Concrete Island

‘… Catherine … Catherine … ’

The sound of his wife's name moved through the silent grass. Lying at the foot of the embankment, Mait-land listened to the echoes of the syllables inside his head. As they roused him he realized that he had spoken the name himself. The faint sounds were audible in the darkness. The traffic noises had gone, and the embankment above him was quiet. Far away, beyond the central drum of the Westway interchange, an overnight truck-driver steered his vehicle northwards, its engine labouring.

Maitland lay back in the darkness, his head resting against the soft slope of the embankment. His legs were hidden in the long grass. A hundred yards away, the three lanes of the feeder road were deserted. The route indicators towered above the unvarying yellow glow of the sodium lights. Involuntarily, as he thought about his wife's name, Maitland looked towards the west. Silhouetted against the evening corona of the city, the dark facçades of the high-rise apartment blocks hung in the night air like rectangular planets.

For the first time since his accident, Maitland's head felt clear. The bruises on his temple and upper jaw, like the injuries to his legs and abdomen, were defined and localized, leaving his mind free. Already he knew that his right leg was severely damaged. A massive contusion was spreading from the hip down the outer surface of the thigh. Through the torn fabric of his trousers he touched the tender skin, raised by a leaking weal that wet his hand. The hip joint appeared to have been driven into the basin of his pelvis, and the displaced nerves and blood-vessels throbbed through the torn musculature as they tried to reassemble themselves.

Maitland examined the damaged thigh with both hands. It was one forty-five a.m. Twenty yards away, the silver roof of the Jaguar reflected the distant lights of the motorway. He sat up, clenching his fists as he cut off his involuntary cry. He realized that the energy left to him was finite, perhaps half an hour of extended effort. He turned on to his side, drew his left leg out of the grass and lifted himself into a kneeling position.

Gasping at the night air, he no longer tried to control himself. He leaned helplessly against the embankment, hands deep in the cold soil. A faint dew already covered his torn suit, chilling his skin. He looked up at the steep slope, for a moment laughing aloud at himself.

‘How the hell am I supposed to climb that…? Might as well be Mount Everest.’

As he crouched there, trying to grapple with the pain from his injured hip, his whole situation seemed to Maitland like a bad joke that had got out of hand. A defective tyre-wall, a bang on the head, and he had suddenly exited from reality. He thought of Helen Fairfax asleep in her flat, as always on the left side of the double bed that filled the minute bedroom, her head lying on the right-hand pillow, as if she had deputised the various sections of her body to represent both herself and Maitland. Curiously enough, this calm and capable woman doctor was a restless dreamer. By comparison, Catherine would be sleeping quietly in her white bedroom, a bar of moonlight across her pale throat. In fact, the whole city was now asleep, part of an immense unconscious Europe, while he himself crawled about on a forgotten traffic island like the nightmare of this slumbering continent.

Headlamps flared against the roof of the overpass tunnel. A car hummed along the silent roadway.

‘Help … Stop … ’

Maitland waved one hand without thinking. He listened to the car fade away, carrying its comfortable driver, latch-key securely in his pocket, to a warm suburban bed.

‘Right … Let's try again … ’

He climbed two feet up the slope, dragging the injured leg behind him, before collapsing into the soft earth. Even this small exertion had multiplied the pain in his hip socket. Unable to move, he knelt with his face in the broken soil, the cold earth against his cheek. Already he knew that he would never be able to climb the embankment, but he tried to drag himself up the slope, scooping armfuls of the soft earth from his path, forcing himself across the crumbling surface like a wounded snake.

‘Catherine… ’

For the last time he whispered her name, well aware that in some obscure way he was blaming her for his plight, for the pain in his injured leg, and for the cold night air that lay over his body like a damp shroud. A profound sense of depression had come over him, replacing the brief surge of confidence he had felt. Not only would Catherine assume that he was spending the night with Helen Fairfax, but she would not particularly care. Yet, he himself had almost deliberately created this situation, as if preparing the ground for his crash…

Night and silence settled over the motorway system. The sodium lights shone down on the high span of the overpass, rising into the air like some disused back entrance to the sky. Maitland lifted himself on to his left leg, supporting himself on his arms against the slope of the embankment. His right leg hung in front of him like a dead animal lashed to his belt. The long grass swayed in the night air, a corridor of crushed blades marking the route he had taken that afternoon. Hobbling along, the injured thigh held in both hands, he pressed on through the grass.

The silver fuselage of his car appeared among the shabby wrecks. Half-veiled by the grass, their rusting hulls were almost invisible. Maitland reached the rear door. Exhausted by the effort, he was about to lift himself into the back seat when he remembered the carton of wine bottles.

