Harry Doing Good
Page 9
He heard a shout from inside the building. Peter leaped over the wall, streaked past Lumpy, zigzagged away past Genius and Egan, who made a futile grab at him as he went past. Ray saw Harry’s face in the doorway.
‘Peter!’ he was yelling. ‘Don’t be a fool!’
Lumpy rushed to the doorway and shoved Harry further inside, guarding the entrance; Genius was astride the ToteGote kicking until the high buzz of the motor sounded, then he had picked up the rifle and was riding one-handed after Peter as Egan shouted directions. Peter was running as fast as he could, twisting and stumbling. Ray saw Genius gain slightly on the speeding figure, then fall off the bike, quite unable to control it with only one hand. The man rolled, still clutching the rifle, came to a crouching position and fired: Peter was passing a tall outcrop of rock, and a patch on its surface starred suddenly. Ray heard the high whine of the ricochet and a whirr of splinters even at that distance. Peter stopped, turned. Genius got to his feet, gesturing angrily with the rifle, and slowly Peter came back, hunched in dejection. Genius walked him back to the building, prodding him with the rifle from time to time, and Ray saw Egan pass them, pausing briefly to speak to Genius, then going to retrieve the ToteGote. Ray wriggled back off the skyline after watching for a few more minutes, cursing himself for not having tried to create some sort of diversion to aid Peter in his brave bid to escape. Somehow, somewhere, Ray had to find the courage. He decided to keep watch next day in the hope of being able to do something constructive then.
*
Harry was furious, and raged at Peter, who pointed out quite reasonably that he had endangered no one’s life but his own.
‘I told you,’ Harry said. ‘I told you we’d sit it out, and then you have to go and do a thing like that!’
‘It was a chance,’ Peter said, shrugging. ‘It didn’t come off, but it was a chance.’
Harry grumbled for a while, then made the best of it. After all, no one had been hurt. He supervised the others in laying the tents flat on the ground with the sleeping bags on top of them.
‘Make ourselves comfortable,’ he said. ‘Pity they wouldn’t give us the spade and the cooker. But we can put up the latrine tent over there in that corner. It won’t be the Ritz, mind.’
Peter thought. Here we are, prisoners, and he’s going on like an old hen turning broody. If I could push that wall down on their tent tonight, we might have a chance… No, won’t do. You now have personal experience to show you that it won’t do. He may be wrong about everything else, but he’s right about the stray bullet. They’ll keep watch. I can’t risk it. Wait for tomorrow, and if I can catch them off guard, one by one while we’re supposed to be working, that’ll be the thing.
Harry said, ‘We’ll take that fifty quid they offered. I’ve decided we’ll take it. We can do a lot with fifty quid. We could have a good week at Aviemore in the winter: stay in one of the caravan parks. Don’t worry, gang, I’ll make it up to you for all this, and fifty quid’ll go a long way towards it.’
Linda realised that Harry, always well intentioned, was trying to cheer them up, and she said brightly, ‘Aviemore! What a great idea, Harry. Do you really think we could?’
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘No problem. Me and the lads, we’ll do this nasty job of work, and we’ll have this satisfaction, see? We’ll be writing off two days of this holiday in exchange for a whole week in the Highlands. That’s more than a fair bargain, only they won’t know it, will they? We’ll get the better of ’em that way!’
He was rotating the ball bearings in his pocket, knowing that there was a bright side to everything if you could only pick it out.
Simon thought, He’s mad. He’s right up the twist. Off his trolley. And so was I. If he thinks I’m going to Aviemore or anywhere else after this lot, then he needs shooting. Better keep quiet, though; see it through and then goodbye, Harry. But my God, goodbye Harry would mean goodbye Linda. I’m in a trap. Not just these four walls and those horrible devils outside, but I’m in a trap with Harry if I want to see Linda. My God, I hope one of those chaps shoots him: that’d be a fair enough bargain as far as I’m concerned.
Cheryl said, ‘It’s all like some dreadful dream. Hateful.’
