Good Enough For Nelson (16 page)

‘There’s supposed to be an umpire here, too,’ said McAllester. ‘Still no sign of him. Anyway, come on Chung Toi, let’s get on with it.’

Chung Toi took the rope and grapnel from his haversack. He swung the grapnel experimentally, whilst staring up the crag to gauge the distance. Then, with a quick whirl, he threw the grapnel upwards, with the rope snaking after it. The grapnel soared up, to catch on a lip of rock only a short scramble from the top. It was a marvellous throw. Chung Toi pulled the rope sharply downwards. They all heard the grapnel crunch securely into place.

‘Well, I’m damned, that was a tremendous throw, Chung!’ said McAllester. ‘And do you know, I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen that done before in my life?’

With Chung Toi’s rope in place, Sheep Crag became no more than a saunter. Even though they had to lower the rope again, with a bowline loop in it for Persimmons to put under his armpits so they could all drag him up, Purple Platoon were soon easily, miraculously easily, at the summit.

‘You can’t go much further can you, Jas?’ McAllester said to Persimmons when he stood at the top.

Persimmons shook his head. McAllester knew he was very close to tears.

‘That’s very bad luck. We’ll have to see what we can do. If you go on much more on that ankle you might do it permanent damage.’

Persimmons had managed to compose himself to say something. ‘I’m afraid I really have just about had it. It feels as though my whole foot right up to my knee is being boiled in scalding water.’

‘OK, we’ll do something about it.’ While Chung Toi coiled away his rope, McAllester looked out over the wide moorland plateau where they now stood. ‘By my reckoning, that bit of grass over there is where we’re supposed to lay out a helo landing pad.’

Baines’s lorry had obviously dropped Purple Platoon on one of the remotest parts of the moor, and they had been steadily working their way towards civilisation. There was a road with one or two cars on it running across the side of the hill a mile and a half away and, much nearer, there were even some people, a small band, crossing the moor towards Purple Platoon.

Caradoc looked at the party approaching with a weird feeling that he recognised this place. The whole scene had a dreamlike authenticity. He was quite sure he had never been here before in his life but, like Childe Roland, he knew that this was where he was destined to come eventually. Even those people down there, evidently another Roughex team, looked more like seventeenth-century pilgrims wending their way across a lonely plain.

Judging by their agitated gestures and the banners they were holding up, the newcomers certainly did look a very strange Roughex team. They were either in some distress or, at any rate, trying to attract attention to themselves.

‘Those don’t look like one of our teams,’ Caradoc said. They were near enough now for him to read some of the banners. ‘Fly Away Navy’, one said. ‘Hands Off Dartmoor’ said another. ‘Ponies Not Polaris’ said a third.

‘It’s those demonstrators,’ said McAllester. ‘They want the forces to clear out of Dartmoor. What’s more, that’s
Lucy
in the lead! No wonder she was so cagey last night.’

They could hear the helicopter somewhere overhead and in a moment they saw it, banking over the road and turning to come back. The demonstrators saw it, too, and moved forward to occupy the flat, firmest part of the central plateau where the helicopter intended to land.

‘Hell … ‘ muttered McAllester. ‘They’d better get out of the way...’

The big dark blue helicopter soared over the protesters and began to descend. They could see Buster peering forwards from his window, holding his helicopter at the correct attitude for landing. As the big helicopter sank, its rotor blades whirling, Lucy ran forward and stood underneath it, waving her hands to and fro dismissively. At once McAllester sprang forward and ran and closed Lucy from behind. He took her off her feet in a driving rugby tackle, bundled her under his arm and despite her weight carried them both forwards for several yards before pitching them both face downwards in a shallow wet ditch. The air right above them thundered with the sounds of the helicopter’s arrival and the grass for many yards around was flattened by its rushing wind.

Despite Lucy’s heavy anorak McAllester felt the shape of her body and a surge of sexuality. She was aware of it, too, and with a tremendous swingeing crack, slapped his face.

The roaring sound lessened as the rotor blades slowed. Looking up, McAllester saw Buster’s concerned face.

Lucy’s face was mud-stained and furious. ‘You always were a crude person ...’

