courtesy coach, his face betraying nagging doubts as to how his car would behave after standing for seventeen days in the open air.   It had been trouble-free on the way up from Somerset, but it would still need a thorough overhaul, and he might have to replace it.   Had they really made a wise choice, spending all that money on a holiday that was now over - a holiday which only one of his girls had been able to enjoy?

      Sitting near them in the coach was a charismatic businessman whose attention Wendy soon captured.

      "Been on holiday?" he enquired amiably.

      "Florida," Trudy answered with an air of unwarranted pride.

      "Disney World," added Wendy, keen to give a more colourful reply.

      The stranger nodded.   "Sounds more exciting than my business trips to Europe," he said, and they all smiled in polite agreement.

      "Anyone for Zone A?" called the driver.   Both Allen Bradmore and the stranger responded in unison, then nodded sociably to one another.   A moment later they were left standing in the rain, trying to remember where they had parked their respective cars.

      "Hope our little Rustmobile shows willing after being stood out in the damp," Allen remarked with a transparent lack of confidence.   "She's been a right little pig, the past month or so."   He did have other words in mind, ones he chose not to use in his daughter's hearing.   Wendy was a child who missed nothing.

      "Perhaps we ought get it turned into bacon," she interjected brightly.

      "I'm lucky," said the stranger as they walked along together.   "Mine's a leased car.   One sniff of trouble and I change it."

      They stopped beside Allen's Ford, thankful to put down their cases.

      "Before we pile everything on board," he warned, "I'd better see what sort of mood she's in."   But after turning the engine for a full minute, the battery began to drain.   Allen felt so peeved, he yielded to a childish whim and threatened the vehicle with corporal punishment.

      "Now the damned battery's gone flat.   Always bloody something!   Cars are nothing but trouble.   Never forget that, Wendy."   He kicked the rear bumper three times.   "Trouble, trouble, trouble!"

      "Flat battery will get you nowhere," she chirped in a dutiful attempt to raise his spirits.

      "If we'd known this was likely," Trudy observed with the wisdom of hindsight, "two of us could have travelled back with the Billingses."

      "It's always bloody likely!" Allen snapped.   "You should know that by now.   I'd better phone the AA."   He took out his wallet, and then banged his fists on the roof of the car.   "Hell and ship's biscuits - I've left the damned membership card at home."

      He kicked the car again to make sure it knew of his displeasure.

      The stranger grinned.   "The card doesn't matter much these days - they can always check on their computer.   Where do you have to get to?"

      "Taunton, in Somerset," Allen replied, as if it might as well have been Siberia.   The two weary females looked very dejected as they huddled together for warmth.   English weather came as a cruel shock after a fortnight in the Sunshine State of Florida.

      "Look," said the stranger, "I'm bound for Exeter.   I'd be more than happy to go via Taunton, if that's of any use?   Makes no difference to me.   The company pays for my petrol anyway, so the extra mileage won't cost me a bean.   My name's Dogwood, by the way - Bill Dogwood."

      "Perhaps it's best if we hang around here and get the blessed thing fixed," Allen mumbled grudgingly, but Bill Dogwood was shrewd enough to know he didn't mean it.

      "What if they can't fix it?" Trudy argued.   "Besides, we're all utterly exhausted.   I doubt if I can stay awake another minute, and Wendy looks ready to drop."

      Wendy affirmed this by sagging visibly in the hope that Mr. Dogwood might find her amusing.

      "It's impossible trying to sleep on those Jumbo jets," Trudy went on.   "We've been wide awake since seven o'clock this morning.   No, yesterday morning, I suppose - it's Tuesday now.   Isn't it?"

      Bill Dogwood laughed loudly.   "I know how you feel.   I've done it scores of times.   It's all right flying out west but it's hell coming back.   Look, let me give you folks a lift home, really.   Mind, I haven't got room for all that luggage though, except perhaps the guitar."

      Wendy's eyes sparkled at the prospect of giving a command performance.

      "We can leave everything else in the car, Allen, till you come back with the AA.   I'm sure it'll be quite safe."

      Allen finally relented.   So they loaded six cases into the back of the Ford, and waited till a spotless midnight blue Jaguar drew up alongside.

      "All set?" said their smiling rescuer.   "If so, hop in."

      Once aboard, Wendy strummed a few introductory chords prior to offering her host a recital, but Mr. Dogwood's response was to turn on his radio - just in time to hear the reports of a serious accident on the nearby motorway, causing long delays for westbound traffic.

      "We needn't let those clowns bother us," he remarked with easy confidence.   "I prefer country roads anyway.   Far less crowded, and the way this beauty can travel, it's not going to take much longer than the motorway."

