Near-death experiences in the old kent road

We were not in an especially good mood that Saturday morning, having been summoned to the wilds of north London by the pleasant young couple to whom we were trying to sell our car, so it could be assessed by their ``independent'' mechanic. We ended up in a greasy yard by a railway bridge, hanging about stony-faced while he tinkered and pulled woeful faces. Surprise, surprise, he detected manifold faults, including well dodgy brakes. Wiping his hands on a greasy rag, he recommended we drop the price by pounds 500, while the couple stood by wearing expressions of pious concern. ``Honestly, guv, I can't recommend it to them at your price.'' So we got in the car and reversed furiously back out over the bumps and puddles.Two days later, another buyer sent an AA mechanic over to check it out; he pronounced it a good car and a bargain (`Brakes OK, then?' I asked casually). But that was later.

Think of us, then, driving up the Old Kent Road in a state of righteous anger and irritation over our wasted morning. We halted at some lights behind a large lorry. There was an angry revving noise, then loud male shouts and prolonged screaming, and the sound of a speeding car. B moved his head slightly, said ``Oh God'', and a second later a small car came hurtling past with a puppet, a dummy, an unstrung, dangling thing caught underneath it, a flash of bare legs bouncing up and down. I jumped out of the car. In the road about 100 yards away, a woman lay on her side, hillocky, shoeless, unmoving. The car was already squealing towards the vanishing point. Everything else had gone quiet. I ran about half the distance towards her then stopped. She looked dead enough. I ran to a shop, mimed a dialling motion. They knew, they'd seen too. ``I've done first aid,'' said a dark-haired girl. ``Then go,'' I told her. ``Should I?'' ``Go, go, go,'' I said.

I walked back up the road to the point where she'd been hit, where a gaggle had gathered. A pair of clumpy shoes lay wide apart on the tarmac, one upright, one on its side. And the most surreal touch of all: pigeons, flocking and pecking at something in the road, more of them gathering on the guttering of neighbouring shops and fluttering down. It puzzled me for a moment: they reminded me of the hallucinatory chickens in Santa Sangre, pecking at blood. Then I saw two brown paper packs of seed, spilt in the road, with a newspaper. Her handbag had already vanished, magically; no one had seen it happen. The crowd and the pigeons added to the air of prestidigitation. There was dispute among the pedestrians. ``It was a young girl who got hit,'' said someone dreamily. ``No, it wasn't,'' I said. ``Look at the shoes.'' Battered, the shoes of an old woman, who like Miss Flyte in Bleak House, stinted herself to feed the birds.

The police must be used to these bravura rushes of improvisation from witnesses. A florid woman with big hair and heavy make-up was assuring a policeman that the driver had been an elderly man with silver hair, that he was alone, driving a dark-brown estate car. B was disagreeing on every point. Then the woman came over all Madame Vasso: ``He will turn himself in. He is filled with remorse. He didn't mean to do it.''

I, meanwhile, was leaning against our car, trying to control the convulsive action of my arms by folding them. They flopped open again, shaking like two strands of pasta galvanised by an electrical current. I was half- amused, half-shocked at my inability to do anything to stop this.

Two ambulances arrived and parked protectively on either side of the woman. A man with a sharp, eager face weaved around on his bicycle, circling as close as he dared. I saw her leg twitch; the murmur went around: ``She's alive.'' There was a good 20 minutes of urgent paramedical attention there on the road, before the bright yellow helicopter from the Royal London manoeuvred down into the road, its rotor blades just clearing the street lamps. After the whole circus had disappeared into the sky, the police began directing traffic down the side-streets.

We doubled back and nosed northwards again, over the river to Covent Garden. We were still trembling when we asked for two double espressos in a coffee shop. ``Are you eating?'' asked the proprietor. We shuddered. ``Well, you can't just have coffee,'' he said irritably. We muttered that we'd stand, we'd gulp it in one, we'd just ... ah, what's the point. We walked out.