There was little more to do after making these decisions than to push and roll our selected tree to a slightly better position ready for the final moment. There was even time to make an expedition to the nearest point on the coast to look for a likely boat for our escape to the steamer, and indeed to locate one with scarcely any trouble. Then all we had to do was to hide in the woods and wait till Friday came round again and with it the weekly departure of the steamer and the weekly despatch of another instalment of Oceana’s gold to the outside world.
That night we ate a rabbit which Keig had snared and Margaret cooked spitted on a stick over a careful little fire.
Smoothly though such preparations as we had made had gone, I cannot pretend I was happy about the whole idea of the robbery. For one thing it all seemed too simple. We had done nothing. We had picked out with some care, it was true, the best place for our attempt and we had gone to a little trouble to get a suitable tree for blocking the line into the best position. But, beyond a certain amount of discussion of what role each of us would play in the actual business when it came to it, we had done nothing more.
Not that, lying awake in the aromatic fir woods at night, I had not racked my brains to think of more that we could usefully do. And had been totally unsuccessful.
Only over the final part of our plan was I really comfortable. Once out at sea, I thought, we were pretty likely to be safe: the steamer crew, anti-Mylchraine to a man, would be only too ready to help us, and ever since the end of World War Two Oceana’s tiny volunteer Local Defence Force had lost even the pair of launches it had possessed in those excited, strictly neutral days.
But the whole idea of the robbery itself never ceased for me to seem like a pure pipe-dream, simply the product of Keig’s state of euphoria after his success in finally throwing off the Keepers’ hunt. But Friday came and his attitude had not changed.
At the exact time we had decided on we went down and tipped our prepared fir-tree across the line. It fell a little short, but it was clear that it would be quite enough to halt the train. Then Keig and I walked back to our pre-arranged ambush point, and Margaret went to a nearby crag from where she was to signal when she saw the train coming.
And then we waited.
Much at the time we had expected Margaret waved her orangey-red shawl in the agreed signal. I tensed myself for the dash forward, but uselessly. It would be three or four minutes at least before the train would round the bend just beside us.
After two of those minutes had gone by we heard the sound of the engine. It grew steadily louder. Then the train came noisily round the corner into our view. It was not going very fast. It looked, as it had done when I had gone to Lesneven in it eight days earlier, quaint and rather jolly. A lot of steam puffed out from all sorts of places on the engine.
A moment later the driver must have seen our tree. We heard the brakes go on in a gradually rising squeal.
‘Now,’ Keig barked, just before the train came to a standstill.
We shot up from the bush where we had crouched only a couple of yards from the line and pelted as fast as we could go towards the train about thirty yards ahead, Keig clutching his axe and jerking it up and down as he ran. Under our feet the pineneedle-covered earth was soft and silent. We had calculated that coming up in this way none of the few passengers on board was likely to see or even hear us.
At the guard’s van we swung up, one on either side as we had arranged, opened the half-doors to left and right of the rear observation section and got in. Neither the guard, leaning out on my side but looking up front to see what the trouble was, nor the Watchman on Keig’s side appeared to have noticed us at all.
A narrow sliding door barred off the main closed section of the van, and, besides a deep wooden locker under the open rear window, there was nothing else in the whole observation section. Keig flipped at the top lid of the locker with one hand. It opened easily. He took a quick look inside.
‘Empty,’ he said.
Already I was trying the sliding door, my mind excitedly leaping ahead in the curious fairytale atmosphere in which the whole event seemed to be taking place.
In keeping with the unreal smoothness of everything, I found the door completely unsecured. It rolled sideways as I tugged at it. Keig slipped through the gap, twisting his broad shoulders to get in fast enough.
It was gloomily dark in the wholly-enclosed centre section of the van, and for a moment or so after I had entered at Keig’s heels I stood blinking hard and wondering how we were ever going to see the gold even if it was here. But already Keig was moving rapidly from pile to pile of the few pieces of goods and baggage disposed here and there on the floor, and within seconds my eyes got equally accustomed to the gloom and I was able to make out at least the shapes and sizes of things.
Hardly had I done so when Keig straightened up.
‘Not in here,’ he whispered close to my ear.
It was what I had already begun to think. The gold, if Keig was right about it, should be in two quite small black leather cases. That was the amount that went each week, never less, never more. And nothing like that was to be seen here.
Keig took my elbow and steered me over to a second sliding door, the one leading to the front observation section of the van from which we had seen guard and Watchman peering perplexedly forward. He stationed me, as we had agreed, on the left-hand side.
I saw him get himself ready, taking a fresh grip on his axe and crouching slightly in front of the door. He gave me a quick nod.
I tugged sharply at the door. It did not budge an inch.
I pulled again, with both hands. Still the door stayed obstinately closed.
‘Locked,’ I muttered, all my happy excitement ebbing instantly away at the check.
I stood for a little in blank dismay. Then I came to life and started forward for the rear door. I am not sure of my motive: I may have been simply going to run for it, or I may have developed a sort of frenzied determination to take the lead in going round the van and attempting a frontal assault on its two occupants.
