‘But the man?’
‘Yes, he’s armed. And there’s a car always somewhere in the lane or up on the common — two men, also armed. And people above the house, in the woods.’
‘So?’
‘Well, hit this man over the head or something — and run straight down over the fields. Your people are down there, aren’t they? You can almost see them from here.’
‘Yes,’ I said with a touch of uncertainty. ‘Of course, I see them.’
Mrs Grace took me up at once. ‘They’re not “your people” then?’ She looked at me.
‘It’s complicated. Not exactly.’
‘You’re with the Americans?’
‘No. Not at all. My “people” — such as they are — are in London. At headquarters. I have to get out and contact them. And on a Sunday it may not be easy. But that’s our problem. And yes, we can try getting over the fields and contact London from there.’
‘If you can’t, or have any difficulty and have to hide out overnight — use my dance studio in Pitville. There’s a telephone — and a room above it which no one knows of; in the attic — I prepared it myself. It’s quite comfortable — with a way out over the roofs and into another street.’
‘That’s the first place they’ll make for when you don’t turn up,’ I said. ‘After they’ve been to your house.’
‘Unlikely. But if they do the studio will be full of people all tomorrow evening: Western Area Ballroom Dancing Certificate Examinations. I’m not involved. If they come, they won’t stay — not with fifty people bouncing about the place.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘That could be useful. How do you get in, where is it?’
She told us and gave us a spare key to the place. And then she gave us the name of the hotel where she’d meet us on Monday, or whenever we could make it: The Moorend Park, a mile out of town just off the main Cheltenham — Swindon road.
‘Well, what do you think?’ she said when she was finished. The man had gone back and was playing with the twins again. But now we could see in his playing the real end of the game.
‘Yes,’ Helen said. ‘Yes. It’s wonderfully generous of you. But what about you afterwards — your job, your family.’
‘I haven’t any. My husband died. My parents killed in the siege of Leningrad. I was away at the time — in Intelligence. Afterwards the KGB placed me as a Displaced Person in a camp in Germany — then I came on here after the war.’
‘And all that thrown away — just at the drop of a hat?’ I asked. ‘All gone. You’ll be much more a displaced person now. I find that difficult to —’
‘I was sent to get information here, not to kidnap children.’
‘We can surely get some sort of protection or asylum for you afterwards,’ Helen said.
‘More likely prison.’ Mrs Grace laughed. ‘No, it’s best to say nothing until I’m out of the way. I’ll move on. I’ve money. Perhaps America. This is not my kind of world any more.’ She stopped.
The man had left the swing and was walking towards the house. We separated. And I thought, looking at the town below us in the sunlight: is this really true? Are we going to be there tomorrow?
That evening, when Helen and I were alone, and had talked the plan over, I said to her: ‘There’s only one thing — what about Alexei? All those names you have. What do you do with them — and him?’
She got up to play her march again. ‘He isn’t coming. He can’t. I’ve no idea what to do with them — or him. I’ll just have to take them with me, that’s all.’
Then the needle hit the disc and the military band blazed into haughty life, a bouncy martial tune of brass and drums and cymbals, heralding some kind of war after all this peace.
It went like clockwork next afternoon to begin with. Mrs Grace took the children out at 2.30. And at 2.35 I hit the blond young man over the head — over an ear rather, not being used to it. He’d just come back from his car by the garage, reporting the twins’ safe departure on the radio to his colleagues at the end of the lane. I got him with the drawing-room poker from behind the front door as he came into the house, Helen having called him into the house from the kitchen. We were getting on well with him at that point. He went down very quickly. Helen told me to hit him again. But there was no need. I stood there, annoyed somehow. I’d wanted to knock him out but not to hurt him. And he was obviously hurt. I took his gun off him and locked him in the downstairs lavatory, leaving a half bottle of brandy and some cigarettes inside for his recovery.
And then we were off, running down the steps between the crab-apples, onto the dazzling sunlit lane and into the first field of corn stubble, dodging round the bales of straw, for we were in full view by now of anyone watching above the house in the fir plantation. But as we went the geese in the paddock, shocked and annoyed at this sudden impudence in their domain, set up a frantic cackling, awful cries of alarm all over the quiet hills. And then we heard the crack of a rifle shot behind us.
But we still would have made it, the long line of straw bales shielding us, if it hadn’t been for the hedge-trimming tractor with the circular saw.
We’d forgotten about that — no, we’d never thought about it — and then there it was as we went through a gap in the ditch into the second field, making for us fast, about two hundred yards away, speeding across the field to a point where it would cut us off before we could get to the only exit, a gateway in a thick bramble hedge in front of us.
The saw was spinning fast at the end of a long articulated hydraulic arm, a crab-like pincer whining bitterly on the air. The man inside the cab was practically invisible, protected by a wire mesh, a grey shape bearing down on us from the right. We were gaining on him, but only just, the gate still a hundred yards away. Then he suddenly turned, and instead of trying to cut us off, made straight for the gateway himself. And now he gained on us.
We slowed up. It was no use. He slewed the tractor round in front of the gate and faced us again, pulling the arm round so that the saw spun right in front of us and just above our heads. Then he began to move forwards, very gradually, driving us back towards the house like a sheep-herder. I got the revolver out and fired. But the thing jerked up in my hand, the bullet going off high above him somewhere in the direction of the Malvern hills. A second shot was nearer, hitting the spinning saw and ricocheting away. I didn’t have time for a third. By then we were moving backwards, dodging the blade. And each way we turned, he turned with us, manipulating the arm and tractor together with easy skill.
The cows saved us — a herd of insolent young Friesian bullocks. They had been curious at first, on our run down the field, and had followed us. But now, as we were driven back together, they began to stampede, kicking their hind legs up in retreat. And we found cover among them — the tractor stalled, trying — literally — to hack its way through them.
‘The golf course,’ Helen shouted, pointing up the hill to our left, away from the lane and a car which had just arrived in front of the house. There was a line of old trees, I saw, beyond the next field, and then a young fir plantation on the lower slopes of the hill beneath the laneway. We made for that, keeping our heads low along the ditches.
And we made it — getting into the cover of a beech wood, resting a moment before running on along the side of the hill, rising slightly now, until we reached the new fir trees where we could go faster, moving through the green alleys over a sun-speckled carpet of moss and old fir needles.
We came out of the woods near the clubhouse of the golf course. Outside the staff entrance to the clubhouse I saw several bicycles. We might have taken a car but they were all parked right in front of the windows, and the road from here, I knew, must in any case be downhill all the way to the town.