‘Don’t be dafter than you can help!’ McAllester had hardly expected Lucy to be fulsomely grateful, but this was too much. ‘Do you think if I’d wanted three three-minute rounds cuddling with you I’d try to do it in the middle of bloody Dartmoor, in public, in a rainstorm, right under a bloody helicopter that’s just about to land on top of us? Have a
bit
of sense! You don’t seem to realise you might have been killed then. Do you realise with that kind of chopper there comes a point when the pilot’s committed himself to coming down and he
can’t
stop even if the First Lord of the Admiralty was underneath? He can’t lift up and he can’t change direction once he’s gone past that stage. He would have landed right on top of your silly little pointed head, don’t you understand? And where would you have been then?’

Lucy bunched her fists. ‘People like you ought to be ... ought to be ...’ She pursed her lips and McAllester noticed she was wearing no lipstick. She could think of no fate, no torments, no excommunication, no political purgatories, nearly excruciating enough for McAllester and the rest of them. She got up, treading on his hand, and hurried back to the rest of the demonstrators.

‘Female chauvinist
sow
!’ McAllester called after her, and felt slightly better for it.

On her way Lucy passed Isaiah Nine Smith, in flying helmet and overalls, who had just alighted from the helicopter. ‘You really ought to be a lot more careful,’ he said to her, as she scurried past him. ‘You might well have been injured just then.’

Lucy gave no sign that she had noticed him, as she rejoined the rest of the demonstrators. They were a small, sodden band of young men and girls, all soaking wet, and all looking rather alike, except for Ruth O’Malley in the rear, and a fierce-looking little lady with white hair in the front who first embraced Lucy and then shook her fists at Isaiah Nine Smith and Purple Platoon.

‘That was well wrestled, McAllester,’ said Isaiah Nine Smith, looking across at Lucy and the demonstrators. ‘Odd looking lot, aren’t they? You’d think they had better things to do than come out here on a day like this. Anyway, your team are doing very well, McAllester. That’s a very good rendezvous, right on time. All well in your team?’

‘Not quite, sir. Persimmons has sprained his ankle. I think, quite badly. I think he ought to be withdrawn, sir.’

‘OK, tell him to get into the chopper. Your tents and food are in there. You can get them out now. All set for the next transit?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘By the way, anybody seen anything of the Captain’s Secretary?’

’No, sir.’

‘He’s supposed to be umpiring in this part of the world.’

Purple Platoon set off, in the rain, for the last and hardest exercise of the day, a fifteen mile triangular map-reading cross-country march, on which they were required to cover five miles an hour for three hours. Caradoc was now team-leader, and took the lead, with McAllester in fifth or sixth place in the line.

Each team was supposed to check in with an umpire at the corners of the march triangle, but at the first rendezvous there was no sign of an umpire so Purple Platoon pressed on, setting their teeth and calling upon their last reserves of strength and fitness. Syllabub stopped moaning, Adrianovitch had no breath to spare for swearing, and even Chung Toi began to tire. Without Persimmons they could make better progress, but the rain fell harder, the terrain seemed rougher, the packs with tents and food were certainly heavier.

When they were nearing the second rendezvous point, the mist closed in and brought down visibility to less than twenty yards. Once again, they relied upon McAllester’s map-reading and Caradoc’s bump for moorland direction. It was growing dark, on a wet dreary Dartmoor evening. Damp mist blew along at ground level. Purple Platoon’s spirits were as low as the visibility. In their extreme fatigue they fancied they could see other Roughex teams groping through the mist and hear voices, lost and calling, imploring them from either side.

Bingley, last in the line, stopped and cocked his head. ‘It’s the funniest thing,’ he said, ‘but I heard somebody shouting just then. Hold on a minute! ‘

The fine stopped still, gladly.

‘It wasn’t my imagination. I
definitely
heard something.’

Bingley darted off the path, round a bluff, and there was Lucy, shouting.

When the others came up they could see from her face that something had happened.

‘We’re lost,’ she said. ‘And Ruth is ill.’

‘Where is she?’

‘Just here.’ Ruth was huddled behind a low wall, her head dropping forward. ‘We somehow got separated from the others in the mist. Ruth fell down and now she says she can’t go on. She’s very cold.’

Caradoc bent down to look at Ruth’s white face. ‘Gosh, this is no good,’ he said. ‘She not wearing the proper clothes for this sort of weather. This always happens. People’s body temperature goes right down, and they get really cold, deep down in the heart’s core. Get your blankets out, men. If we don’t do something quick, she’ll die.’

