Chapter One: The Night Visitor

Martin awoke in the dark and slowly became aware that someone was knocking on the door of his bedroom. He groped for the lamp and turned it on. The alarm clock showed twenty five minutes to one.

"Hang on!" he called out, and jumped out of bed and opened the door. One of the students from downstairs, Nina, a serious-faced girl dressed in heart-print pyjamas and thick glasses, was standing there with her arms folded across her chest. She did not look happy.

Martin blinked. None of the students ever came up to his room in the attic. On the very few occasions that one of them needed to speak to him, they would either stand at the bottom of the stairs and shout up, or just leave a little note in the kitchen.

"Hello?" he said uncertainly.

"One of your friends is here to see you."

She said the word "friends" in the same slightly revolted way you might say, "One of your cats has poohed in my slipper".

Martin stared back at her blankly. "What do you mean?"

None of my friends ever comes here. Not that I'm ashamed of where I live, but… I'm ashamed of where I live. And what friends, anyway?

"I mean; one of your friends is here to see you. He woke me up," she added pointedly.

"Who is it?"

"How should I know? He's your friend!"

Martin was getting properly annoyed now. "Alright, well, send him up then!"

Nina made a face. "I think it might be better if you come down."

"What do you mean; better? Just send him up!"

She turned and headed back downstairs without a reply.

"Oh, for God's sake!"

He let out an exasperated sigh, pulled on his dressing gown and slippers, and followed her back down the two flights of stairs to the hall. Someone was slumped on the bottom stair with his head buried in his knees. Pretty much the last someone Martin expected to see.

"Arthur? What on earth are you doing here?"

Arthur didn't lift his head from his lap or show any sign that he had even heard. Martin had to half climb over him to get to the hall, whereupon he saw that his friend had obviously been in some sort of accident. Blood was seeping through a tear in his right trouser leg, and his right forearm was badly grazed.

"Arthur!" he exclaimed, "Oh, my g - what happened? Are you alright?"

"Nnngh," said Arthur in response.

Martin crouched down in front of him and gently lifted Arthur's head from his knees. There was another nasty graze on his cheek, but far worse than that was the unfocussed look in his eyes and the expression of misery on his usually cheerful face. If Martin didn't know any better, if he didn't know Arthur... there was only one conclusion to be drawn.

"Arthur, have you... you've not... have you been drinking?"

Arthur let his head bang into his knees again. "Nnn nnn feh ah ca," he mumbled.

"What? I can't understand you. What happened? How did you get these grazes?"

"Feh ah ca!"

Martin frowned. He hauled himself upright again, repeating Arthur's words in his head and trying to make sense of them. Not that anything about this situation made sense. Arthur didn't drink. Not in the same way that Douglas "didn't drink"; he'd just never shown any interest in it.

"Flacker?" repeated Martin, with a helpless shrug. "I'm really sorry, I don't know what you're trying to say."

Arthur made a noise of frustration. "Fll ah ca! Fll ah ca, fll ah ca, fll ah ca!"

Oh.

"You fell out of the car?"

"Yeh, goh ma fooh cawn seebel.'

Ah. Once you'd cracked the code, Arthur was suddenly a lot easier to understand.

"You got your foot caught in the seatbelt?"

"Swah I seh!"

Martin bit back a laugh. "Yes, that is indeed what you said, yes."

And then something occurred to him that made the smile freeze on his face.

"Arthur... did you... did you drive here?"

"Yeh thass wha'm say -"

Shit. Maybe he wasn't drunk at all, maybe he was concussed. Maybe he'd just driven his car into a lamp-post. Maybe the reason he was slurring so badly was because he'd hit his head on the steering wheel and was even now bleeding internally, and - oh, God!

"Where's your car?" Martin demanded, trying to keep the rising panic from his voice. "Did you crash the car? Where's your car, Arthur?"

"Dn shou ah me! Iss oussigh! Tole yuh, fll ah ca!"

"Yes, yes, I know you fell out of the car," said Martin, impatiently, "I got that bit. What I'm asking is; where is it now?"

"Tole yuh, iss oussigh!"

"Outside. Oh, thank God. So you didn't crash your car?"

