Rule Britannia (25 page)

Mr. Willis shook his head in disbelief. “I only came through to do the necessary, and I must have had a little turn and tumbled to the floor. How very distressing.”

The two boys were staring at him, fascinated. The Welsh lilt was new to Colin’s ears, and from his intent expression Emma knew he was concentrating hard in order to memorize it.

“Do you often fall asleep in the afternoon?” he asked.

Mr. Willis smiled. “I have not done it these sixty years,” he replied, “not since the days I went to chapel Sundays and the drone of the minister’s voice sent me to dreamland.”

“Now run along,” said Emma firmly. “Mr. Willis wants to tidy himself and then go home.” She turned, pushing the boys ahead of her, back to the kitchen. “Have your tea and don’t come through again,” she warned them.

They were not listening. They had run through to the playroom to tell Andy and Sam of the strange happenings in the cloakroom. She returned to the hall and found Mr. Willis putting his boots on in the porch. The music room door was closed. He put his fingers to his lips.

“The lady may be resting,” he whispered. “I wouldn’t disturb her for the world. Tell her from me her slightest wish is law. I burn to serve.”

“Yes,” said Emma, “yes, of course.”

“The fir cones here are for your fire, the sack is mine, but I bequeath it to her as a souvenir of a momentous visit, to be repeated, I trust, at some future time. The lunch was delicious.” Not one word of apology for the lapse in the middle. “Your grandmother did mention a possible encounter later at the farm,” Mr. Willis added before going down the steps, “its purpose not fully explained. I shall be there.”

He bowed, turned, and plodded off down the garden path and through the gate.

All was silent within the music room. Could it be that Mad had also fallen asleep? She generally left the door open so that Folly could wander in and out. Emma decided to wait until Mr. Willis had departed beyond recall, then she would make the tea, arouse her grandmother, and casually announce the fact that the visitor had left of his own accord with messages of gratitude to his hostess.

Mad was not asleep. When Emma brought in the tea she found her sitting on the sofa with some half-dozen volumes of Shakespeare open beside her.

“Darling,” she said, “I’ve been wading through all these. Which play is it where the man says, ‘I can call spirits from the vasty deep’?”

Emma sighed and put down the tray. “Do you mean Owen Glendower?”

“Of course. I couldn’t remember his name. Such a wonderful part for Taffy. I want him to read it to me when he wakes. Is it one of the Henry plays?”

“
Henry IV, Part One,
” replied Emma. Mad was really very ignorant.

“Ah…” Mad was fumbling through the pages, “wait a minute, here it is… ‘At my nativity the front of Heaven was full of fiery shapes, of burning Cressets; and at my birth the frame and huge foundation of the earth shak’d like a Coward…’ ” Her reproduction of Taffy’s voice was superb. “Em, do go and see if he is awake, he must have been lying there two hours, at least.”

“Oh yes, he’s awake,” Emma told her. “What’s more, he’s gone.”

“Gone?” Mad looked up at her, distressed.

“He didn’t want to disturb you. He thanked you for the lunch.”

Mad closed the volume of Shakespeare with a bang. “It’s too bad. I was looking forward to a lovely reading session before Operation Dung Cart. How was Taffy? Had he recovered?”

“Perfectly. And he didn’t even apologize.”

“Why should he? He couldn’t help himself.”

Emma stood in front of her grandmother, her arms folded. “I think I ought to tell you,” she said, “that Operation Dung Cart, whatever that may be, is just not on. At any rate for you. I telephoned Bevil Summers this morning, and he’s coming out to see you. He’ll be here any time now.”

Mad paused in the act of pouring out her tea. “Bevil can’t stop me,” she said.

“Oh yes, he can.”

Their roles were suddenly reversed. Emma was giving the orders. She would have to treat her grandmother in the same way as she treated Colin when he threatened disobedience. Mad was silent. She went on pouring the tea, but the ominous whistle sounded under her breath. Emma poured out her own tea, equally silent.

Suddenly Mad shrugged her shoulders. “Oh well,” she said with a sigh, “you’re probably right. I might have got in the way, and I’d like to have a word with Bevil, as it happens. The fact is, I believe I strained myself yesterday carrying the sacks of fir cones. I’ve got a curious pain in my side.”

“Oh, Mad…” Emma was all concern instantly. “Where? What sort of pain?”

“Here,” frowned Mad, “rather low down, in the groin.” She pointed to herself, and when Emma touched her she winced.

“Why on earth didn’t you say so before?” exclaimed Emma.

