Harry Doing Good

by Canaway, W. H.

  ‘Okay,’ Ray said. ‘As long as you want, man.’

  Getting up, he walked over and retrieved the grouse, bringing it back to Harry.

  ‘You didn’t hang it up,’ he said.

  Harry took the grouse and flung it away into the trees.

  ‘I never want to see it again. And when we go back up there in the morning, you get rid of that slingshot of yours the same way I got rid of the gun.’

  ‘Destroy the evidence?’ Ray said.

  ‘That’s it. You see, in a month or so those…those fellers up there, they’ll have decomposed, see? And if we put a load of rocks on top of the rifle and that thing of yours, in a different place, that’ll be better still. It’s for your own good.’

  Ray acquiesced wryly. If both slingshot and rifle were in the same place, and were ever discovered, then he could not see how that would benefit him at all. But at least he would not be in possession of the slingshot, and right now he didn’t feel like having it around anyhow.

  *

  The men spent the next morning carting rocks of suitable size from where glacial action had deposited them during the Ice Age, and dropping them into the mineshaft on top of the fleeces and viscera, rifle and slingshot. To their surprise they found that the rocks fell no more than twenty-five or thirty feet. Presumably the shaft led to a side passage. At first the rocks squelched as they landed, but then began to clatter, and after two hours with frequent breaks Harry called to them to stop.

  ‘That’ll be enough rocks,’ he said. ‘The stink’s almost gone.’

  They rested for ten minutes, then began to tear up tussocky clods of grass and peat, throwing them down on top of the rocks. There was no sign of the soldiers, or indeed of anyone else, on the plateau. They laid down a final covering of heather, and then ceased work. There was no smell at all from the shaft, and they left it with a sense of accomplishment: a good job well done.

  On the way back Harry said, ‘Those chaps just had the wrong idea. All that talk of using modern methods! The best way to collect sheep is with sheepdogs. A good man with a trained dog or two. The dogs would round up all the sheep in a big bunch. I suppose you could even make a pen for them, or a fold or whatever they call it. Then all you’d have to do is bring them out one by one.’

  ‘Sure,’ Ray said. ‘That’s what they were fixing to do with us.’

  Simon said, ‘Dogs would have been best. They wouldn’t even have needed to bring a gun up here. I don’t think they were all that bright when you come to think of it.’

  ‘Just stupid,’ Harry said. He added thoughtfully, ‘We’ll have to do something about that truck full of sheep. If we just leave it where it is, sooner or later someone’s going to report it, and sooner or later the police are going to open it. They’ll see all those sheep, and it’ll lead them straight up top. What we need is time.’

  ‘You mean we ought to drive it away and leave it somewhere else?’ Simon said.

  Harry said, ‘That’s the idea. Now we mustn’t be stupid. What we need is one of those huge transport cafés where there’s always dozens of trucks. You know: where drivers can stay overnight. We’ll slip it in, have a meal, then leave the truck and trundle off in the Kombi.’

  Ray said, ‘Who’s going to drive the truck?’

  ‘I will,’ Harry said. ‘I’ve got a heavy goods licence. But Simon can’t drive. Can you?’

  ‘Sure. I can drive the Volkswagen,’ Ray said. ‘But I have no valid licence.’

  ‘We’ll have to risk that,’ Harry decided. ‘You take the Kombi, and I’ll take the truck. It’s a good job that fog went away. I wouldn’t fancy driving a big thing like that in thick fog.’

  They descended the path alongside the stream, for the last time, and agreed that it would be best to make a start immediately after lunch. Simon was pleased, because he had imagined that the work at the mineshaft would have taken all that day, and he wanted to get away as quickly as possible.

  ‘Horrible place,’ he said.

  In the pool the dipper was busy, just as it had been when they had made their first ascent and again it emerged from the clear water and flitted away in alarm, skimming up the frothy lace of one of the cascades and disappearing out of sight behind a boulder. The air was mild and still and peaceful; though the sky was overcast, it might still have been a summer’s day. In the lower reaches of the stream, small trout were rising to hatching insects.

  Ray said, ‘A horrible place? If it is, it’s because we made it that way.’

