A Summer in the Twenties

by Peter Dickinson

  ‘Come what may . . . come what may . . .’

  ‘What’s up?’ said Tom.

  ‘Samuel Paddick, I imagine, the crossing-keeper at Cliffe—he has always been a fusser. No doubt he has telephoned through to the stationmaster here. New man. I wish I knew him better.’

  Mr. Tarrant leaned from the exiguous cab. The lamp was moving towards them through the darkened station. Quick steps ran before it. A hand-torch blazed in his face.

  ‘Daddy? Tom?’

  ‘Judy!’

  ‘Miss Barnes is here. I drove her out and asked the station-master to stop you. It was the only thing I could think of. He’s been sweet about it.’

  Tom managed to push through past Mr. Tarrant and down onto the platform.

  ‘Turn that light off,’ he said. ‘I can’t see a thing.’

  It was dark again, pitch after the glare.

  ‘Kate?’ he said.

  ‘I’ve let you down,’ she said. ‘I told him.’

  ‘Oh. What’s he going to do?’

  She went on as if she hadn’t heard the question.

  ‘He must have smelt something was up—he’s like that. He didn’t ask direct, but . . . I promise you I couldn’t have got the men down to Belmont Street without his knowing, and he could have stopped them whatever I said. I was very careful. I only told him bit by bit. He seemed quite pleased with the whole thing—I thought he was going to try and make out it was something the Party had planned . . . Only this evening he told me he’d changed his mind.’

  ‘The men aren’t going to be there.’

  ‘Oh yes, they’ll be there, waiting. Only you won’t come.’

  ‘How . . .’

  ‘He telephoned Mr. Panhard yesterday and told him there was a rumour of the strikers trying to steal the train tonight. You see?’

  Tom grunted. He could see her now, and Judy, and a man—presumably the stationmaster, beyond them. Yes, he thought, that would be Ricardo’s style—to promise relief, excitement, a victorious skirmish, and then to see that it never came, prevented by the sinister forces of oppression. What had begun as a lark, which could fail without disaster, was now something more serious. Mr. Tarrant’s voice spoke above his head.

  ‘Come what may I am going to take this train along the Wold Line.’

  ‘Of course you are, Daddy,’ said Judy. ‘Tom will think of something.’

  The stationmaster coughed, anxious but diffident.

  ‘Kate,’ said Tom. ‘Do you know where they’re going to try and stop us.’

  ‘No . . . but I think he does. There was something, almost a joke . . . before he went out tonight. He was excited . . . Yes, he knew something.’

  ‘Then it will be Drewton Cutting again,’ said Tom.

  ‘Oh, yes, of course,’ said Judy.

  ‘How can you be sure?’ protested Mr. Tarrant.

  ‘It’s the only place they know,’ said Tom. ‘They aren’t railwaymen. They’ve seen a train stopped there before—it’s absolutely isolated. Bertie . . .’

  ‘Young Panhard!’ exclaimed Mr. Tarrant. Evidently he had not caught the name when Kate had said it. For the first time there was a real note of doubt in his voice.

  ‘I think we could talk him out of it,’ said Tom slowly. ‘If we explained what we’re up to.’

  He could sense the other’s disbelief in the silence.

  ‘I know something Bertie doesn’t,’ he said. ‘I can offer him a bargain, because he really wants to know. I think he’d take it.’

  ‘It will be no use if we are derailed already,’ said Mr. Tarrant. ‘We have not the time to go so slowly that we can spot every obstacle.’

  ‘No,’ said Tom. ‘I’ve got to get there first.’

  ‘I’ve got the Lagonda,’ said Judy.

  ‘And Judy could fire the engine,’ said Mr. Tarrant. ‘She has done it before, have you not, my dear?’

  There was a wistful note, recalling old days and a different level of companionship.

  ‘No, let me do that,’ said Kate.

  ‘Miss Barnes?’ exclaimed Mr. Tarrant. ‘Er, the Miss Barnes, hm hm?’

  ‘That’s right, and a docker’s daughter. I ought to be able to stoke a boiler—I’m as strong as an ox. Let Miss Judy go with Tom. If he’s going to talk them out of it, and he’s got her there . . . but if it’s me, you see?’