"Nngh!"

The wave of relief that washed over Martin almost made his head swim. "Good. That's good. Give me your keys, then, and I'll go and check on it."

He watched, amused, as Arthur made repeated failed attempts to get his hand into his trouser pocket.

"Dno where mkeys," he mumbled.

"I think they might be in your pocket, suggested Martin, trying not to laugh, "Shall I have a look?"

He leant down, patted Arthur's right trouser pocket, located his car keys, and removed them swiftly.

In the same moment Arthur tried to move out of his way, slipped sideways and headbutted the wall with such force it made Martin wince.

"Ow!"

"You alright?"

"Hih my heh."

"Yes, I heard. I bet that hurt, didn't it?"

"Unngh."

"Well, that's nothing to how much it's going to hurt tomorrow," Martin scolded him. "Honestly, Arthur, what on earth possessed you? And drink-driving! How can you have been so stupid? You're lucky not to have been killed. Or worse, you could have killed someone else. It's just such a monumentally stupid thing to do. I can only imagine what your Mum would say, although fortunately for you I'm not going to tell her, because I'm not a masochist. I'm sure somehow she'd manage to turn it around so it was all my fault. I suppose that's why you've come here rather than going home, is it?"

Arthur didn't have an answer. He was too busy trying to stop his head from sliding down the wall.

Martin shook his head. In the five years they had known each other, he had never seen Arthur drunk once. He had heard about the Peach Schnapps Incident, of course, mostly from the ashen-faced, hushed-voiced accounts of Douglas and Carolyn, but he assumed they were mostly exaggerating, as both of them were rather wont to do. And even then, Martin had imagined that an Arthur who had drunk alcohol was probably not much different to an Arthur who had drunk coffee; basically, his usual Tiggerish self, only slightly more... slurry.

Arthur was struggling to keep his eyes open, and Martin thought he would probably have to put him to bed on the sofa when he returned. That would be fun.

"I'm just going to check on your car, Arthur," he said aloud.

"Kay," murmured Arthur, into the wall.

Arthur's car was parked on the opposite side of the road, but facing the wrong way. He had somehow managed to park right next to a tree, which at least explained how he had got tangled up in the seatbelt trying to climb out of the passenger side and fallen out of the car. Martin walked around the car once to make sure there were no signs of an accident, but apart from the driver's door being not properly closed and what looked like a small dent where Arthur had opened it into the tree, there was nothing else obviously amiss. He pushed it shut, locked it, then checked all the door locks again, just to be sure. Finally, satisfied everything was okay, he went back inside.

"Everything's fine. There's a bit of a dent in the door, but - oh, God."

Arthur had been sick. There was some of it splattered down the wall, and quite a lot more down the front of his t-shirt and on his trousers. He was shivering and, Martin realised with shock, crying; an awful low keening wail of misery.

"It's alright," Martin told him, dismayed. He had never been good with this kind of thing - illness, crying, fluids…

The wailing got louder.

"Honestly, it's fine. We can clean it up. Actually, I think there's a bucket under the sink. Try not to be sick in the next ten seconds, I'll see if I can find it."

He'd never run twenty feet so fast in his life.

"Look what I found," he said, thrusting it into Arthur's arms five seconds later. "Fortunately I live with students, so there's a bucket for just such occasions. Look, it's even a yellow one. Arthur. Arthur, look; yellow bucket."

Arthur coughed and dribbled sick down his chin. He really did look dreadful. His face was clammy and tear-stained, and his hair was stuck to his forehead with sweat. He clung onto the bucket as though it was the only thing keeping him upright, let his forehead rest against the wall and closed his eyes, his lips moving silently.

Martin reached out his hand and patted Arthur's shoulder awkwardly. It was difficult to get any nearer without risking getting sick on his pyjamas. This close, Martin could smell the alcohol mixed in with the vomit, something sweet and sickly that made him recoil a couple of feet. What the hell had he even been drinking?

He repeated the question to Arthur, who just mumbled something incomprehensible in response.

"I hope this isn't the Peach Schnapps Incident all over again," joked Martin, weakly.

"Ah ee."

"What?"

