When the helicopter had disappeared Charlie got up and moved leisurely down into the bottom of the bowl. A large grass snake slid across the sheep track ahead of him. Charlie stood upright, jumped up and down, and gave a small scream half in fright and half in defiance. He left the path and wandered through the low thorn bushes. He picked up a length of dead branch and carried it crossways in his mouth for a while. A jay flew across the thorns and gorse and screamed as it veered away from the sight of Charlie. Charlie sat down, took the stick from his mouth and began to beat the ground with it. He went on drumming away giving long drawn hoo pants and grunts as he thumped the ground. Overhead, in the gathering dusk, another helicopter went by, its lights flashing.
Its pilot was Captain Stevens who by now was getting bored with the daily search patterns he had to fly. In the mess the feeling was growing that Charlie was nowhere in the area. Or, if he were, he was lying dead somewhere. Some farmer or gamekeeper finding him in com or covert could easily have blasted him with a shotgun. There were plenty of men who would shoot first and think afterwards . . . would even, when the thinking began, take the trouble to bury him and stay silent. Anyway, why all the fuss about him? At the briefing conference after lunch that day when the new search patterns had been set and allocated there had been present—though not a word did they say—a hard, precise-looking type that mess rumour said was from Whitehall and a woman from Fadledean, or so the rumour went. A lot of quiet rumours were beginning to float in the air. Dark-haired, good-looking woman, but a bit of an ice-maiden, he guessed, though you couldn’t always bet on that. Sometimes they exploded like a volcano at the right touch. Still not his kind. Blonde and busty and a shade overweight, that was for him, like Ruthie who would be waiting for him tonight . . . a sleeping out pass until six tomorrow morning, dinner, drinks and then a large armful of home comforts for the troops. God, that guy with the ice-maiden looked as though he would twist his grandmother’s neck if anyone made the price right. The dark ring of beeches at the top of Danbury loomed up on the skyline.
Captain Stevens went up two hundred feet and passed over them. Away to the right at the bottom of the hill near the road a few cars were still standing in the car park. Lovers and their lasses roaming in the gloaming . . . he grinned . . . great place Danebury, many a child had been conceived in the long grass shadowed by the tall trees. Beyond the hill the lights of the airfield showed, patterning the ground, and he began to lose height as he started a slow swing that would bring him in to land.
An hour later Charlie ambled through the growing darkness up the western flank of the hill, away from the car park and the road, and crossed the deep vallum which ran around the tree-thick summit. He picked his way past the excavated com and storage pits of another age cut in the chalk to the far side. He climbed one of the outlying trees. After a little search he found himself a bedding place and began to bend over leafy branches and twigs to make himself a couch, twisting and turning and softly grunting to himself until he had made it to his satisfaction. Looking down on the lights which showed from the airfield and its buildings, well-fed, all vomiting and shivering attacks forgotten, he settled himself to pass his fourth night of freedom.
Seventy miles away to the east the Fleet Street presses of the national dailies were already rolling and spinning—and spinning with them were pictures of Charlie at the tail of the lorry, grimacing contentedly, a carrot in one hand and a lettuce in the other.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE NEXT MORNING, just before daybreak, the weather which had been set fine over the whole of southern England for weeks changed. Great banks of heavy-headed clouds rolled up from the west to blot out the paling stars. As Charlie slept a great fork of lightning fractured the sky over distant Salisbury to be followed within seconds by a heavy, explosive roll of thunder. Charlie uncurled himself and sat up on his nest. Lightning flashed beyond the airfield and another roll of thunder pounded the air. Then a massive artillery of flash and thunder peal began to swing a great barrage of summer storm over the country and with it came the rain. At first it fell in heavy erratic drops that beat a tattoo on the leaves of the beech trees, and then grew into a heavy steady downpour which added its noise to the rolling thunder.
Charlie reached up a long arm, grasped a branch above him and stood upright on his bed. He raised his head to the sky so that the lashing rain beat fiercely into his face and began to give a series of excited pant-hoots which grew louder and louder as though some ecstasy were rising in him, delighting him with its power and novelty. In his young days of jungle freedom he had known such storms and with his mother and other mothers and young had sat safely in trees or on some high point and watched the adult males, fired by the coming of the rains, welcome the deluge with their wild, charging displays and dances. Maybe he remembered something of them now, or maybe he moved instinctively to a primate instinct awakened in him because in all the time of his captivity he had never been unsheltered and exposed to the slashing, pounding assault of stinging rain against his face and body as the sky was filled with the boisterous rhythms of thunder and the arcing blaze and jabbing darts of lightning. Whatever the reason, he was slowly possessed by the emotions and responses which the storm drew from him.
