a cube of glass

Ian paused by the fence beside the old railway bridge to tuck in his shirt. He clambered over the rusty strands of wire and scrambled down through the rubbish strewn brambles to the embankment below. At the bottom of the steep slope were old unwanted sofas and broken bits of fridge that people had tipped over the bridge, along with bottles, cans and magazines.

Ian leafed briefly through a muddy copy of Playbirds that was hanging from a clump of ragwort, then headed north along the narrow path where the railway track had long since given way to lush grass. The path was marshy in places, and he had to tip toe through the silty mud or brave the nettles that grew tall and voracious along the bottom of the bank.

The top of the slopes on either side of the path were lined with hawthorn. Beyond the shade of their tangled branches (where nothing grew) were blackberry brambles and tall unrecognisable weeds with bright yellow flowers and occasional fanfares of fox gloves. And further on, where the path was wider and drier there were dandelions, their seed heads denuded by the gentle breeze.

The embankment was a sanctuary for wild life, its banks gaping with a network of holes dug between the roots of the hawthorn. Ian always saw rabbits there, hopping out onto the path ahead, twitching their noses at him then skittering off through the brambles. He sometimes saw foxes and once even the white striped snout of a badger as it ambled through the dusk. However, the animals' peace was not undisturbed. The evidence lay along the path; red cartridge tubes and discarded bits of carcass spilling from grey bin liners. Often came the hunters, armed with air rifles and shotguns, terriers and shovels, wooden boxes with rows of air holes precisely drilled beneath the lid hinges. In cloth caps, camouflage trousers and sleeveless, khaki, quilted jackets they stalked the undergrowth capturing and killing. Pleasures Ian couldn't understand.

Often, as he walked the embankment, Ian thought about Rich, or more precisely about the accident. He'd torture himself with endless questions. What if he'd been there? Would it never have happened? Would he be dead too? Did they die straight away? Or did they lie there trapped and slowly drown? Did it hurt or were they all unconscious or too drugged up and drunk to feel anything? Would they have escaped if they hadn't been drinking? Did they try to escape but couldn't? Were the door knobs up? Were the windows open? Would he have been able to escape had he been there? What did they think about as they died? Did Rich think of him? Had he argued with his mates? Was that why they'd crashed? Did Rich curse him as he lay there? Or did he spend those last precious moments with Xandra, or Julia, or the one in the shower he had heard but never met? Did Rich pray? Where had they been driving to? Were they coming back home? How fast were they going? Did a car in front brake suddenly? Did one of them grab the wheel from the other for a laugh? Did they swerve? How many times did the car roll over? If he'd been in the car would the extra weight have made it roll over one more time and land the right way up? Would they then all have been able to get out safely?

Halfway along the embankment Ian scrambled down a narrow gully of soil between the hawthorns, using their roots for footholds, and into a field. He set out across the open pasture towards the narrow lanes that wound their way back down into the town.

Ian was midway across a field when he heard the sound of a horn. Turning he saw the hunt led by baying hounds eagerly bounding across the grass behind him. Feeling suddenly vulnerable out in the open Ian panicked and jogged for the cover of a small copse of trees. He broke into a sprint and arrived at the trees just moments before the hunt was upon him.

The hunt leaders, who wore scarlet, brass-buttoned coats, pounded by with a thundering of hooves on turf. The shaved flanks of the galloping horses were flecked with foaming sweat. Their eyes rolled and they champed at the bit like old men with false teeth eating steak and kidney pies. Close behind the red-jacketed men came stout ladies in dog-tooth hacking jackets. The ladies had red cheeks and huge arses, their barrel-bellied horses stumbling over divots in the churned up turf as they cantered past, forced on by a savage swishing of crops. The fat ladies were followed by eager Pony Club girls, all neat in leather boots, pony club ties and beige stretch-to-fit jodhpurs which clung to their pert bottoms as they lent forward over their ponies' necks to chase up the hill after the pack, whilst Ian hid behind a tree as if he were the object of their pursuit.

As Ian watched the last of the horses canter past, a couple of hounds who had strayed from the rest of the pack ambled, tails-wagging, through the copse. They sniffed in Ian's direction. He tried hard not to look like a fox, and gazed nonchalantly up to where brief rays of sunlight filtered through the branches of nearby oak trees and onto the decayed husks of dead bluebells. Ian snapped a branch off a tree and plucked the young leaves from it.

A group of walkers brought up the rear of the hunt, calling the stray hounds. Most of them were ladies with big noses, barber jackets and scarves round their heads. They all carried walking sticks made from carved and varnished branches and wore khaki wellies. Some carried waterproofs, others had hats on. Finally, there were a couple of cartoonlike rosy-cheeked yokels, with haystack hairstyles and rotten teeth. They talked in comically broad country accents and carried a spade and a wriggling Jack Russell with mischievous eyes.