Harry went over to her and said soothingly, ‘Don’t, love.’
He steered her over to her sleeping bag, an arm round her shoulders, and said, ‘Why not tuck in now? Have a good rest.’
Ann said, ‘Harry, I don’t think you’re in touch with the real world at all.’
‘Eh?’ he said, surprised.
‘What do you think is going on? Do you really think any businessman would behave like these people? Using a gun, forcing you to work, telling us they’re going to tie us up and then leave us to work ourselves free. I think we’ve been caught by a bunch of thieves.’
Harry said, ‘Oh, come on, you’ve been seeing too much telly.’
‘Maybe you haven’t seen enough,’ Ann said with asperity.
Simon looked shocked, as he was — into sudden realisation that Ann had hit on the truth.
‘She’s right,’ he said. ‘They’re stealing sheep, and we haven’t had the sense to see it.’
‘Yes, she’s right,’ Peter said. ‘She must be.’
Cheryl said nothing, her big eyes wide and fearful; long ago she had accepted that she was in a dire situation, and saw no value in endless discussion. All she wanted was the swift passage of time, and if she could sleep, then time would pass quickly for her. She lay in the sleeping bag and closed her eyes.
Harry thought, How can Ann be right? I’m the one who’s right. But then, everybody can be wrong once. Now if she is on to something, and these fellers are stealing, what can we do? I said the best plan is to work for them, take their fifty quid, and be off. If they are villains, that’s still the best plan, only we’ll have to be twice as careful. I’ll have to keep that in mind, but play it down, make sure no one panics.
He said, ‘Well, it just could be, I suppose. Pick up the phone, Pete, get the police quick.’ He grinned and said, ‘See what I mean? There’s one fact at the bottom of all this. It doesn’t matter who they are, they need some help. They tried to beg it, and they tried to pay for it; now they’re going to force us to give it. So let’s do that, and get away out of it as fast as we can. There’ll be plenty of time to think about what to do after that.’
Linda agreed with Harry, but nobody else volunteered any comment. One by one they bedded down in their sleeping bags, and one by one they slept, except for Peter and Ann. There had been no prearrangement; but as the others slept, these two inched their sleeping bags together until they touched, then, working as quickly and quietly as possible, they unzipped the bags and zipped them together again, undressed and lay together, feeling at first only an intensely profound solace in the warm contact of each other’s bodies, too long denied. The presence of other people, also, inhibited them for a minute or two as they clasped each other and kissed, Peter’s hand tangled in Ann’s hair. Then his lips nuzzled down over her unseen disfigurement, loved anyway because it was part of her, down to her breast, a hardness against her legs. She was holding and guiding it as he began to move above her, probing and sliding, tip over pip until at last she shuddered and churned, her knees gripping him as he plunged into intolerable sweetness, sighing and gasping and then lying heavily on her, still pulsing but coming to conscious thought again: At least we’ve got this to be thankful for.
So their night’s course was charted, and sometime in the small hours Harry awoke in a sudden panic, confused thoughts of Cheryl in danger having made him shoot up in his sleeping bag, eyes staring, feeling that he was choking. Then he subsided. There was nothing wrong. Or was there? Somewhere there was movement, panting, subdued and glutinous sound, murmuring, a rhythmic counterpoint to the measured breathing of sleepers elsewhere in the room.
Harry said, ‘What is it? Anybody awake?’
The urgent rhythm stopped and gave way to a welter of half-suppressed panting.
‘Who is it?’ Harry said. ‘What’s going on?’
There was silence. Harry listened, then lay back in his sleeping bag, puzzled and perturbed.
‘Cheryl?’ he said quietly, but there was no reply.
