Free A Perfectly Good Man by Patrick Gale Page B

kicked him then. He had watched scenes like this in prison; he had known there would be kicking eventually.
    In what space was left for thought between pain and pumping adrenaline, he assumed they were going to continue kicking him as he slumped to the pavement and that quite possibly he was about to die. But they broke off and ran away, laughing. He distinctly heard them begin their prank on someone else.
    ‘Hey. Excuse me? We’ve just got a question we’d like you to answer. Don’t be shy!’
    He could feel blood bubbling from his nose and then tasted it too. He put a hand gingerly to the back of his head and felt wetness there that sickened him. He tried to stand but his legs would not obey him, robbed of power by shock, perhaps. Besides, he had no idea what he should do next. He supposed he must need a hospital yet knew neither where Portsmouth’s hospital was nor how he would reach it. He must leave the street, at least, he knew that much, in case the gang tired of their second victim and decided to return to their first.
    ‘No. Don’t try to get up.’
    His eyes had closed up, he realized now, and made him temporarily blind. It was a young voice, low, educated, officer-class if it was a sailor’s. He felt a hand on his shoulder holding him in place quite firmly. ‘An ambulance is coming,’ the voice said. ‘You’re safe now. Did they rob you?’
    ‘No,’ Modest managed.
    ‘You’re bleeding quite a lot. I’m going to give you a handkerchief and you need to pinch it hard across the bridge of your nose if you can bear to.’
    ‘Not sure I can …’
    ‘Here. I’ll guide your hand.’
    A folded handkerchief was pressed into his hand then his hand was guided to the middle of his face by large fingers which then clutched his into position. The pain grew no worse so perhaps there was no fracture. Modest felt a great desire to sleep come upon him.
    ‘No,’ said the priest. ‘You need to stay with me, I’m afraid, in case you’ve got concussion. What’s your name?’
    ‘Modest.’
    ‘How wonderful. Like Mussorgsky. And Tchaikovsky’s brother.’
    ‘Yes. Modest Carlsson.’
    ‘Are you Swedish?’
    No one had ever asked this before. It made it so easy.
    ‘Half. And half Russian.’
    ‘Your English is very good.’
    ‘I’ve lived here all my life. I was born in Bayswater.’
    ‘And where do you live now?’
    ‘Allaway Avenue.’
    ‘So you were nearly home! That was bad luck.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Why did they hit you?’
    ‘I wouldn’t die for Queen and Country.’
    ‘Ha. That’s a new one. Me neither. I’m a terrible coward and I’ve got flat feet. And I’m a priest. We’re much more use alive in any case. Nature’s stretcher-bearers.’
    Modest was going to ask him his name but suddenly the ambulance arrived and a policewoman and the priest explained briefly that he had seen nothing, just found him, which surely was not quite the truth, then he gave Modest’s shoulder a quick squeeze and murmured, ‘God watches you, Modest. All will be well,’ and seemed to melt away as other voices and other hands took over.
     
     
    When he told them he was a childless widower, the nurses insisted on keeping him in overnight for observation. He needed stitches to the back of his head. A nurse laid a deliciously cold dressing across his nose and eyes to reduce the swelling but even so, when he could see again properly come morning, he found that his fat face now looked monstrously swollen.
    A consultation of the section on stains in the Reader’s Digest Household Manual – a book which, like the New Testament, he had impulsively removed from stock for his own uses – told him the trick with bloodstained linen was to soak it in brine. He was not particularly interested in hygiene, beyond the preservation of books, but he was due to take a wash to the launderette and salt happened to be one of the few cooking ingredients he had in his possession.
    There was something satisfactorily symbolic, too, in