‘I’m going to see my sister at Sidmouth!’ shouted the old man. ‘Always go every month! You a Londoner?’
‘Yes.’ They got to the top of the hill and rattled down the other side. Gibb glanced at his driver. One of the inquisitive type.
‘Been working down here?’
‘Yes,’ Gibb said swiftly, sidelong. ‘Been on a dock job at Plymouth, I have, see, but yesterday I hear my little girl’s been knocked down! Car come on the pavement behind her. Just coming home from school, she was, poor kid. Pushed her into a lamp-post. Broke two ribs, they say. Couldn’t sleep when I heard. Terrible, isn’t it?’
‘Terrible,’ said the old man, clucking his tongue. ‘ I’m very sorry for you. Very sorry indeed. Have you heard how she is?’
‘Not since. I set off this morning, soon as it was light.’
‘Motor-cars,’ said the old man. ‘The bane of life today. Ought to be prohibited. Will in another generation or two.’
‘Yes,’ said Gibb, ready to agree to anything. ‘ I shouldn’t wonder if you’re right.’
They hummed recklessly through another village. Two policemen were there talking to a motorist. Gibb braced himself but they got past.
‘But wouldn’t it have been better,’ said the old man, ‘to have gone by train? It’s little more than four hours by rail.’
Gibb licked his lips. There was a lovely spanner in the cubby-hole of the car. ‘Well, y’see, I was laid off three weeks ago. Laid off, I was. I’ve stayed on expecting another job, see, but you know how money goes, especially sending it home as well. I just hadn’t got the cash.’
The old man clucked sympathetically and to Gibb’s relief began to talk of his own life. He was a retired schoolmaster – ‘ just a village school, you understand.’ Gibb heard all about school meals – which made his stomach turn over – and the education act and the effect of inflation on pensions.
Presently they began to approach Exeter. ‘Tell me where you would like to be put down.’
‘Well, if it’s all the same to you, maybe I’ll come part way to Sidmouth.’
‘That’ll take you well out of your way.’
‘Sometimes you stand a better chance of picking up a lift on one of these side roads. I reckon.’
‘As you please.’ For the first time the old man’s rinsed-out blue eyes rested on his companion with a hint of doubt. Silence fell.
They branched off beyond the River Exe. The countryside was in full bloom; apples and cherries waved their blossoms wantonly in the breeze. Past a road junction, in a quiet part of the road, Gibb said: ‘This’ll do.’
‘My dear young man, you’re right off your proper direction here. However, if that is what you want, so be it.’ He brought the car to a grunting stop.
‘Now you can get out.’
The old man looked startled. ‘What d’you mean?’
Gibb picked up the heavy spanner. ‘I mean I want your car. That’s plain enough, isn’t it? Out …’
The old man licked his lips. A vein corded in his neck. ‘ What are you going to do?’
‘I’ll not cosh you if you play the game, but one shout or move and I’ll lay you out. Got that?’
They climbed out of the car. No one was about. Gibb opened a gate and led the way into an apple orchard. In the middle of it they might have been in a Japanese flower world. Every time they moved a shower of scented petals floated over them.
‘Against that tree. Sit down. I want your braces, to take the places of my strings, see, because I want my string to tie you up.’
The ‘string’ was rope he’d stolen with the suit. The old man said: ‘For twenty-eight years I have been offering lifts to people on the road. This is the first time …’
‘Well, there has to be a first time for everything, hasn’t there. Didn’t they say about me on the radio last night? I bet they did. Les Gibb, serving a three-year stretch for robbery with violence. Chanced it, last night –’
‘With violence.’
‘Yes, with violence. I’d as soon cosh you as not, see. What’s that?’ Gibb raised his head.
‘What?’
‘That cuckoo noise. That’s not a real cuckoo, is it?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘First time I ever heard one. They don’t live where I live.’
