Life Less Lived Ch. 13

Marina trained the torch on the back wall. down near the bottom were a row of relatively new air bricks set in fresh mortar, but the bricks above looked less secure.

"Look, Babs, if the wall above was weak enough to collapse and there's no longer the same weight pressing down, maybe we can kick the wall out. Let's get the rest of these shelves out of the way."

They worked moving the shelves, some came away easily, others were jammed in. The bay was filling up with smoke and it was becoming hard to see and the temperature was rising alarmingly.

The planks were clear and Marina tried to kick the wall with her trainers, time after time but to no avail and she was tiring. Lady Barbara had worn her smart trouser suit down to the cottage and had walked to the barn in sensibly-heeled slip on shoes, but they had slipped off during the capture and being dragged into the stall.

"Our feet are about the same size, Marina. Slip off your left shoe and we will see if we both kick the wall at the same time we can shift this blasted wall."

Soon Lady Barbara had Marina's left shoe on.

"We'll aim as high as we can, Marina, OK?"

"OK, on three, one ... two ... three!"

They each struck at a couple of bricks about a metre or so up the wall and were rewarded by a shower of mortar dust. They looked at each other and grinned, both had faces reddened by exertion, heat and were covered in soot and dust. They looked like mad laughing devils.

"Again!" they cried in unison and kicked again and again, rewarded by more dust. After four or five kicks they felt the bricks move.

"Throw our backs into it," cried Marina, and they kicked again.

The bricks definitely moved. They kicked again and five or six bricks fell through, and could hear a splash on the other side.

"There's a drainage ditch along the north wall," Marina remembered, "as the horses have to cross a wooden bridge to reach the first field gate."

"I remember," Lady Barbara agreed, "Let's keep going."

They laughed and moved along and kicked at another set of bricks and after three or four kicks they gave way too. More kicking and then with a rumble and a crash they could hear whatever was left of the wall above them crash down into the ditch.

To their dismay, instead of the view of the fields and the downs ahead of them, and escape from their danger, all they could see was a wall of smouldering straw, clearly having come down off the roof when it collapsed. If they hadn't had the torch, the area would have been pitch dark, as all the fluorescent lights had already gone out.

They shone the torch along to the east, where the bridge should have been, but they couldn't even see the bridge as the ditch was full of straw. Looking to the west, they could see that the ditch was pretty clear for ten or fifteen metres but still couldn't see through to the end.

"Let's take a shelf plank each," Lady Barbara suggested, "we could use them to push the straw away and see if we can find a gap that we could open up."

By using the shelves like a spade they dug into the ancient straw and cleared a space under the debris to the ditch below. The ditch turned out to be a stream, with a noticeable current, and they dipped a shelf in and worked out it was about two feet deep, no doubt fed by the firehouses. They eased themselves down and decided to move with the flow upstream to the west, with a canopy of fallen straw and wooden laths from the roof above them. They carried on as far as they could go before the wall of the barn to the left changed direction, although the stream carried on.

They were still in a tunnel of smouldering straw, but they poked at the side of it with the planks and were able to see through. The straw was hot and smouldering, but they dipped themselves in the water of the stream, to thoroughly wet themselves and then clambered through the smouldering gap they'd created and moved away from the barn.

The timber frame of the ancient barn appeared to be holding on, and the single thickness brick infill was hanging on along the west side of the barn, but most of the short north wall appeared to have collapsed. All around them the straw from the now completely missing roof was burning or glowing as if ready to burst back into flames, and there was no way for them to make any progress around to the house side of the barn.

So they clung together for comfort in relief while they waited for the fire service to finish damping down and rescue them. After a few minutes, the exhausted pair fell asleep in each other's arms.

***

Chichester General Hospital was always busy at visiting times, part of which took place during the evening shift change, so if one extra nurse was floating around she would easily go unnoticed.

The Sussex Police Constable charged with guarding the prisoner in a private side ward in the burns unit, even held the door open for the pretty nurse to go through and check on her patient. A little older than most of the nurses she was, probably in her late twenties, early thirties, thought PC Cox, and looked as though she could be really hot stuff.

Most of the nurses smelled clean of soap and commonplace deodorants, but the perfume on this one smelt expensive, really expensive, he thought. He almost asked her what make it was, as his wife of five years had a birthday coming up and he was, as usual, completely at a loss what to get her.

Through the door he could see her check the patient's chart, ballpoint pen at the ready, then refilled and adjusted the patients pain management IV, paying every attention to her patient's welfare.

It was no wonder, PC Cox thought, that the patient was sleeping peacefully, despite the horrific pain of his injuries.

In a matter of five minutes the nurse was finished and he watched her wiggling walk on clacking high heels all the way down the corridor.

To be continued