“They would in this mud,” Cess said. “We’ll only blow up three quadrants and leave the other one flat, so it’ll look like it’s listing.”
“Do you honestly think they’ll be able to see that from fifteen thousand feet?”
“No idea,” Cess said, “but if we stand here arguing, we won’t be done by morning, and the Germans will see what we’re up to. Here, lend me a hand. We’ll unload the tank and then drive the lorry back to the lane. That way we won’t have to drag it.”
Ernest helped him unload the heavy rubber pallet. Cess connected the pump and began inflating the tank. “Are you certain it’s facing the right way?” Ernest asked. “It should be facing the copse.”
“Oh, right,” Cess said, shielding his torch with his hand and shining it on it. “No, it’s the wrong way round. Here, help me shift it.”
They pushed and shoved and dragged the heavy mass around till it faced the other way. “Now let’s hope it isn’t upside down,” Cess said. “They should put a ‘this end up’ on them, though I suppose that might make the Germans suspicious.” He began to pump. “Oh, good, there’s a tread.”
The front end of a tank began to emerge out of the flat folds of gray-green rubber, looking remarkably tank-like. Ernest watched for a moment, then fetched the phonograph, the small wooden table it sat on, and its speaker. He set them up, got the record from the lorry, placed it on the turntable, and lowered the needle. The sound of tanks rolling thunderously toward him filled the pasture, making it impossible to hear anything Cess said.
On the other hand, he thought as he wrestled the tank-tread cutter off the back of the lorry, he no longer had to switch on his torch. He could find his way simply by following the sound. Unless there were in fact cows in this pasture—which, judging by the number of fresh cowpats he was stepping in, there definitely could be.
Cess had told him on the way to Tenterden that the cutter was perfectly simple to operate. All one had to do was push it, like a lawnmower, but it was at least five times as heavy as the lawnmower at the castle. It required bearing down with one’s whole weight on the handle to make it go even a few inches, it refused to budge at all in grass taller than two inches, and it tended to veer off at an angle. Ernest had to go back to the lorry, fetch a rake, smooth over what he’d done, then redo it several times before he had a more-or-less straight tread mark from the gate to the mired tank.
Cess was still working on the right front quadrant. “Sprang a leak,” he shouted over the rumble of tanks. “Lucky I brought my bicycle patch kit along. Don’t come any nearer! That cutter’s sharp.”
Ernest nodded and hoisted it over in front of where the tank’s other tread would be and started back toward the gate. “How many of these do you want?” he shouted to Cess.
“At least a dozen pair,” Cess shouted, “and some of them need to overlap. I think the fog’s beginning to lift.”
The fog was not beginning to lift. When he switched on his torch so he could return the needle to the beginning of the record, the phonograph was shrouded in mist. And even if it should lift, they wouldn’t be able to tell in this blackness. He looked at his watch. Two o’clock, and they still hadn’t inflated a tank. They were going to be stuck here forever.
Cess finally completed the mired tank and slogged across the field to the copse to do the other two, Ernest following with the cutter, making tread-tracks to indicate where the tanks had driven in under the trees.
Halfway there, the sound of tanks shut off. Damn, he’d forgotten to move the needle. He had to go all the way back across the pasture, start the record again, and he’d no sooner reached the cutter again than the fog did indeed lift. “I told you,” Cess said happily, and it immediately began to rain.
“The phonograph!” Cess cried, and Ernest had to fetch the umbrella and prop it over the phonograph, tying it to the tank’s rubber gun with rope.
The shower lasted till just before dawn, magnifying the mud and making the grass so slippery that Ernest fell down two more times, once racing to move the phonograph needle, which had stuck and was repeating the same three seconds of tank rumbling over and over, and the second time helping Cess repair yet another puncture. “But think of the war story you’ll have to tell your grandchildren!” Cess said as he wiped the mud off.
“I doubt whether I’ll ever have grandchildren,” Ernest said, spitting out mud. “I am beginning to doubt whether I’ll even survive this night.”
“Nonsense, the sun’ll be up any moment, and we’re nearly done here.” Cess leaned down so he could see the treadmarks, which Ernest had to admit looked very realistic. “Make two more tracks, and I’ll finish off this last tank. We’ll be home in time for breakfast.”
And in time for me to finish the articles and run them over to Sudbury by nine, he thought, aligning the tracker with the other treadmarks and pushing them down hard. Which would be good. He didn’t like the idea of those other articles sitting there for another week, even in a locked drawer. Now that he could partially see where he was going and didn’t need to stop and check his path with the torch every few feet, it should only take him twenty minutes to do the treads and load the lorry, and another three-quarters of an hour back to the castle. They should be there by seven at the latest, which should work.
But he’d only gone a few yards before Cess loomed out of the fog and tapped him on the shoulder. “The fog’s beginning to lift,” he said. “We’d best get out of here. I’ll finish off the tanks and you start on stowing the equipment.”
Cess was right; the fog was beginning to thin. Ernest could make out the vague shapes of trees, ghostly in the gray dawn, and across the field a fence and three black-and-white cows placidly chewing grass—luckily, on the far side of it.
Ernest folded up the tarp, untied the umbrella, carried them and the pump to the lorry, and came back for the cutter. He picked it up, decided there was no way he could carry it all the way across the field, set it down, pulled the cord to start it, and pushed it back, making one last track from just in front of the tank’s left tread to the edge of the field, and lugged it, limping, from there to the lorry. By the time he’d hoisted it up into the back, the fog was beginning to break up, tearing apart into long streamers which drifted like veils across the pasture, revealing the long line of treadmarks leading to the copse and the rear end of one imperfectly hidden tank peeking out from the leaves, with the other behind it. Even knowing how it had been done, it looked real, and he wasn’t fifteen thousand feet up. From that height, the deception would be perfect. Unless, of course, there was a phonograph standing in the middle of the pasture.
He started back for it, able to actually see where he was going for several yards at a time, but as he reached the tank, the fog closed in again, thicker than ever, cutting off everything—even the tank next to him. He shut the phonograph and fastened the clasps, then folded up the table. “Cess!” he called in what he thought was his general direction. “How are you coming along?” and the fog abruptly parted, like theatre curtains sweeping open, and he could see the copse of trees and the entire pasture.
And the bull. It stood halfway across the pasture, a huge shaggy brown creature with beady little eyes and enormous horns. It was looking at the tank.
“Hey! You there!” a voice called from the fence. “What do you think you’re doing in my pasture?” And Ernest turned instinctively to look at the farmer standing there. So did the bull. “Get those bloody tanks out of my pasture!” the farmer shouted, angrily jabbing the air with his finger.
The bull watched him, fascinated, for a moment, then swung his head back around. To look directly at Ernest.