I never discovered which. Keig shot out his hand and grabbed my arm.
‘Wait,’ he hissed. ‘Keep still.’
I stood there like a statue.
And after a few moments the sounds of the afternoon began to penetrate into the half darkness of the closed compartment. In the distance I heard the train’s engine puffing quietly to itself. Then there was the nearer sound of faint voices calling out queryingly. And finally there was even some birdsong.
We both of us stood still listening hard. And it dawned on me that, of course, no one had the faintest idea that Keig and I were on the train at all.
Then we heard new voices, much closer. The guard and the Watchman.
‘Looks like a tree.’
‘What? On the line?’
‘That’s what it looks like.’
‘That’s queer. Wasn’t no wind last night. I know. I was awake half the time with that old arthritis of mine.’
‘Think I’ll go along, see if I can give ‘em a hand.’
Keig’s hand tightened a little on my arm.
‘Want me to come?’ the Watchman’s voice said next-door to us.
I held my breath.
‘No,’ the guard replied. ‘You stay where you are. I’ll give you a shout if there’s anything to do.’
We listened yet harder.
There was a jarring sound on the side of the van. Evidently someone getting down.
Had I left the half-door on my side swinging open? I couldn’t remember.
But it seemed there was nothing unusual to be seen because almost at once we heard the sound of tramping feet slipping and sliding on the loose stones of the permanent way as they receded into the distance. Keig’s hand was still tight on my arm.
We waited what seemed an interminable time, though it turned out to be just long enough for the guard to get up towards the front of the train. Then Keig took his hand off me and crept over to the open
rear door. He went through on tiptoe. I followed.
Cautiously Keig put his head a little way out of the window on one side. And quickly flicked it in again.
He leant towards me.
‘He’s looking out that side,’ he whispered in a voice I could hardly hear. ‘The Watchman. We’ll creep round the other way.’
He left me and went across to the half-door on the opposite side. Slowly he eased it open, peered round and then jumped down. I went across ready to follow him. He was standing well clear of the track and as soon as he saw me he signalled vigorously that I was to do what he had done, jump over the stones of the permanent way on to the soft earth on the far side. I launched myself and landed, with what seemed an appalling thump, beside Keig.
At once he turned and led the way towards the front of the guard’s van. I set off behind him.
I think had I been given a moment to consider my situation I would not have been able to move. But there was no time at all, and two seconds later I found myself beside Keig looking into the forward observation section and at the blue-uniformed back of the white-haired Watchman.
And just at that moment he turned round.
I suppose it was because there was no more to see up at the front. But whatever the reason it left him staring the pair of us straight in the eye.
He did not say a word. But it must have been quite clear to him that we were not a couple of passengers who had simply come back to ask what the trouble was. We must have looked, in fact, a pretty pair of villains. Neither of us had shaved for a week—a lack which Keig had grumbled about every single morning—and we had been sleeping every night in our clothes, which in any case were considerably the worse for long immersion in sea-water. And Keig was holding, in a decidedly menacing way, his long-handled axe.
For a short time the Watchman simply looked at us and we looked at him. Then he quickly dipped two fingers into the lower right-hand pocket of his blue-uniformed waistcoat and from it produced a stubby key on the end of the brass chain which looped across his dignified little belly.
I thought that he must somehow know what it was we had come for and was simply going to open the locker beside him and hand over the two black cases. I believe the same unlikely thought was in Keig’s mind as well because he made no move at all to rush the van while the Watchman’s attention was not fully on us.
But it was not the gold that came out of the opened locker. It was the Watchman’s carbine.
The Watchman was elderly and should have been retired long ago no doubt, and I do not suppose he had had to move fast for years. But he certainly moved quickly enough at this moment, and before either of us down beside the track had so much as taken a pace forward he was pointing the short-barrelled wooden-stocked weapon fairly and squarely towards us.
I felt nothing but a boiling sense of rage against Keig. I had known all along that he was going to overreach himself. And now he had.
I do not know for how long I stood there under the steadily-held carbine and felt fury towards Keig go swirling through my head, certain now I had been right to doubt him over the business of crossing to the Kernel in the lighter. It had been sheer luck and nothing more that we had got out of that mess intact. And now he had done the same thing again. Blasted, cocky axe-twirler.
Filled to complete self-absorption with these thoughts, I did not at first realize that Keig was talking to the Watchman. I blinked, and the meaning of the words just said sank in.
‘Put down that gun.’
My eyes were fixed on the old man.
He shook his head slightly from side to side.
‘Now it’s no use you trying anything,’ he said. ‘I know the sort you are. I’ve been expecting something like this for months. But they wouldn’t listen.’
Old he undoubtedly was. But he spoke with plenty of determination. There was a faint stubble of snow-white hair on his pink clean-shaven face.
‘Put down that gun,’ Keig repeated.
‘No.’
‘Then I’m coming to take it off you.’
An absolute chill seemed to strike simultaneously at every part of my body. Feet, hands, back, head, all went cold on that summer afternoon at exactly the same moment.