He pulled himself round to the rear of the car and unlocked the trunk. He lifted out one of the bottles of white Burgundy and fumbled with the wrapper. Opening the tool-kit, he took out the adjustable spanner. On the second blow he struck the neck from the bottle. The clear liquid splashed around his feet in the cold air.

Sitting unsteadily in the rear seat of the Jaguar, Maitland drank his first mouthfuls of the warm Burgundy. He winced as the alcohol stung his cut mouth and gums. Within seconds the wine flushed his chest, and he could feel the pulse thudding in his injured thigh. Stretching his leg out on the seat, Maitland methodically drank his way down the bottle. Gradually he felt the pain in his hip begin to recede. He was soon too drunk to be able to focus on his wrist-watch and gave up all sense of time. Stirred by the night air, the grass pressed closer against the windows, shutting out the embankments of the motorways. Maitland lay with the bottle in his hands, his head resting against the window pillar. One by one the points of pain that covered his chest and legs like a series of constellations began to fade, and the atlas of wounds into which his body had been transformed went out like a dead sky.

Mastering his self-pity, he thought again of Catherine and his son. He remembered his cold euphoria as he tottered about on the motorway, screaming his wife's name at the cars. If anything, he should have thanked her for marooning him here. Most of the happier moments of his life had been spent alone – student vacations touring Italy and Greece, a three-month drive around the United States after he qualified. For years now he had re-mythologized his own childhood. The image in his mind of a small boy playing endlessly by himself in a long suburban garden surrounded by a high fence seemed strangely comforting. It was not entirely vanity that the framed photograph of a seven-year-old boy in a drawer of his desk at the office was not of his son, but of himself. Perhaps even his marriage to Catherine, a failure by anyone else's standards, had succeeded precisely because it recreated for him this imaginary empty garden.

Nursing himself from the jagged bottle, he fell asleep three hours before dawn.

4 The water reservoir (#ulink_23c272b0-dc65-50f0-93e5-5c658db27be5)

HE woke in broad daylight. The grass brushed against the quarter window by his head, blades dancing an urgent minuet as if they had been trying to wake him for some time. A panel of warm sunshine crossed his body. Unable to move for several seconds, he wiped the oil-smeared dial of his watch. It was eight twenty-five a.m. He lay sprawled stiffly across the back seat of the car. The motorway embankments were hidden from him, but a steady drumming, as threatening and yet in some way as reassuring as the soundtrack of a familiar nightmare, reminded him where he was.

The morning rush-hour was under way, thousands of vehicles pouring back into central London. Horns sounded above the guttural roar of diesel engines and the unbroken boom of cars passing through the overpass tunnel.

The wine bottle lay under his right arm, its broken neck cutting into his elbow. Maitland sat up, remembering the anaesthesia which the wine had brought him. He could remember as well, like a degraded memory hiding itself in the back of his mind, the brief outburst of self-pity.

Maitland looked down at himself, barely recognizing the derelict figure sitting in the rear seat. His jacket and trousers were smeared with oil and blood. Engine grease covered the weal on his right hand where it had been struck by a passing car. His right thigh and hip had swollen into a massive contusion, and the head of his thigh-bone now seemed to be fused into the damaged pelvic socket. Maitland leaned over the front seat. Bruises and tender pressure-points covered his body like the percussion stops of an overstressed musical instrument.

‘Maitland, no one's going to believe this … ’ The words, spoken aloud as a self-identification signal, merely made him aware of the damage to his mouth. Massaging the bruised gums, he smiled to himself with weary humour and peered at his face in the driving mirror. A livid bruise ran diagonally across the right side of his face like one half of an exaggerated handlebar moustache.

Time to get out of here … He looked round at the motorway embankment. The roofs of airline buses and high-topped trucks moved along the eastbound carriageway. The westbound lanes were almost empty. A delivery vehicle and two passenger coaches sped past on their way to the suburbs. Once he had climbed the embankment he would soon flag down a driver.

‘Find a phone booth – Hammersmith Hospital – ring Catherine and the office …’ Itemizing this check-list, Maitland opened the door and eased himself into the sunlight. He carried his right leg in both hands like a joint of meat and lifted it out on to the ground. He leaned unsteadily against the door, exhausted by this small effort. Deep spurs of pain reached from his hip into his groin and buttocks. Standing still, he could just balance himself on the injured leg. He clung to the roof gutter of the car and looked at the traffic moving along the motorway. The drivers had lowered their sun-vizors, shielding their eyes from the morning sunlight. None of them would notice the haggard figure standing among the abandoned cars.

The cold air drummed at Maitland's chest. Even in the pale sunlight he felt cold and worn. Only his heavy physique had brought him through the crash and the injuries on the motorway. A stolen sportscar, unlit headlamps, an unlicensed driver – ten to one the young man at the wheel would not report hitting Maitland.