Ian waited until the various members of the hunt were well gone before he left the shelter of the copse. Then he jogged up towards the hedge at the top of the field, which bordered the road back into town. When he reached the hedge he was panting slightly, and he paused for a while beneath a solitary oak tree. The hard ridges of its bark dug into his back as he sat and surveyed the view below him.

The valley stretched out for miles beyond the slope he'd just run up. The town dominated the view; a core of grey offices surrounded by red-brown houses and coated in multi-coloured industrial estates, which grew out along the bypass like cancer along a vein, eating into the green flesh of the countryside. The borders of the sprawl were marked by the brightly girded skeletons of new factories, and - beside the grey thread of river to the west of the town - the hypermarket car park, a mosaic of brightly coloured cars, a mural to the town's new-found prosperity.

In the centre of town, the streets he remembered from his childhood were all gone; the greengrocer's replaced by estate agents, bookshops replaced by building societies, the china shop by a burger bar. And the farms scattered around the fringes of the town were now mostly converted to small businesses, architects and computer services centres. Lanes where tractors once slowly rattled, had been stripped of hedgerows to make way for the lorries he could see thundering back and forth between the dual carriageway and the dark scar of the gravel pits, where they collected materials to build yet more new roads.

At the estate on the edge of town where Ian had grown up, a baker used to delivered bread daily, and a man called round on Wednesdays with a van full of fruit and vegetables. Now not even the milkman delivered. The three room village school Ian had attended had been converted into flats. The jars of boiled sweets in the local shop had been replaced by rows of horror and soft porn videos. The local community hall that had once thrived on flower shows, amateur dramatics and brass band concerts had become a venue for rock bands, banned from pubs in the town centre, whose fans littered the tangled grass of the old football pitch with empty lager cans and cigarette packets.

Families who had lived in the area for centuries, whose ancestors had survived the plague and whose fathers and grandfather's names covered the war memorials in front of the church, had mostly gone, forced out by rising rents and demolition. Even the Tudor cottage, just down the lane from the estate, which Ian had done a history project on at school, had not escaped the onslaught of modernisation.

Unchanged for three centuries the cottage was, until the new owners somehow got retrospective planning permission for an extension at the back and a double garage at the side, built, just like that, with bricks and tiles that didn't quite match.

When Ian was small he had often visited old Mrs Williams who used to live in the cottage. She had a wrinkled face like a witch but she was very kind. He remembered how she always used to give him a square of home-made flapjack and let him drop pennies into the well in the back garden and make secret wishes. The new owners (heirs to a northern pickle manufacturers fortune, so he'd heard) filled the well in and replaced it with a swimming pool. They drove their kids to a private day school twenty miles away, shopped at the hypermarket on the edge of town and wanted pavements put in the lane that led to the woods where they took visitors for walks on Sunday afternoons.

As Ian wallowed in his melancholy memories a slight breeze crept up the hill. The clouds came together and hid the sun. Ian shivered. He decided it was time to head back home. He wandered along the edge of the thick brambled hedge looking for the stile he knew was there, overgrown by spiny-creepers. The sky had darkened, by then more grey than blue. In the distance dark edged clouds carried rain rapidly nearer.

Suddenly, at the lower edge of the field, Ian glimpsed a flash of fawn moving past the dark green of the hedge. At first he thought it was a stray hound but then he realised it was a deer; a fallow by the look of its squarish back and the white patch on its chest. It must have been startled, thought Ian, by the hunt which he could still hear on the far side of the copse; the baying of hounds, the horn, the shouting.

Ian marvelled at the deer's graceful motion, effortlessly springing over the turf. He wished he could be like the deer, making a home in a clearing among the trees; no roads, no factories, no rent. Unfortunately, there wasn't a great deal of nutrition in the copse for a supermarket dependent vegetarian. And besides, he asked himself, what would he do all day? He knew he wouldn't survive long before he crawled back to his cassette collection, central heating, and ready-to-eat pasta shells in spicy tomato sauce. However, he decided, if there were such a thing as reincarnation he wouldn't mind coming back as a deer.

He imagined dodging between the trees, the breeze across his back, his nimble hooves picking a perfect passage between the roots and brambles, skittering across the soft mud, the litter of leaves between his cloven toes. Ian was so engrossed in his fantasy that, as he stood on the stile and watched in astonishment the deer leap over the hedge, he didn't even hear the car. Ian turned as he heard the dull thud and screech of brakes. He saw the deer hurled into the air, its willowy body limply somersaulting like a stuffed toy. He watched the car ride up the steep verge and turn over twice, tumbling the driver like a dice in its metal clutch, then slide on it's roof into a ditch across the road.

Ian leapt over the stile and ran down the road, the laces of his baseball boots whipping against his shins. The deer lay in a crumpled bloodied heap to one side of the road. Its insides hung out ruptured by the impact. One eyeball hung from its socket on a thread of tissue, the other, intact, still shone with life. Ian glanced at it briefly as he ran down the hill to the car fifty yards beyond.

