The Labyrinth Makers

by Anthony Price

  The man looked at him, mystified. Then he grinned like a small boy who has come up with the answer to an unfair adult question.

  'Nottingham,' he said happily.

  Audley shook his head. 'The old airfield here–at Newton Chester.'

  The black curls shook back at him. There was no airfield here. The airfield was near Nottingham.

  As the door closed on the man Faith flopped back on her Hilton-standard bed.

  'Mrs Audley is inconvenienced,' she murmured. 'No double bed, no toothbrush–no Bull.' She began to laugh. 'And no airfield!'

  Audley watched her slowly give in to the laughter. What spoilt the joke for him was that she could well have added 'no treasure'. But stretched out on the bed, and a generous bed it was–she did take his mind off that unhopeful prospect. She herself was, after all, the only attainable treasure of the operation now. He eyed her long legs speculatively; and an end attainable there and then, for the asking.

  But the compulsion to see the airfield while the light held was still stronger than sex, rather to his regret. He told himself savagely that it was common sense rather than incipient middle age which took business before pleasure.

  'Come on, wench,' he said hoarsely. 'Put on a new face! We've got one more call to make.'

  Faith groaned. 'You're a slave-driver, David! God, there's no romance about your job, is there?'

  'Doesn't staying in a strange hotel with a strange man count as romance?'

  'Camp-followers' duty–I'm just following the family calling. That's not romantic, only patriotic. And which grotty bit of my family history are you about to dredge up this time?'

  'This is merely a courtesy call. RAF Newton Cnester is plain Castle Farm now. We're going to call on Farmer Warren to ask him to let us look round.'

  'Is he expecting us?'

  'If the First Class mail can be relied on he won't be too surprised by my appearance. What he'll make of you I shudder to think!'

  She had loosened the French pleat, and to attempt to pass her off as a Ministry of Defence secretary on Sunday overtime would seriously impair the public image of Civil Service morals.

  She tossed back the pale mane of hair. 'What the devil am I supposed to be, then?'

  'I think you'd better go on being the first Mrs Audley –keeping an eye on her hard-working husband. I doubt if Farmer Warren will believe it, but it will just have to do.'

  She smoothed down the mini-dress over her hips. 'And what exactly is my hard-working husband doing?'

  'He's leading a survey team examining the condition of abandoned air strips. And don't laugh, my girl, because your taxes have been spent on far less likely things than that. We're just the advance guard, and you've come along for the ride.'

  Faith wrinkled her nose. 'Old Farmer Warren'll have to be a turnip to swallow that. He'll put me down as a shameless hussy–but since that's just about what I am, I suppose I'll have to bear his displeasure.'

  But if Farmer Warren did not swallow the story, equally he did not view Faith with displeasure: Farmer Warren was in his thirties, or mid-thirties, and if he wasn't exactly handsome he was engagingly good-humoured, with white teeth flashing like a toothpaste advertisement in his weather-browned face.

  'Got your letter, sure enough–and it rather put the fear of God up me. You're not thinking of moving back here, by any chance, are you? My family moved off once, and fair enough with the Germans over there. But I don't reckon to be shifted again,' he said frankly, with the hint of steel in his smile.

  Audley reassured him. 'The runways would never do for jets anyway, Mr Warren,' he lied comfortingly. He hadn't the faintest idea what sort of runways were suitable for jets. 'We just want to see how the temporary wartime strips have weathered in different parts of the country. We won't do any harm.'

  'They've weathered too darn well, if you ask me–wasted a lot of good land. But help yourself. Just don't frighten my silly sheep too much and don't tramp down too much of my rye grass. We're taking the first cut for silage next week. Come and go as you please–you'll have to come through this side because the old airfield entrance is all wired up. There's not much left there anyway.'

  Audley was about to thank him when a diminutive, pretty auburn-haired girl in a mini-skirt far briefer than Faith's joined them.

  'Don't be boorish, Keith! Take them round yourself. You can show them your wonderful Longwools at the same time!'