He lifted his injured leg and placed it in the grass in front of himself. He thought of the wine in the Jaguar's trunk, but he knew that the Burgundy would go straight to his head. Forget the wine, he told himself. Collapse into this long grass and no one will ever find you. You'll lie there and die.

Swinging his arms out, he managed to jump forward around the injured leg. He grasped at the long grass to steady himself.

‘Maitland, this is going to take all day…’

He made a second step. Gasping for breath, he watched an airline coach move westwards along the motorway. None of the passengers looked down at the island. Gathering himself, Maitland made three more steps, almost reaching the blue hull of a saloon car lying on its side. As he stretched out a hand to the rusty chassis his injured leg tripped against a discarded tyre. His left knee buckled, dropping him into the long grass.

Maitland lay without moving in this damp bower. As he caught his breath he wiped the moisture from the grass on to his bruised mouth. He was still twenty feet from the embankment – even if he were to reach it he would never be able to climb the steep and unpacked slope.

He sat up, lifting himself on his hands through the grass. The rusty axle of the saloon car rose into the air above his head. The tyres and engine had been removed, and the exhaust pipe hung loosely from the expansion box. Maitland reached up and began to shake the pipe with his hands. He wrenched it from the bracket and pulled the six-foot section of rusty tubing from behind the rear axle. His strong arms bent one end into a crude handle.

‘Right …! Now we'll get somewhere … ’ Already Maitland felt his confidence returning. He hoisted himself on to this makeshift crutch and swung himself along, his injured leg clearing the ground.

He reached the foot of the embankment, and waved with one arm, shouting at the few cars moving along the westbound carriageway. None of the drivers could see him, let alone hear his dry-throated croak, and Maitland stopped, conserving his strength. He tried to climb the embankment, but within a few steps collapsed in a heap on the muddy slope.

Deliberately, he turned his back to the motorway and for the first time began to inspect the island.

‘Maitland, poor man, you're marooned here like Crusoe – If you don't look out you'll be beached here for ever …’

He had spoken no more than the truth. This patch of abandoned ground left over at the junction of three motorway routes was literally a deserted island. Angry with himself, Maitland lifted the crutch to strike this meaningless soil.

He hobbled back towards his car. Twenty yards to the west of the breaker's yard he mounted a slight rise. Here he paused to examine the perimeter of the island, searching for a service staircase or access tunnel. Below the overpass the wire-mesh fence ran in an unbroken screen from one concrete embankment to the other. The slope up to the feeder road was more than thirty feet high and even steeper than the embankment of the motorway. Where the two roads met, at the western apex, the earth slopes gave way to vertical concrete walls.

Maitland swung himself back to his car, stopping every few paces to beat down the long grass that thrust itself at him. When he reached the car he unlocked the trunk and methodically counted the five bottles of Burgundy, lifting each one from the carton in turn as if this potent liquor represented the one point of reality left to him.

He reached for the heavy spanner. Well, Maitland, he told himself, it's a little early for a drink, but the bar's open. Wait a minute, though. Think, you need water.

As the morning sunlight steepened, warming his cold body, he reminded himself again that even a few mouthfuls of the wine on an unfed stomach would throw him into a drunken stupor. Somewhere among these cars there would be water.

The radiator. Slamming down the lid of the trunk, Maitland picked up his crutch and swung himself to the front of the car. He edged himself under the fender, with his bruised hands searched among the brake lines and suspension units for the lower edge of the radiator. He found the stop-cock and forced the tap, cupping the liquid that jetted out.

Glycol! He spat away the bitter fluid and stared at the green stain on his palm. The sharp tang of rusty water made his throat ache.

Already he sensed his reflexes quickening. He leaned across the driving seat and released the hood catch. He pulled himself upright, lifted the heavy hood and searched the engine compartment. His hands seized the water reservoir of the windshield washers. With one end of the crutch he twisted off the metal armature and ripped away the leads from the plastic canister.

It was almost full, holding nearly a pint of clear water. As he tasted the cool stream Maitland rested against the car, waving the crutch at the vehicles moving along the motorway. Small achievement though it was, the discovery of the water had recharged his confidence and determination. During his first hours on the island he had been too quick to assume that help would automatically arrive, that even a feeble gesture such as waving to a passing car would bring instant rescue.

He drank half the water, carefully bathing his injured mouth. He felt pleasantly light-headed, the water exciting his nerves and arteries like an electric stimulant. Hobbling around the car, he tapped the roof with almost child-like humour. He eased himself on to the trunk and sat there, looking across the uneven surface of the island at the wire-mesh fence. There were more than enough tools in the Jaguar's kit to wrench a hole through the mesh.