Lightly holding the branch above him with one hand he stood upright and began to sway and roll rhythmically from one foot to another. With his great chin and squat nose raised to the sky to take the rain’s onslaught he started to call waa-waa-waa against the surge and violence of the roaring thunder. The tempo of his dance rose as the rain ran in streams down his dark pelt and now and again, without stopping his swaying, he would shake his body like a dog and send the water spinning from him. Then, as though there had grown some ecstasy in him demanding more than this treading dance which was breaking up his bed, he suddenly jumped downwards, swinging from branch to branch and calling loudly. He dropped from a branch, fifteen feet to the ground and began to run through the trees, calling, grunting and hooting and striking out with his hands at the bushes and low growths in his path. On the outskirts of the hilltop he leaped into a young ash tree, wrenched off a branch, and then jumped clear to the ground. He dashed down the flank of the hill, swinging and brandishing the branch at the sheets of rain which cascaded about him, rain that exploded on the summer-hard earth in a layer of spumy froth and ran in spouting, growing torrents down the slope while the storm dark sky above was turned blue and livid by the flaring lightning.
An hour later the storm had moved away to the east, marked now by a distant mutter of thunder, and the rain had steadied to a quiet, persistent downfall which was to last until midmorning. Half an hour later as the bell in a church clock tower began to strike six, Charlie climbed over a field gate which fronted the main London to Exeter road. The excitement of the storm had gone from him. His fur was slicked with rain and splattered with mud and he was hungry. A few yards down the road was a lay-by and parked in it was a small, shabby green van.
Charlie walked upright to the van and stopping at its nearside door looked through the half-open window. Sitting in the driving seat was a young man in his late twenties. He was drinking tea from a mug which he had filled from a thermos flask and eating a bacon-and-cheese sandwich. He had a craggy, weather-tanned amiable face and longish brown hair which turned up in a row of duck-tails at the back of his neck. He wore a shabby white cardigan and light blue and very much stained linen trousers. This was Duncan Sparrow, single, well-educated, not so well-balanced, an opportunist, and a not very successful smallholder. He ran the holding single-handed and to supplement his small earnings he had a contract to drive to Andover early each morning to collect the day’s supply of newspapers and magazines from a wholesale newspaper firm to deliver to shops in six of the outlying villages within a radius of ten miles of his smallholding. Great oaks from little acorns grow was his motto. Though he would have been the first to admit that few of his acorns ever showed signs of sprouting. He came from an old but long impoverished family, did not mind do
ing any kind of job, or taking almost any kind of opportunity which might bring in a little extra cash. On the whole people liked him, but did not entirely trust him—an assessment of which he was well aware without taking any offence. He was in goodly company for there were millions like him.
When he turned his head and saw Charlie looking in, he stared at him, momentarily surprised, and then he grinned and said in his pleasant, cultivated voice, “You look a bit done in, old chap. Here.”
He leaned over and held out his half-eaten sandwich. Charlie took it without hesitation and began to eat. As he did so Duncan Sparrow watched him. Two or three cars, their tyres searing loudly in the rain, went by. Duncan had spent a year on a game farm in Rhodesia and was well used to animals, although chimpanzees were a little beyond his field. Still, he thought. . . you didn’t get far unless you could adapt to new circumstances and such-like. He took the last breakfast sandwich from what he called his fodder-tin and got out of the van, moving slowly and paying little attention to Charlie. That Charlie should turn up out of the blue was a surprise, but Charlie himself was no surprise. He had heard the broadcasts about him and, while he had been waiting for his consignment of paper bundles, he had read about him in the free copy of the Daily Mail which was one of the perks of his job.
He opened the small double doors at the back of the van. It was empty now except for some sacks and a litter of old newspapers, some crushed egg cartons and an untidiness of bits of straw and hen’s feathers. Across the van behind the two front seats, separating them from the van’s interior, was fastened a loose spread of broad-meshed cord netting. As he opened the doors Charlie came to the back of the van, his large chin and lips moving as he masticated the half sandwich. Seeing the other sandwich which Duncan Sparrow held up, Charlie reached for it, hooing gently through the wad in his mouth.
Duncan tossed the sandwich into the back of the van and then stood back, saying easily, “If you want it, old lad, you’ve got to jump in and get it. No tricks, I swear. Just pure kindness of heart. You stay loafing about this road and some bastard’ll run you down.”
Without any hesitation Charlie climbed into the back of the van, retrieved the sandwich, and sitting down on a sack began to eat it.
“There’s a sensible chap. And don’t worry, you can trust old Dunky. He’ll see you right.”
He closed and locked the doors and a few moments later was driving down the road on the way to his smallholding. Charlie, to whom the offer of food meant friendship, sat swaying gently in the back eating his sandwich.
When they turned off the main road, Duncan glanced briefly back at him, grinned, and over his shoulder said affably, “Some storm what? Tropical you could say. Must have reminded you of home.”
Then turning away he began to whistle gently to himself. Just what he was going to do with Charlie he didn’t know. But then, there was no point in rushing things. Somewhere there had to be something in it for him. Just had to. After all, the gods had dealt the cards, and they had the look of a good hand, so it was up to him to play them right. It was just a question of figuring the angles like, say, the press or the police and his own profit.
