Magpie Tales#60

Another evocative picture for this week's Magpie Tales from Tess at Willow Manor  . . . where you can read many other responses.

STREET SCENE

The inquest found that the motorcyclist was not to blame.

The rainspots on the visor seemed not right, what with all the blood.  The bike had veered to avoid the usual child-running-into-the-road. But at the wrong, wrong moment the driver of a van, double-parked, had swung a rear door open. It struck the bike, not hard, but hard enough. The bike veered again, mounted the kerb, beyond control now. The biker wrestled it but I could see it was hopeless. The front wheel hit the shop front, under the window. The biker came over the handlebar and through the window. Head first. The window came down in a cascade of glass. The assistant - I remember his white trilby - had just wrapped my square sausage and pork chops. He managed "Jeez!" and raised an arm. He was lucky.  I was lucky. The woman next to me . . dear God, you don't last long with a slice of glass in your neck. Blood pumped out in great spurts. Even if there's anything you could do there's no time. I stood, pissing my knickers while she gurgled "Somebody help me" before she fell.  The biker ended up on the display slabs just inside the window, in a heap of leathers and boots and smashed  trays with beef cuts and link sausages and lambs' liver.  I can't remember much about what happened next but when I got outside there were folk milling round and gawping, and pretty soon sirens, and beat cops keeping folk back. The bike lay on the pavement. The biker had crawled out of the shattered window and seemed okay and was sitting on the pavement against the shop's front wall where the bike had hit, every limb shaking. I crouched down close by.  Bits of mince or something stuck to the leathers. I brushed them off, thinking "How pathetic is that?"

    "Take your helmet off. Get more air."  The black, rain spattered plexiglass wasn't even cracked. You wonder - you can't see in, how do they see out? I said, "I saw it all. I was in the shop. I'll witness." What's the point of saying "You weren't going fast. Didn't look like your fault." An ambulance was drawing up. Paramedics came over. I said, "I think we're O.K. In the shop." They crunched over broken glass. Blood was trickling across the shop step. The biker had taken the helmet off. A girl! Close cropped fair hair. My age for a guess. So shocked even her jaw was shaking.  I don't know what you do for shock. I put an arm round her. 

   And d'you know what she kept saying, over and over?  I mean, this would be insanely funny except that there was a woman lying bleeding to death in a wrecked butcher shop. She kept saying "But I'm vegetarian. I've always been a vegetarian."

   The paramedics came out of the shop. What was on the stretcher was completely covered and they were not hurrying.