“I didn’t want to make a fuss.”

“Shall I tell Dottie?”

“Certainly not. What could she do? I tell you what. Be an angel, and go through to the boys when you’ve finished tea, and keep them amused. I’ll lie quietly here and be on the spot for Bevil when he comes. Don’t worry, it’s not a bad pain, just rather odd and nagging.”

Emma swallowed her tea, watching her grandmother from time to time. Her imagination leaped forward to disaster. Probings by the doctor, X-rays, hospital, an immediate operation… Nagging pains were always the most sinister, especially for old people. One day a person was perfectly well, or at any rate never complained, and then when it was too late, when you couldn’t do anything…

Mad settled the cushion behind her head and reached out for
Henry IV.
Emma carried the tray back to the kitchen. She wouldn’t say anything to Dottie until after the doctor had been. Then they would know what to do. As soon as the boys had finished their tea she took them to the library, being careful to shut the door so that the sound of the television should not irritate Mad. She switched on the set, and settled in her grandmother’s chair just as a program about the Boston Tea party was starting. It proved to be a test of endurance, at least for Ben, who preferred to climb onto the window seat and rattle the shutters.

“Be quiet,” said Colin, yawning, in the tone of a weary undergraduate before taking his Finals, “I can’t concentrate.”

Ben ceased for a time, then started to rattle the shutters again.

“What on earth does he want?” Emma asked, her nerves on edge.

“I think he’s saying something about Madam,” replied Colin, without taking his eyes off the screen.

Emma leaped to her feet, seized Ben from the window seat and bore him off, oddly enough without protest, to the hall. To her surprise, he made instantly for the porch and tried to wrestle with the latch.

“Shuck…” he said, “shuck, fit!” and pointed to the garden beyond.

“Will you stop it, Ben?” shouted Emma. “Madam is in the music room trying to rest.”

Ben shook his head and stamped his feet, and suddenly Emma saw the headlights of Dr. Summers’s car circle the drive below the gate and stop. Ben must have heard the car. This was doubtless what he was trying to tell her.

“All right,” she said, “stop talking for one moment, do.”

She waited by the porch until the doctor emerged from the mist and drizzle.

“Sorry I couldn’t make it before,” he said as she opened the door to him. “It’s been one hell of a day. Hullo, blackamoor.”

“Oh, I’m so glad you’ve come,” said Emma. “It really is urgent this time, though I didn’t know it when I rang you. She’s complaining of a pain in the groin. I don’t like the sound of it. Ben,
will
you leave the porch door alone?” Ben continued to point towards the garden, mouthing expletives. “Don’t take any notice of him, he likes to show off,” Emma explained, and she opened the door of the music room. The light was still on behind the sofa, but only Folly lay curled up asleep among the cushions.

“She must have gone upstairs,” said Emma. “That means she’s feeling rotten. I don’t care how much she tries to hide it. I’ll give you a call.”

She ran up the stairs two at a time and went through to her grandmother’s bedroom. The light was not on, nor had the bed been turned down. Could she have gone to the playroom or to Dottie? She ran downstairs again to the hall. Once again Ben tried to struggle with the porch door, gesticulating, his mouth working. Misgiving came to Emma. She remembered him doing the same thing when he stood on the window seat in the library. The window faced the lookout and the plowed field beyond the wall. She went to the cloakroom and switched on the light. Mad’s house shoes were standing neatly against the wall. Her boots, her oilskin and the peaked cap had gone. Oh no… She went back to the hall, her hands spread out in a gesture of resignation.

“It’s no use,” she said. “She’s given us the slip. That whole story of a pain in the groin was a gigantic lie to put me off the scent. Now what in heaven’s name are we to do?”

Bevil Summers raised his eyebrows. “Let’s leave heaven out of it, shall we?” he said. “Just try and explain exactly what you mean.”

Emma barely heard him. “She even winced when I touched her, said she wanted to rest, asked me to keep the children quiet.” Emma paused in mid-statement. “It’s true, she did say she had a pain rather suddenly…”

“Surely,” said the doctor, “you know your grandmother well enough by this time to be certain when she is making anything up or not? I do.” He sighed. He had had a heavy day, and he looked it. “Anyway,” he said, “do you mean she’s not in the house? She’s gone out, in this weather?”

“I’m afraid so,” Emma told him, “boots, oilskin, all gone. She’s done it on purpose so that you couldn’t stop her.”

“Why should I stop her? She’s probably taking a stroll in your shrubbery. It won’t hurt her.”

