Bernard Cornwell - Wildtrack

WILDTRACK

A Novel of Suspense

BERNARD CORNWELL

Wildtrack is dedicated

to the memory of

David Watt

PROLOGUE

They said Id never walk again.

They said Id be in a wheelchair till they lifted me into the box and screwed down my lid. I should learn a trade, they said. Something cripple-friendly, like computers.

Theyd had me for damn nearly a year. Theyd put a metal rod into my right thigh, and grafted skin where my thighs and arse had been burned. They did a mixture of rough carpentry and micro-surgery on my spine and, when it half workedwhich meant I could twitch the toes on my left footthey opened me up again and did a bit more. It had all taken months and still I could not walk.

You must get used to it, they said, because youre never going to walk again. Youre never going to sail again. Youre a paraplegic now, Nick, so kiss it all goodbye. I told them to get stuffed.

Thats not the spirit, Nick! Doctor Maitland said in his no-nonsense voice. Theres no stigma involved, you know. Quite the opposite! He flipped the pages of a yachting magazine that lay on a pile of similar magazines beside my bed. And youll be afloat again.

You can go sailing this very spring!

It was the first sign of hope hed given me, and I responded eagerly. Can I?

My dear Nick, of course you can. Theres a motor sailor on the Solent thats specially adapted for your sort of case. My eagerness ebbed. My sort of case?

Ramps for the chairs and a trained volunteer staff on board. Maitland always spoke of these things in a matter-of-fact voice, as if everyone in the real world went around on wheels with tubes sticking into their bladders. And perhaps youd let the press go along? he added hopefully. They all want to interview you.

Tell them to go to hell. No press. Thats the rule, remember? I dont want to see a bloody reporter.

No press, then. Maitland could not hide his disappointment.

He loved publicity for his paraplegic paradise. Perhaps Ill come along. Its been many a long year since I went sailing.

You can go on your own, I said sullenly.

That isnt the right spirit, Nick. He twitched at my curtains, which didnt need twitching.

I closed my eyes. Im going to walk out of this bloody place on my own two feet.

That wont stop you going sailing in the spring, will it now? Maitland, like all his staff, specialized in that bright interrogatory inflection at the end of statements; an inflection designed to elicit our agreement. Once they had us accepting that we were doomed, then half their battle was won. Will it? he asked again.

I opened my eyes. The last time I went sailing, Doc, I was in a friends forty-footer coming back from Iceland. She was knocked down near the Faeroes and lost all her mast above the spreaders.

We hacked off the broken stuff, rigged jury hounds, and brought her into North Uist five days later. That was a neat piece of work, Doc. I didnt add that the friend had broken his arm when the boat had broached, or that it had happened in the depths of a bloody awful night. What mattered was that we took on that bitch of a northern sea and brought our boat home.

Maitland had listened very patiently. That was before, Nick, wasnt it?

So theres no bloody way, Doc, that Im going to sit on your cripple barge and watch the pretty boats go by. I knew I was being churlish and ungrateful, but I didnt care. I was going to walk again.

If you insist, Nick, if you insist. Maitlands voice intimated that I was my own worst enemy. He went to the door, then stopped to glance back into my room. A look of utter astonishment dawned on his round pink face. You havent got a television!

I hate bloody television.

We find it an extremely effective instrument for therapy, Nick.

I dont need bloody therapy. I want a pair of walking shoes.

You really dont want a television? Maitland asked in utter disbelief.

I dont want a television.

So that afternoon they sent the new psychiatrist to see me.

Hello, Mr Sandman, she said brightly. Im Doctor Janet Plant.

Ive just joined the orientation staff.

She had a nice voice, but I couldnt see her because I had my back to the door. Youre the new shrink?

Im the new orientation therapist, she agreed. What are you doing?

I was holding on to the bedrail with my right hand and edging my right foot down to the floor. Im teaching myself to walk.

I thought we had a physio department to do that?

They only want to teach me how to pee in a wheelchair. They promise me that if Im a good boy well go on to number two in the spring. I flinched from the excruciating pain. Even to put a small amount of pressure on my leg was enough to twist a fleshhook in the small of my back. I supposed the psychiatrist would say I was a masochist because, as soon as the pain struck, I put more weight on the leg.

God, I was weak. My right leg was shaking. The nerves of the leg were supposed to be severed, but Id discovered that if I locked the knee with my hands it would stay locked. So now I thrust the knee down and very gingerly pushed myself away from the bed. I was still holding on to the rail. My left leg took some of the weight, and the pain slid down those tendons like fire. I had no balance and no strength, but I forced myself away from the bed until I was standing half bent, with my right hand gripped so hard about the bedrail that my knuckles were white. I could not breathe. Literally. The pain was so bad that my body could not find the breathing instructions. The pain coursed up into my chest, my neck, then flared red in my skull.

I fell backwards on to the bed. The pain began to ebb out of me as my breath came back, but I kept my eyes closed so the tears would not show. The first thing I have to doI tried to sound nonchalantis learn to straighten up. Then how to put one foot in front of the other. The rest will come easily. I wished I had not spoken, for the words came out as sobs.

I heard Doctor Plant draw up the chair and sit down. Id noted that shed made no attempt to help me, which was all part of the hospitals treatment. We had to fail in order to discover our new limits, which we would then meekly accept. Tell me about your boat, she said in the statutory matter-of-fact voice. It was the same voice she would have used if Id claimed to be Napoleon Bonaparte.

Tell me how you won the battle of Austerlitz, Your Imperial Highness?

Its a boat, I said sullenly. My breathing was easier now, but my eyes were still closed.

We sail a Contessa 32, Doctor Plant said.

I opened my eyes and saw a sensible, short-haired and motherly woman. Wheres your Contessa moored? I asked.

Itchenor.

I smiled. I once went aground on the East Pole sands.

Careless.

It was at night, I defended myself, and there was a blizzard blowing so I couldnt see the marks. And a dirty great flood tide. I was only fifteen. I shouldnt have tried to make the Channel, but I thought my old man would tan the hide off me if I stayed out all night.

Would he have done? she asked.

Probably not. He didnt like using the cane. I deserved it often enough, but hes a soft bugger really.

She smiled, as if to indicate that I was at last entering a territory she could understand; a channel well marked by the perches and buoys of the clinical studies of parenthood. Your mother had left you by the time you were fifteen. Isnt that so?

Im a right bloody monkeypuzzle tree for you, arent I?

Is that what you think? she asked.

What I think, I said, is that I hate it when bloody shrinks ask me what I think. My fathers a grease-coated crook, my mother did a bolt, my brothers a prick, my sisters worse, and my wife has left me and married a bloody MP. But Im not here for any of that, Doctor. Im here because I got a bullet in my back and the National Health Service has undertaken to put me together again. Doing that does not, repeat not, involve poking about in my doubtlessly addled brain. I stared up at the ceiling. Id spent nearly a year staring at that bloody ceiling. It was cream-coloured and it had a hairline crack that looked something like the silhouette of a naked woman seen from behind. At least, it looked like that to me, but I thought Id better not say as much to Doctor Plant or else Id be strapped on to a couch with the electrodes glued to my scalp.