While the rain still fell, Purple Platoon took off their haversacks, and pulled out their groundsheets and blankets.

‘Get down.’ Caradoc jerked his thumb at Lucy. ‘Lie down in the blankets with her.’

‘What?’

‘Get
down
, woman. Put your arms around her and start keeping her warm. We’ll wrap you both up. Give her a cuddle. If
you
don’t,
I
bloody well will! ‘

Lucy quickly got down and Purple Platoon wrapped both girls in blankets and groundsheets.

‘We’ll put up one of our tents over you.’

‘Eeey, that’s looks nice,’ said Bingley wistfully. ‘I could just do with a bit of cuddling myself.’

‘Same here,’ said Caradoc. The whole of Purple Platoon agreed that cuddling indeed would be nice.

‘If only this bloody thing...’ McAllester kicked Syllabub’s radio set viciously, and it gave an outraged squawk. ‘Crikey, I think it’s working, we should have kicked it long ago. Here you are, Syllabub, your big moment. Get on to them and tell them what’s happened. I’ll give you a map reference of where I think we are. Ask them to send out the chopper and pick Ruth up.’

They put up the other two tents, and sat in them, smoking and talking. The Roughex could mark time for the moment. Adrianovitch began to sing ‘A British tar is a soaring soul’. Bingley managed to get a fire going, while they were waiting. It smoked abominably, but it cheered them all up enormously.

‘To get a fire going in
this
weather,’ said Caradoc. ‘You must have been the best bloody boy scout in the whole bloody world, man!’

‘Ah well,’ said Bingley, modestly. ‘There’s always dry material around if you look, down holes, in rabbit scrapings, under gorse bushes, it needs to be very wet for everything to be wet.’

‘I believe you,’ said Caradoc.

McAllester was sitting in the door of the girls’ tent when he heard the helicopter.

‘There it is,’ he said. ‘The system’s working!’

‘Are you surprised?’ said Lucy, sitting up from the blankets and looking out.

‘A bit. You might like to know that’s the same helicopter coming to pick Ruth up that you and your chums were trying to wave off.’

‘All right, don’t rub it in. But if you hadn’t been playing your games here on the moor we wouldn’t have been here either, and Ruth wouldn’t have been ill.’

When the helicopter landed, Isaiah Nine Smith got out. ‘Who’s that man in the helmet who keeps on getting out of the helicopter?’ Lucy asked.

‘That’s Commander (T). The chap in charge of all our training.’

‘Rather dashing. What’s his name?’

‘Isaiah Nine Smith.’

‘What a very odd name.’

‘Ike to his friends, of whom I am not one.’

Still wrapped in blankets and ground-sheet, Ruth was put on a stretcher and loaded into the helicopter.

‘You’d better go, too,’ Isaiah Nine Smith said to Lucy. She had a wet and stained blanket round her shoulders. Her face was muddy and her hair hung down in streaming wet strings. He was in flying overalls, and his bright yellow flying helmet had ‘Commander T’ printed on it in crisp black lettering. ‘Better see your friend into hospital.’

‘Yes sir,’ said Lucy and got into the helicopter.

‘Exercise is cancelled from now,’ Isaiah Nine Smith said to McAllester. Purple Platoon cheered quietly. ‘This rain is a bit too much. If you drop down a quarter of a mile from here, you’ll hit the Okehampton road. There’ll be a lorry to pick you up in the next half an hour or so.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Purple Platoon, saluting.

‘Anybody seen anything of the Captain’s Secretary?’

On Monday morning, the Captain’s Secretary was still missing.

‘He’s not too good, sir,’ Polly explained. ‘His wife phoned in a couple of minutes ago, sir. He’s still in bed suffering from exposure, sir.’

‘Good Lord,’ The Bodger blinked. ‘What was he exposed to?’ ‘It seems he had a very hard time on that Roughex, sir. He was umpiring apparently, and somebody took away a bridge before he could get across it and then they hauled up a rope that should have been left to help him up a cliff and then finally a helicopter flew away without waiting for him, sir. So the upshot was that he had to swim and walk and climb and generally move about much more than he expected, sir.’

The Bodger looked hard at Polly, to see if she was laughing or not. But nobody could be more expressionless than Polly when she tried; to find out what she was thinking was like playing poker with Dresden china.