Emma stared. Of course, he didn’t understand. She hadn’t told him.

“Mad hasn’t gone for a stroll in the shrubbery. She’s gone on some terrible assignation with about thirty farmers called Operation Dung Cart. That’s what I couldn’t explain over the telephone.”

This time it was the turn of Bevil Summers to stare. Then he shrugged his shoulders and reached for the raincoat he had just taken off.

“In that case,” he said, “we had better go and find her. Get your own coat and follow me down to the car. If the commandos are out in force we shall all be in trouble.”

A sea mist was always at its worst on the high ground where Trevalan stood. Coming out of the gate at the top of the drive Bevil Summers braked and consulted the clock on his dashboard.

“Now, listen,” he said, “I hadn’t reckoned on a lawless expedition at the end of a day’s work. I’d marked down your grandmother and Terry, and then my final call was to a patient a couple of miles on the homeward trek, just short of Pinnock Down. He’s bedridden and I can’t miss him out. So we’ll just run along there first and get him settled. It won’t take long.”

“Anything you say,” replied Emma. “I feel frightful in any case about dragging you off in this way but I just can’t trust Mad, and the two boys are almost as bad.”

“It’s not your fault,” said Dr. Summers. “You are just one of the luckless hundreds, possibly thousands, before we’re very much older, who are being put to inconvenience and worse by these damned rules and regulations. I’ve spent half the day telling the regional hospital board to do something about it, and I think I’ve succeeded in moving them, finally. You can’t cut off people’s water and stop them driving cars because some American marine has fallen off a cliff. Union is one thing, but military tactics to put the wind up the local population are another.”

So he too had got himself involved. The snowball gathered pace. Them and us.

The car drew up beside a handful of cottages. “I’ll try and make it brief,” Dr. Summers said, and reaching for his bag he made for one of the center cottages. He went inside and the door slammed. It seemed suddenly very quiet. The mist was as thick as ever, and the mizzle of rain made it impossible to see out of the windscreen. Emma rubbed the side window, but could see little but a couple of tall trees looming from behind a hedge, their branches bare. An owl hooted. She thought of her grandmother crossing the plowed field down to the farm in the mist and rain, not minding, not afraid, and she knew that this was something she could never have done, even in ordinary circumstances, unless one of the boys had been with her, because when darkness fell all the familiar things of the day became shrouded, remote, taking on a different, even sinister, aspect as if they belonged to another age, more primitive, where Time did not exist. Even now, even here, on the silent road beside the cottages, she only felt safe because of being in Bevil Summers’s car, with its human leather smell. The car protected her, but across the fields, or further along the road, nothing was friendly, the emptiness threatened, just as Trevanal threatened if she tried to walk through it in the dark.

“Nonsense,” Mad used to say. “People who are afraid of the dark are afraid of death. We should all take a lesson from the blind. They live with it.”

Perhaps someone was dying up in that cottage bedroom, the bedridden person the doctor had gone to see. She suddenly thought of her mother, whom she barely remembered, lying wan and pale, waiting for the fatal illness to take its course. Had she been frightened, had she felt the shadows closing in upon her, drawing nearer every day, every hour?

Emma wished Bevil Summers would come back. Imagination was beginning to take over. She pictured an old-fashioned bedstead in a small bedroom with an uneven floor, a weeping woman holding an old man’s hand, the doctor shaking his head and saying there was nothing he could do. How terrible if there really was something called an Angel of Death that hovered overhead waiting to bear souls away, a dark spirit with enormous wings, and you tried to resist but you couldn’t, and you saw it looming nearer, the wings spread wide, until you were engulfed, like drowning, like… Then she saw the marine lying on the plowed field with the arrow between his eyes.

She started, almost screamed. It was only Bevil Summers opening the door of the car.

“Sorry,” he said, “a bit longer than I thought. Had to hear all about the old boy’s aches and pains.”

“He’s not dying, then?”

“Dying? No! He’ll live another ten years if he takes care of himself and his wife stops nagging him. Now then, what’s our plan of campaign?”

Her morbid train of thought had led her far from the immediate situation that lay ahead. What a fool he would think her if he knew. Worse than fainting when Terry had his injection.

“I suppose,” she said, “we’d better turn round and go to the farm. That’s where Mad must have been heading when Ben saw her through the library window. Mr. Trembath and the boys will be there, and Mr. Willis too.”

The doctor started the engine. “So he’s in it too, is he? Quite an organization. Where are they supposed to be heading for? They’ll be stopped at the bottom of the hill by the chap at the roadblock.”

