The Journeying Boy

by Michael Innes

  The journey went interminably on. Apart from two or three silent men who sat at the back, conversation was general on various points of crop and animal husbandry. A friendly farmer observing that Mr Thewless had nothing more entertaining to read than a novel by Mr Charles Morgan, insisted on lending him the current issue of the Tullycleave, Derryness, and Kinnoghly Recorder, and from this he learnt that at Crockacooan on the following Thursday it would be possible to bid for three store heifers in forward condition, four dairy cows springing and in full milk, a slipe, three rundlets, and a number of double and single trees. He was just speculating on the nature of a double tree when the train ran into the tunnel.

  One short tunnel there had already been; traversing it had made Mr Thewless notice the absence of any form of artificial light in this primitive vehicle. One simply sat in the dark and waited. And this time the period of darkness was longer. It must be fully –

  At this moment the thing happened: first a shattering jar; then a splintering crash and a tinkle of breaking glass as the bug lurched over on its side; then shouts, cries and – from somewhere at the back – a succession of spine-chilling screams.

  It was a situation made all the more unnerving by the complete darkness which enveloped it. Mr Thewless, clinging with one arm to a seat which had reared itself up at an angle of some thirty degrees, stretched out the other in the direction in which he judged the shoulder of his pupil ought to be. ‘Humphrey,’ he called, ‘are you all right?’ But there was too much noise for him to be sure if there was any reply. The driver and conductor were endeavouring to restore calm by each shouting at the top of his voice; children were dismally howling; overhead the piglets sustainedly squealed. In the restricted space of the tunnel the resulting reverberations were altogether bewildering, and it was not easy to decide whether what was involved was a major disaster or a largely baseless panic. Somebody struck a match and there was a momentary vision of sprawled bodies and scared faces. From the rear a man’s voice called: ‘I’ll get back along the tunnel and bring help’ – and this was followed by a further shivering of glass, as of somebody breaking resolutely out of the coach. From the rear too the most agonized groans continued to come, and when another match was struck Mr Thewless saw that one man there was writhing as if in agony and another slumped in his seat, apparently streaming with blood. This last glimpse presented so clamant a call for aid that Mr Thewless began to scramble over the seats, the lessons of long-past first-aid classes reassembling themselves surprisingly in his mind. But he got no distance in this charitable endeavour. For in the darkness and continued confusion something struck him with unaccountable violence on the head and all consciousness left him.

  He came to his senses knowing somehow that no great interval of time had elapsed. Nor had the situation greatly changed, except that he himself was now outside the coach and propped against the curved side of the tunnel. Here and there a torch flickered, but there was still more of impenetrable blackness than of light – as also more of turmoil than of order. It was clear, however, that some outside help had arrived. It must, indeed, have arrived with surprising speed, since almost the first object of which he was aware in a passing flicker of light was an efficient-looking stretcher upon which, momentarily unattended, a shrouded form reposed. And Mr Thewless felt a sudden cold fear. Could it be Humphrey who lay in sinister stillness there? The mere thought brought him staggering to his feet and he reached out towards the stretcher. As he did so another uncertain beam of light showed him Miss Liberty close by – Miss Liberty with her features set in swift calculation and with her arm oddly raised… Unaccountably, once more Mr Thewless was struck on the head and was just aware of being gripped in strong arms as he fell.

  When he recovered consciousness for the second time it was to discover that a throbbing which he had supposed to be the subjective consequence of his own battered cranium was in fact the steady pulse of a powerful engine, and for a moment he had the confused impression that the bug, with that resistance to even extensive injury characteristic of lowly organisms, had again got under way. But this was an altogether smoother mode of progression, and some subtle report of the senses assured him that it was much more rapid as well. There was still complete darkness around him, but presently he discovered with great surprise that this was merely because he had his eyes shut. Opening them, he found himself to be lying on a stretcher in an admirably appointed ambulance, all chromium, white enamel, and antiseptic smell. Despite the warmth of the afternoon, a little electric radiator was thoughtfully burning, and above it was a tastefully arranged vase of flowers. There was a gay frieze of delightful nursery scenes, and perched at Mr Thewless’ feet was an uncompromisingly hygienic but nevertheless cuddlesome teddy-bear. On the other side of the vehicle was a second, and empty, stretcher.

  From all this there was only one reasonable inference. He had been badly injured in the accident and was now being borne away in an ambulance hastily requisitioned from some children’s hospital. But it was odd that there was nobody else in need of similar conveyance; for example, there had been the two badly hurt men at the back. And what had happened to Humphrey? Even if he had escaped injury, what would be the consequence of these untoward events upon a boy so easily thrown off his balance?

