Attack Alarm (21 page)

It is a very unnerving sensation to pass from open country into a wooded place when you are going in fear of your life. For ten days I had been living on the bare hill-top of the ’drome. I knew all the sounds of that open stretch of ruined downland. During that time I had never heard the rustle of a tree in a current of air, the scamper of a squirrel through light branches, or the movement of dried leaves and twigs caused by the night life of a wood. It was all new to me, and each sound, terrifying at first, had to be sorted out and understood before I dared move forward again.

Once, behind me, I heard the snap of a twig where something heavier than usual had pressed on it. That sound alone held me poised with one foot forward for fully a minute.

At last I made the path that ran through the centre of the wood. There was no sound apart from the faint stirring of the branches high above my head. I crossed the ten feet of open ground without a challenge. This gave me confidence and I pressed forward faster. My lack of caution brought its own reward, for I tripped over a mound of earth and only just saved myself from falling into a deep trench. There was more
barbed wire beyond it, but it was just a few strands, not dannet, and quite easily negotiated.

It took time, however, and as I slipped over the last strand a twig snapped only a few yards behind me. The sound of it seemed loud in the stillness. I froze. My senses warned me that it was not one of the usual noises of the wood. A second later came the unmistakable sound of somebody stumbling and the thud of a body as it pitched into the trench I had just crossed. A muttered curse and I heard the man pick himself up cautiously.

Silence for a moment. Then he began to negotiate the barbed wire. I slid quietly behind a tree, my heart pounding against my ribs. My immediate reaction was that one of the Guards was trailing me. But reason told me that if it was one of the Guards he would have known the position of the trench and would not have fallen into it. Moreover, I had heard no clatter of a rifle as he fell. And that muttered curse! Surely he would not have uttered it if he had been trailing me.

The man, whoever he was, was very near me now. I could hear the pant of his breathing. Then the sound was lost in the whir of a car coming up the road. The wood about me suddenly took shape as the blacked-out headlights swept past only a few yards beyond where I stood. It only lit the wood up for a second before it drew level and was gone, but in that second I saw the man who was coming towards me and recognised him.

“Good God, Micky!” I said. “What the devil are you doing here?”

I sensed the shock of my voice as the car swept on and the blackness, more impenetrable than ever, settled once more on the wood.

“Who’s that?” His voice sounded hoarse and frightened.

I hesitated. The road was close, much closer than I
had expected. Once on it I could give him the slip and he would never know who it was. “Is anybody there?”

And because I felt his fear, I said: “It’s Hanson.”

“Hanson?” he whispered. “Cor lumme, you didn’t ’alf give me a fright.”

“What the devil are you doing?” I asked.

“Doing a bunk, same as you. Though I didn’t think you was that scared.”

“Good God!” I said. “You mean you’re deserting?”

“Who says I’m deserting? I ain’t deserting. I’m transferring. I’m going to volunteer in the Buffs.”

“But why?” I asked.

“Cos I ain’t gonna stay in that bleeding aerodrome to provide target practice for Jerries. That ain’t fighting. It’s bloody murder. I want to be in something where I can fight the Jerry proper. I want to get at ’em wiv a rifle and baynet.”

“But if you’re caught you’ll be regarded as a deserter.”

“Admitted. So will you. But I ain’t aiming to get caught.”

“The odds are against you, Micky,” I said. “Why not go back now while you’ve got the chance.”

“And be bombed again without being able to do nothing to stop it. Not bloody likely. Wot about you, anyway?”

“Well,” I said. “I’m not exactly deserting.”

“I suppose you’re resigning. You got a nerve telling me to go back, whilst you’re running like hell yourself. Wot d’you think I am? Are you going to volunteer in some other unit?”

“No,” I said.

“Well, I am—see? I want ter fight for me country. I ain’t deserting. Come on, let’s get out o’ here while the going’s good.”

It was no use arguing with him. Time was too precious and at any moment we might be overheard, I followed him down a gentle slope and over a wooden stile on to the road. “There’s a garage just down the road,” I said. “We’ll get a car from there.”

But we were in luck. We hadn’t gone more than a hundred yards when we heard a car coming towards us. “Stand by to board,” I said to Micky. And as the dull headlights came round the bend ahead of us, I stepped out into the middle of the road and signalled it to stop. It pulled up with a shriek of brakes. It wasn’t a car at all but a Bedford truck.