      Half an hour later they were speeding through Hampshire countryside in smooth, silent comfort.   The sky was overcast, but brilliant sunshine lit the western sky ahead of them in a spectacular display of dazzling yellow.   Allen sat in front with the driver, lamenting the rising costs of living, while his wife sat nervously in the back beside Wendy, wondering how best to express her growing concern about how fast they were travelling.

      Wendy herself had her head down, lost in a world of her own as she thumbed through a Disney World leaflet she found in the pocket of her blue overcoat.   But after a while, she suddenly sat bolt upright and announced to the driver: "I'm feeling sick!"

      Bill Dogwood, more concerned for his car than for the comfort of his young passenger, pressed a button beside him, and as if by magic Wendy's rear window opened itself wide.  

****

      At that very moment, a few miles ahead of them, Alec Barker was driving a half-empty petrol tanker back to its depot after a light day, thankful to be travelling east with the sun behind him.   The days were becoming shorter, and though it was a good half-hour before sunset, the visibility across the misty Hampshire countryside was poor.   There had been a steady downpour of rain all day, and autumn leaves danced wildly across the road with each disturbing flurry of wind.

      Alec was taking a short cut, keen to reach his own front door before anyone spotted the frail female passenger sitting at his side.   It was late and he was in a hurry, increasingly frustrated at the lack of consideration shown by an over-cautious driver only yards ahead of him.

      "It's all very well for you," he yelled, partly to amuse his young companion as she clung to the door handle.   "Some of us have to work for a living, eh, Sandy?   Go on, you four-wheeled muffin, get a move on."

      High hedgerows grew on either side of the narrow road, and frequent bends made overtaking unthinkable.

      "Damn and blast you, Tortoise!   Pull over for a second, then I might get past, you snail-headed, weasel-watching son of a dormouse."   Despite his annoyance, Alec took care to moderate his language in the presence of Sandy who, according to company regulations, shouldn't have been there at all.

      But Sandy was someone he valued even more than his job, and for once he'd ignored the rules in the interests of commonsense.   He'd passed her several miles back trying to thumb a lift home after she'd fallen off her bicycle and grazed her knee.   The damaged bike still lay in a ditch to be rescued later on, but Alec felt fully justified in taking the girl on board his tanker, rather than risk her being picked up by a total stranger.   After all, what father wouldn't bend a few rules for the safety of his own daughter?

      "Oh, come on!" he bellowed.   But despite Alec's frequent outbursts, the elderly driver of the Morris seemed determined to travel at thirty miles an hour, as if to prove that speed were the sole cause of accidents.

      After five minutes behind this kerb-crawling idiot, Alec was not only impatient but angry - yet he was a good driver who never took undue risks.   His turn would come eventually - perhaps around the next bend there might be a long straight stretch.   So he hung back, trying to remain calm as he shared with Sandy his wry observation that nearly all crawling drivers wore grey Trilby hats.

      At last a chance came.   Alec accelerated and was about to overtake when, without warning, a muddy tractor suddenly pulled out of a field, blocking his path.   Angered by this extra thoughtlessness, Alec jammed on his brakes, shouting his uncomplimentary opinion of the farmer who was now flinging huge globules of mud high into the air behind him.

      As they rounded the next bend Alec saw another chance.   He sounded his horn and put his foot down, and though the two drivers in front made no concession, yet the move still seemed perfectly safe.   The petrol tanker thundered forward at fifty miles an hour, passing the tractor and drawing level with the Morris, just as a dark blue Jaguar came into view round the next bend, travelling extremely fast, its driver holding a hand over his eyes to shield the sunlight as he tried to see what lay ahead of him.

      Alec muttered an obscenity and braked.   He might have dropped into a space between the farmer and the tortoise, but they hadn't left him enough room.   As he tried to ease back, so did the vehicle beside him; and when he braked even harder, the flying mud and the leaves on the wet road added their own fatal contribution.   The tanker skidded and spun out of control, while continuing to block the path of the oncoming Jaguar.

      "There's nothing I can do," he yelled desperately to Sandy, reaching across to open the nearside door, hoping she might be flung clear onto the soft grass verge.   But the verge was now on the wrong side.

      With gallons of fuel still in the tank behind him, Alec knew what was bound to happen.   He shut his eyes, shielding his daughter's face with his arms as the two vehicles collided head-on.   Onlookers would have seen an immediate blinding eruption of orange fire as the tangled heap of wreckage burst into flames, incinerating drivers and passengers alike beyond recognition - a horrific moment, terrifyingly sudden but mercifully instantaneous.