‘Be careful,’ said the old man nervously. ‘My circulation is poor. If you tie my wrists too tight …’
‘O.K. I won’t kill you, at least not if you behave.’ Gibb stood up and stared at his victim. ‘You’ll do, I think. You know you remind me of my old schoolmaster. He didn’t like me much. Used to call me ‘‘ Gibb by name and glib by nature’’.’
‘I can understand that,’ said the other bitterly. ‘You certainly took me in with your lies.’
‘Well, maybe it’s easier if you’re brought up right, like you was. I wasn’t, see. My old man used to beat the daylights out of me. It makes you a bit glib, that does … Just try it some time; you got to think of an excuse quick or get a bash on the earhole. It makes you glib … Afraid I’ll have to gag you.’
Protesting like a drowning swimmer, the old man had his scarf tied over his mouth. It wouldn’t last long, but it would muffle him for a while. Gibb thumbed through the schoolmaster’s wallet. He took the driving licence and four pound notes.
‘Sorry about this,’ he said. ‘So long. Someone’ll find you sooner or later, and it’s a nice sunny day for a picnic.’
He went back to the car, got in and drove off. He kept to the main A.35, cut out Sidmouth but didn’t avoid Lyme Regis, and the old car nearly died climbing the great hill out of the town. He held up a long stream of traffic, and felt himself like a carnival queen at the head of a procession. At the top he drew into a gate to let them all past, and mopped his brow. Not a thing worked on the car except the engine; he couldn’t see what speed he was doing, what petrol he had got, whether he had oil or water. He was light-headed for lack of food, but somehow he’d overcome the first pangs and he decided to press on while the going was good. Neatly noon now, and the sun beat down. He tried to lower one of the windows, but after struggling for a time the door came open and nearly caught on a passing post. After that he was content to sweat and swelter.
At last it was Dorchester 3 miles. All depended how long before the old schoolmaster was found. Risk it. Down the long straight main street, which was crowded with traffic. A policeman held him up, and when he was waved on he stalled his engine. Watched with mild contempt but without suspicion, he pulled the starter a half dozen times before the engine fired. Then with sweat crawling all over him like a nest of worms, he jerked ahead.
Out of the town, take the left fork for Salisbury. A toss-up but you followed your hunch. In Salisbury he’d have to stop, buy something to eat and drink. Couldn’t go on no longer. His throat was parched, his tongue swollen. But he never reached Salisbury. He turned a corner and saw, at first not realizing. It was the sort of queue you get at a frontier post, except that it only seemed for cars going his way. Then he saw police.
He was within twenty yards of the last car in the line. Between himself and the last car was an overgrown lane: he turned almost on two wheels into it, jolted and lurched over deep ruts and then nearly into a ditch. Down it, rattling and wobbling; there was a stream at the bottom and a ford. Through with a sound like tearing linen; water whooshed at either side of him, and he took the hill like a racer. But the old car, forced too hard, had had a coronary. Half-way up it coughed and missed and began to die. He was just able to steer it under the shade of a tree before it breathed its last.
Out double quick. Not sure if the police had seen him but there was no time to stop and find out. He jumped a gate, ran round the edge of a field of green oats, looked hastily back, and, seeing no one but a farm worker who gazed at him with vacuous interest from the seat of a tractor, began to walk away more slowly, keeping the sun on his back.
He walked for an hour. It was a dream walk, half a nightmare. He was in a land
of stately trees planted here and there on wide green fields with all the gifted irrelevance of the 18th century. Birds darted across his path, cows stopped their chewing to watch him pass, a foal kicked its heels and galloped away. All his life a city dweller, he had never seen anything like it before. In his weak condition it all seemed too perfect to be real, an Elysian field in which he walked standing still while invisible scene-shifters moved the monuments of green beauty unsteadily past him.
A cottage by the road. His knees were giving way under him. He went up and knocked on the door. A middle-aged woman with grey eyes opened it.
‘Could you – let me have – a glass of water?’
She looked at him suspiciously, hesitated, and then he folded up on the doorstep.
He didn’t remember getting inside the house but he supposed afterwards she must have helped him. She had given him water and then a weak whisky; he could feel it seeping into his veins like raw new blood.
