Narrow Escape (18 page)

I stepped forward and Geoff grabbed my arm. “I wouldn't get too close if I were you,” he said.

“Why?”

“It's the main drain from the toilets and it hasn't been supported properly.” He pointed to where the pipe was attached. “Look, that's just hanging there. One knock or a flush too many and that's just going to fall off,” he said.

“But doesn't that mean that anything going through would just spill out into the car park?”

Drew grinned “Yep. Up to our ankles in sh–”

Bill cut across him. “Effluent,” she said.

“Lovely.” I couldn't see the difference the ‘big plan' was making to our lives here. I couldn't see why we were being asked to pay more. I didn't think it was right to pay for the fun opportunity to be covered in human waste, it was like playing poo roulette. As usual I tried to see something good in all this. “I see they've put lights up though, at least we can see what we're going to be asked to wade through.”

Bill snorted. “Shame they put such cheap lights in.” She pointed to the steep steps that led from the main marina into the car park. “That light up there manages to illuminate the top two steps, then you stagger in complete darkness down to the bottom where that other light manages to light up the bottom two steps. You then have to walk across the car park in the pitch black before the sensor picks up movement about ten foot away from the toilets and starts up the main lights. It's so badly designed; a couple of quid more and this could have been so much safer. One of the little ones is going to fall down those steps.

“Don't moan,” I poked her in the shoulder. “You should be grateful, don't forget we're now getting all the grass outside our boats mowed as well.”

“Oh yes, how silly of me.” Bill threw her hands up in a gesture of exasperation. “That daft twit comes along at the most inconvenient time and hacks down the grass. We all did a far better job of it when we did our own. But the very best thing is that he just leaves all the grass cuttings lying around. We walk through them, they stick to your boots and then you proceed to drag them right through your boat.” Sticking her cold hands into the depths of her pockets she frowned at the offending pipe. “Everything is half-arsed in this place, everything is half-done or just done badly.”

By this time we'd moved back up the steps and I could see down into the marina. “Well at least they've still allowed the boats to be craned out and the blacking is still going on.”

Bill shrugged. “I wonder how long that will last for.”

“Donna's looks a little precarious stuck on the end like that,” I said.

Bill and Drew looked at me. “Did you not hear about that?”

Well, obviously not. Donna didn't actually live in her boat, she lived with Steve, our next-door neighbour, and her boat was rented out to a nice man with a little boy. I saw a lot of Donna and Steve but I didn't often see her boat, it was right down the other end of the line.

“The stern tube gave out,” Bill said. “One minute it was fine and afloat, the next filling with water and heading for the bottom. Her tenant phoned her very early one morning last week and said ‘I'm sinking, what should I do?' Well everyone piled round there and bailed it out and they managed to effect a sort of bodge repair but it had to come out as quickly as possible and now she's got to get the stern tube replaced and she's got that new engine to put in as well.”

“Oh dear,” I said. “What happened to her tenant?”

“He had to find somewhere else to live and pretty quickly.” Bill looked a bit sick. “Just goes to show, these things can go from placid to panic in an instant. You don't get that with houses.”

We wandered back along the flood defences discussing the awful things that can happen on narrow boats.

“Did I hear recently that some bloke got blown up?” I couldn't remember where I'd heard that but I knew it was fairly local. I knew Bill would know, she seems to hear everything that goes on on the local waterways.

She nodded. “He was lucky.”

“Lucky?”

“Yeah, he had a fire and his gas canisters blew, luckily he was outside and when they went up the explosion blew him off the boat and into the water … Lucky.”

Fire is one thing we're all afraid of. I've never seen so many fire alarms and CO
₂
alarms as people have on boats. It's sensible, I suppose. We all live in a long tube, lined in nice dry wood. An unchecked fire can obliterate a narrow boat in less than ten minutes; you barely have time to get yourself out before the whole thing becomes one big pyre. If the fire service are called and there's gas on board there's very little they can do except cut the ropes and kick it into mid-stream. If it's going to blow you just want to get the other boats as far away as possible.

It was a strange coincidence that merely one week later the fire service was called to the marina. Luckily it wasn't a fire, it was a cow.

On the far bank the young bullocks wander up and down during the day. Apart from terrorising dog walkers and making a mess of the bank they don't really do anything or cause a problem. That is until one of them decides it wants a drink. Nine times out of ten they manage to get out again but about once a month one gets stuck. The poor fire brigade are called and they have to drag the unhappy and unhelpful animal out of the water.

Of course it wasn't always something as daft as cows that had to be dragged from the water. Only the previous year we'd all been watching the rescue helicopters and the search boats go up and down the river after the tragic deaths of two young men. They hadn't been messing about, they weren't tourists, and they weren't drunk. One young man, a trainee game warden, had been trying to save some geese in distress and had fallen out of a boat. His brother, trying to save him, had tragically died as well. It was a terrible accident and their family must have been devastated. It proved to all of us that even when you know what you're doing the dangers are very real.

July seemed to be the month for disasters and accidents. With the promise of a little good weather for the last weekend of the month, Steve and Donna decided to organise one of their parties.

These were always loud and raucous affairs but none of us minded. Steve would load all the revellers on to his boat and transport them off into the wilderness where they could revel to their hearts content and the rest of us could sleep in peace.

The only time we ever saw the party people was on arrival and at departure. It was quite funny, they would arrive in good spirits, chatting, laughing, and happy and would leave twenty-four hours later, still happy but somewhat subdued, the talking would be much muted and a lot of them fell down the flood defences.

Sunday morning and I'm laughing at the hang-dog expressions at the staggering trail of people that are weaving across the tops. One young man seemed more hang-dog than the rest and, as he reached the top of our steps, he stumbled and had to sit down rather quickly.