      Police and fire engines were on the scene within minutes, alerted by the ominous column of black smoke that soon became visible for miles.   But there was nothing to be done, except to put out the fire and begin clearing up the mess.   There couldn't possibly be any survivors, not in such an inferno, nor would it be easy to identify the victims.

      The burnt-out Jaguar was traced to a hire company who had leased it to a Devon-based computer software salesman by the name of William Dogwood.   Among the grotesque tangle of blackened metal, firemen found the remains of five victims, including one child.   It was thought unlikely that a child would have been travelling in the tanker, so police concluded that William Dogwood had been carrying three other passengers, though nothing in the wreckage gave any clue as to who they might have been.   The metallic remains of a guitar were found among the debris, but this could have belonged to anyone.

      The Devon police visited the late William Dogwood's frail mother who lived in Exmouth, but she understood little about her son's business, nor could she name any of his friends or colleagues.   Indeed, she seemed unable to grasp the distressing news the constable was trying to bring her.

      Meanwhile, the police in Hampshire went to the nearby village of Baverbridge to see the widow of the tanker driver, who revealed that her eight-year-old daughter Sandy hadn't returned home from school either.   Her bike was found later in a roadside ditch, several miles to the east of the crash site, offering further evidence that she might have been travelling in her father's cab.

      It was around midday on Thursday, two days later, when a team of telephone engineers were working near the scene of the accident, replacing a telegraph pole that had been damaged by the fire.   They had finished work for the morning and were sitting in their vehicle in an adjacent lay-by, eating lunch-time sandwiches and drinking from a communal flask of coffee.

      One member of the crew - a keen amateur bird-watcher - started taking an interest in a blue jay he saw fluttering restlessly on a nearby hedge.   Perching himself high on the front of the van to get a better view through his binoculars, he noticed a vivid blue object which aroused his curiosity.

      He might have thought no more about it, but with a few minutes left of his lunch break, he strolled down the road to take a closer look.   His colleagues watched in amusement as he climbed a gate and began peering intently into a ditch on the other side of the thick hedgerow.

      "What's Mike spotted now, a penguin?"

      "More likely a courting couple."

      "Nah!   Wrong sort of bird, old son."

      Mike was now stalking cautiously along the edge of the field.   For a moment he stood still, as though trying not to disturb some small creature.   Then he turned and came running back, leaping over the gate and along to the van in a state of high excitement.   He stepped up to the window, panting as he tried to tell the rest of the crew.

      "There's a body!" he pointed.   "Over there in the ditch, a dead child, a little girl!   God, it didn't half give me a turn when I realised.   We'd best report it at once."

      The look on Mike's face told his colleagues he wasn't joking.   They contacted the police at once, then Mike took two of the others back to where he had seen the body.

      Sure enough, there was a young girl, apparently seven or eight years old, dressed in a blue coat and lying in a very unnatural position, looking more like a discarded doll than a human corpse.   They stood, staring in disbelief and stunned into silence.   None of them had seen an actual dead body before.

      "Bloody hell!" one whispered, edging forward for a closer look.

      "Best not touch anything," Mike cautioned.   "Might destroy some vital bit of evidence."

      "D'you reckon it's a murder?   Or a victim from that accident earlier, what do you think?"

      Mike could only shake his head.   Without getting much nearer, and wary of treading on any clues, they could do no more than invent plausible theories.   Having seen all they cared to, two of them strolled back to the van while the other stood guarding the spot until the police arrived.

      A young constable bent forward for a closer inspection.

      "Been here several days by the look of it," he decided, and radioed for assistance.   Ten minutes later the telephone men had finished telling the gathering crowd of officers all they knew.   An ambulance arrived, and as they sought police permission for the body to be moved, one of the men yelled out.

      "God, she's still alive!"

      "She can't be," said another.   "With a head wound like that?   Look at her face, poor lamb, and her leg!"

      But the ambulance men knew their job.   They lifted the girl carefully from the ditch, laid her on a stretcher, carried her into the ambulance and set off at high speed for a nearby hospital.   The police finished their examination of the site and went away to file their report.   There was no suggestion of foul play.   The girl was clearly another victim of the road traffic accident.

      The local paper came out the following morning, carrying lurid details of Tuesday's fatal accident, and reporting no survivors.   Another full week elapsed before the press made headline news again with this amazing new twist - how apparently the victim of a major car crash should be found at the scene of the accident forty hours later, lying in a ditch more than ninety yards from the point of impact.