“Can I see your identity card?” I asked as the driver leaned out of the window of the cab. I glanced at it and then flashed the torch I had brought with me in his face. “I’m afraid you’ll have to get down while we search your cabin,” I said.

“What the hell’s the matter?” he grumbled.

He showed no signs of moving. “Come on, look sharp!” I barked. “I haven’t got all night to waste.”

“All right, mate, all right,” he muttered as he climbed out. “What’s the trouble, anyway?”

“Looking for a Bedford truck full of H.E.,” I told him.

“Well, you’ve only got to look at the bloody thing to see it’s empty,” he said.

“The driver may have dumped it,” I explained. Then to Micky I said: “You search the other side. Come on, look sharp. The fellow doesn’t want to waste all night. He’s probably late back already.”

“You’re right there, sir.” I think he thought by my voice and the way I had spoken to Micky that I was an officer in battle dress. “Shan’t be in bed till one and due to clock out again at eight in the morning.”

I had climbed up into the driver’s seat and made a pretence of searching with my torch, whilst in reality I was noting the position of the gears and foot controls.
“That’s too bad,”
I said. At the same time I slammed home the gears, revved the engine and let the clutch in with a bang.

I heard the beginning of his shout, but lost it
in
the noise of the engine as I raced through the gears. In a second it seems I had swept past the turning that led to the main gates of the aerodrome. And in less than ten minutes I had swung left on to the main Eastbourne road and was making for East Grinstead. Fortune had favoured us. A Bedford truck, empty, has a pretty turn of speed. The moon was just rising and the added light enabled me to push her. On the straight stretches I was showing nearly sixty on the clock.

In less than half an hour from the time I had expropriated the lorry I had passed through East Grinstead and Forest Row and was climbing the long winding hill that leads up to Ashdown Forest.

Just past the Roebuck at Wych Cross I forked left, and about a mile farther on I came upon the turning off to the right of which Marion had spoken. I switched my lights off. The moonlight was quite strong now. “Well, Micky,” I said. “This is where I leave you.”

“Wot’s the game?” he demanded suspiciously.

“How do you mean?” I asked.

“Ain’t I good enough for you, then.”

“Don’t be silly,” I said.

“Well, wot’s the idea, then? You got a hideout you don’t want me to share—that’s it, is it?”

I hesitated. It didn’t seem to matter much if I told him the truth. “I haven’t got a hideout at all,” I said. “You see, I’m really not deserting. In a few hours’ time I shall be back at the aerodrome.”

“If you do it’s the glasshouse for you and a brick wall, I tell you, mate. Anyway, if you’re going back, wot’s the good of getting out.”

“Because I had to get to a certain farm to-night,” I said. “I’m playing a lone hand against a gang of fifth columnists. They’ve got a plan by which they will help Germany to capture our fighter aerodromes. I aim to stop them.”

He looked at me. In the faint light from the dashboard I noted the sidelong, furtive glance. “You ain’t kidding?”

I shook my head. “No,” I said.

“Sure?”

“Cross my heart.”

A sudden gleam came into his small close-set eyes. “Cor lumme!” he said. “Wot a break! Like a book I bin reading all about gangsters in America. Will they have guns?” he asked.

“Probably,” I said. And I couldn’t help grinning though I felt queasy inside because it was so near to zero hour.

“Cor lumme!” he repeated. “That’s the way I like to fight—’and to ’and. I wouldn’t ’alf like to give a Jerry a sock in the kisser—just one and I’d be ’appy. Come on! Let’s get at ’em.”

I glanced at him. It was incredible. A coward in the face of bombs, yet here was the spirit that made British Tommies go in fearlessly with rifle and bayonet against an enemy armed with light automatics. Again I hesitated. He looked as though he might be useful in a rough-house—small and tough, probably a dirty fighter. I had no illusions about my own abilities in a fight. He might be very useful.

“All right,” I said, and slipped the lorry into gear again. “But there may be no scrap and no gang of Nazis. I may be wrong.”