  Yes, thought Tom, Judy’s presence would make a difference, alter the balance quite perceptibly. Did Kate guess—did she know—that Tom’s bargain-piece was the real name of Ricardo? A web of other questions tried to ramify in his mind. No time for that now . . .

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Give us as much time as you can, sir. The tunnel before the cutting’s about three hundred yards long, with a gap in the middle. Try to come out of it at a walking-pace. If the line’s clear I’ll wave a white lamp or a torch from side to side, if I can find one. Otherwise it’ll have to be a white cloth. It must be about fifteen miles by road—can you do that in twenty-five minutes, Judy?’

  ‘Twenty,’ she said.

  ‘So if you’re at the cutting in half an hour, sir . . .’

  ‘I will be there.’

  The stationmaster coughed again.

  ‘One moment, if you please . . .’ he began.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Mr. Tarrant, beginning to climb down from the cab. ‘Smith, isn’t it? I’m very pleased to meet you. Now I want you to arrange something for me. The signalman at Eastrington . . . drive carefully, my dear.’

  ‘You too,’ said Judy.

  The voices faded behind them as she and Tom hurried along the platform.

  The Lagonda had still only one light working. The single beam cut a narrow tunnel through the night, far-lit but with no side-vision at all. The Brantingham chauffeur had made an adequate job of mending the latch on the driver’s door but had merely lashed the near-side front door into place, so Tom sat in the back, staring ahead over Judy’s shoulder as they rushed down to Howden, squealed round the sharp corner into the main Hull road and accelerated east. The battered bodywork squeaked and rattled and the exhaust-noise echoed back from the walls of the little town as Judy worked ruthlessly up through the gears. The car seemed to Tom to be making barely less racket than a locomotive. Once clear of the buildings Judy treated the road like a racing-track, taking the sharpest line through the curves and exploiting the camber on the wrong side of the road as she did so. She drove very erect, prim in her concentration. Her ear was only an inch from his cheek and he was strongly aware of her closeness, not as a sensual joy but as an expression of partnership in the task in hand. He felt her relaxation as they reached top speed down the first long straight.

  ‘That’s a stunning girl,’ she said suddenly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’d no idea. This man, I don’t know his name, he was playing with her like a cat with a bird, keeping her there till it was too late for her to do anything. He pulled the telephone out of the wall before he left and there wasn’t another one for miles. But she knew a boy who had a motor-bike near there and she got him to bring her out. They missed you by five minutes. Howden was the first place I could think of stopping you.’

  ‘You did marvelously. I think this is going to be all right after all.’

  ‘She’s desperate about this man, Tom.’

  ‘I know.’

  (What did that mean? How could he imagine what Kate might feel? When she had first told him about Ricardo her attitude had been deliberately ironic but once or twice the thrust of passion had almost cracked the surface—not the simple passion of love for a lover, but the tangled frustrations of love for a cause, of toiling years, of being betrayed and of betraying. It was good, at least, that Judy realised. Good but typical.)

  ‘I’m not sure that she actually had to tell him,’ he said. ‘She may have thought she did, but I suspect it was more of a way of making her mind up. If he let her down, you see . . .’

  ‘Yes.’

  The first signpost to Eastrington flashed past. After d
riving for two days round this network of roads he knew that turn well—had in fact parked the Lagonda a mile or so up it in order to walk back along the line and chat, pretending to be a journalist, with the signalman who controlled the crucial junction. He craned north, hoping to see the silvery smoke of the old engine pulling away along the Wold line but the hedge blocked his view. They should be just about there by now, and through the junction without any trouble if Mr. Tarrant had managed things as smoothly as he had shown every sign of doing. Mentally Tom compared times. The roads were much less direct, but at the speed Judy was driving she might be almost as good as her word and make it to the lane above the cutting in twenty minutes . . . say five minutes down across the rabbit-nibbled slope of the Warrens, five to talk to Bertie . . . the train had the gradients to cope with, and two gated crossings to stop at, open the gates, stop again to close them, move on . . .