  3

  It was two-thirty in the afternoon. Harry stood with Ray by the Kombi, which was packed and ready to go. Simon and the girls were sitting inside and waiting. Harry opened the driver’s door and invited Ray to get in.

  ‘Take her down as far as the truck,’ he said, and went round to the other side, sitting in the front passenger seat. ‘We might as well check you really can drive this thing.’

  Ray depressed the clutch pedal and tested the gear change, recalling the straightforward H-gate and the position of reverse gear.

  He said, ‘I remember. No sweat. I just keep right behind you.’

  Harry said, ‘If you get lost, remember the road we’ll be on is called the A5. There’s a book in here with maps and everything. I expect we’ll be all right, but you might as well know about it before we start.’

  He reached into the glove box and brought out an AA handbook, showing Ray their position, and tracing the road through several pages of the map.

  ‘The A5 finishes up as the Edgware Road in London,’ he said. ‘Not that we’re going as far as that. We’ll get rid of the truck somewhere in the Midlands.’

  Ray started the engine and moved off as Harry replaced the handbook, then fumbled underneath it. He brought out Peter’s postcard.

  ‘Talk about luck,’ he said wonderingly. ‘I’d forgotten all about this.’

  Simon said, ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s the postcard Pete wrote on the way up here. Don’t you remember? He had this old postcard of the Winnats that he bought when we were up in the Peak district. It’s addressed to his mother and it says, “Going to have a great time. See you at the weekend. Pete.” I promised to post it for him, and that’s what I’m going to do.’

  ‘How can you do that?’ Ann asked. ‘I’d like to keep it. Something to remind me of him.’

  ‘That’s the last thing you can do,’ Harry said emphatically. ‘No. We post this down on the A5 somewhere. It’s on the way to London, isn’t it? That’ll mean Pete must have gone to London: it’ll back up what we say.’

  Ray was driving slowly but competently, staying in third gear downhill on the little road. He pulled up opposite the freezer truck and left the engine running, expecting Harry to get out at once and go to the truck. But Harry sat motionless, then turned a puzzled face to Ray.

  ‘We’ve no keys,’ he said in dismay.

  Ray said, ‘Oh, no. You mean you didn’t take the keys?’

  ‘I just didn’t think. And nobody reminded me.’

  Ray switched off the ignition of the Kombi, then he and Harry climbed out and went over to the truck; the others followed.

  Simon said, ‘You’d think we’d remember something like the keys. The thing won’t move without them.’

  ‘It’ll move,’ Harry said. ‘These things are more complicated than dishwashers, but you can start ’em without a key. You have to find a couple of elephants to push the thing so as to get compression: it’s diesel, see? But I can’t even get inside because the cab’s locked,’ he added after trying the door handles.

  Ray said, ‘We’re cooked. Why don’t we just leave this truck and get the hell out?’

  ‘We’ve been into that once already. It isn’t on. This thing has got to be shifted a long way from here.’

  Cheryl said, ‘Yes, but how? How can you move it if you can’t get inside to begin with?’

  Harry felt jittery, close to despair; his fingers rubbed round the single ball bearing in his anorak pocket.

>   ‘Don’t you see?’ he said wearily. ‘Somebody’s got to go back up and get the key. Key, keys, key-ring, I don’t know what, but that’s what we’ve got to do.’

  Simon and Ray looked at him in consternation.

  ‘You can’t be serious?’ Simon asked him. ‘Go back up there again? And then…?’

  ‘It’s the only way,’ Harry said. ‘Take the towrope. It’s got a hook at one end.’

  Ann said, ‘I don’t want to hear any more. I thought at last we were going to get away, and now this happens.’

  ‘I’m not going up again,’ Simon said. ‘When I think what we’ve all been through — and now you want us to go back! It’s all like a horrible trap closing round. I’m not going back.’

  ‘Me neither,’ Ray said.

  Hollow-eyed, Harry stared at them both for a moment, then he nodded.

  ‘Lack of spirit,’ he said. ‘I can’t blame you for it, but I wish you were different. I’ll just have to do it myself, then, won’t I?’

  He took the towrope from the back of the Kombi and coiled it over one shoulder.