Harry knew what had been happening. Two of them had been making love, there in that room where they all slept. It was horrifying to contemplate. Two of them could do that when they were cooped up in some hut in the wilds under an armed guard! But worse, far worse, was the feeling of betrayal. The basis of the LYF lay in comradeship and in the absence of any funny business. And yet there it was, rampant while he slept. Even now he could hear the susurrus of zippers, faint whispering as the pair of traitors restored themselves to respectability. He could rush out and grab them, but that would create an uproar which would bring in the man on guard. Worse, it would shatter their charmed circle for ever, making an end to the tepid security which he loved so much, and which he was willing to make any compromise to maintain. It never occurred to him that the circle was already shattered, or that the willingness to compromise was in itself a betrayal. If this had been pointed out to him, Harry would have refused to admit it, moreover: in the absence of the reality he would settle for a simulacrum. So, although tormented by what had happened, although desperate to know who had been involved, he was going to question nobody, but hope like Cheryl that the time would pass quickly, and that after a few weeks or months things would be as before.
7
They worked all day on the ropeway after Lumpy had killed almost a hundred sheep: he started killing at first light and finished soon after ten o’clock. While Genius collected the carcasses and Egan waited at the bottom of the ropeway to receive them, Lumpy supervised the prisoners. Harry began work with a forced cheerfulness, which soon evaporated; Peter and Simon worked sullenly and grimly from the beginning, though Peter had some consolation in the memory of his night with Ann, and could tell himself that a couple of days’ hard work was a cheap price to pay for such an achievement. He and Ann would marry and build a life together; they would forget all about Harry and his childish nonsense.
Harry had put the night’s events out of his mind. Sweating and struggling with the dead sheep, still warm, smelly, greasy and bloody, he regretted that yesterday had passed without any religious observance at all, not even a hymn or two inserted into a general sing-song as he had intended. He felt an increasing resentment against Egan, and darted furious glances at Lumpy, who stood relaxed a few yards away, the rifle cradled on both arms.
He said to the others, ‘I bet somebody comes along today. It stands to reason.’
Peter looked up to where the girls sat in a group. They had been installed between Lumpy and the lip of the stream’s basin, with orders to stay there until Genius had completed his collection of the carcasses.
Peter said, ‘So what? If somebody does come along, they’ll just tell him what they told us.’
‘No,’ Harry said. ‘I mean a farmer. Someone like that.’
He was silent for a while, and then said, ‘I hope that metal detector’ll be all right. We could have given the floor a going over in that hut place, if we’d thought of it.’
Pausing in his work, he took out the little statuette and brooded over it.
‘It could be valuable,’ he said. ‘Could be worth a fortune.’
Simon said, ‘Harry…?’
‘What is it?’
‘Why don’t you just drop dead?’
*
At midday Genius shepherded the girls back to the ruined building, amusing himself by riding the ToteGote in low gear and circling round them; the noise woke Ray from a doze in his nest in the heather. He had breakfasted on his last two apples and a drink of peaty water, and now felt ravenously hungry, cursing himself for having failed to raid the others’ supplies during the morning. He picked up his rucksack and wormed his way into dead ground, approaching closer to the building, then going to earth in a patch of Welsh poppies and bilberries growing in a tiny hollow. Poking his head up cautiously, he saw the girls set to work, peeling potatoes and scraping carrots, cleaning sheep kidneys and bloody livers, while Genius sat by on the flat rock and chain-smoked.
For half an hour Ray tried to key himself up to the point where he could launch an attack. Several times his muscles tensed, but on each occasion he failed to carry out his intention. Telling himself that he was chicken, trying to spur himself on with insults…it was just no use at all: Ray could not summon up that sudden kick over into blind aggression which was necessary. He projected mental images of himself, hurling stones, using his slingshot with a pebble; but he knew intuitively that he would miss if he tried, or hit one of the girls instead, and he felt trapped on a treadmill of futility.
Then he thought. If I show myself, that guy will come after me. Maybe I can draw him off, give the girls a chance to run for it.
He worked his way backward for a couple of hundred yards, then stood up, holding the rucksack in one hand and standing on the skyline. He thought, Here I am, sticking out like a bull-terrier’s balls, and the guy hasn’t even seen me.