“Well, would they?” Emma asked. “If they’re in the Land Rover? It’s not a private car.”

Bevil Summers shook his head doubtfully. “If you ask me, they’ll stop anything they see, even a wheelchair. I tell you what,” he continued. “We’ll cut down Pinnock Lane and park against the hedge at the bottom, without the lights, and then we’ll find out if there’s anything doing at the roadblock.”

“Supposing we’re seen and challenged?”

“I’ve a doctor’s pass.”

“What about me?”

“You’re my secretary and part-time nurse. We’ve been called out on an emergency.”

Well, really… he sounded as if he were enjoying himself. And on second thoughts, Emma decided, she was no longer frightened herself. Someone middle-aged, like Bevil Summers, could be depended upon, he would have an answer for everything, like Pa, and if pushed to extremes would lie himself out of a situation. His generation did not suffer from guilt, as hers did, or from a troubled conscience.

“What do you think is going to happen?” she asked him. “I don’t mean tonight, but tomorrow, next week, the future?”

He did not answer immediately. Navigation was necessarily slow because of the mist, which was thicker than ever.

“I think the penny will suddenly drop in the minds of millions of people that it’s just not on,” he said finally, “and there’ll be the biggest uprising this country has ever seen since—well, I don’t know, since the Conquest, if you like. Nothing to do with Right or Left, or Fascism or Anarchy, or any so-called ideology; just pure, unadulterated, British bloody-mindedness that refuses to be kicked around.”

“By ‘it’ do you mean USUK?”

“Of course I mean USUK, or any takeover bid from whatever quarter it may come. Association with other countries, fine. Domination from one in particular, never. Open your window and keep your eyes skinned, I’m going to switch off the lights, and the engine too.”

He had turned down the narrow incline known as Pinnock Lane, which terminated at the bottom in the cliff road above Poldrea beach. Emma wound down her window and peered out. She could see nothing, hear nothing, with the mist and the rain driving into her eyes. It was a strange feeling, bumping slowly down the steep lane in an unlit, silent car. Exciting, too. Dr. Summers let the car roll gently almost to the base of the hill, then he eased it into the left-hand side, under the hedge, and braked. Still Emma could see nothing.

“Come on,” he said, “climb out this side, after me. And not a word.” He held out his hand and helped her out of the car. “Keep your head down,” he said, doing the same himself and hunching his shoulders, “and stay close in under cover of the hedge.”

He crept ahead, Emma following, and she had a curious, almost hysterical, desire to laugh, because what they were doing was so incongruous, so out of character, with Bevil Summers, whom she had always connected with things like measles and chicken-pox and bouts of flu, and occasional tea-time visits to gossip with Mad and talk about Andy, whose parents had been his friends, now suddenly turned into a Resistance spy, a revolutionary, a rebel. There were fields on either side of the lane, and a gate into the one on the left. He lifted the latch and motioned to Emma to pass through, then fastened the gate and followed her.

Now she could hear the sound of the sea breaking on Poldrea sands and the first lights appeared, dimly through the mist and darkness, the lights from the Sailor’s Rest across the road and the single light by the sentry box at the roadblock. Dr. Summers held out his hand again and drew Emma into cover of the hedge. They crouched there side by side, watching the sentry on duty, the inn and the entrance to the beach and the camp behind him. He was standing inside his box to obtain cover from the rain, now and again looking to right and left. There was no sound of any vehicle, no sign either of cars drawn up outside the Sailor’s Rest. The ban had kept Mr. Libby’s clients at home, both his local customers and those from the camp. Serve him right, thought Emma, no bidders for his Californian wine, nor for his beer either.

She was wrong, though. Some straggler was emerging from the darkness behind the inn, obviously the worse for liquor. Whoever it was was swaying on his feet, and singing too. The sentry, on the alert, came from his post and called “Halt!” The straggler, unheeding, continued to advance, waving a hand in greeting and singing loudly.

“Pipe down, buddy, and go home,” called the sentry.

Then, with a shock of realization, Emma recognized the oilskin and the peaked cap. “Oh God, Bevil,” she whispered, “it’s Mad.”

She heard him draw in his breath, and he put his hand on her arm to enjoin silence. The supposed reveler hiccoughed, and caroling “John Brown’s body lies a-moldering in the grave” lurched forward towards the sentry, staggered, and collapsed upon the ground at his feet. The sentry instinctively bent down, and as he did so somebody sprang from behind his box and dealt him what appeared to be a karate blow on the back of the neck. The marine lay motionless and the oilskinned figure in the peaked cap rose to its feet.

