Windows in the walls gave plenty of light, but inside all one could see was a bare wooden floor stretching to double glass doors leading to a railed balcony overhanging the swollen river.
‘Don’t boathouses have water in them?’ I enquired mildly.
‘The water’s underneath,’ Harry said. ‘This room was for entertaining. There’s another door down by the edge of the river for going into the boat dock. That’s where the grotto was. Sam had put coloured lights all round and some actually in the water... it looked terrific. There was a bar up here in this room. Fiona and I went out onto the balcony with our drinks and looked at the sky full of stars. It was a warm night. Everything perfect.’ He sighed. ‘Perkin and Mackie were with us, smooching away in newly-wedded bliss. It all seems so long ago, when everyone was happy, everything simple. Nothing could go wrong... Then Tremayne had a spectacular year and to crown it Top Spin Lob won the National... and since then not much has gone right.’
‘Did Sam invite Nolan to his party?’
Harry smiled briefly. ‘Sam felt good. He asked Dee-Dee, Bob Watson, the lads, everyone. Must have been a hundred and fifty people. Even Angela...’ He stopped and looked at his watch. ‘It’s just about time.’
He turned and took a step towards the far-end balcony, the ancient floorboards creaking underfoot.
There was a white envelope lying on the floor about halfway to the balcony and, saying perhaps it was a message, he went towards it and bent to pick it up, and with a fearsome crack a whole section of the floor gave way under his weight and shot him, shouting, into the dock beneath.
It happened so fast and so drastically that I nearly slid after him, managing only instinctively to pivot on one foot and throw myself headlong back onto the boards still remaining solid behind the hole.
Harry, I thought ridiculously, was dead unlucky with cold dirty water. I wriggled until I could peer over the edge into the wet depths below and I couldn’t see him at all.
Shit, I thought, peeling off my jacket. Come up for God’s sake, Harry, so I can pull you out.
No sign of him. Nothing. I yelled to him. No reply.
I kicked off my boots and swung down below, holding on to a bared crossbeam that creaked with threat, swinging from one hand while I tried to see Harry and not land on top of him.
All that was visible was brownish opaque muddy water. No time for anything except getting him out I let go of the beam and dropped with bent legs so as to splash down softly and felt the breath rush out of my lungs from the iciness of the river. Letting the water buoy up my weight I stretched my feet down to touch bottom and found the water came up to my ears; took a deep breath, put the rest of my head under and reached around for Harry, unable to see him, unable with open eyes to see anything at all.
He had to be there. Time was short. I stood up for a gasp of air, ducked down again, searching with fingers, with feet, with urgency turning to appalling alarm. I could feel things, pieces of metal, sharp spiky things, nothing living.
Another gasp of air. I looked for bubbles rising, hoping to find him that way, and saw not bubbles but a red stain in the water a short way off, a swirl of colour against drab.
At least I’d found him. I dived towards the scarlet streaks and touched him at once, but there was no movement in him, and when I tried to pull him to the surface, I couldn’t.
Shit... Shit... Stupid word kept repeating in my brain. I felt and slid my arms under Harry’s and with my feet slipping on the muddy bottom yanked him upwards as fiercely as I could and found him still stuck and yanked again twice more with increasing desperation until finally whatever had been holding him released its grasp and he came shooting to the surface, only to begin falling sluggishly back again as a dead weight.
With my own nose barely above water I held him with his head just higher than mine, but he still wasn’t breathing. I laced my arms round his back, under his own arms, letting his face fall on mine, and in that awkward position I blew my own breath into him, not in the accepted way with him lying flat with most things in control, but into his open nostrils, into his flaccid mouth, into either or both at once, as fast as I could, trying to pump his chest in unison, to do what his own intercostal muscles had stopped doing, pulling his ribcage open for air to flow in.
They tell you to go on with artificial respiration for ever, for long after you’ve given up hope. Go on and on, I’d been told. Don’t give up. Don’t ever give up.
He was heavy in spite of the buoyancy from the water. My feet went numb down on the mud. I blew my breath into him rhythmically, faster man normal breathing, squeezing him, telling him, ordering him in my mind to take charge of himself, come back, come back... Harry, come back...