  The second Eastrington signpost glimmered ahead, still shining as if with its own light when the beam of the Lagonda’s single lamp had passed it by. Tom’s mind registered the oddity a moment before he realised that there must be another car coming down that side-road. As they whipped past the turn the interior of the Lagonda glowed for a moment in the beam of far headlights. The road was fast but tricky, a series of longish straights ending in variable curves, some gentle enough for Judy to take flat out, others forcing her to change down, keeping the revs close to the limit and roaring away into the next straight. She seemed to know the road perfectly until she misjudged a corner and had to brake sharply near the crown. Tom felt the back wheels beginning to slew and clutched at the safety-bracket on the door-pillar. Judy twitched the wheel, caught the skid, straightened and accelerated out of the bend.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I thought it was the next one.’

  ‘Don’t worry. You’re doing marvellously. I don’t believe Segrave could drive this road faster.’

  ‘Somebody is,’ she said.

  Tom twisted to look through the rear window. He saw the hedge of the previous curve whiten, and then, just as the Lagonda reached the end of the straight, the darkness glowed with a strong slant beam. The next straight was shorter, but the following car was again almost in sight before the bend hid it. They boomed up a straggling one-streeted village. The brick houses stood suddenly sharp-shadowed on either side of them and their own single beam seemed lost in the glare of the huge headlights behind.

  ‘Pull the blind down, darling,’ said Judy quietly.

  Tom tugged the canvas from its roller and clipped it fast, cutting out the blaze through the back window. Now they were driving in a pocket of dark along a floodlit street. Judy had her foot right down. The surface was cobbles, and the car bounced and leaped as she swung to the right of the road and took a blind corner almost on the pavement.

  ‘You don’t have to . . .’ muttered Tom.

  ‘The camber’s wrong the other side,’ she said. ‘You can come off there at forty. Gosh, I think he may have! No.’

  The lights of the following car wavered in their smooth swing across the left-hand houses, and when they caught the Lagonda again they seemed to have fallen back. That village became the next one with hardly a gap between the buildings and the road was cobbled all the way, with great dips and potholes near the kerbs. Judy hogged the crown, bouncing through the night at over sixty, but the lights of the car behind closed and closed. Tom could hear the beat of a far larger engine before a twin horn started to blare.

  ‘Might as well let him through,’ he said.

  ‘The road gets better in a minute. Tell him to get off my tail.’

  Tom wound his window down and gesticulated to the other driver to fall back. The only answer was a renewed blaring of the horns and a sense of the headlights closing to swallow the Lagonda up until the monster could not have been a yard from their back bumper. His arm-waving became more a gesture of fury than advice to be patient.

  ‘Not impressed,’ he called. ‘Do let him through, darling.’

  ‘In a moment. He must be bonkers. Now . . .’

  The houses were gone. Without slowing she pulled to the left as the tyres hummed onto the tarmac. Tom beckoned the pursuer through with generous waves. At once a long bonnet nosed into the gap, an open tourer, details invisible, a roaring dark mass behind its headlights. Tall at its wheel the driver came into view. He had no human head, just an indeterminate mass protruding above the shoulders.

  ‘Look out!’ yelled Judy.

  Tom was flung against the back of her seat as she braked. ‘Idiot!’ came her voice. He glimpsed the road ahead, but it wasn’t there, only an angled slice of grass between the hedge and the other car. His grip was torn from the safety-bracket as the near wheel leaped from the bank, Something slammed at his head. He was aware of Judy, still fighting with the wheel and still yelling but being whirled away from him as the dark universe swung round making no noise, with him in a trance of pain at its centre. He was floating in the dark, flying, aware next of the groaning grunt of air being squeezed from his lungs as a huge mass shoved into his back.

  He tried to get to his feet but slithered on sloping earth and fell onto hardness. His ears rang and he could taste blood in his mouth. He pushed himself onto his hands and knees, conscious of the feel of metalled road but having no notion why it should be there. Heavy footsteps sounded to his left, running. He staggered to his feet and turned to face them. There was a car standing fifty yards off, with its tail-lights glowing red and its headlamps whitening the distance. Silhouetted, a creature came pounding towards him, a human body with a log instead of a head. Drearily Tom drew breath and brought his leaden hands up to fight.

