By eight we were ready to roll, or would have been if the wheels of the Picaro hadn’t been halfway sunk in the mud. All Bill’s ingenuity with planks and brushwood, me and Dismal breathlessly pushing, couldn’t get it onto a firmer part of the path. “We used to pull tanks out of the dreck in Normandy,” he said, “but this is the limit. Of course, we could wait three months for the ground to dry, except by then it’ll be wet again. If we don’t get out today Moggerhanger will have us on the carpet, and no mistake.”
“We need a tractor.”
He took a map from the car. “There’s a farm five hundred yards east, so it shouldn’t take you long. I’ll go in the house meanwhile, and have a cup of tea, till you get back.”
Knowing his non-com attitude would only rile the farmer, I took on the task, and crossed the stream by several huge stones, then pushed against four-foot nettles and pestiferous brambles, keeping the farm’s chimney in sight. My trousers turned into wet tubes of clinging cloth but I waded on, till three dogs out of hell came from the gate barking for my blood. The woman at the door, who called them off, was youngish, wore a woolly hat, a checked pinafore over her dress, and laced-up shoes.
I wished her good morning, told her where I lived, that I was in trouble with the car.
Her blue eyes glinted laughter as she called in an attractive Welsh accent: “People do get stuck there now and again. It’s difficult to park. Come in the kitchen. The rain hardly ever stops around here.”
Four chairs were set around a well scrubbed table, blue and white crockery shining from behind glass on the walls. “Even Lord Moggerhanger’s Rolls Royce had to be pulled out last year,” she said. “He swore like a trooper. I was quite shocked. But won’t you sit down?”
“I don’t want to dirty your floor.”
“Don’t you worry about that. David will be in for his breakfast soon, then he’ll run the tractor over for you. I’ll make you a cup of tea while you wait.”
It was such a pleasant scene, an odorous smell of meat coming from the stove, that David could have taken the whole day for all I cared, and if Bill went ragged with anxiety and impatience, and we weren’t on time to meet Moggerhanger at Spleen Manor, so what? Many people in the country lived like this, so settled and happy, and I remembered how my children used to bewail that I wasn’t a farmer so that they could have a lot of animals and ride around the fields with me on a tractor.
When the water was ready she put three spoons of tea into a small pot. No teabags here. “I’m sorry to cause so much bother.”
My remark surprised her. “No trouble at all. I see you got wet on the path. I must ask David to scythe it down, but there’s so much else to do at this time of the year.”
“I imagine that’s always the case.”
“Well, it is, but we manage as best we can, and never complain, though I suppose some people would think we farmers often have cause to.”
The tea cleared my brain, and I accepted another, as she poured one for herself. “You’re at the house with a friend, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” I told her. “Lord Moggerhanger sent us up to check the place out.”
“You get some funny characters around here, but we try to keep an eye on it. David saw your friend last night, on his way back from town, a tall chap waving a flashlight on the main road, and then going into a telephone box on the corner. I thought there was a phone in the house now, but if anything goes wrong with it you’re always welcome to come here and use ours.”
“Thank you. I think my colleague wanted a chat with his wife, where I couldn’t overhear.” My suspicions were up, because who would Bill want to talk to just after I had told him of Moggerhanger’s movements for the day? I sweated with a worry I couldn’t show, and wondered whether he’d betray me for some reason and, if so, what price he’d get for it. Then I felt ashamed, on recalling how he had rescued me in Greece.
The dogs barked, joyfully this time. “That must be David now,” she said.
A tall thin man of about forty, wrinkles of work about his eyes, but a smile all the same at seeing a stranger, heard his wife explain my problem. “I’ll do it now,” he said, “and have breakfast afterwards. You must be anxious to get away.”
Back at the cottage he attached the car to his tractor and hauled it out of the mud, then pulled it to the top of the slope, where he set it facing the right way for the main road. I offered him a cigar, but he didn’t smoke, so I took a ten-pound note from my pocket and, realising I might offend him by the offer, told him it was for his favourite charity.
“In that case,” he smiled, “I’ll take it. I have a few of those.”
We were off by half past nine. Dismal, while not exactly a jealous dog, being too idle for that, was always inclined to eat whoever was in the front seat beside me. Even with the children I’d often had to stop the car and give a punch he would survive yet not soon forget. This time it was Bill who, feeling the preparatory nibble at his neck, turned and thumped him.
“You navigate,” I said. “Take me northeasterly across the country to join the M1. After Ripon we split right, and I’ll talk you down to Spleen Manor from there. By the way, who were you phoning from the call box last night? The farmer’s wife told me her husband saw you.” I turned onto the main road. “He has a talent for description.”
A few seconds went by. “I suppose there’s no harm in telling you. Do you remember that woman Muriel we met in Greece, married to that pipe-smoking old buffer Ernest? I shafted her rotten, if you recall. Since getting back I’ve phoned her a time or two, but it’s hard work, because she took so strongly against me after we went off with the two lovely French girls. I’m slowly bringing her round to wanting to see me again, and when I saw the phone box last night I thought I’d give her a bell. She sounded happier this time, so maybe she’ll agree to us meeting soon. I can hardly wait, and I hope she can’t, either.”
“Why didn’t you tell me when you got back?”
“It was a personal matter, wasn’t it?”
Always in a good mood when on the road, I rightly believed him. “But what about her husband?”
“Michael, show me a naive and easygoing chap like that, and I’m more than halfway there.”
He wasn’t the sort I could taunt, though I might have told him that Ernest wasn’t as simple as he had seemed. But I didn’t bother, knowing that Bill always went roughshod over such complications. “Is there any woman in your life you’ve really been in love with?”
He was gallant enough to think about it. “Generally it’s the last one I got into bed.” Cigars smouldering, we steamed towards Shrewsbury. “That’s a place to bypass,” he said. “So listen carefully to my instructions.”
A master at finding parallel routes, he would never take the main road if a lesser one wriggled in the same general direction. I couldn’t fault him for it, and told him so.
“Michael,” he said, “there’s nothing the British are better at than the indirect approach. Many’s the time it put us at an advantage. Never go head on when you can find another way. All you’ve got to do is look at the map, and use your brainbox. Nine times out of ten your enemy never expects you to come that way. In any case it pays to give all your attention to the map. The map’s the outlaw’s best friend. You can bet that anybody pursuing you hasn’t got much skill in that department, or knows how to use the information.”
“You’d have won the Second World War all on your own, with knowledge like that.”
“I might, Michael, only don’t get so sarky. Just go through this village, turn left at the church, and keep on over the island, then we’ll get into Stafford by the back door.”