  'They don't want to see my Longwools,' Warren growled back at her proudly. 'Even if they are worth seeing–better than dead concrete and tarmac. But of course I'll show you round–I should've thought of that. At least show you the lie of the land, that's the least I can do.'

  He swept aside Audley's protests. 'We'll take the Land-Rover–first bit's too bumpy for that nice car of yours. It's your coming on Sunday that's put me off. Never expected a Civil Servant to work on Sunday like me …'

  He prattled on gaily as they shuddered down a rutted track through a belt of young trees. The hedges on either side were thick and overgrown, brushing against the side of the vehicle.

  'I ought to cut 'em back,' shouted Warren. 'Pull 'em out. That's the way with hedges now. But where'd the birds and such like go? And you'll see in a moment why I like a bit of undergrowth.'

  Magically the bumping ceased and the Land-Rover shot forward on a smooth road surface which began without warning.

  'Perimeter!' shouted Warren, and they roared out of the enclosing hedgerows into the open. 'Airfield!'

  A prairie was what it was: an immense unnatural meadow, treeless into the distance where the first blue haze of evening was gathering.

  But it was a prairie with aimless highways on it, highways on to which the grass overlapped and pushed from every crack and cranny.

  'No sheep this end,' said Warren, bringing the Land-Rover in a great careless sweep leftwards, totally disorientating Audley. 'This is one of the main runways. You can really let her go here–just the place for those go-karts. We'll have a couple when my son grows up.'

  Ahead Audley saw a black water tower, with two ugly Nissen huts nearby. Beyond them a series of grassy banks rose unnaturally–blast pens? Sheep pens now, though, with their entrances blocked by straw bales and hurdles.

  Warren brought the Land-Rover to a standstill, but without turning the engine off.

  'This was where the main buildings were. Nissen huts mostly. Wooden control tower. Only the concrete bases left now, except for a couple I use as food stores. When the bombers were here they kept the bombs over the other side.' He pointed vaguely across the prairie.

  'You lived round here then?'

  'Born and bred here. Father farmed what was left during the war. I was only little, but I remember them–Hampdens, Beauforts, Bostons and Dakotas. Bostons were my favourites.'

  Audley climbed awkwardly out of the cabin and walked a few paces across the tarmac. A slight breeze had risen–or perhaps there was always a breath of wind across this open land; it stirred the young spring grass, rippling over it in waves. He could smell sheep, and everywhere the runway was marked with their droppings. There was a pervasive loneliness about the place. Not the loneliness of the open downland, which had never been truly disturbed. Men had been very busy here once amid the roar of engines, with all the purposefulness of war. Where the downlands were eerie, this was only sad, as though time had not yet been able to wash away the human emotions which had been expended here.

  The airfield was not quite dead yet, not quite one with all the other debris of old wars.

  He got back into the Land-Rover.

  'Queer old place, isn't it!' said Warren. 'I've sat here of an evening, and I could almost hear the planes. And I've waited for one of 'em to come up from nowhere on the runway down there, like they used to do!'

  Audley exchanged a quick glance with Faith. Her face had a curiously frozen look, as though talking of the past could conjure it up again.

  'That would be down there, towards the old castle?'

  'That's rig
ht.'

  'Can we go down that way?'

  Warren nodded, and started the engine. 'Nothing easier!'

  'Do you mind if we get off the runway, though. There should be a taxiing lane to the left somewhere. I'd like to see what that's like.'

  Warren slowed down and turned on to a narrower roadway which curved away from the junction of the runways. As far as Audley could see, the airfield stretched ahead of him, dead level. He twisted himself in his seat to look backwards; the control tower had gone and he would have to use the water tower as his point of reference.

  'If you want to see the old castle, you're going to be disappointed,' shouted Warren. ' 'Tisn't a castle at all. It's just a few hillocks on the ground–a Roman camp it was. Not a proper one, either. The archaelogists said it was what they call a practice camp probably. You wouldn't know what it was just to look at it.'