Behind him Charlie shuffled up to the netting and made soft and friendly pant-hoots.
* * * *
Outside the steady rain had freshened the foliage and flowers in the park and the wildfowl on the lake after their first flurries of excitement at its coming were now preening and grooming their plumage. The pavement across the road had bloomed with the coloured umbrellas of the office girls hurrying to work. Rubbing his beard in thought, Grandison watched the passing flow of traffic and people. People hurrying to work . . . coming into London by train and bus, glad of the freshness the rain was bringing, sitting reading their papers as they travelled, and as a relief from the usual morning recital of the world’s woes they had been given Charlie. And why not? No editor worth his salt would have spiked the story. Charlie was fun, Charlie was the element of rebellion against a too-regimented life. Just one look at him standing at the rear of the truck immediately captured their sympathy and delight. Charlie, cocking a snook at authority, against regulations and the bars visible or invisible that fenced them all in, was a hero. No editor would drop the story until everything had been squeezed out of it.
He went back to his desk and sat on the corner. The four nationals which had run the story were spread over the highly polished red morocco leather top. Two had Charlie on the front page . . . a head-and-shoulders blow-up, showing a toothy grin and the hands flourishing carrot and lettuce, and then two more shots of the truck, Charlie in the back, and a glimpse of traffic and buildings. One of them had a policeman on the pavement in the background which he was prepared to bet had been faked in. It made no difference. It was all good fun—at the moment. Except that the worrying note was there in the Daily Mail. Somebody had worked hard and fast on the telephone and with local representatives. Extensive enquiries to all wild-life parks, and public and private zoos have so far revealed that none has lost a chimpanzee. Where does Charlie come from? The only word from the Salisbury police is that (at the moment the owner is not available for comment.’ Why not? The police had been landed with a hot potato. With bad luck or bad direction it might become too hot to handle. Thinking of the two telephone calls he had already made he shook his head. If you wanted to cover up the truth you shouldn’t depart entirely from it in any public statement. That way it always left you with a line of escape and recourse to the easy phrase of ‘in the interests of the public’ and all the other pabular forms to feed to the people without having to come down openly on newspaper editors. For them a nod was as good as a wink and often saved the use of a D notice. One thing that must not happen was that the story should get out of hand and rouse an awkward outcry from the fringe elements and cranks in the country. Frowning to himself, he thought, damn Charlie . . . ambling around down there with troops, helicopters and police looking for him, enjoying himself no doubt while the long length of fuse smouldered gently forward.
He picked up the telephone and called Rimster at Redthorn House. When Rimster came on, Grandison said, “You’ve read the morning papers?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What have you done?”
“The police have got the name of the photographer. He phoned in early this morning. I don’t see there’s anything we can do about him.”
“Neither do I. Tell them to drop him. What about this truck?”
“The number plate shows on one of the photographs. The police are tracing it now. My guess is that he may never have known he had Charlie in the back. He probably dropped off after he had eaten all he wanted. But we’d like to know where, of course. We may get some lead from him. What’s happening about the press?”
“Nothing—yet. They got the story by a fluke. If it’s killed dead right away people will wonder why. The moment Charlie’s picked up it will die a natural death—even if we have to say eventually that he was being taken to Fadledean. They should have said Fadledean right away as I wanted. People know animals are used there and they would have looked the other way—except for the odd cranks and the press wouldn’t have given them a look in.” For a moment his own sense of frustration at being overridden from above broke through. “What I can’t understand is why the animal hasn’t been picked up yet.”
“Everything that can be done is being done. Time and chance —and maybe the gods—have just been against us.”
“Maybe. And now we’ll find some of the public are against us. The man on the run is a romantic figure. Make it Charlie with that happy grin of his and a carrot in his hand and he’s not just romantic—he’s the stuff of all folk heroes. People will be on his side—not ours.” He sighed. “Still, if he doesn’t soon come to hand, we may have to do some hard thinking about a change of policy.”
“The truth?”
“If it should come to it—which God forbid—yes. That’s why they should have stuck nearer to the truth from the beginning—and would
have done if I’d had my way.”
Going back to the dining-room to finish his breakfast the note of anger in Grandison’s voice was still with Rimster. He usually got his own way, usually fought for it because he knew—and had so often proved—that he was right. But that didn’t matter tuppence with the people he served if for reasons of political or personal prestige, deviously lodged in their minds, they felt that this was the wrong moment for being asked to handle openly a difficult situation. Truth for politicians was a hybrid growth which flourished best in a half light.
Going to their table he saw that Jean Blackwell was now down and beginning her breakfast, a newspaper at the side of her plate. He gave her a good morning and sat down and poured himself a cup of coffee.
Nodding at her newspaper, he said, “What do you think of all that?”
Jean smiled. “Charlie seems to have been enjoying himself—and making a fool of the police and a few others, including us.”
The Doomsday Carrier Page 8