The car lay on its side in the ditch, one wheel still slowly turning on a twisted axle. Close to the car the smell of petrol fumes and oil was heavy in the air. A Guide to Country Houses of the South East lay face down in the road beside Wiltshire Walks.Spots of rain started to fall and run down the book's plastic cover. Scattered further down the road were pound coins, a lighter, pens, a black plastic bound service manual and a plastic bottle of anti freeze, split open, bleeding blue liquid that mixed with oil and rain and ran down the road in rainbow filmed rivers. Ian peered in through the cracked window of the car. A man lay inside. He had a plump face and dark curly hair, a navy blazer and a blue and white striped shirt spattered with blood. The man's head hung limply to one side.

'Fucking hell! He's dead!' thought Ian.

He leant forward, hands on thighs, his heart pounding like a fist in his chest as he continued to stare at the man through the cracked glass. Maybe he isn't dead, thought Ian, he might just be unconscious. He wasn't sure what to do. His instincts were urging him to try and pull the body from the wreckage. But he knew you weren't supposed to move people after accidents. Best just to wait and let the police and the ambulancemen deal with it, he decided. Somebody must have heard the sound of the crash and called for help. Somebody would be there soon.

Ian looked hopefully up the road, listening for the distant drone of any approaching vehicle, but all he heard was the sound of rain spattering off the upturned car, the wind howling along telephone wires and rushing through the trees, leaves crackling like fire. He continued to gaze up the road as if hypnotised by the wreckage, staring at the skid marks, the battered headlight surround, paint scoured from the car's roof and the gut-trailing carcass of the dead deer, just staring at it all until a jabbing stench of charred oil alerted him again to the trapped man, and he knew he was going to have to try and move him.

A thin line of smoke started to spiral up from the ruptured engine as Ian scrambled round the back of the car, catching his trouser leg on the crumpled rear bumper. It was no good. The car leaned too far over into the ditch. The driver's side door was completely blocked by the grass bank. He would have to pull the man from the passenger door. He hastened back round to the other side of the car.

Ian tugged at the door handle but the door was locked. He kicked at the door's shattered window. It crumbled, cubes of glass spilling into the car like giant sugar granules. Ian kicked away the remnants of glass from the window frame, then reached inside and released the door lock. To his relief he was immediately able to pull the door open. Ian leaned into the car and carefully unfastened the man's seat belt. He tried to pull the man's legs free but they were jammed beneath the upside down steering wheel. Ian pulled at the man's arm. His head lolled towards Ian but the body wouldn't budge. The car door fell shut on the back of Ian's legs. Cursing, he kicked it back open.

Ian got out of the car pulling his shirt down and his trousers up. Somebody must come soon. Somebody must come.But the road remained quiet, blanketed by smoke snaking slow and deadly up through the rain.

Ian took a deep breath and reached into the car, once more embracing the limp body. As he pressed his head hard to the man's chest he could hear the thump, thump of a healthy heart beat. Spurred on by that warm pounding, he hooked knees behind the side of the door frame, locked fingers and heaved.

The man shifted slightly, but the smoke inside thickened dark and choking. Ian released his hold and put his head outside. Tongues of flame licked up from the engine. Ian gulped for air, but the smoke was all around him, burning his throat and eyes like boiling glue.

Head spinning and lungs fit to burst Ian again reached into the car and blindly clasped the man. A dagger of glass slashed his left arm and smaller fragments of glass were embedded in his knees. But he was too frightened to feel any pain. With one last tug he felt the man suddenly slip free from beneath the steering wheel and fall out of the car on top of him.

He lay winded for a moment on his back in the road, an oily dampness seeping up into his shirt. He forced himself out from beneath the man, grabbing tight handfuls of navy blazer. Panting heavily he dragged the man away from the car like a hunch-backed gazelle, his skinny body struggling with all that dead weight, wiry arms taut, desperate and determined.

They were about thirty yards back from the car when it finally blew. Ian heard a small bang no louder than a back fire. Then, with a series of two or three deafening explosions, the car burst into a ball of fire. Ian dropped the man and fell back onto the road, shielding his face with his hands from the intense heat and force of the blasts. He slumped exhausted onto the sodden grass of the verge and watched the crackling flames send up an enormous mushroom cloud of smoke. He raised his head in a silent prayer, gratefully letting the rain run down his face.

The man opened his eyes as he lay cradled in Ian's arms. He looked confused and mumbled something that Ian could not understand. The man tried to lift himself.

"Don't move," said Ian. "Someone will be here soon".

The man shifted his weight and groaned in agony. The red stain on his chest spread. Ian covered the stain with his hand. They sat together waiting; waiting for someone to drive past and alert an ambulance, which would collect and deliver them to white-curtained wards full of soothing, starched nurses bearing towels, radiator-warm. Blood seeped between Ian's fingers and dribbled down the back of his hand.

He heard a distant siren.

"Not long now," Ian whispered to the man. "They'll be here soon now."

He felt a stab of pain in his arm, looked down and saw that most of the blood on the man's shirt flowed from a gash just above his own wrist. The siren wail grew louder.

"Don't worry mate," he murmured. "Not long now."