  Audley listened with one ear, both eyes on the receding water tower. The Nissen huts dwindled as the taxiing lane unrolled smoothly behind them.

  Then slowly the tower began to sink from view. He looked round at the featureless meadow. Sure enough there was a gradual, almost imperceptible slope to it now, a gentle undulation. The Hump!

  Steerforth's safe deposit hut must now be somewhere to the left, what was left of it. To the right was the line of the runway, and there'd be no buildings on that side. He looked backwards: the water tower had disappeared completely. On either side the empty airfield stretched, with not a thing in sight.

  'Slow down a bit,' he commanded Warren. 'I seem to remember there were one or two odd huts down here, weren't there?'

  'Nothing much down here. The old shooting range's over to the left, ahead, near the Roman camp. There was a hut hereabouts, and another down the bottom there for the flare path gear, I think.'

  'Where was the hut here?'

  Warren braked and coasted to a stop. 'Just over there. There's a bit of concrete still in the grass–it's a damn nuisance every time we're haymaking. I've never got round to grubbing it up — some of those concrete bases are a foot thick and more.'

  Audley could just distinguish a break in the waving grass. So there it was: the last known resting place of the golden treasures of Troy. A few square yards of wartime concrete, annoying an English sheep-farmer! And that was where the real search had to begin tomorrow. It would be easy enough to find the spot again, anyway.

  'Hey! Come to think of it, there's an old map of my father's which has the old buildings and the runways marked on it–at least, I seem to remember them marked on it,' said Warren with a flash of inspiration. 'I'm sure it's in the attic somewhere with his papers. I could look it out for you if you're interested.'

  'That would be very civil of you–it would be a great help,' replied Audley. Actually, wherever the boxes were, they were certainly not going to turn up on the site of any demolished airfield structure. But an accurate map of the area was essential: it had been the one thing which had not been included in the Steerforth file among either the old or the newer papers, understandably, since the airfield itself had been of no significance.

  Warren let in the clutch. 'Right, then! We'll be getting back, if you don't mind. I won't be able to find your map straight away–wife's uncle'll be here any moment. I'm making silage for him this year–but when he's gone I'll get up into the attic and have a look round. Are you staying round here?'

  'We're at the Bull.'

  'Phew! Then you'd better have your cheque book at the ready. Won't let you bend down to pick up your handkerchief at the Bull now, but they don't forget to charge you for it afterwards! Food's good, too–if you can afford it. But it's only the taxpayer's money you're spending, isn't it?'

  Warren's combination of self-confidence and casual familiarity grated on Audley's nerves. But the man's grin took the sting out of the jibe. He was being perfectly natural, treating them as he probably treated everybody, and it was impossible to be stuffy with such open good humour. And not just impossible–ridiculous too.

  Audley suddenly felt tired and very sorry for himself. Somewhere along the way over the last few years he seemed to have lost both his sense of proportion and his sense of humour. Their arrival at the Bull had been a case in point: Faith had seen the joke and he hadn't. And now this.

  Then there had been Fred's original warning about the sheltered existence which had divorced him from reality: it had been a delusion of intellectual grandeur which had got him into this business.

  Except that Fred wasn't reality either. Nor was Panin. Warren and Faith and Mrs Clark were reality.

  Or perhaps he was simply in the eye of the hurricane, in a moment of sanity surrounded by trouble. Tomorrow, certainly, he would have to face up to the fact that he didn't really know where to begin to look for the treasure, or even why he was looking for it. But in the meantime he could enjoy himself.

  XIII

  The atmosphere of sanity created by Keith Warren saw Audley a long way. It saw him back to the heated comfort of the Bull –Faith even remembered to borrow two suitcases from a sympathetic Mrs Warren. What explanation she gave he never knew, but he suspected it was more for his sake than her own that she added this touch of respectability.

  It saw him through dinner, which was not quite as good as Warren had forecast, but good enough to cancel- out the sly looks presumably reserved for newly-married guests.

  But it didn't quite see him to bed.

