| Family Matters Excerpt
With a lurch, the aircraft found the correct angle of ascent. But began to turn slowly as it rose.
Gareth watched Valerie correct the turn clumsily with her feet on the pedals. The ground began to move rapidly beneath them. Too rapidly. ‘For God’s sake!’
‘What?’ Sweat shone on her cheeks as the sun beat into the cockpit. Their angle of ascent sharpened again, and again she corrected. Gareth grabbed the edges of his seat. His heart rate began to climb the scale.
‘That’s enough! You idiot! I’ve just realised what’s going on! Turn her round and put us down. I’ll drive you home. We’ll have a meal on the way.’
She glanced at him and grinned. ‘There’s only one pilot on this aircraft!’ The treetops were already rolling out ahead, and she let the machine fly on towards them. ‘Don’t you feel as if the trees sometimes look almost solid enough to land on?’
‘No I bloody don’t!’ Not remotely they didn’t, thrashing back and forth with the approaching rotor wash.
The controller’s voice came over the radio. “Watch out, Alpha Zulu, you look a bit close to the Eastern perimeter trees.”
Valerie made no response.
Gareth felt fear rise up in him, real and undeniable, and shock at how far below them the ground was, how fragile the cockpit that sheltered them. ‘Valerie! Put this bloody machine down! Are you mad?’
‘Alpha Zulu! You are too CLOSE –’
The aircraft gained speed without height, scudding along parallel to the ground. Abruptly, Gareth changed his plea. ‘Climb! Climb now! Valerie, the trees!’
As if the penny had suddenly dropped, Valerie yanked the cyclic back. The aircraft reared… all Gareth could see was sky.
And Valerie jerked the cyclic forward again.
The helicopter plunged like a furious horse, the businesslike chadda-chadda-chadda of the blades interrupted by a bang and a lurch as if a grenade had hit their tail and at the same time a rifle volley of cracking, splintering wood came from below them as the skids caught the edge of a tree and wrenched them round.
He heard Valerie’s yelp in his earphones, ‘Shit!’
The aircraft pitched; Gareth’s teeth snapped shut on his tongue and he tasted blood. The machine whipped around. And around.
Then pitched earthwards as if spat from a cyclone.
He had time for one coherent thought. Brace yourself for the impact. But then the cyclone hurled them down with a force that made any such attempts puny. His head snapped helplessly forward, back, and his legs and arms flailed into Valerie’s as Valerie’s limbs windmilled uncontrollably into his. He tasted fear, he tasted lunch.
Ferocious energy smashed them into the unforgiving earth.
The engine screamed, and the machine thrashed itself to death against the ground.
Now it was much quieter.
The front screen was in shards, branches poking through into the cockpit. The instrument panel hung drunkenly and he could hear the descending hum of the gyros winding down. Blood spattered the white parts of the white and black interior, which seemed somehow to have shrunk as if he were inside a ping-pong ball that had been trodden on. Slowly, he blinked.
He would’ve shaken his head to clear it but it felt as big and heavy as a pumpkin. His ears rang, his headset had gone. His head, arms and legs lolled right; he was hanging by the seatbelt because the machine was lying on its right side.
Obviously alive and equally obviously hurt, all he felt was numb and immobile. Shouldn’t there be pain?
Grunting with the effort, he eased his head around to look at Valerie still belted into her seat below him, blood streaming from her lips and nose.
Think.
What should he do? What could he?
He might be able to release his harness.
But then he’d fall.
He’d had enough of falling. And he’d land on Valerie. Her eyes were staring and half-open, but he thought he could detect movement of her chest. Yes, she was definitely breathing. He let his eyes close and his head sink again.
Thank God.
He didn’t want Valerie to die when they’d only just found each other.
Distantly, he became aware of rising noise. A siren, like an old air raid siren. And then a vehicle’s two-tone. Shouting, closer. Running feet. Voices, panted words. ‘There’s fuel every-bloody-where. It’s Valerie North and her passenger.’
‘Did you see what happened?’
‘I don’t know, she just managed to miss the sky. Hold the extinguishers ready.’
The spectre of fire entered Gareth’s mind and he thought, thickly, that he should probably be trying to get clear of it. The stench of fuel was strong.
‘Are we going to try to shift some of this debris?’
‘Only the stuff that’s not actually in contact with the aircraft. Don’t want it to roll any further, just clear the way for the medical services.’ Crisp, decisive voices.
Gareth opened his eyes again. His vision shook and the cockpit swam. He groaned.
A face and the electric yellow flash of high viz clothing came to a gap in what was left of the acrylic bubble. ‘All right, mate. You’re all right. The paramedics will be here in no time. They’ll have you out. We’ll stay with you till then. All right? Can you hear me? We’re the fire crew, and we’ll see you’re OK.’
Gareth managed a word that sounded like, ‘Yunk.’ He wanted to spit blood out of his mouth but his face felt stiff and his lips wouldn’t move properly. He’d obviously taken a smack in the face, like Valerie.
‘Better if you stay conscious. You stay with me, all right? All right?’
‘Yunk.’
‘I’ll be here till the paramedics get here. They’ll soon have you right. Trained for this, those boys. They’ll have you and Mrs. North out of here and into hospital in no time. Eh, mate?’
Gareth groaned. Hospital! Of course, he’d have to go to hospital; he was scarcely going to be able to drive home. He’d go to hospital, and his next of kin would be informed.
Diane was going to find out about Valerie.
And the Secret Life of Gareth Jenner that had given him so much pleasure over the last couple of years would be exposed, and he would never again experience that delicious sense of freedom from leaving his world, his ordinary, ordinary world, and stepping into the other, more exciting and comfortable one. A world that was full of nice things that he didn’t have to share.
The heady escapism was over.
Sensation returned to his body abruptly and pain flood into every particle – the cage of his chest was on fire, his fingers had been slammed in a car door, his arms wrenched from their sockets, a giant had stamped on his legs before giving his head a proper kicking.
‘Won’t be long now,’ said the face peering into the bubble. ‘Soon have you fixed up. Breathe deeply, mate. Just hang on.’
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