Genius was watching the girls unwaveringly as they prepared the stew. Apart from giving them succinct orders about the meal, he had said nothing to them since they had arrived, simply watching them with his calmly cheerful air and smoking cigarette after cigarette, stubbing out the butts on the rock.
Ray waited for a few minutes, feeling foolish. The guy still hadn’t seen him; he might have been the original invisible man for all the notice anybody was taking of him. The girls hadn’t seen him either. Desperately, he whistled loudly, then jumped up and down, waving his free arm.
They certainly saw him then, and the girls recognised him at once. Cheryl was about to say something, but Linda stopped her, while Genius rose from his seat on the rock and stood for a moment in uncertainty. Then he waved back, casually, and sat down again. The wave was no invitation, but a merely phatic signal of the sort given to a chance-met stranger passing by. Ray stood for a moment, then slowly walked off to the eastward out of sight.
His capture was quite undramatic. Rounding a large rock outcrop similar to the one behind which he had kissed Cheryl, he came face to face with Egan, who was breasting a slight rise in the ground, followed by Harry, Peter and Simon, with Lumpy bringing up the rear.
‘Why, it’s Ray!’ Harry said, which was all that was needed.
‘Is it indeed?’ said Egan. ‘How do, Ray: you’re just in time to join us for lunch.’
*
So Ray joined Harry and the other two men at their unpleasant work on the ropeway. Genius helped Egan stack carcasses in the truck, and the girls sat as before where Lumpy could keep an eye on them and the men at the same time. Cloud began to thicken in the southwest during the afternoon, and a breeze sprang up from the same quarter.
‘Looks like rain,’ Harry said. ‘I hope we can finish off for the day before it starts.’
This hope, at least, was fulfilled. They worked until almost six o’clock, and though the breeze increased to a strong wind, the rain held off. Genius came up from the truck, and ordered work to halt for the day.
He said to Lumpy, ‘Eagerboy’s got some trouble down there with a rheostat. He’ll be up later, and we’re not to wait tea for him.’
The procession trooped back to the ruined building, the girls in the middle. They had been silent and subdued all day, bored by the enforced idleness and worried over the men. Lumpy’s gun had ceased to terrify them, but each had noticed his eyes on her at numerous times during the day.
For tea they ate frankfurters and baked beans, with sliced bread, an unappetising meal. While they were eating, Genius nudged Lumpy.
Genius said, ‘Old Eego won’t be up for hours.’
Lumpy grunted, his mouth full.
‘Nice girls,’ Genius said. ‘You been watching them all day, Lumps. Don’t you think they’re nice girls, eh?’
Lumpy nodded.
‘Behaved themselves, have they?’
‘That’s logic, mate. They know what’s what; any nonsense like trying to run away, and their fellers would get it. Nice bright girls.’
Rain spattered the ground, a sudden almost horizontal downpour in a flurry of wind; at once the party leaped to their feet and hurried indoors, scrambling over the halfwall into the roofed section and hearing the rain hissing and lashing outside.
‘There. I said it was going to rain,’ Harry said. ‘Could keep it up for days, but I don’t think so.’
Genius said, ‘Who the hell cares what you think?’
He stood on Ann’s sleeping bag, scuffing it with dirty boots.
‘You mind what you’re doing with your dirty feet,’ Simon told him. Simon pointed to Ann and said, ‘That’s her sleeping bag you’re mucking up.’
‘My feet’ll get wet if I don’t wipe my boots,’ Genius said patiently, the cheerful expression unchanged. ‘I might catch a cold.’
He moved off the sleeping bag and came to Ann, looking her up and down.
‘You don’t mind if I wipe my feet, do you?’
Ann shook her head mutely, and Genius turned to Lumpy.
‘That’s what I mean, Lumpy boy,’ Genius said. ‘If you was to send experts out collecting them you couldn’t find nicer girls anywhere. When was the last time you met any as nice as these ones, Lump?’
Lumpy said, ‘I dunno.’