He landed hands first on the wet, sandy soil and rolled over on his side. Wind roared inwards towards the blaze, sucking the air from his mouth. His skin was paper; his hair tinder.
Run, for God’s sake.
Richard Denham moved to get up, but the next blast flattened him, sending a huge jet of flame over his head.
He crawled forwards through showers of brilliant white stars. Some fifty feet away a man in a sailor’s cap was beckoning, shouting through the rippling glow.
‘Over here, buddy, come on.’
I’m coming, friend, he thought, seeing in his mind that first day on the Somme twenty years ago. Which way are the Jerry lines, pal?
He staggered up and began to run, but a roll of burning diesel smoke engulfed him. Stumbling, he hit his head against something metal.
The next thing he knew he was being carried away at a run, jiggled over the sailor’s shoulder like a sack of oats, the man’s lungs heaving under the load.
The sailor swore as he lowered Denham to the ground.
A light drizzle was falling. He touched the swelling lump where he’d hit his head.
People were moving, dark figures silhouetted against the glare of the fire. He caught the obscene reek of roasted flesh.
Suddenly he thought, Where is it?
‘Can’t hear what you’re saying, buddy. We’re giving you morphine, you understand? You’re burned.’
Bundles of paper, he knew, had a knack of surviving blazes. He remembered that from crime reporting. Eleanor would have made it safe.
A needle pricked his arm. He felt the cool flow of the injection.
Where was Eleanor?
How strange, how small the things that change history, turn it from its darkened course, send it eddying off down new, sunlit streams.
He lay back on the wet grass, feeling the ropes that tied him to consciousness begin to loosen. In the blackness above, embers traced the air like fireflies.
How strange.