  Confronted by this thought, Mr Thewless realized that it was his first duty to ascertain the extent of his injuries and thereupon come to a determination as to what was best to be done. There being no nurse or attendant in the ambulance of whom to inquire, he decided upon a cautious exploration. Apart from a moderate headache and a decided tenderness on the top of the skull, he was aware in himself of no unusual sensation. He knew, however, that sometimes for a considerable interval after the sustaining even of grave injuries very little pain may be felt. But if sensation were delusive, movement could scarcely be so. Now, what was the worst that could have befallen him? The answer, he decided, was a broken back. And, with a broken back, there was one thing assuredly that one could not possibly do: sit up. Bracing himself against some sharp agony, Mr Thewless made the effort to achieve this position. And immediately he found that he was sitting up with as little inconvenience as he experienced every morning in bed.

  Mr Thewless moved a limb. He moved all his limbs. He twiddled his toes and twisted his neck. Then, as an afterthought, he vigorously champed his jaws, blinked his eyelids, and retracted the muscles of his abdomen. The issue of all these experiments was incontrovertible. Whatever minor sprains or abrasions he might have received, he was by no means in the sort of condition that justified his thus being treated as a cot case and hurtled away from his young charge hard upon an alarming and dangerous experience. And as soon as he realized this Mr Thewless acted with vigour. ‘Stop!’ he shouted loudly. ‘Please stop at once. There has been some ridiculous mistake.’

  Nothing happened. He called more loudly still, but again in vain. The hum of the engine must be rendering his cries inaudible through the partition separating him from the driver and anyone else in front. He therefore explored the back, and found only double doors which appeared to be locked on the outside. At the other end, however, and quite close to where the driver’s ear must presumably be, there was what proved to be a sliding shutter – and this Mr Thewless opened with considerable relief. ‘Excuse me,’ he said politely through it; ‘would you mind stopping, and opening the door? I find that I have sustained no serious injury.’

  These remarks being, even if faintly surprising, eminently rational, Mr Thewless was a good deal startled to hear them received with a loud laugh. ‘Shut your trap, son,’ said a rough voice. ‘Hollering won’t do no good. Sit down and play with yer bloody bear.’

  Mr Thewless was not unnaturally much shocked. It was evident that the driver, being accustomed to conveying children, had forgotten that upon this occasion he was dealing with an adult. But that sick children should ever be spoken to in such a way aroused his extreme indignation at once. ‘Stop the ambulance instantly,’ he said. ‘Your language is disg
raceful, and you may be sure that I shall report upon it with the utmost severity to the proper authorities.’

  Again the driver laughed loudly. ‘Gawd,’ he said, ‘what a rum kid?’

  ‘’Ere’ – it was a second voice that spoke this time – ‘is it a kid? It don’t sound much like a kid to me.’

  ‘Wot’s that?’ The driver was startled and jammed on his brakes. ‘Didn’t yer have a look at ’im under that ruddy sheet?’ The ambulance jolted to a stop. ‘Let’s ’ave a look.’

  And a moment later the doors were flung open. Mr Thewless, boiling with indignation, jumped to the ground and confronted two surly and oddly uncertain men, who had not at all the appearance of hospital attendants. ‘Strewth!’ said one. ‘’Ere’s a go.’

  But the second appeared more self-possessed, and now presented Mr Thewless with an ingratiating smile. ‘You mustn’t mind his language, sir,’ he said. ‘He don’t belong at all regular with the ambulance; it’s just that the regular driver’s away like.’

  At this the first man growled what might have been an apology. When he spoke, however, it was in tones of indignation almost matching Mr Thewless’ own. ‘Look ’ere,’ he said, ‘ain’t yer tripes ’arf torn out? Ain’t yer at death’s door? Ain’t yer a bleeding mess?’

  Mr Thewless uttered a comprehensive denial of these charges. ‘I am perfectly well,’ he said sternly. ‘And I demand to know–’

  ‘Then we ain’t got no time to waste on yer. What d’jer mean coming joy-riding with them as is employed strikly on errands of mercy? Serious calls is wot we attend to. Come along, mate. And jigger off, yer silly old goat.’

  At this the two men leapt with surprising speed into their ambulance and drove away. Mr Thewless was left standing by the roadside, speechless with bewilderment and rage. All around him stretched an empty moor, now growing bleak and inhospitable in the late afternoon sunlight. Miles away, a single white spot on the horizon suggested some humble species of human dwelling. Further sign of life or habitation there was none. He examined the dusty surface of the road. No tracks were visible except those of the ambulance which was now growing small in the distance. It was only too evident that the back of beyond had veritably received him.

  Doggedly he began to trudge towards the distant white speck.

  12

  ‘No eggs! No eggs!! Good heavens, man, what do you mean by no eggs?’ And, as one thunderstruck, Mr Cyril Bolderwood of Killyboffin Hall stared at Denis, the general factotum whom, in expansive moments, he was pleased to describe as his steward. Then less vehemently he added: ‘You did say no eggs?’

  ‘It’s a shameful fact, sir, that I’m just after discovering.’ Denis paused to remove a straw from his hair and drop it in his master’s waste-paper basket. ‘But Mr Ivor had the last of our own for his breakfast surely, and now there’s never an egg to be bought in all Killyboffin on account of the fish having come.’