  ‘I don’t know how long I’m going to be, but you’ll have to wait,’ he told them. ‘Move down the road a bit, facing up it. You’ll have to turn round, Ray. Can you do that?’

  Ray said, ‘Sure, no problem.’

  ‘Good. Set up a picnic, so it looks as if you’re just pulled off the main road and nipped into a quiet place for a brew-up and a bite to eat. Then wait for me. That’s all. Just wait for me.’

  He spoke with a controlled intensity quite inappropriate to what he was saying, and he thought, It all comes back to Harry. Harry has to do it all in the end. Fix up the holidays, look after everybody, get them out of trouble, put things right while they all sit round having a picnic.

  Harry said no more to them, but turned and left them; he strode up the ropeway, treading out strongly until he was out of their sight, then slowing. He felt glum and dispirited himself, tired after the morning’s hard work, and dreading what he had to do; it seemed to him that he was bound to this plateau by some malign force which kept dragging him back to it despite every effort he made to escape. He passed the mineshaft, the rope weighing more heavily on his shoulders now, and trudged on until the ruined building came into view. Twenty-five minutes later he had reached the still, oily surface of the peatbog. He unslung the towrope, then made a reversed coil on the ground in front of him so that the hook lay uppermost. He needed a grapnel, or a hook with a barb, but this hook recurved so that it could be bound and so prevented from slipping from a tow; it was blunt, thick, and with too narrow a gape. But it was all he had. He picked up three or four feet of rope and swung it tentatively, calculating: the first to go in had been that chap they called Lumpy. The boss had been next. He measured the surface with his eye, swung the rope harder in circles over his head, then cast like a handline fisherman. The rope uncoiled in front of him; then a length of it hit the surface, hook first, and sank. Harry waited a few seconds, and began to haul in very slowly.

  Half an hour later he was still casting, and still hauling, with no success at all. He pulled the soaking rope out of the brown water, then sat down beside it on the muddy ground near the track made by the ToteGote, his lower lip trembling like a small child’s on the verge of tears.

  *

  Cheryl said, ‘He’s been gone hours! What can have happened?’

  She was becoming jumpy and impatient. The others had resigned themselves to a long wait, and she had been nagging them every few minutes.

  ‘Why don’t you keep quiet?’ Linda said testily. ‘He won’t be back any quicker just because you keep on worrying yourself silly about him.’

  Cheryl said, ‘I’m not worrying about him. I’m worrying about us. We ought to be miles away from here by now.’

  ‘Honey, you’re all uptight,’ Ray said with solicitude. ‘Just sitting here is making you worse. We’ll take a little walk, then you’ll unwind.’

  Linda said, ‘Ray, you know Harry told us to stay here.’

  ‘Sure,’ Ray said easily. ‘We won’t go far, and we’ll be right back. Come on, honey.’

  Cheryl stood, glancing at the others; then she went to Ray, and they walked slowly up the little road.

  ‘Well!’ said Ann.

  ‘Well what?’ Simon asked.

  Linda said, ‘Don’t be silly, Ann. They’ll be all right. She was getting all nervy, and getting on our nerves as well. I mean, after what’s happened, Ray couldn’t possibly…you know.’

  Ann nodded.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, of course I know what you mean.’

  Ray and Cheryl walked up the lane, past the truck, past the old base camp, climbing gently to where gorse and blackthorn and scrub oak grew.

  ‘I feel better already,’ Cheryl said, comfortable with Ray’s arm round her waist.

  Ray said, ‘Forget it all. Imagine this is a day out, just the two of us. All that other mess happened in another life; it’s all gone by. We stopped down the road a ways, and now we’re taking a little walk like we made a date to, back in that other life, and never got around to it.’

  She looked at him, her eyes wide with surprise, then he gently steered her into the little coppice and sat down with her under the trees. He kissed her cool and unresponsive lips, then stroked her cheek.

  ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘I don’t want you to.’

  He said, ‘Love is tenderness. Love is regard. You are Cheryl, yourself. And you are beautiful. What I said that day we first met still holds good. Never forget that, but forget all the rest. I’m a gimp, and you have…that hand, but we can be beautiful people together.’