  ‘You all right?’ said the creature in a strange gruff voice.

  ‘I suppose so. What . . .’

  ‘Serve you right. I’ll be toddling along then.’

  ‘You utter pig!’

  That wasn’t him or the monster. It was Judy! Yes, driving. Where . . . Oh, Judy!

  ‘Judy!’

  That was the monster, but in a quite different voice.

  ‘I didn’t know,’ it went on. ‘I say, I thought it was only Tom. We’d seen him driving around in your bus . . .’

  ‘Woffles, come here at once and help me out.’

  ‘Right oh. I say, I’m terribly sorry. I thought . . .’

  Tom turned, his head still ringing but his memory leaping back. The Lagonda was on its side in the ditch. Judy’s head and shoulders were protruding through the window of the strapped-up door. The monster—Woffles, gripped her beneath the arms and lifted her clear, right over his masked head, and down.

  ‘Where’s Tom?’ she said. ‘Oh, darling, are you all right?’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘Not a scratch, I think. You sound a bit groggy. Is that blood?’

  ‘I’m all right, just stunned and winded. I suppose I must have been thrown out before you went over. I landed on the bank, I think.’

  ‘Well, if you’re both all right,’ said Woffles.

  ‘We’re coming with you,’ said Judy. ‘We’ve got to see Bertie.’

  ‘I don’t know . . .’

  ‘Woffles!’

  ‘Oh, all right.’

  She sat on his lap, cuddling against him and picking the glass out of his hair by touch. He could feel, as after the strikers’ attack on her car, the tremors of shock quivering through her body, and this time he shared them. The whip of the night air seemed to have cleared his mind completely. The Bentley’s engine snarled and drummed as Woffles pushed it through the tortuous corners of North Cave. Tom felt Judy’s fingers caress a tender patch above his left ear.

  ‘You’re going to have a terrific lump there tomorrow,’ she said.

  ‘If that’s all . . .’

  ‘And the Lagonda. Oh! I think you’re still bleeding! Tom, oughtn’t we to get you to a doctor?’

  ‘Got to see Bertie first. It’s become much more important. Kate’s friend . . . Woffles, I take it Bertie’s at Drewton Cutting.’

&nbs
p; ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Guessed. How many with him?’

  ‘Half a dozen. Some of the chaps have lost interest, and some . . .’

  ‘You late?’

  ‘Course not. I mean, dash it. I was out at Eastrington seeing which way the train went. I thought you’d be on it, but . . . If it went through the Wolds, you see, that was fine and I could beaver up and tell them at the cutting, but if it went the other way I had to hare into Hull with a letter from Bertie for the top bobby. You see?’

  ‘Why did you push us off the road?’ said Judy.

  ‘I didn’t know it was you, I tell you. I knew it was your bus, but Tom’s been driving around in it. I mean, I was shirty enough already at whoever it was for not letting me through, and then when he started to wave his arm around like that and I recognised his jacket . . . I mean, I couldn’t have known he was in the back seat, dash it. I’m afraid I lost my rag . . .’

  ‘Poor Woffles,’ said Judy. ‘What bad luck.’

  ‘Really? That’s jolly decent of you.’

  ‘Provided Tom’s all right and you get us to the cutting in time.’

  ‘Right oh. Just you watch. Nearly there.’

  They were silent for a minute or two, but as they climbed rowdily between the hedges of a narrow unfamiliar lane beyond North Cave, he spoke again. His normal eager burble was muted and strained.

  ‘I’m getting a bit fed up with all this,’ he said. ‘It’s not nearly the fun I’d imagined. Nothing much happens, and when it does it goes wrong. I mean, I might have killed you both, I suppose. I admit I’m pretty sick with Tom, but dash it . . . And Bertie spends all his time writing letters and reading dreary Bolshie pamphlets. He’s getting pretty difficult to argue with, you know? Sometimes I think he’s going off his nut, and next thing he’ll have us marching about in coloured shirts and giving fancy salutes . . . I think I’m going to pack it in. Do you know anything about Kenya? I met a chap, you see. You can buy whole mountains there for a few thousand quid, and there’s masses to shoot.’