Bangalore. Roger Crook

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СКАЧАТЬ have tried to stop him? If he had, would it have kept him safe? Who knows? He’d never tried to influence his children; he didn’t like people who wanted to control, to influence others. He believed in freedom, in being a free spirit. For a fleeting moment he wondered if that was why he was the only one around the table who was really alone. He didn’t like the question and the half ‘yes but’ answer creeping into his mind, so he pushed it away.

      Michelle and Roddy went to the kitchen and made a pot of tea and a jug of coffee with the freshly ground coffee Michelle had brought with her. In all her visits since they’d been divorced he’d never known Michelle go into the kitchen, not once. Now she tended to them all and even fussed a little with a natural warmth he hadn’t seen for a long time, not since they’d first married. Had he misjudged her?

      Roddy took a small tin of cigars out of his breast pocket and offered Angus one. He declined and said he’d stick to rolling his own cigarettes. He offered his tobacco pouch to Pat, who rolled herself a cigarette, Michelle watched saying nothing. When Rachael took the pouch her eyebrows arched, but still she said nothing.

      Time passed slowly. Michelle made more tea and coffee. Angus looked at his watch as the phone rang. Without saying anything he got up and hurried into the homestead as the ringing seemed to become more urgent. Then it stopped. It was one-thirty in the morning.

      After about ten minutes Angus came back and sat down. Trying to smile he looked at them one by one around the table. “That was the army. They got them out about two hours ago; they should be in Kabul by now. Ewen is one of the injured; they have no details except that he is injured. They said they will ring again as soon as they have any more information. They thought about two or three hours; that will give the medical team time to give a proper report or whatever they call it. He said he was sorry that he didn’t have more information but that he thought that he’d better ring with what he has.”

      Michelle had gone very pale and tears were running down her cheeks and she was dabbing them with a handkerchief. Roddy had his arm around her. Angus had his hands folded on the table; Rachael reached and put her right hand over them. Her left hand was holding Pat’s hand. It was Rachael who spoke first. “The best thing we can do is try and get some rest, at least have a lie down and try. I’ll stay up and listen for the phone just in case they ring.”

      Nobody moved. Nobody wanted to go to bed and be alone with their thoughts. Roddy said, “C’mon, Michelle, let’s go down to our room. You can doze in a chair if you don’t want to go to bed. You can’t sit out here all night; it’s nearly two o’clock now. Michelle got up. She hadn’t spoken since Angus had got off the phone; she had stopped crying but hadn’t regained any colour in her face, which was now devoid of any expression. She went round the table and kissed each one of them on the top of the head and allowed Roddy to usher her into the house.

      Angus took his hands from under Rachael’s and said, “I’m going to have a large whisky – anybody else?”

      Rachael looked at him. “Brandy, Dad. Have you got any?”

      “I have – a bottle of your grandfather’s best cognac at the back of the cabinet. Pat?”

      “Whisky, Angus, then I might try and lie down, I’m wide awake at the moment.”

      As he got up they heard footsteps on the veranda and Ali appeared around the corner of the house. Angus smiled when he saw him. “Ali, my boy, come on in and join us. Do you want a drink – whisky, brandy, beer, what’ll you have?”

      “Whisky will do fine, Angus, thanks. I saw the lights on and I couldn’t sleep so I came over. Have you heard anything?”

      “Rachael can tell you while I get the drinks.”

      Pat was the first to go to bed. She got undressed and lay down, wide-awake and thinking of Ewen. She heard Angus close his bedroom door across the hallway. She was glad that Ali had come over to sit with Rachael to talk to her and listen for the phone.

      Chapter 8.

       Came the Dawn.

      The soft grey light of dawn was creeping across the morning landscape. Pat was half-awake, in that nether land between being awake and being asleep. Then the phone rang in the hallway and she sat bolt upright. When she got there, pulling the robe that Alice had provided around her, Rachael, blanket around her shoulders, was talking to whoever was on the other end. Ali was by her side. She watched Rachael’s face for any hint of what might be being said. Rachael didn’t look at her. Angus joined them and she didn’t look at him either.

      Eventually she said, “All right, thanks, I’ve got all that. Will you tell your people over there that I am a doctor and if they can give a more detailed report I will explain it to my family and Pat, in layman’s language?” She listened to the reply with an impassive face. “Good. Shall we say in about four hours, that’s around nine o’clock?” Again a short reply. Rachael waited and then said, “Rachael, Rachael Sinclair. Bye.”

      Rachael turned to face them. Instead of giving them the news she said, “Ali, be a darling and go and put the kettle on in the kitchen; this calls for big mugs of tea. When you’ve done that, slip over and get Alice. She should be here. I’ll go and get Mum and Roddy. They must be awake.” As she finished, Michelle and Roddy appeared, as did Alice saying, “I’ve been in the kitchen for the last hour and the kettle is boiling.”

      When they had congregated in the kitchen and as Alice was making the tea Rachael gave them the news. She tried to smile and communicate confidence but it was evident to them all that the news was not good. “The report says that Ewen is gravely ill. He has broken bones from the crash but the survivors all say that they owe their lives to him. As far as they can determine so far, he has a gunshot wound to his lower leg and the other leg is broken. They suspect there has been some internal bleeding. He is very weak from exposure and has lost a lot of blood. At the moment they are trying to stabilise him so that they can conduct more detailed examinations. He’s had a lot of powerful painkillers so he is only semi-conscious. They are trying to determine if he has suffered any head or spine injuries. He is suffering from concussion. They are doing head x-rays.”

      It was Angus who spoke first. “Rach, in plain language, what does gravely ill mean?”

      She looked at him. She’d had to do this before when people she didn’t know had rushed to casualty after being told by the police that their loved one had been in a road crash, frightened people grappling with their emotions. Now it was different. She was one of them – it was her family.

      Her reply was as soft and gentle as she could make it. “It means, Dad, that they are probably fighting to keep him alive. The injuries he has are serious; he may have others that they don’t know about. The injuries they know about would have been serious enough if he had been treated straightaway, but after over a week out there largely untreated, in shock, in the cold and at altitude, being thrown around on a makeshift stretcher… I gathered the eight who were uninjured carried the two injured for over 40 kilometres, which is quite amazing.”

      Michelle was wide eyed as the reality of what Rachael had said gripped her with fear. In as strong a voice as she could muster she asked, “When he’s been stabilised, what happens then?”

      “I don’t know, Mum. I can’t tell with the little we know. I would imagine that…I don’t know anything about the hospital in Kabul.”

      “It’s a military field hospital, very well equipped to deal with the seriously injured, but they get them out of there as soon as they can, mostly in less than twelve hours. СКАЧАТЬ