“Well done, Taffy,” said Mad. “I’m afraid I hammed it rather, but it worked.”

Dr. Summers withdrew his hand from Emma’s arm. “This,” he said, “is where we come in.”

He was wrong, however—temporarily, at least. Vehicles were coming down the main road, silently, without lights, and from Pinnock Lane, too, the route they had themselves traversed.

“Land Rovers,” said Emma, “and tractors too. It’s the farmers.”

“Good for them,” murmured the doctor. “Stay here and don’t move. It’s possible I may have a patient in our friend the sentry.”

Emma watched him return to the gate, speak to the driver of an approaching tractor and go towards his own car. She did not see him reappear but he must have fetched his bag, for a few moments later she saw him kneeling beside the sentry, and he was taking something from the bag. Mr. Willis was with him, and between them they carried the unconscious marine into the sentry post. There was no sound except the sea breaking on Poldrea sands. The farm vehicles were silent. Mr. Libby, the landlord of the Sailor’s Rest, ignorant of the assembly gathered so close to his terrain, and sulking perhaps for lack of custom, slumbered conceivably behind his bar. Emma could no longer distinguish Mad from among the figures crowding by the barricade, nor Joe, nor Terry, but a tall shape who seemed to be in charge was surely Jack Trembath. It’s no good, she thought, I can’t stay here, I must join them, and she ran through the gate and out onto the road, and then someone turned, and took hold of her arm, and twisted her round to peer into her face. Whoever it was, he was a stranger to her.

“I’m Emma, from Trevanal,” she said, and instantly he released her, grinning, and she realized that he, and all the others, had blackened their faces with burned cork.

Then she realized the purpose of the mission, what they were going to do. Operation Dung Cart was well named. The muck and dirt, the refuse, the manure, from every local farm within reach had been loaded into Land Rovers, trailers, tractors, and was now being disgorged beside the roadblock and dumped also at the entrance to the Sailor’s Rest, where the Thanksgiving celebrations were to take place the following day. Spades, forks, buckets, pitchforks, every sort of tool had been pressed into service, all in silence, as the crowd of farmers and willing neighbors spread the muck. No tidal wave, bringing a sweep of sand, could have caused greater havoc. The stink of rotting manure filled the damp air. The sentry, covered by a blanket and unconscious in his box, his sleep evidently prolonged by medical assistance, was unmindful of all, and the doctor himself, no longer kneeling by his patient’s side, had seized a pitchfork from an obliging hand and was tossing muck with the best of them.

“Here,” said Joe, suddenly appearing at Emma’s side, “take this,” giving her a garden spade, and in a moment, half-laughing, half-exultant, she was helping too, throwing the dirt from a trailer onto the rapidly-forming mountain that made a more effective barricade than ever the military post had done; while across the way she saw her grandmother at the same task, with Terry by her side, and Mr. Willis darting from one group to another with a navvy’s shovel borrowed from heaven knows what source.

The fun could not last forever. Someone from the Sailor’s Rest must have given warning, for the door opened and Mr. Libby stood on the threshold, then ran forward shouting, waving his arms, only to stop again, further progress barred by a mountain of manure almost ten feet high. He reeled as someone flung a spadeful at his feet, and Emma caught sight of his expression, horrified, appalled. Then he ran back inside the inn and slammed the door.

“Home, lads,” called Jack Trembath, “and every man for himself before they get us in the rear.”

Instantly the figures dispersed, people were climbing into vehicles, and the silence was broken by the sudden roaring of engines as tractors and Land Rovers ground into action for their return journey. Dr. Summers, with Mad beside him and Terry swinging on his crutches a pace or two behind, called out to Emma.

“To the car,” he said. “Quickly! We can back up the lane faster than the tractors. Joe’s all right, he’ll double up the field on foot to the farm and then home.”

They crossed the road to the lane, and hardly a moment too soon, for someone, perhaps Mr. Libby, had given the alarm. Lights were showing in the camp itself, figures were running and orders were being shouted. Somehow all four tumbled into the car, Emma and her grandmother in the back seat, Terry beside the doctor. The engine started and the car shot into reverse, backing furiously up the hill. Grinding in their wake came the slower progress of Land Rovers and tractors. Caution thrown to the winds, the drivers of the assault force of Operation Dung Cart blew their horns. The doctor blew his too. The night, hitherto so still, was filled with discordant, triumphant sound.