Gordon Williams (8 page)

Frank Pawson told the ambulance-driver he was in a hurry to get back to Two Waters.

“We’ll make it by four, easy,” said the driver. “I’m in a hurry myself, the road might get blocked up if it starts snowing again.”

In the back Henry Niles looked tired.

“You’d better lie down on the bench, Henry my old son,” said
Pawson. “Have a kip, you’ll be home soon. I know, I’ll strap you down, you won’t get bounced about so much.”

“That’s a good idea,” said Henry Niles, as though he was a small boy being introduced to a new game. As Frank Pawson fastened the buckle he felt like apologising to the poor little bastard. It wasn’t fair, was it, the way things turned out for different people? Here he was fair laughing, things couldn’t be better, and here was poor old Henry, a lunatic. Never had a chance, poor bastard. Still, Henry was lucky in one way – there was a time when they might have hung him, lunatic or not.

“All right then, Henry? Have a bit of a snooze.” He might have been tucking in a baby. He sat back on the other bench and thought about Kate Grady. It had turned out better than he’d hoped. She fancied him, they were at the right age, she was a grown woman and she knew what she was going into, nurses made great wives, life couldn’t have turned out better. Christ, wouldn’t
her
face be a caution when he told her? He thought of all the brilliantly vicious things he would say, just as he was leaving, pay her back for all her evil. He felt the ambulance moving fast. Put your foot down, matey, don’t waste a second...

The ambulance was doing about forty when it came to the lefthand bend at the top of the twisting slope down to Fairwater Ford. It was then the snowflakes began to fly on to the windscreen, hundreds of fast-moving limpets seizing a foot-hold. Like many professionals, the driver didn’t immediately switch on his windscreen-wipers.

When he saw the snow would stick, he flicked the switch. His vision was obscured.

The glass cleared. He was about ten yards past the point where he would normally have slowed down and applied slight brake
pressure to go into the bend. He braked.

The ambulance went into a skid. There was no room for him to drive into the skid. Instead of taking the corner to the left, the ambulance slid, side on, at the low bank on the right hand side.

It hit the bank, which was only eighteen inches high. The impact on the offside wheels sent the vehicle toppling, roof first, over the bank. It turned over once – twice – three times – on the steep slope. Then it came to a standstill, resting on its side, half-way down the incline.

It took Henry Niles some moments to understand that he was hanging off the bench with a leather belt round his chest. Pawson lay beneath him, not moving. Henry Niles was confused. The strap made it difficult to breathe.

“Mr. Pawson? It’s hurting me.”

Pawson lay still. Henry began to whimper. His fingers could make no impression on the metal buckle. He struggled, his legs hanging over Pawson’s head. Then he slipped through the belt and fell on top of Pawson. He started to cry. Mister Pawson didn’t move. Henry shouted. Nobody came. Sometimes they came when he shouted, sometimes they didn’t. The ambulance doors were open, one flap resting on snow. He clambered out, his whimpering stopping when he found his feet in snow.

He remembered it, white and cold and wet. Men had chased him over a big space, he didn’t know why they chased him, he’d run and run and run until he’d fallen in it, they were shouting so loudly his ears had almost burst. Then he remembered why they were chasing him. He
did
remember, some times, but most of the time he was able not to think about it. He knew that men didn’t like him.

Many psychiatrists and psychologists and doctors had tried to
penetrate the mind of Henry Niles, the mental defective who had murdered three children before, at the age of twenty-five, he’d been put away for the rest of his life in Two Waters. These men had come to an almost unanimous conclusion – that Henry had a mental age of eight. None of them could explain why other humans with the same mental age – children of eight years old, for instance – did not have Henry’s deadly compulsion to rape and strangle little girls. Occasionally they detected signs of a more mature intelligence in Henry, but it was impossible to draw him out. With adults he behaved like a frightened child, with children he was a giant ogre. As long as grown-up people were present he tended to cower in corners, like a savagely beaten puppy. But when he was alone in a world of children, he grew up.