  He kissed her again, and this time she responded warmly. Soon they were making love, Ray gentle and adroit, patient and considerate, until at length she cried out, shuddering, her head snapping back and her arm crushing his neck as he gasped in a synchronous ecstasy. As they quietened, she gazed up through the lace of green branches as yet untinted by the autumn, her eyes brimming and tears escaping sideways, running over her face above the cheekbones.

  Full of concern Ray asked, ‘Did I hurt you?’

  She shook her head and said in a small voice, ‘You made me so happy.’

  As she spoke, a tear dropped to a leaf of parsley fern, the plant partly crushed by her head, and the globule rolled to the tip of the leaf and hung for a tiny fraction of time, an orb of light; then it elongated, fell to the grass and was gone.

  *

  Harry thought he was going insane. His arms were so tired, his mind a morass of despair. He had been casting out the towrope for almost two hours. Occasionally, as he hauled in, he would feel a momentary resistance, but this would cease altogether as soon as he pulled harder: the ineffective hook was not catching. Given the smooth quilted material of the sleeping bags which held the corpses, it seemed doubtful whether the hook would ever take hold. Harry worked mindlessly, casting, hauling in, groaning with effort…until finally and incredibly, the hook caught in something — and held. A deadweight, literally. Straining, he pulled in hand over hand, wet rope falling on and around his feet, and slowly began to perceive in the brown water the blue of a sleeping bag, the hook caught in the nylon drawcord of the top opening.

  At first Harry thought with sinking apprehension that it was Peter’s blue sleeping bag; then he remembered that Egan’s had been blue also. He dragged it to dry ground, fought down a giddy nausea, then opened the bag and slipped it down. Egan’s white face, tinged with violet, the mouth jellied with blood and the side of the head contused, stared up at him. He went swiftly through the pockets until he found the keys, covered up the body and fastened the bag. In a sudden access of triumphant strength he lifted the bag, the stone in it making the foot end droop oddly, and hurled it back in a great splash of water, staggering. He recovered his balance, picked up the towrope, and flung it in as well, watching with hands on hips as the surface of the water calmed. He was breathing like a marathon runner, his mouth dry and acrid. For perh
aps five minutes he stood there in recuperation; then he turned, following the track made earlier by the ToteGote. His open brown face was set blankly, his eyes bleared by strain, and his arms were trembling with muscular reaction. He said aloud, ‘Harry’s done it: always leave it to Harry.’

  *

  Simon sat with Ann and Linda. They had set up the stove and made tea, according to Harry’s instructions, and were sipping it with enjoyment. At the bottom of the little lane, traffic shot by along the main road. None of them saw the police car pass, then stop and reverse, coming forward into the lane from the main road, until it was a hundred yards away; then they all stared in horror as it approached. It was a white Vauxhall with a wide band of fluorescent red along each side.

  Simon said to the girls, ‘Keep calm. Remember, we’re just sitting here having a cup of tea. That’s all.’

  The police car stopped by the Kombi, and two patrol men got out, coming over at once. One was corpulent, with light blue eyes and sandy hair; the other was fair also, with grey eyes and a tanned face. Both men had the level gaze and the unfazed, untrusting air which would have labelled them as policemen anywhere without benefit of uniform.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ said the fatter man, who had been driving.

  ‘’Afternoon,’ Simon said, wondering with sick anguish what was about to happen.

  The radio in the police car quacked incomprehensibly and unheeded in the background; the co-driver glanced idly into the Kombi through the back windows.

  He said, ‘Having a nice cup of tea, are you?’

  Simon nodded mutely.

  ‘Anybody else in your party?’ the tubby driver asked.

  Simon thought, If I say there’s no one else, what happens if Ray and Cherry come back? And Harry?

  He said, ‘There’s three others. They went for a walk. Why?’

  ‘Nothing really,’ the driver said. ‘…That truck up there: anybody in it?’

  The truck was visible from the Kombi, but not from the main road, and could not have been spotted before by the patrol.

  Thinking quickly Simon said, ‘Two chaps got out.’ He gestured uphill to the right. ‘They had fishing rods.’