able to march in step, but between the unevenness of the terrain and our various impediments, we stumbled at a turtle’s pace, and made so much noise I could feel Goodman’s disapproval, even with Javitz between us. An entire night passed, longer, a nightmare of stumbling, cursing, tangling, and growing fear.
Finally, our guide could stand it no longer. He stopped, causing us to pile up into him, and spoke. “I will come back for you.”
Before either of us could speak, he was gone. Gratefully, I sank to the ground and let the weight go off my arms. Javitz stayed upright, propped on his stick. Neither of us spoke.
Five minutes went by; eight. Javitz stirred, and said, “He will come back.”
“Yes.” In truth, I did not much care: I was quite prepared to sit here, warm under the fur and the small body, until light dawned.
But Goodman did return, without so much as a rustle before his voice whispered, “All clear. Just a hundred yards more.”
I struggled upright, hushed Estelle’s sleepy protest, and laid my hand on the pilot’s shoulder.
Never have I been more grateful to feel a rustic track underfoot.
With some effort, we folded Javitz into the back of the motorcar, and I deposited Estelle in his lap. I whispered, “You are all right, holding her?”
“I can’t do the driving,” came his voice in my ear, “so I might as well hang on to her. She’s a good kid,” he added.
“Isn’t she just?” I replied gratefully, and resumed my place behind the wheel.
I went less than a mile, then stopped, leaving the engine running.
“Mr Goodman, I appreciate all you’ve done for us, but there’s no reason to take you any farther. I’d suggest you be very cautious about your house for a time, since there’s no knowing if they mightn’t come back, but I think you could manage that.”
“I will c-come with you.”
“There’s no need for-”
“Go!” he roared.
We went.
With our five pursuers to the south, we were forced to motor north, eventually to circle around. The forest track thinned and nearly died altogether, but eventually grew more confident, giving way to a wider track, which led to a more-or-less metalled stretch, until eventually our tyres hit a surface recognisable as roadway. I was grateful that our villains had thought to fill the petrol tank before they had ventured into the wooded places. Their thoughtfulness meant that we had fuel sufficient to reach civilisation.
Or if not civilisation, at least a crossroads with two buildings. One was a neat stone house, darkened at this hour. The other appeared to have been a smithy from time immemorial, converted now to the Twentieth-Century equivalent: a garage. A shiny petrol pump stood in the forecourt, illuminated from above by a hanging lamp, an altar light over a shrine to modernity.
It was still well before dawn and none of the shrine’s attendants were stirring. However, I for one needed to stretch my legs, step into the bushes, and consider our next move.
I pulled into the station’s forecourt and put on the hand-brake, then fumbled to separate the ignition wires. They spat and the motor died. Instantly, a small sleepy voice piped, “Where are we?”
Good question.
We climbed from the motor and took turns paying visits to the shrubbery. I gave Estelle some biscuits and a cup of water from a tap behind the petrol station, which woke the dog tied behind the dark house, which in turn roused the owner. The man stuck his head out of the upstairs window, shouted the dog to silence, then demanded what we thought we were doing.
I launched into speech before any of my companions could respond, a tumble of apology in a cut-glass accent with words designed to soften the heart of the hardest working man:
“Look hopeless, you two,” I suggested, at which Javitz leant heavily on his stick while Goodman did him one better by stepping away into the night. Clutching Estelle, who by this time was fully awake and curious about it all, I waited beneath the light for the man above to tug on his trousers and come down.
By the breadth of his shoulders, he had been the smith before the petrol engine took over his occupation-his hands were permanently stained with the grease of engines, but they showed signs of regular use of an anvil and hammer as well. The role of the smith in the mythic landscape of England required that the man be addressed with considerable respect, and more than a little care: A smith answered only to himself.
However, silver placates the most irascible of gods. A display of our tribute soon had him working the pump, but it was my air of respect and Javitz’s of interest that led to the grudging admission, once the tank was filled, that he generally woke near to now anyway. I glanced at the sky, and noticed the faint fading of stars to the east. I gave him a wide smile and asked brightly, “If you’re about to make yourself some tea, I don’t suppose you’d like to sell us a cup?”
He grimaced, but then went into the house, which I took for agreement.
While he was away, I took advantage of the light over the pumps to go through the motor’s various pockets.
It was, as I’d expected, a hire car, from a garage in Lancaster-the size alone promised they hadn’t come from far away in it. This suggested that the men had come up from the south on a train, having got news of an aeroplane crash followed by the odd purchases made by one of the more colourful local residents. They’d either been remarkably efficient or damnably lucky, to find us so quickly.
The other items in the pockets were uninformative, although the maps would be useful. The most suggestive thing about the motor was its size: With five men already crammed inside, they hadn’t intended to take us prisoner.
I carried two of the maps around the front, spreading them across the bonnet with the three-shilling Lake District sheet on top. Javitz joined me, Goodman reappeared, even Estelle tried to peer between my elbows until I lifted her onto the warm bonnet, where she sat supervising, Dolly in lap and chin in hand. I was eerily visited by the shade of her grandfather, finger on lips as he awaited information.
I tore my gaze from the child to compare the map with the few road-signs I had glimpsed, tracing our location forward. Oddly, the place where we had begun our journey was relatively devoid of the usual signs and markings: It was a vast private estate, which explained the unharvested woods and lack of public footpaths. That part of the map might as well have borne the old cartographic label
“This is where we are,” I said, laying my finger on a join of thin lines, then exchanged the large-scale sheet for one of the entire country. “I must be in London by Saturday morning, but we need a safe place for you as well. I was thinking that-”
Goodman abruptly thrust his hands in his pockets and half turned away. I raised an eyebrow, but he simply stared at the trees pressing in on the road, caught up in some obvious but unguessable turmoil.
“Did you have a suggestion?” I asked.
He took a step back, running one hand over his bush of hair. Another half-step, as if about to make a break for the woods, then he stopped. “I… he…”
His face seemed to convulse, as if a current had been passed through the muscles. It was an alarming expression, one I had seen before in the shell-shock wards of the hospital during the War: minds broken by the trenches, struggling so hard to produce words, it made the tendons on the men’s throats go rigid.
One’s impulse is to provide words, any words. “We could-”
He held up a hand to stop me, then turned his face towards Estelle, the youthful gargoyle on our bonnet. We waited. He swallowed, and when he spoke again, it was in an oddly thick and methodical voice, as if he were removing each word from his throat and laying it onto a platter. “He…
The idea of this man with relatives struck me as even more unlikely than his having a motorcar, and it was on