      "It has to be assumed," it read in pompous journalese, "that whereas the adults in the car had been wearing seat-belts in accordance with the law, this young girl had been travelling without a belt, and had either leapt or been pushed from the tanker in a desperate attempt to escape the inevitable crash.   Or was she catapulted out of the back of the Jaguar, hurled through an open window like a sling shot, across the road, through a hedge, to land in a leaf-filled ditch on the other side?   Either way, half-buried among twigs and branches that would have helped break her fall, and half-hidden by leaves, she lay unconscious for two long nights before an inquisitive bird watcher with binoculars happened to catch sight of her blue coat.   She is now lying in a coma in a Southampton hospital.   Doctors say it is doubtful whether she will ever regain consciousness."

      A short paragraph was added a week later, calling for relatives of the unknown child.   "She lies there, unconscious on a life-support system, and time alone can determine the outcome of this poignant human story.   Only when and if she regains consciousness, may she be able to tell the waiting world just who she is."

      A third report several weeks later described how doctors had attended to the child's many physical injuries.   The ugly gash on her head was luckily only a superficial wound, but there were substantial injuries to her jaw and lower teeth.   She had a cracked pelvis and both her legs were badly smashed.   Her two nights out under the stars could have proved fatal if the weather hadn't been mild and dry, but luckily the sheltered ditch into which she was flung was filled with soft leaves that very nearly covered her.   There was a trace of pneumonia which mercifully proved not to be serious.

      Her jaw was wired up, and metal pins were inserted into her legs and hips.   Once the surgery was over, she was cocooned in plaster from her waist to her ankles, with her legs splayed out like white nutcrackers, and ugly lengths of plastic tubing implanted into various parts of her body.   Her continuing unconsciousness had spared the unknown girl a prolonged and tiresome period of discomfort and distress.

      The police called on Mrs. Barker, and tactfully obtained details of the clothes Sandy had been wearing.   The red blazer and grey skirt she described bore no resemblance to the bright blue coat the bird-watching telephone engineer had seen through his binoculars.   It seemed most unlikely that the hospital patient could be Sandy Barker, so the police said nothing to raise the poor woman's hopes.   They would get confirmation soon enough, once a photograph of the unknown child had been circulated.

      And so, for a while, shielded also by the tact of her neighbours, Mrs. Barker and her other daughter Karen never knew that a girl of about Sandy's age had been found.

      Weeks passed.   The young Sleeping Beauty showed no signs of recovery, but lay motionless, suspended in a world of her own that no-one else could share.   She was removed from Southampton to a hospital in South London, where she remained under observation for signs of possible brain-damage.

      And still there came no clue as to who she was.   The late William Dogwood's employers were shocked to hear of his death, but no-one could offer any help in identifying his passengers on that fatal day.   He was a single man with only an aged mother to care for, and no other friends or relatives who couldn't be accounted for.   Besides, everyone agreed he should have been travelling alone.  

****

      It was not until that bright morning in November that the mystery child's awareness slowly began to return.

      "That's fine," a soothing voice whispered in her ear.   "You just lie there peacefully, and I'll send along someone very nice who wants to meet you.   Would you like that?"

      The patient's head nodded slowly, almost imperceptibly, and the dry lips parted for a moment.   But no sound was uttered.   There wasn't any need.   Everything was so peaceful.   Why disturb the day with words or thoughts?   Better to lie still and gently drift, nudged by the comforting attentiveness of that nearby voice and the warming sunlight which came and went behind the thin curtains.

      For just a moment the close attention was gone, and Wendy's feeling of peace was deposed by a threat of fear.   She tried to move, but moving didn't seem to work any more.   She tried calling out for Mummy, but no sound came from her lips - and she felt unnaturally stiff.   She was about to utter a strangled cry when she heard a new voice - a deeper, caressing voice that seemed to embalm her very soul.

      "Hallo, little one," it said.   "My goodness, we've been expecting you back for such a long time.   You slept right through lunch again.   How's it feel to be the star attraction?"

      The patient murmured a gracious acknowledgement.

      "Fine!   Now I want you to rest here for as long as you like," the voice went on.   "Then later we'll see how you feel about things, and perhaps you can tell us where you come from.   But there's no hurry - and if you need anything, we'll be right here.   There's nothing for you to worry about."

      That didn't help.   It meant there was something to worry about.   When did people ever say there was nothing to worry about without some serious reason for saying it?

      The patient began to stir, and became progressively ill at ease.   Something wasn't right; something was very wrong, but she didn't know what.   Maybe, if she could remember, she could relax again, but Wendy knew only that everything was strange.   She felt incomplete, unresolved, interrupted; her mouth hurt and she felt stiffly shackled as though a dozen unkind hands were pressing down, restraining her struggles.

      Yet she hadn't the strength to fight it, so at last she gave up, and with a deep, quivering sigh, she drifted back into the security of her dreams.  

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