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.
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