With tremendous effort Arthur managed to lift his head from the wall and focus on Martin, standing three feet in front of him.

"Andy!"

"Andy? Who's Andy?"

"Fuh th shh."

"What?"

"Iss wha ya spa ta gih fuh shh."

"Sorry, Arthur, but those aren't words."

"Mum seh mon cor."

Aha! Finally, a word that Martin recognised!

"Mum? Mum what?"

"Mum seh meon cor… cor… a course."

Martin laughed out loud. "Ok, Arthur, I'm pretty sure I must have misheard, but did you just say, "Mum sent me on a course"?"

Arthur nodded, the slow careful nod of a man who is afraid his head will fall off.

"Excellent. This evening is getting more and more surreal. Well, I suppose I'm going to have to guess. Let's see... was it a course in how to get really, really drunk and then fall out of your own car?"

"Nngh. Mer… mer… ger see meh all pra see ger. Ipswich."

It really was incredible how Arthur's alcohol-sodden brain managed to get out one entirely comprehensible word for every twenty incomprehensible ones. And that that word should be Ipswich.

"Say that again, Arthur. I think I nearly actually understood you that time..."

"Merger…see… meh hall… praseeger..."

"Emergency Medical Procedures! I did that course too! Excellent, I'm getting really good at this game! What about it?"

"Bb... bb... Andy!"

"Yes, you mentioned him already. I still don't know who he is, I'm afraid. Was he the instructor on the course?"

"Bb.. brr... brr... andy..."

"Oh, God. Please tell me you didn't break into the Portakabin and drink the medicinal brandy."

"Din bray'n. Goh keys."

"Ah, of course you have. And that will make all the difference when Carolyn finds out, I'm sure."

Arthur let out a sob and tried to bury his face in the wall again.

"I'm joking!" Martin told him hurriedly, "Come on, you didn't really think I'd tell your Mum, did you? Although I can't see how she won't find out. I mean; look at the state of you."

"Da duh," mumbled Arthur, into the wall.

"What?"

"Da… da…"

"I'm not your Dad, Arthur. Frankly, I'm a teensy bit offended that you got us confused."

"Nngh, nngh... da... drr... drr.."

One step forward, two steps back. Arthur seemed to have lost the the ability to use vowels now. Martin sighed and rubbed his face, forgetting he was still holding Arthur's car keys in his hand and nearly jabbing himself in the eye. He suddenly felt very tired indeed.

"Come on, Arthur, it's late, and I need to go to bed. I'll get you a blanket and you can sleep it off on the sofa, alright? I'll get you a clean t-shirt as well. And if you don't mind, I'll keep hold of your car keys. Don't want you trying to drive home after the amount of brandy you've drunk."

Brandy.

For the shock.

That's what they'd taught him on the Emergency Medical Procedures course in Ipswich. That's what Arthur was trying to tell him. Something must have happened, and Arthur had somehow remembered his medical training, driven to the airfield where they kept the emergency supplies, and - well, prescribed himself brandy... Once an airline steward...

Immediately Martin felt guilty for ever thinking this was funny. Falling out of his own car was absolutely the sort of idiotic thing he would expect Arthur to do. Getting paralytically drunk on the medicinal brandy from the Portakabin and then driving to Martin's house in the middle of the night was absolutely not. This wasn't just unlike Arthur, it was completely and utterly out of character. Why hadn't Martin realised sooner that something was wrong?

"Arthur," he said fearfully, "Has... has something happened?"

"Da drr... da..."

Martin frowned. "Dad?"

Oh dear. If Gordon Shappey was involved somehow, this could not be good news. For anyone.

"What about your dad? Has he been causing trouble again? Oh, God. Did he do something? To your mum? Or you?"

"Nngh... nngh..."

"Arthur -"

"Da drr... died..."

Author's Note:

Thanks for reading, and I hope you liked my first ever Cabin Pressure story. It's going to get a little angsty, as you would expect, but it's really a friendship fic at heart. This is the first chapter of 5, and I have half-written the other chapters, so I promise you won't be kept hanging on for a year to find out how it ends. It would be brilliant if you were able to leave a review. Ta muchly!

- Shappeybunny