He said, his voice harsh: “Luke. You never spoke of him in the car. Neither of you has mentioned his name since we buried him. Do you think about him?” The question sounded like an accusation.
Miriam turned her gaze from the lake and gave him a steady look. “We think of him as much as we dare. What we’re concerned about now is getting his child born safely.”
Julian came up to him and touched his arm. She said, as if he were the one who most needed comforting: “There will be a time to mourn Luke and Gascoigne, Theo, there will be a time.”
The car had sunk out of sight. He had feared that the water at the edge might be too shallow, that the roof would be visible even under the cover of reeds, but peering down into the murky darkness he could see nothing but swirling mud.
Miriam said: “Have you got the cutlery?”
“No. Haven’t you?”
“Damn, they’re in the front of the car. Still, it hardly matters now. We’ve no food left to eat.”
He said: “We’d better get what we have got to the wood-shed. It’s about a hundred yards up that path to the right.”
Oh God, he prayed, please let it still be there, let it still be there. It was the first time he had prayed in forty years, but the words were less a petition than a half-superstitious hope that somehow, by the strength of his need, he could will the shed into existence. He shouldered one of the pillows and the raincoats, then picked up the kettle of water in one hand, and the suitcase in the other. Julian slung a second blanket round her shoulders and bent for the saucepan of water only to have it taken from her hand by Miriam, who said: “You carry the pillow. I’ll manage the rest.”
Thus encumbered, they made their slow way up the path. It was then that they heard the metallic rattle of the helicopter. Half-imprisoned by the interlocking boughs they had little need for extra concealment but instinctively they moved from the path into the green tangle of the elder bushes and stood motionless, hardly breathing, as if every intake of breath could reach up to that glittering object of menace, to those watching eyes and listening ears. The noise grew to an ear-shattering clatter. Surely it must be directly overhead. Theo almost expected the sheltering bushes to shudder into violent life. Then it began to circle, the rattle receding then returning, bringing with it renewed fear. It was almost five minutes before the noise of the engine finally faded into a distant hum.
Julian said softly: “Perhaps they aren’t looking for us.” Her voice was faint and, suddenly, she doubled up with pain and grasped at Miriam.
Miriam’s voice was grim. “I don’t suppose they’re on a joy-ride. Anyway they haven’t found us.” She turned to Theo. “How far is this wood-shed?”
“About fifty yards, if I’ve remembered rightly.”
“Let’s hope you have.”
The path was wider now, making their passage easier, but Theo, walking a little behind the women, felt burdened by more than the physical weight of his load. His previous assessment of Rolf’s likely progress now seemed ridiculously optimistic. Why should he make his way slowly and by stealth to London? Why should he need to present himself personally to the Warden? All he required was a public telephone. The number of the Council was known to every citizen. This apparent accessibility was part of Xan’s policy of openness. You couldn’t always speak to the Warden but you could always try. Some callers even got through. This caller, once identified, once vetted, would get priority. They would tell him to conceal himself, to speak to no one until they’d picked him up, almost certainly by helicopter. He had probably been in their hands for over twelve hours.
And the fugitives wouldn’t be difficult to find. By early morning Xan had known about the stolen car, the amount of petrol in its tank, had known to a mile how far they could hope to travel. He had only to stab a compass point in a map and describe a circle. Theo had no doubt of the significance of that helicopter. They were already searching by air, marking out the isolated houses, looking for the gleam of a car roof. Xan would already have organized the search on the ground. But one hope remained. There might still be time for the child to be born, as her mother wanted, in peace, in privacy, with no one to watch but the two people she loved. The search couldn’t be quick; he had surely been right about that. Xan wouldn’t want to come in force or to attract public attention, not yet, not until he could personally check the truth of Rolf’s story. He would use only carefully selected men for this enterprise. He couldn’t even be certain that they would hide in woodland. Rolf would have told him that that had been the original plan; but Rolf was no longer in charge.
He was clinging to this hope, willing himself to feel the confidence that he knew Julian would need from him, when he heard her voice.
“Theo, look. Isn’t this beautiful?”
He turned and came up beside her. She was standing beside a tall overgrown hawthorn heavy with red berries. From its top bough there cascaded a white froth of travellers’ joy, delicate as a veil, through which the berries shone like jewels. Looking at her rapt face, he thought: I only know it’s beautiful; she can feel its loveliness. He looked beyond her to a bush of elderberries and seemed to see clearly for the first time their back glistening beads and the delicacy of the red stems. It was as if in one moment the forest was transformed from a place of darkness and menace, in which he was at heart convinced that one of them would die, into a sanctuary, mysterious and beautiful, uncaring of these three curious interlopers, but a place in which nothing that lived could be wholly alien from him.
Then he heard Miriam’s voice, happy, exultant. “The wood-shed is still here!”
The shed was larger than he had expected. Memory, contrary to its custom, had diminished, not enlarged. For a moment he wondered whether this dilapidated, three-sided building of blackened wood, fully thirty feet across, could be the wood-shed he remembered. Then he noticed the silver birch to the right of the entrance. When he had last seen it the tree had been only a sapling, but now its branches overhung the roof. He saw with relief that most of the roof looked sound, although some of the planks had slipped. Many at the side were missing or jagged and the whole shed, in its lopsided, solitary decrepitude, looked unlikely to weather more than a few more winters. A huge wood-transporter, grained with rust, had sunk down askew in the middle of the glade, its tyres split and rotting and one immense wheel lying free beside it. Not all the logs had been carted away when the forestry finally ended, and one stack still remained neatly piled beside two huge felled trees. Their denuded trunks gleamed like polished bone and chunks and slivers of bark littered the earth.
Slowly, almost ceremoniously, they entered the shed, heads turning, anxious-eyed, like tenants taking possession of a desired but unknown residence.
Miriam said: “Well, at least it’s a shelter and it looks as if there’s enough dry wood and kindling here to make a fire.”
Despite the thick surrounding hedge of tangled bushes and saplings and the rim of trees, it was less private than Theo had remembered. Their safety would have to depend less on the shed being unnoticed than on the improbability of any casual walker finding his way through the tangle of the forest. But it was not a casual walker he feared. If Xan decided to undertake a ground search in Wychwood it would only be a matter of hours before they were discovered, however secret their lair.
He said: “I’m not sure we ought to risk lighting a fire. How important is it?”