Geoff and I looked at each other, he grinned at me,

“Oh all right, I'll go and see if the idiot needs some pain killers or something.” I put my boots on and climbed out of the boat.

“Hi,” I called. I walked through the gate and stood at the bottom of the steps looking up at him, “Are you all right, can I get you a coffee or something?”

He was very pale and I noticed that his hands were shaking. Oh for goodness' sake, how much had this guy had to drink?

It took him a moment to focus on me and then he gave me a smile. It was a very slow, slightly hazy smile. “Could I have a drink of water please?” he said.

“Sure.” Subconscious alarm bells were ringing but I couldn't put my finger on what was bothering me. As I turned to head back to the boat I realised that what I thought was a wet patch on the thigh of his shorts wasn't water, it was blood. As I watched, a thick trickle of dark blood emerged from the leg of his shorts and ran in a steady stream down toward his trainers.

I got him a glass of water and picked up my medical kit, which had been kindly put together for me by my best friend Helen when we bought our first boat. She's a paramedic and she put together an incredible amount of useful stuff.

I handed him the glass of water. “Do you know that you're bleeding rather heavily?”

He looked up and blinked at me. “What?”

“Your leg's bleeding.” I pointed to where the blood was pooling on the grass.

He glanced down and looked shocked. “I thought it hurt,” was all he managed to say.

“Can I have a look?”

Putting the glass of water on the step beside him, he stood up. “Yes please,” he said and promptly dropped his shorts.

I was slightly taken aback. I could easily have just lifted the material or rolled it back but obviously this didn't occur to him. I debated asking him to put them back on but decided I didn't really want him standing up again. He wasn't as stable as I might like, physically or mentally.

Elaine stuck her head out of her boat. “What on earth are you doing to that young man?” she said with a laugh.

“Bleeding.” I pointed to his leg.

She pulled a face, “Yeauch! Call me if you need me.”

I didn't think she actually meant it.

Taking a couple of capsules of saline solution I snapped the tops off and poured them over the wound. Taking a clean pad I started to clean away the old blood. I was rather unnerved to notice that it wasn't a cut as I'd first suspected. Under the dried blood was a deep puncture. I could see what I hoped was white fat and the dark pink of muscle beneath. There was no doubt this guy needed stitches. I was also a little confused, the deep puncture should have been bleeding freely but it was only when he moved that it welled up. This wound looked as though it hadn't happened any time recently.

He didn't move as I cleaned him up and when I looked at him he was staring off into the distance and humming to himself. “Do you remember how you did this?”

He grinned down at me. “I fell in the river.”

“OK, then what happened?” After sluicing as much muck as I could out of the wound, I stopped. He'd started to wince at my ministrations. I could still see bits of dirt and grass in the wound but he really needed some pain killers before anyone went probing around in there. Quite frankly I wasn't convinced of my ability to get any more out, someone more trained than me needed to do that.

The pain had obviously gone some way towards sobering him up and he seemed to realise that he was sitting on the top of a set of wet steps in his underwear with a woman he didn't know dabbing away at his leg. He grabbed his discarded shorts and placed them carefully over his lap. “I'm so sorry,” he said.

“Don't worry about it, I used to work at the hospital – you wouldn't believe what I got to see.”

He relaxed. “Well that was lucky, to be found by a nurse.”

I concentrated on making sure that the covering I was putting over the wound was well stuck down. “Oh I'm not a nurse,” I said.

“Doctor?” He sounded hopeful.

I gave his bandage a gentle press and laughed as he winced again. “Television engineer,” I said.

He began to look rather sick again.

“So what happened to this?” I began packing my bits and pieces away.

He sighed and frowned. Obviously the evening was rather hazy. “I remember trying to jump off the boat and onto land,” he said. “I slipped and went into the water.” He shrugged.

“Did you fall between the boat and the side?” I was fairly sure I now knew what had made the big hole in his leg.

He nodded. “I remember the boat hitting my back, it squashed me against those weird grey things. That's when I hurt my leg. I remember someone telling me that I was bleeding, but I couldn't feel it so I didn't bother with it.”

The water would have been very cold at night so I could only assume that's why he hadn't been able to feel the pain. All along the side of the river, corrugated sheets of asbestos are held on by big steel bolts. The head of each bolt is about the same size as the hole in his leg. He'd obviously fallen in up to the waist; I could see where his white T shirt had a tide mark. As the boat swung back it had crushed his legs against the side and one of the bolts had punctured the skin. He was lucky he'd only gone in half way, if he'd gone under and the boat had swung back I doubted whether he would have been able to get out and I was fairly sure that none of the other party-goers would have noticed he was missing until it was far too late. Alcohol and boats are a very bad mixture.

“I think we'd better get you to A&E,” I said.

He nodded and attempted to stand up. “That really hurts now.”

Yeah I just bet it did.

Leaving him sitting with his leg up I scouted around to find someone that could take him to the hospital. No such luck, those that knew him were still mostly drunk or hung over and in no position to drive. I did consider calling an ambulance but after spending a fair amount of time with Helen I knew that calling an ambulance for a non-life threatening situation would have her screeching at me like a banshee.

“Dammit all, I'm going to have to take him.” I griped at Geoff as he came out with a coffee for me.

“Why can't one of his friends take him?” It was a reasonable question.

“Look at them,” I waved at hand at the staggering, wincing crowd that was now a steady flow across the tops. “They're all heading back to their cars, none of them are going to be able to drive; they're just going to sleep it off.” If I did make one of them take him there was every possibility that they wouldn't get to the end of the drive before having an accident.

“Ambulance?” Geoff asked with a hopeful air.

“Helen,” I said. “He doesn't need an ambulance; he just needs someone flaming sober.”

“Good point,” he said.