It had been my intention to cross the wider space from kitchen to stairs, and from there take Matthew up to a bedroom where he could rest and recover in relative comfort but Matthew himself forced me to swiftly abandon that idea. I had managed to get him this far by taking his right arm heavily across my shoulders while his other groped drunkenly from handhold to handhold but whether it was from the blaze of unaccustomed heat or the unexpected realisation that his ordeal was nearly over I do not know, but all of a sudden his remaining ability to support himself abruptly vanished. Entirely without warning, his fingers fell short from their reach towards the tabletop and then his head drooped. He had already been testing me pretty near to my limit but this sudden collapse took me far beyond tolerance and we were very lucky that I even managed to get him as far as the living room settee, let alone all the way upstairs to my bed.
A peculiar pause followed this where, after my abrupt release from such a heavy burden, the sensation of being airborne was so strange that the force of it nearly finished what Matthew’s weight had begun. My face burned from exertion and, added to the heat of the fire at my back, it seemed to take an eternity before my aching lungs could adjust to breathing warm air. But then, in the next instant, normality reasserted itself and I had time to wonder that it was Matthew Croft of all people who had been found lost in a snowstorm. And then to notice almost immediately afterwards that the voluble enthusiasm, which had been an almost constant backdrop to our journey across the kitchen, had faded sharply to silence.
Freddy’s delight at his part in an apparently heroic rescue ought to have been inexhaustible; I quickly turned with a smile and encouragement so that the boy would be protected from understanding the full urgency of getting the object of his adventure warm but he wasn’t looking at me. Freddy was staring with eyes fixed wide at the man who was sitting slumped before us and blinking blearily at the threadbare carpet by our feet.
I took a steadying breath. “Freddy, will you fetch some of my father’s old clothes? We’d better get him into something dry.” My voice was bright and carefully filled with that lively tone of artificial cheer that was usually the reserve of matronly housekeepers but I might as well have said nothing for all the notice he took.
“Freddy,” I said sharply, “did you hear what I said?”
Then I turned my head and followed his gaze.
Matthew was still sitting exactly where he had landed when I had clumsily surrendered him to the settee except that now he was making an ineffectual attempt at unfastening the buttons of his soaked jacket. Finally able to see it properly, the jacket looked like it was made from a kind of stylish brown wool and would have originally been better suited to a walk through town towards his office than across country in the snow. Whatever it had once been however, now it was only disgustingly grimy and the torn seam on his sleeve that had been noted before had since parted even further so that it was now exposing a large expanse of lining.
I suppose it was because of this obvious damage to one shoulder that I had not noticed what had happened to the other.
The stain had spread from his collar down towards the elbow of his left sleeve and it was entirely different to the multitude of scuffs and scrapes of mud and filth that coloured the fabric elsewhere.
“Here, let me.” The quickly delivered request was tinged with disbelief as I leant down and reached for the sodden jacket.
His numbed fingers surrendered the task of fumbling with the buttons readily enough and then in a few short seconds I was pulling the icy flaps apart.
“Oh, good God.”
Blood had soaked through the shirt onto his woollen jumper and from there spread in an ugly stain across his chest, and it was very clear to me now that there could be no ordinary explanation for what I had found out in the snow.
“Good God, Matthew!” I said again. “What has happened to you?”
He looked up at that and gave me a faintly blurry smile. “Pay no man, isn’t that what they say? No, hang on, that isn’t it – what’s the saying…?” He was speaking with the careful enunciation of one who was not in nearly as much control of himself as he would have liked to have been. He blinked and then added, “Ah yes, owe no man. But that isn’t fair; I don’t think he can have meant for it to turn out like that…”
Then his expression clouded as if he knew he was wandering and, with an obvious effort, he bit off whatever else might have followed.
Freddy must have moved behind my shoulder because Matthew’s eyes suddenly snapped past me. He stared up at the boy for a moment, the heavily shadowed eyes widening in alarm before travelling jerkily back to my face. Then, with a blur of movement that was startlingly reminiscent of the precision I had seen out in the snow, he reached out and took a tight hold of my hand.
“Don’t tell them.” His voice rose anxiously as the draw on my arm forced me to bend awkwardly down towards him. “You won’t tell them about me, will you? Please?”
I shook my head, trying to discreetly prise my wrist free only to feel a cold stab of apprehension as he begged again, “Please!”
“I won’t, Matthew,” I said, not really knowing to what I was promising.
He gave me one long hard look and seemed to believe me. Releasing my hand, he blinked from me to Freddy and back to me again. Then, letting out his breath in a long gentle sigh, he slowly and with about as much grace as a bad actor playing a part, crumpled backwards onto the soft panels of the settee.
I stared down at his prone form for a moment before my brain clicked into gear.
“Right Freddy,” I said crisply. “Fetch my scissors, the medical kit – the horse one I mean, we’re going to need more than plasters – and some blankets. I’ll get some water on the boil.”
Freddy looked at me with big scared eyes. “Is he dead?” he whispered.
“No Freddy, he’s not,” I said firmly. “Now off you go, quickly please!”
When the boy had finished that little task, I would strategically send him on another lengthier errand, this time to the hay barn.
If I had been determined to protect Freddy from further shock and the subsequent bad dreams, I only wish I could have extended the same courtesy to myself. Patching up the various wounds that the horses have presented over the years may have trained me in all the practical skills, but nothing could have prepared me for the emotional horror of having to cut away his shirt and examine the twelve or so shotgun pellet wounds that had splattered across his upper arm and chest. None of them had gone deep, he must have been hit at the very edge of the gun’s range, but blood still oozed sickeningly from the wounds as I carefully eased the pellets free.
Blessedly, he was still unconscious as I dressed the wounds with iodine solution and gauze; it seemed to take forever to strap it all firmly into place with the thick rolls of bandage when I had to deal with the leaden weight of his body on my own. But then at long last it was finished and I could place bandages, wounds and everything safely out of sight under the great stack of blankets which would slowly but surely bring him back to vital warmth, and pause a while to gather my thoughts.
Many hours later though, and after all that bustle and urgency it was suddenly feeling very much like I was being given rather too much time in which to think. Freddy had been fed and dispatched off to bed long ago and with the wind outside picking up little gusts of ice and sending them in a distant rattle against the glass, I was actually for the first time in my life finding the house slightly eerie. The rhythmic hiss and creak of the door beneath the stairs made it sound like I was catching the stealthy betrayal of someone’s passing footsteps and with very little else to do now but sit and wait, I found myself wishing very fervently that the back room was not so draughty and my imagination not quite so alive.
Like our water supply, this little corner of the Cotswolds had never been connected to mains electricity either, so the room was merely lit by the inky amber of an oil lamp and the formerly companionable glow of the hearth. This scene was not unique to my household;