I changed quickly up into top and just kept the engine ticking over, so that we made little noise as we ran across that flat open heath. The road was nothing more than a rough gravel track. And in the dim moonlight the country ahead and on either side looked
desolate. There were no trees, and the only relief from the interminable heather was the gnarled and twisted skeleton of gorse bushes, black and flowerless from a recent fire. My uneasiness grew with my surroundings.

“Cor, don’t ’alf seem creepy,” Micky muttered, voicing my own thoughts. I couldn’t help remembering
Childe Rolande to the Dark Tower Came.
There was a very slight mist and the place reeked of desolation. When last I had seen Ashdown Forest it had been in sunlight, and it had seemed warm and friendly, with autumn tints glowing in the heather. I had been motoring down to Eastbourne to spend a week-end with some friends. Now it was no longer friendly, and I thought of the Ancient Britons who had fought and died here in their hopeless attempt to stem the tide of Caesar’s advancing legions. So many of the more desolate parts of Britain seem to house the ghostly memory of that tragic race.

The track forked. Evidently I was on the right road. I swung right. The road was now definitely no more than a cart track, grass-grown in the middle and full of pot-holes. At the end of it should be Cold Harbour Farm.

I passed an even smaller track leading off to the right. Then a patch of gorse bushes seemed to jump up at me out of the pale mist. I braked and swung the lorry off the track. It was time, I felt, to carry out some sort of reconnaissance. I stopped so that the lorry was screened as far as possible from the track and climbed out.

Micky followed. “Where do we go now?” he asked in a hoarse whisper.

“Up this track,” I said. “It should lead us to a place called Cold Harbour Farm.”

“Cor, stone me, wot a name!”

We went on
in
silence, two shadows slinking through the pale ethereal light, our canvas shoes making no
sound on the baked surface of the path. About a quarter of a mile farther on we passed through a gate. It was open and its rotting timbers hung drunkenly from rust-eaten hinges. Painted roughly on it was the name—Cold Harbour Farm.

The track swung away to the left, and a little farther on we got our first glimpse of Cold Harbour Farm, a low, rambling building with a jumble of outhouses and a big barn at the farther end.

“Sort o’ spooky, ain’t it?” whispered Micky. It was one of those buildings that look dilapidated even at a first glance—an untidy place, with gables. There was still no sign of a tree, only the stunted gorse bushes. Neglect had allowed them to encroach to the very door.

We moved stealthily now, leaving the path and crossing what seemed once to have been a garden, for there were vestiges of rhododendrons and even roses amongst the choking growth of heather and gorse. We took the building in the flank and came out upon what had once been a gravel terrace. The gabled wing of the house looked dark and deserted. The roof tiles were green with moss and broken in places, and the woodwork of gables and windows was rotting. Everything was deathly still in the damp air. We crept round to the front. It was a long building and must at one time have been owned by quite a prosperous family. The sweeping outline of a drive was still visible amidst the chaos of the advancing heath. I gazed along the whole length of the decaying building. No chink of light showed in any of the windows. No sound disturbed the stillness of the night. Ivy had taken a stranglehold everywhere. Undisturbed, it billowed up even to the roof.

My heart sank as I looked at the place. I just couldn’t see Vayle making it his headquarters. London seemed a much more likely place for him to meet other
agents. Out here in this God-forsaken spot every visitor was bound to be noticed and commented upon by whatever local inhabitants still existed in the neighbourhood.

In any case, the house, being quite a big one, would in itself be a subject for gossip.

I went up to the front door. It was clearly not the original door, for it was of cheap deal with a brass handle. The brown paint was cracked and peeling. I tried it, and to my surprise it gave to my pressure, creaking slightly as I pushed it open.

We went in and I closed it behind us. All was silent in the darkness of the house. No, not quite. Faintly came the ticking of a clock. It sounded somehow homely, suggesting that the place was inhabited. I switched on my torch. We were in a big low-ceilinged hall. In front of us was a flight of narrow stairs covered with a threadbare carpet. The hall itself was flagged with here and there a tattered rug. There was a fine old refectory table with straight-backed chairs. The rest of the furniture was Victorian. The place looked dirty and neglected. The huge open fireplace was littered with fallen plaster, and the ceiling, which showed in strips between the heavy oak beams, was blackened and in places had crumbled so that the laths were visible.