He stood alone beside the upturned ambulance. It was nine years since he had been on his own in the fresh air. Back up the slope he saw the other man, the driver, lying in the snow. Sniffing heavily, he started up the slope. Behind him was the great moor, dark now as the snow fell in earnest. He slipped several times as he scrambled up to the driver. He looked down on a face half-pushed into snow. Blood trickled from the ear and moved in a throbbing stream down the man’s cheek.

“Gentle Jesus meek and mild,” Henry moaned. He began to clamber desperately to the top of the slope. He shouldn’t have seen that blood. They would blame him for that. There was blood that other time. It wasn’t his fault. He would have to run away before the men came, shouting.

He had walked about half a mile in the snow, down the road to the Fairwater Ford and over the little footbridge beside the ford and halfway up the hill on the other side, before a car pulled up beside them.

“Want a lift then?” said one of three young farm workers in the car. “It’s a funny ol’ day for walkin’. We can take you’s far’s Compton Wakley, that suit you?”

“It wasn’t my fault,” said Henry.

One of the men laughed. Henry looked at him through the open window.

“We ain’t blamin’ you for walkin’,” said the first man, “Got caught, did you? Don’t do to risk it on the moor. Changes fast like.”

The car made good time to Compton Wakely. The men talked among themselves. Henry was happy.
They
didn’t think it was his fault. They were nice men.

At Compton Wakley he stood by the side of the road until the car drove off. Then he began walking down a road marked by a signpost: FOURWAYS CROSS. He had gone only a few hundred yards when another car stopped and a farmer offered him a lift as far as Compton Fitzpaine. He got into the car.

“You’ll be goin’ to the dance at Dando then?” said the farmer. “You must be dancin’ mad to try and walk it on a night like this.”

“It wasn’t my fault,” said Henry.

The farmer snorted.

“It’ll be your own fault if you don’t get back this night,” he said. “I reckons us’ll be the last car along this road the way it’s comin’ down.”

“I don’t want to go back,” said Henry Niles.

“Just as well then,” said the farmer. Dances, he thought, always attracted them.

George Magruder wandered about the silent house, unable to concentrate on his work, irritated at what he saw now was his own stupidity. In the kitchen he switched on the transistor radio which Louise used when she was cooking. It was some disc-jockey programme, a slimily ingratiating English voice smeared by what the idiot fondly imagined was an American accent. It made him even more irritated. How often in arguments back home had he used the B.B.C. as an example of public-interest broadcasting? Now it sounded like a third-rate copy of the worst kind of American huckstering.

He heard the disc-jockey say news time was approaching. He walked through to the dining-room and then into the sitting-room. What he missed was people. This was life in a vacuum. The sooner he could wrap up Branksheer the sooner they would leave this place.

Behind, in the empty kitchen, the news-reader gave details of a new wage freeze. Then...

“Henry Robert Niles is missing from an ambulance which crashed while taking him to Two Waters. Niles, who was found guilty but insane at two separate murder trials ten years ago – one after he’d escaped and murdered a third child – was being taken from Trebovir County Hospital. At a public inquiry into his escape it was stated that he had a mental age of eight and would never be allowed to leave a maximum security institution. Police say snow and bad visibility on Tornmoor are hampering their search. Niles is wearing a white shirt, brown jacket and grey trousers. Two other men are reported to be critically injured after the crash...”

In the sitting-room George Magruder punched his right fist into the palm of his left hand. He decided he would walk down to the school. It was ridiculous to stay cooped up here, like some neurotic in the early stages of paranoia. Maybe in a crowd Louise would be more reasonable.

He put on the old rubber boots in the kitchen. The news reader said heavy snow would continue through the night in the west. He switched off the radio. Nothing like the jolly old British to tell you the obvious. It was snowing heavily outside. They probably made up their weather forecasts by looking out of the window.

He took his nylon jacket from a hook, zipped up the front and pulled the parka-hood over his head, tying the strings under his chin.

“Here we go, one man against the primeval elements,” he said, out loud, as he slammed the door. “A hundred miles to Nome and the wolves are howling for food. On – into the raging blizzard.”

By the time he reached the end of the lane, his head bent to protect his face against the driving snow, he was engaged in a fantasy which was a combination of Chaplin’s
Gold Rush
and a James Stewart film, the name of which, for the moment, escaped him...

