Concrete Island Read Online Free

off his involuntary cry. He realized that the energy left to him was finite, perhaps half an hour of extended effort. He turned on to his side, drew his left leg out of the grass and lifted himself into a kneeling position.
    Gasping at the night air, he no longer tried to control himself. He leaned helplessly against the embankment, hands deep in the cold soil. A faint dew already covered his torn suit, chilling his skin. He looked up at the steep slope, for a moment laughing aloud at himself.
    â€˜How the hell am I supposed to climb that…? Might as well be Mount Everest.’
    As he crouched there, trying to grapple with the pain from his injured hip, his whole situation seemed to Maitland like a bad joke that had got out of hand. A defective tyre-wall, a bang on the head, and he had suddenly exited from reality. He thought of Helen Fairfax asleep in her flat, as always on the left side of the double bed that filled the minute bedroom, her head lying on the right-hand pillow, as if she had deputised the various sections of her body to represent both herself and Maitland. Curiously enough, this calm and capable woman doctor was a restless dreamer. By comparison, Catherine would be sleeping quietly in her white bedroom, a bar of moonlight across her pale throat. In fact, the whole city was now asleep, part of an immense unconscious Europe, while he himself crawled about on a forgotten traffic island like the nightmare of this slumbering continent.
    Headlamps flared against the roof of the overpass tunnel. A car hummed along the silent roadway.
    â€˜Help … Stop…’
    Maitland waved one hand without thinking. He listened to the car fade away, carrying its comfortable driver, latch-key securely in his pocket, to a warm suburban bed.
    â€˜Right … Let’s try again…’
    He climbed two feet up the slope, dragging the injured leg behind him, before collapsing into the soft earth. Even this small exertion had multiplied the pain in his hip socket. Unable to move, he knelt with his face in the broken soil, the cold earth against his cheek. Already he knew that he would never be able to climb the embankment, but he tried to drag himself up the slope, scooping armfuls of the soft earth from his path, forcing himself across the crumbling surface like a wounded snake.
    â€˜Catherine…’
    For the last time he whispered her name, well aware that in some obscure way he was blaming her for his plight, for the pain in his injured leg, and for the cold night air that lay over his body like a damp shroud. A profound sense of depression had come over him, replacing the brief surge of confidence he had felt. Not only would Catherine assume that he was spending the night with Helen Fairfax, but she would not particularly care. Yet, he himself had almost deliberately created this situation, as if preparing the ground for his crash …
    Night and silence settled over the motorway system. The sodium lights shone down on the high span of the overpass, rising into the air like some disused back entrance to the sky. Maitland lifted himself on to his left leg, supporting himself on his arms against the slope of the embankment. His right leg hung in front of him like a dead animal lashed to his belt. The long grass swayed in the night air, a corridor of crushed blades marking the route he had taken that afternoon. Hobbling along, the injured thigh held in both hands, he pressed on through the grass.
    The silver fuselage of his car appeared among the shabby wrecks. Half-veiled by the grass, their rusting hulls were almost invisible. Maitland reached the rear door. Exhausted by the effort, he was about to lift himself into the back seat when he remembered the carton of wine bottles.
    He pulled himself round to the rear of the car and unlocked the trunk. He lifted out one of the bottles of white Burgundy and fumbled with the wrapper. Opening the tool-kit, he took out the adjustable spanner. On the