She sat quietly with folded hands on the other side of the kitchen while he told her he’d been walking all morning and had lost his way and hadn’t realized it was so hot, etc., etc. The kitchen was as clean and neat as she was, not a hair out of place; he was in luck because there didn’t seem to be a man. And she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. You could always manage a woman on her own. He got up, making a pretence of going, but quickly sat down again, putting on what he thought was a rather good act of feeling faint and saying that as a matter of fact he hadn’t bothered with breakfast and had she by any chance a bite to eat in the house to help him on his way? He’d gladly pay for it, he really would.
Gibb had a way with him; people somehow always fell for his easy talk, and the woman said: ‘I have some cold meat – a few cold potatoes. You’re welcome to them if you want them.’
‘Thanks. Thanks very much. I wouldn’t ask but I’m not long out of hospital. You get proper out of condition, lying up like that, no exercise.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, bringing him a plate of beef that made him hardly able to think straight for the sight of it. ‘You are convalescent?’
‘Well, in a manner of speaking, yes. I’m up and down, you know. It’s from the war, y’see. Long time ago, but it keeps on giving me a bit of trouble.’
She looked at him quickly, with her steady grey eyes. ‘ It is a long time ago. I shouldn’t have thought you were old enough.’
‘I’m forty-four. I was just old enough. Worse luck.’ He laughed. ‘Time goes, don’t it.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed soberly. ‘Time goes.’
He ate the food, trying not to wolf it. Every moment he felt better, but he didn’t hide from himself the job it would be getting to London if the cop had reported the stolen car in Dorchester. Once or twice she went out of the kitchen but was soon back and kept passing into a small scullery where he heard her moving pans about.
He said: ‘This somebody’s park round here?’
‘No. Why?’
‘I thought it looked like a park, all those trees, like.’
She smiled for the first time. ‘No. It’s just – farm land. You’re English, aren’t you?’ She was quite easy on the eye when her face lit up.
‘Oh, yes. But I’ve not seen much country, not like this. Been round London docks most of my life.’
‘I see.’ She had unobtrusively cut him more bread.
‘D’you have a farm?’ he asked.
‘No. Oh no. I – Live in this cottage.’
‘All by yourself?’
‘Yes.’ He saw that after she spoke she regretted it. So she wasn’t too comfortable about aim, eh? She added: ‘ My fiancé was killed in the war.’
‘You don’t say.’ He wiped his mouth. ‘That was bad. Real bad. So we got a sort of bond, haven’t we?’ ’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, look what the war done for me. Where was he killed – where was your fiancé killed?’
‘Arnhem.’
He said easily: ‘Why, that’s where my number came up! What a chance! Isn’t that something. It’s a small world!’
‘Yes, it’s a small world.’ She picked up his plate and carried it out. He eyed her retreating figure.
When she came back she said abruptly: ‘ Have you been in hospital in this district?’
‘Well, no, not in this district, as you might say. I’m just staying near by. How far are we from Salisbury?’
‘Eighteen miles.’
‘Phew! Where’s your nearest town?’
‘We are four miles from Shaftesbury.’
‘I reckon I’ll make for there and get a bus back to Dorchester. I reckon that’s better than going home the way I came.’
‘Were you in a parachute regiment?’ she asked.
‘What?’ He lifted his head and stared. ‘Why, yes. Funny you should guess that. Funny, I’d say. Did your – was your fiancé in airborne?’
‘Yes. They all were, weren’t they?’
‘Yes, of course they was, I suppose. Funny, I don’t remember much. I got mine pretty soon, you know. Knocked right out.’
By the window, with her back to the sunlight, she still watched him. ‘Would you like to borrow a bicycle?’
He stared into the sun. ‘What, me borrow a bike? You got one? How could I let you have it back?’
‘Leave it at the Old Bell. They can bring it back when they come visiting the next farm.’
‘That’s – well, it’s generous … And me a stranger! You might never see your bike again,’
‘It isn’t mine. It belonged to my fiancé … No doubt he would be glad if I lent it to someone – wounded in the same battle.’
