I grieved for him, for Fiona, for all of them, but most for Harry. That humour, that humanity; they couldn’t be lost. I gave him my breath until I was dizzy myself and I still wouldn’t accept it was all useless, that I might as well stop.
I felt the jolt in his chest as I hugged it in rhythm against mine and for a second couldn’t believe it, but then he heaved again in my arms and coughed in my face and a mouthful of dirty water shot out in a spout and he began coughing in earnest and choking and gasping for air... gasping, gulping air down, wheezing in his throat, whooping like whooping cough, struggling to fill his functioning lungs.
He couldn’t have been unconscious for long, looking back, but it seemed an eternity at the time. With coughing, he opened his eyes and began groaning which was at least some sign of progress, and I started looking about to see how we were going to get out of what appeared to be uncomfortably like a prison.
Another door, Harry had said, down by the river’s edge: and in fact, when I looked I could see it, a once-painted slab of wood set in brickwork, its bottom edge barely six inches above the water.
Across the whole end of the building, stretching from the ceiling down into the river, was a curtain of linked metal like thick over-sized chicken wire, presumably originally installed to keep thieves away from any boat in the dock. Beyond it flowed the heavy mainstream, with small eddies curling along and through the wire on the surface.
The dock itself, I well understood, was deeper than usual because of the height of the river. The door was still six inches above it, though... it didn’t make sense to build a door high if the water was usually lower... not unless there was a step somewhere... a step or walkway even, for the loading and unloading of boats...
Taking Harry gingerly with me I moved to the left, towards the wall, and with great relief found that there was indeed a walkway there at about the height of my waist. I lifted Harry until he was sitting on the walkway and then, still gripping him tightly, wriggled up beside him so that we were both sitting there with our heads wholly above water, which may not sound a great advance but which was probably the difference between life and death.
Harry was semi-conscious, confused and bleeding. The only good thing about the extreme cold of the water, I thought, was that whatever the damage, the blood loss was being minimised. Apart from that, the sooner we were out of there, the better.
The hole through which Harry had fallen was in the centre of the ceiling. If I stood up on the walkway, I thought, I could probably stretch up and touch the ceiling, but wouldn’t be able to reach the hole. Might try jumping... might pull more of the floor down. It didn’t look promising. There seemed to be part of a beam missing in the area. Rotted through, no doubt.
Meanwhile I had to get Harry well propped so that he wouldn’t fall forward and drown after all, and to do that I reckoned we needed to be in the corner. I tugged him gently along the walkway, which was made of planks, I discovered, with short mooring posts sticking up at intervals, needing me to lift his legs over one at a time. Still, we reached the end in a while, and I stood up and tugged him back until he was sitting wedged in the corner, supported by the rear and side walls.
He had stopped coughing, but still looked dazed. The blood streaking scarlet was from one of his legs, now stretched out straight before him but still not in view on account of the clouded water. I was debating whether to try to stop the bleeding first or to leave him in his uncertain state while I found a way out, trusting he wouldn’t totally pass out, when I heard the main door creak open directly above our heads; the way Harry and I had come in.
My first natural impulse was to shout, to get help from whoever had come: and between intention and voice a whole stream of thoughts suddenly intruded and left me silent, open-mouthed to call out but unsure of the wisdom.
Thoughts. Harry had come to this place to meet someone. He didn’t know who. He’d been given a meeting place he knew of. He’d gone there trustingly. He’d walked into the boathouse and tried to pick up an envelope and the floor had given way beneath him and a piece of beam was missing; and if I hadn’t been there with him he would certainly have drowned in the dock, impaled on something lurking beneath the surface.
Part of my later training had been at the hands of an ex-SAS instructor whose absolute priority for survival was evading the enemy; and with doubt but also awareness of danger I guessed at an enemy above our heads, not a saviour. I waited for exclamations of horror from above, for someone to call Harry’s name in alarm, for some natural, innocent reaction to the floor’s collapse.
Instead there was silence. Then the creak of a step or two, then the sound of the door being quietly closed.
Eerie.