* * *

The children’s party was so happy Louise felt like crying. The Rev. and Mrs Hood had met everybody at the door, shaking hands and giving out sweets.

“And this is Karen, that’s your name, isn’t it?” said the curate, bending slightly, his hands on his knees, smiling into Karen’s face. “Merry Christmas, Karen, I’m sure you’ll have a lovely time with all these lovely boys and girls.”

“Say Merry Christmas to Mr and Mrs Hood, Karen.” Louise smiled at the curate and his wife. “This is the first time Karen’s been to a Christmas party in England.”

“You must tell us about Christmas in America, Karen,” said Mrs Hood. Mr Hood patted her head. Karen ducked away. “Don’t be shy now, we’re all friends here.”

Louise saw Mrs Jean Knapman and two other women standing at the head of the long trestle table on which the children’s cakes and oranges were already laid, a Christmas cracker by each plate.

Jean Knapman introduced Louise to Mrs Venner and Mrs Hedden.

“We’ve already met,” Louise said to Bobby Hedden’s mother. Mrs Hedden smiled briefly. Louise was very glad of Jean Knapman’s friendliness, for she had been a little nervous about the party. She had the feeling they were not particularly popular in the village.

Small boys were already racing up and down the centre of the hall. At first the girls tended to stay by their mothers, but soon little groups began to form.

“You sit beside Karen, Lucy,” Jean Knapman said to her daughter when the Rev. Hood announced that it was time to take places for tea. Louise watched Karen walking shyly to the table. There
was something almost sad about little girls of that age, something solemn and proud. Or was she just feeling sad herself?

“Come on, Janice,” said Mrs Hedden. “You like cake, don’t you?”

“Isn’t it a shame?” said Louise as they watched Mrs Hedden lead Janice to the table. “Isn’t there any chance she’ll ever be any better?”

“The doctors don’t seem to think so,” said Jean Knapman. “The Heddens wanted her put in one of they homes but there wasn’t no room, not when she was just a baby. Now, well, it would be terrible, wouldn’t it, to take her away from what she knows?”

Louise felt a strong upsurge of pity for the little girl with the blank face. Why should an innocent child have its life taken away before it had started? She wanted to cry at the stupidity of it all.

After tea, eaten in a rising crescendo of noise from the two lines of children, the mothers cleared the trestle tables of dirty paper cups and plates and crumbs. Children stampeded up and down the small hall. Louise was glad to see that Lucy Knapman and Karen seemed to have made friends. They sat together when forms were pushed in front of the small stage, where the Rev. Hood made a small speech about the meaning of Christmas and then introduced Mr Hankinson, the conjurer.

Little girls sat with wide eyes and open mouths, little boys ooohed, older boys muttered and giggled and jostled each other, their heads down in subversive conspiracy. Mr Hankinson tore newspapers and magically made them whole again. He told weak jokes as he lifted his left trouser leg to show a red sock and his right trouser leg to show a black sock. He dropped his trouser legs and when he lifted them again the socks had changed over. Louise tried to think how he had done it. Was it one of those small boys who’d strangled their cat? She frowned. All day she’d been trying to forget the cat.
Somebody must have come up their lane at night. It was the sort of thing small boys did. What small boys were out after dark on a night of heavy snow? Maybe the cat had wandered – chased hens. That could be it, it had been caught by someone and that was their way of telling strangers not to let their cats run wild. It was too preposterous, nobody would be so warped.

A trick with a glass of water under a Chinese box did not turn out so well. As Mr Hankinson lifted the box with a sweeping gesture – presumably to reveal the glass of water mysteriously emptied – he knocked it on to the floor. The children roared with laughter as he blushed and bent down to pick up the fragments. Louise winced. It was one of those stupid, irrational childhood things, she knew that, but she just could not stand the sound of glass breaking. Once she’d been to a cowboy picture with George and they’d been shooting at empty bottles on a fence and she’d almost been sick.

After the conjurer the mothers went among the children with Christmas crackers left unpulled by the younger children. Jean Knapman gave one to her Lucy and one to Karen.

“Why don’t you let little Janice pull your cracker, Karen?” said Louise. Karen made a face. “Go on, she wants some fun, too, you know.”