I was going to see Keig shot down. I knew it. I had in that very instant altogether forgotten my rage. All I remembered was the qualities that had drawn me to him in the first place, qualities I had apprehended even across a distance of yards, even in the few moments I had watched him at work in the chain-gang—uncowedness, simple independence, rightness. I was going to see those shot down.
I did not dare do otherwise than keep my eyes fixed hard on the old Watchman. I willed him to drop the gun. But I knew he would not. I seemed to register the whole of the man in those seconds that I looked at him, and I knew he had spent a lifetime doing his duty and meant to go on doing it to the end.
I realized that a movement had taken place by my side. Keig had stepped forward. I saw the short barrel of the carbine move a little away from me till it was pointing straight at Keig. And I saw now out of the corner of my eye that Keig was still moving forward. A second step. A third. He was three yards away from the Watchman now, if that.
Now Keig stretched out the hand that was not holding his axe and hauled himself up on to the van. And then he reached forward over the half-door and took the carbine out of the white-haired Watchman’s hands.
I thought I heard the old fellow give a single sob.
‘I never had to shoot a man in all my service,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t do it when it came to it, not in cold blood.’
Keig turned away from him and called back to me.
‘Come up sharp now. We’ll need to tie him up.’
One of the minor points we had agreed on earlier was that before the ambush I should take off my tie and have it ready in my pocket in case we had to secure anybody. It seemed a long time ago that we had talked about the possibility.
I moved forward, refusing to let myself think about anything but the details of the business in hand. I pulled the tie out and used it to bind the old man’s arms behind his back. As I did so Keig burrowed into the already open locker. He pulled from it first one and then another black leather bag. It was plain they were both very heavy.
‘Right,’ he said to me. ‘Fast as you can.’
This again was one of our pre-arranged alternative plans. If we got the gold without much fuss we had fixed on a route we would escape by designed to give us the maximum advantage over any pursuers. I took one of the black cases and dropped down with it on to the track-side. Keig picked up his axe again and followed me with the other case. We set off at a good pace into the sheltering woods. The leather bag I carried was extraordinarily heavy but I managed to keep up a pretty good speed till we reached the spot where we had constructed a hiding place for the gold. It took less than a minute to plunge both bags deep into the hole we had made and cover them with earth and pine-needles. And then we were off again, unimpeded.
We did hear some faint cries from people coming after us. But it took them a good deal longer than we had counted on to realize what had happened and begin a pursuit. They never stood a chance of getting anywhere near us.
It was about a couple of hours later, after the three of us had watched from a distance the train to Portharnel at last resume its journey and while we were disinterring the black bags from their hiding place, that abruptly I felt able to think again.
‘That old chap,’ I blurted out. ‘He’ll never feel the same about himself again, you know. He’s done for.’
Keig looked up from where he was kneeling, spading out the soft earth with his hands.
‘When you set off to fight someone like Mylchraine,’ he said, ‘a lot of people are likely to get hurt by the way. That’s something I hadn’t altogether reckoned on.’
I had been expecting him once he had got the gold up to indulge in another of his childish axe-dances of victory. He did not.
Part Two
1
It proved to be only forty-eight hours after that unexpectedly sombre moment which set the seal on our interception of Mr Mylchraine’s gold that I found myself escorting Keig through the Dublin streets—apparently more intimidating to him than the tensions of our departure from Oceana in a creakingly slow rowing-boat—as we made our way to Caveen’s Bar, the place where the Revolutionary Council of Oceana used to gather under the protection of a landlord born in the island. Here the Council secretary, a man called Cormode, had suggested we meet when I had contacted him from Cobh after the steamer had docked. I had interviewed him in the same place ten days earlier getting background for my island-dictatorship story. That seemed a world away now.
At the entrance I glanced back at Keig. What impression would he make? He stood there half a pace behind me, still in the clothes he had changed into on his last visit to his home. On the steamer he had managed to spruce them up and had also, after some almost feverish inquiry, borrowed a razor. But he still looked just exactly what he was: a smallholder from the depths of the country, scarf knotted round his bull-neck, moleskin trousers shiny at the knees and well-worn brown tweed jacket. I had persuaded him to leave his axe at the little hotel where we had booked in with Margaret, but in either hand he held with ham-fists tight clenched the two heavy black leather bags that contained the gold. With simple directness he had brought them to hand over straight away.
What would the Revolutionary Council, those insatiable plotters and planners, make of him?
I pushed at a door with its opaque glass panel fancifully inscribed with whirling patterns round the single word ‘Snug’. And as I had expected, there they were, some fifteen of them all told sitting crowded together in the tiny dark-panelled room. There was Cormode, the one who kept things going, a thin shortish man of about forty-five with a big pointed nose, deep blazingly waspish eyes and pale indoor cheeks, and Fayrhare, the ex-British Navy lieutenant-commander, dark and handsome, the Council’s sea-warfare expert, with balancing him their military man, a former Irish Army signals sergeant called Jack Ascough, sandy-haired and with a sandy moustache set in a freckled face. The only other one I could put a name to was Willine, Clifford Willine, poet of the dissident Oceanans, his long sharp knife of a face always ready with a bitter remark.
Strong Man Page 8