  Audley sat in his shirtsleeves watching Faith strip down to an absurdly inadequate matching set of multi-coloured underclothes, reflecting that schoolmistresses had never been like that in the old days. Or maybe they had. But she was not so much shameless as quite without shame, and his mingled lust and embarrassment was outweighed by a tenderness which confused him. He had never felt like this about Liz, who had been so much more spectacular.

  He shook his head. 'What am I going to do with you?' he said, half to himself.

  'I should have thought that was obvious.'

  'I don't mean now, you over-sexed wench! What are we going to do with each other when this is over … This isn't what I do normally.'

  'I should hope not!'

  'Be serious, Faith–just for a moment. You know what I mean. What you call a game–I shall go on playing it if they'll let me. I think it's important and I'm not going to give it up. But you hate it, don't you?'

  She frowned, and then came over and knelt in front of him, taking his hands in hers.

  'Dear David, you're not a very masterful lover, are you? You want to be approved of as well as loved, and the two don't necessarily go together these days, you know!'

  'Then I'm old-fashioned. And that's because I'm too old for you. So it wouldn't work, would it!'

  'It's up to us to make it work. And that's a lot of balls about your being too old. I'm not a schoolgirl exactly, you know. It's no good telling me I'm too young–and I'm the one who decides whether you're too old. And I think you're just pretending to be old: it's a bad habit of yours I'm going to have to break when we're married.'

  She was so matter-of-fact that he almost didn't believe what he'd heard.

  'I know you haven't even asked me yet–I know! But if you're really so old-fashioned you'll have to get round to it sooner or later. It's called "making an honest woman of me". And I shall accept because I can't possibly have you glowering around the way you did when we arrived here!'

  Audley groped for the right thing to say. He had known her for three days and he had never known anyone like her. He had argued with her and lost his temper with her. He had used her as a pawn in his game and he had used her body as much to comfort his fears as to alleviate hers. He could not begin to explain to himself why she had somehow become dear to him; she was not in the least his type of girl. Yet the thought of losing her now was not to be borne.

  Yet she was Steerforth's daughter.

  Slowly she withdrew her hands from his.

  'Me and my big mouth!' she said lightly. 'It's all a joke really, David–forget it. Don't le
t it spoil the fun we can have tonight, anyway.'

  She began to fumble with the hooks behind her back.

  'Here! Do you really think it's fair to describe me as "flat-chested" — those hulking step-brothers of mine used to, you know!'

  Audley reached forward and grabbed her arms clumsily, pulling them forward and sliding his hands down to imprison hers. But somehow he became entangled in a strap, and only succeeded in helping her prove that she would never be a rival to Raquel Welch.

  'For God's sake, Faith!' he said thickly.

  It wasn't the idea he shied away from, but the sheer indignity of the situation. A man simply didn't propose clad only in his shirtsleeves to a half-naked girl in an overheated hotel room in the middle of an incomprehensible job. Not a man like himself, at least, who liked to calculate the odds and hated to be wrong-footed.

  Not a man like himself!

  What a pompous, stupid bastard I've become, thought Audley in a flash of clarity which completed the earlier moment in the Land-Rover. Dignity and reputation were like the Emperor's Clothes–a mere self confidence trick. If he surrendered to this delightful beanpole of a girl he would never be able to wear them again, but in any case they would never again fit him comfortably if he let her escape. He needed her much more than she needed him.

  'My dearest Faith–if you and Mrs Clark both agree, who am I to question your decision? Will you make an honest man of me?

  She nodded, wide-eyed. 'David—'

  'The job still goes with the man, remember.'

  'The job still goes with the man.'

  He raised her hands to his lips. It was a marvellous thing for once to have no reservations about a decisive decision.

  'And the man, my dear, is going forthwith to his Hilton-standard bed. We've got a lot to do tomorrow.'

  He started to raise his hand to forestall what he guessed she was going to say, only to find that his thumb was still entangled by the strap of the ridiculous rainbow brassiere.

  'I know–I know! We've got a lot to do tonight, too! Come on, then, Mrs Audley …'