My attention was so involved with Elizabeth that it was several seconds before the calamity got through. With a shattering jolt the casually noticed face of the Cortina’s driver kicked my memory to life. It belonged to one of Charlie Boston’s boys from the train. The big one. With the brass knuckles.
December couldn’t stop the prickly sweat which broke out on my skin. I put my foot on the accelerator and felt Tiddely Pom’s weight lurch behind me from the sudden spurt. All I could hope for was that the big man had been too occupied judging the width of his car to look up and see me.
He had, of course, had a passenger.
I looked in the driving mirror. The Cortina had gone out of sight over the hill. Charlie Boston’s boys hurrying towards Norton Fox’s village was no mild coincidence; but Tiddely Pom’s whereabouts must have been transmitted with very little delay for them to be here already, especially if they had had to come from Birmingham. Just who, I wondered grimly, had told who where Tiddely Pom was to be found. Not that it mattered much at that moment. All that mattered was to get him lost again.
I checked with the driving mirror. No Cortina. The horsebox was pushing sixty-five on a road wiser for forty. Tiddely Pom’s hooves clattered inside his stall. He didn’t like the swaying. He would have to put up with it until I got him clear of the Downs road, which was far too empty and far too visible from too many miles around.
When I next looked in the mirror there was a pale speck on the horizon two hills behind. It might not be them, I thought. I looked again. It was them. I swore bitterly. The speedometer needle crept to sixty-eight. That was the lot. My foot was down on the floor boards. And they were gaining. Easily.
There was no town close enough to get lost in, and once on my tail they could stay there all day, waiting to find out where I took Tiddely Pom. Even in a car it would have been difficult to lose them: in a lumbering horsebox, impossible. Urgent appraisal of a depressing situation came up with only a hope that Charlie Boston’s boys would again be propelled by more aggression than sense.
They were. They came up fast behind me, leaning on the horn. Maybe they thought I hadn’t had time to see them as they went past me the other way, and wouldn’t know who wanted to pass.
If they wanted to pass, they didn’t want to follow. I shut my teeth. If they wanted to pass, it was now, it was here, that they meant to make certain that Tiddely Pom didn’t run in the Lamplighter. What they intended to do about me was a matter which sent my mending ribs into a tizzy. I swallowed. I didn’t want another hammering like the last time, and this time they might not be so careful about what they did or didn’t rupture.
I held the horsebox in the centre of the road so that there wasn’t room enough for their Cortina to get by. They still went on blowing the horn. Tiddely Pom kicked his stall. I took my foot some way off the accelerator and slowed the proceedings down to a more manageable forty-five. They would guess I knew who they were. I didn’t see that it gave them any advantage.
A hay lorry appeared round a hill ahead with its load overhanging the centre of the road. Instinctively I slowed still further, and began to pull over. The Cortina’s nose showed sharply in the wing mirror, already up by my rear axle. I swung the horsebox back into the centre of the road, which raised flashing headlights from the driver of the advancing hay lorry. When I was far too close to a radiator to radiator confrontation he started blowing his horn furiously as well. I swung back to my side of the road when he was almost stationary from standing rigidly on his brakes, and glimpsed a furious face and a shaking fist as I swerved past. Inches to spare. Inches were enough.
The Cortina tried to get past in the short second before the horsebox was re-established on the crown of the road. There was a bump, this time, as I cut across its bows. It dropped back ten feet, and stayed there. It would only stay there, I thought despairingly, until Charlie Boston’s boys had got what they came for.
Less than a mile ahead lay my likely Waterloo, in the shape of a crossroads. A halt sign. It was I who would have to halt. Either that or risk hitting a car speeding legitimately along the major road, risk killing some innocent motorist, or his wife, or his child... Yet if I stopped, the Cortina with its faster acceleration would pass me when I moved off again, whether I turned right, as I had intended to, or left, back to London, or went straight on, to heaven knew where.
There wouldn’t be anyone at the crossroads to give me any help. No police car sitting there waiting for custom. No A.A. man having a smoke. No life-saving bystander of any sort. No troop of United States cavalry to gallop up in the nick of time.
I changed down into second to climb a steepish hill and forgot Norton’s box driver’s instructions. For a frightening moment the gears refused to mesh and the horsebox’s weight dragged it almost to a standstill. Then the cogs slid together, and with a regrettable jolt we started off again. Behind me, Charlie Boston’s boys still wasted their energy and wore out their battery by almost non-stop blasts on their horn.
The horsebox trundled to the top of the hill, and there already, four hundred yards down the other side, was the crossroads.
I stamped on the accelerator. The horsebox leaped forward. Charlie Boston’s boys had time to take in the scene below, and to realise that I must be meaning not to halt at the sign. In the wing mirror, I watched him accelerate to keep up, closing enough to stick to me whatever I did at the crossroads.
Two hundred yards before I got there, I stood on the brake pedal as if the road ended in an abyss ten yards ahead. The reaction was more than I’d bargained for. The horsebox shuddered and rocked and began to spin. Its rear slewed across the road, hit the verge, rocked again. I feared the whole high-topped structure would overturn. Instead, there was a thudding, crunching, anchoring crash as the Cortina bounced on and off at the rear.
The horsebox screeched and slid to a juddering stop. Upright. Facing the right way.
I hauled on the hand brake and was out of the cab on to the road before the glass from the Cortina had stopped tinkling on to the tarmac.
The grey-blue car had gone over on to its side and was showing its guts to the wind. It lay a good twenty yards behind the horsebox, and from the dented look of the roof it had rolled completely over before stopping. I walked back towards it, wishing I had a weapon of some sort, and fighting an inclination just to drive off and leave without looking to see what had happened to the occupants.
There was only one of them in the car. The big one; the driver. Very much alive, murderously angry, and in considerable pain from having his right ankle trapped and broken among the pedals. I turned my back on him and ignored his all too audible demands for assistance. Revenge, I assessed, would overcome all else if I once got within reach of his hands.
The second Boston boy had been flung out by the crash. I found him on the grass verge, unconscious and lying on his face. With anxiety I felt for his pulse, but he too was alive. With extreme relief I went back to the horsebox, opened the side door, and climbea in to take a look at Tiddely Pom. He calmly swivelled a disapproving eye in my direction and began to evacuate his bowels.
‘Nothing much wrong with you, mate,’ I said aloud. My voice came out squeaky with tension. I wiped my hand round my neck, tried to grin, felt both like copying Tiddely Pom’s present action and being sick.
The horse really did not seem any the worse for his highly unorthodox journey. I took several deep breaths, patted his rump, and jumped down again into the road. Inspection of the damage at the back of the horsebox revealed a smashed rear light and a dent in the sturdy off rear wing no larger than a soup plate. I hoped that Luke-John would agree to the Blaze paying for the repairs. Charlie Boston wouldn’t want to.