  ‘God bless my soul!’ Mr Bolderwood raised both hands in air with an expressiveness possibly indicating his long sojourn in Latin-American countries. ‘Do you realize, Denis, that here is Mr Ivor’s cousin coming from London, where not the King himself has an egg to his breakfast except once in a way – and coming, mark you, with a tutor, Denis, a great doctor from the universities, no doubt – and you stand there and tell me the eggs are all gone from Killyboffin because the fish have come? Is it the tinned salmon in old Mrs Fallon’s little window that have risen up in the night and sucked them dry, Denis? Now tell me that.’ And Mr Bolderwood, who prided himself on a manner of speech both feudal and familiar, sat down with regained composure and began to stuff an ancient pipe.

  ‘Indeed and your honour knows it is no such thing, but rather the live fish coming up the loughs in their millions like the stars of heaven and all the world’s ships labouring after them from Hull and Narvik and Nineveh. And it’s myself have seen boatloads of them coming ashore all morning, and taking Tannian’s car and Donohoe’s, yes and Michael Orr’s old Ford too, and scouring the land to eat it up like the locusts, and ourselves in want of a simple dish to set before a fine lad from London itself, broad and fair and blue-eyed as he is, that none of us has ever had the joy of setting eyes on, and him Mr Ivor’s own cousin.’ Denis paused on this. He found a rhetoric based upon uncertain memories of his grandmother distinctly exhausting to keep up. But since his cosmopolitan employer liked to play at being surrounded by old Ireland, and was prepared to pay for the illusion, Denis did his best to get the atmosphere right. ‘Isn’t it a hard case, your honour, myself and yourself to be treated–’

  ‘So that’s it!’ Cyril Bolderwood had risen again and walked to the window of the long shabby room he called his study. ‘Steam trawlers, eh? And rascals off them wandering the countryside buying by day what they haven’t already stolen by night? Why don’t the police see to them? Why doesn’t the garda act?’

  ‘Indeed, sir, he well might.’ Denis shook his head. ‘And yet it would maybe be beyond reason to expect a poor lad like Shaun Cushin, with a great examination in the Irish before him that would tax the bottomless learning of the Taoiseach himself, to concern himself with chasing after a rabble of foreigners and gaoling them for stealing a goose or a hen or a handful of eggs. Unless’ – Denis added as an afterthought – ‘they should be your honour’s own, indeed.’

  Mr Bolderwood was now staring thoughtfully at a curl of smoke which rose presumably from one of the offending trawlers in the little harbour beyond the village. ‘If we can’t have eggs–’ he began, and abruptly broke off. ‘What the devil is all that noise about?’

  Killyboffin Hall was a large, bare, rambling building, Georgian in a bleak way and falling down at the corners. The lightest breeze, on gaining entry through its many cracks, crevices, and broken panes, became mysteriously transformed into a gale that sobbed and moaned through its lofty rooms, stirring the dust from shadowy cornices and immemorial hangings, and making the worn carpets rise and fall in the long corridors. It was the sort of house in which, in the small hours, boards start from worm-eaten joists, and ancient wicker furniture creaks in shrouded rooms, and invisible fingers are at play upon doors and windows. That the Bolderwoods were positively obliged to live amid such a décor nobody very seriously believed, for clearly it was old Mr Bolderwood’s whim thus to assimilate himself with impoverished landowners upon whom such conditions were obligatory, and the fancy was licensed by sundry tortuous but indubitable blood-ties with the nobility and gentry of the region. Life at Killyboffin, then, had superficially every appearance of all the discomforts associated with genteel penury, and had Sir Bernard Paxton gained any inkling of this eccentric humour on the part of his kinsman he would certainly not – prizing life’s material surfaces as he was inclined to do – have sanctioned the expedition upon which his only son had recently embarked.

  One consequence of the somewhat bare condition of the mansion was the tendency of noise in any volume to gain resonance as it travelled from room to room, and to propagate itself through a complex system of echoes. It was a phenomenon of this sort that was disturbing Mr Bolderwood now. ‘Denis,’ he repeated, ‘what the devil is that?’

  Denis considered. ‘It might be the half-Ayrshire, your honour, got unbeknownst among the turnips, and Gracie and Billy and the lad Pat and the dogs–’

  ‘Stuff and nonsense, man! It’s coming up the kitchen stairs – and whoever heard of a half-Ayrshire doing that? But here’s Mr Ivor. Ivor, in heaven’s name–’

  Ivor Bolderwood, a mild young man behind large round glasses, had entered his father’s study by a door at its far end; and at the same moment a confused rout of persons had burst in opposite. One of these latter, a stout woman in an apron, appeared to possess some power of articulate speech, and her voice presently rose clear of the babel around her. ‘The terrible disaster that it is!’ she cried. ‘And the poor lad nigh at the end of his long journey and all – alas! that Killyboffin should see such a day.’

  To these words a general consenting m
urmur arose from Mr Bolderwood’s other retainers. And Denis, although without any notion of what all this betokened, judged that some more specifically Celtic reaction would be appropriate. ‘Ochone,’ he cried with great satisfaction, and began swaying his body in a rhythmical manner from the hips. ‘Ochone, ochone!’