He was uncomfortable. Sharp enough in his own way, he sensed irony in her voice. But he couldn’t lose by saying yes. ‘ Thanks. Thanks very much. A friend in need is a friend indeed, that’s what they say, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, that’s what they say.’
He offered to pay for the food. He offered to give her something for the loan of the old bicycle she wheeled out of a shed. But she refused both. Her arm half raised to shade her eyes from the sun, she quietly accepted his thanks and his handshake and watched him get on the bike and after a preliminary wobble go off down the lane.
She watched him until he was out of sight over the brow of the hill. She’d heard all about him on the one o’clock news, but she was quite alone and did not feel like being brutally tied up and left in an orchard the way some old Devonshire schoolmaster had been.
Even now she did not rush to telephone, even though she hated him bitterly for trying to ingratiate himself by lying about his part in the war. She could not bear fox hunting – however many chickens the fox might have stolen, however sly and slippery he might be.
Gibb was feeling a different man, and if only his shoes didn’t hurt … That was why he kept the bicycle. He kept the bicycle and bought a map of the district in Shaftesbury and took a road north towards Warminster and then turned right for Wylye. But after a few miles he saw another road block ahead, and he dumped the bike in a hedge and began to cut across the fields. It took him two hours to do four miles and he had gone off course again. A bus came marked Devizes and stopped to let off an old market woman. On impulse he took her place. He was making no progress, but it might shake him free of the police cordon. The bus was full and he was glad of the crowd around him. He understood people so much better than he understood nature.
At Devizes he saw another bus marked Newbury and climbed on that. If he could make this part of the journey he reckoned he had a chance. Once the bus had started he began to feel sleepy. Two or three times he dozed and sat up with a start, dunking that prison officers were standing all round him.
By the time they were through Marlborough the sun was on the slant and from here you could see across miles of open countryside with hundreds of great trees standing alone like monoliths. Not for the first time today, things stirred in the underworld of Gibb’s consciousness. Maybe after a time it would be dull; but you wouldn’t fee
l the same, living in a place like this, you couldn’t feel the same.
Imagine being born here instead of among the tall trees of the London warehouses.
There were police at the bus stop at Newbury, but he had got out the stop before. He came quietly through the town, slouched past the bus station. There was a bus temptingly marked Reading but it wasn’t worth the risk.
Seventeen miles from Newbury to Reading, and after two he began to lift his thumb, still determined to make London tonight. He was hungry again. A lorry picked him up but it was only going four miles and soon he was out on the road again. His feet were killing him. The sun was low, and the high hedges threw half the road in shadow. Fifty miles more. So near and yet so –
A long black saloon drew up with a slither of tyres. ‘Want a lift?’
A big youngish middle-aged man with a clipped moustache as narrow as an eyebrow, a cap dead straight over his eyes, and a mate-in-three-moves suit. ‘Going far?’
‘Well, London. That’s where I’m hoping to get.’
‘Can do you as far as Twickenham, if that’s any good.’ Cuban cheroot smoke drifted across.
‘Thanks. Thanks a lot.’
They accelerated away with a well-bred whine. The needle dickered up to sixty-five, to seventy. Cor, what luck. ‘Smashing car,’ Gibb ventured.
‘Yes, sure. New last week. Just running her in. She’ll do well over the ton. Pretty good animal all round.’
‘Aren’t you supposed to run a new car in slow, like?’
‘She’s all right. And the firm buys me a new one every year.’
They swirled round a corner at seventy. At a 30 sign, the man slowed to 50. It wouldn’t be much joy if they were stopped for speeding.
Gibb breathed again as they slid through Reading. He thought he was pretty well safe now. The man cut south to avoid Slough and went on talking about the blondes in his life. Abruptly he said: ‘And what are you doing on the road? You don’t look like an ordinary biker?’
Gibb thought quickly. You chose your piece for your listener. ‘I – er – no. I been working in Bristol. Bristol docks, you know.’