Hank spoke, his voice screechy with excitement and drink. He still had his flick-knife in his hand. He went up to the man.
‘Before we toast you,’ he said. ‘Maybe we should cut ourselves a live steak or two from the ribs here.’ And he opened the man’s camouflage jacket and made a cut there and then as he spoke, on the man’s flesh, a delicate slash across his lower chest, like a butcher suggesting a joint, so that the blood ran. ‘That’s what you people do, isn’t it? Out in Africa. Bloody savages. Eat your mother live, you would. Wouldn’t you?’
I still thought Hank was playing some brutal game. But this last action of his made me wonder. I knew I’d have to try and save the African, whoever he was, if this murderous charade went any further. I took Spinks’s bow from my back and unwound the tape from the two arrows strapped to its belly.
Hank, having cut the man’s flesh open, was a vicious Master of Ceremonies now, a shark who had smelt blood. He stood back, surveying his work, and there was silence in the glade for a moment. Was this all? Or would there be more. Surely there was more fun to be had …
Hank, sensing this silence as a vital cue, started an undulating, mocking dance round the pyre then, his blond hair flopping up and down in the light, the tassels on his Nazi jacket flying. By degrees the others joined him, mostly drunk, pleased to take up the chase again.
And together they all danced round the African, in a savage parody of jive and twist and rock-and-roll — gyrating, throwing their backsides about and clapping their hands in the air above their heads as they chanted bloody slogans and racist obscenities, the graffiti of a thousand condemned playgrounds coming to frenzied life.
But there was still time, I thought. They would calm down. Indeed I noticed one or two of the youths on the outskirts who were not taking part in the dance at all. They were trying to restrain the others.
‘All right, Hank,’ one of these said. ‘Give it over. We’ll have the fuzz here. Let the bugger go.’
But Hank took no notice. He left the circle then and went to the fire a few yards away, where he drew a long burning ember out. I knew that, even if he was only fooling, once this even touched the dry brambles round the African’s feet, the man would go up in flames like a rocket. On the other hand, I thought, if I used the bow, if I shot Hank, they would find the arrow afterwards …
But perhaps I’d have no alternative. I was about twenty-five feet above the pyre, looking down at a slight angle on the African. If Hank came to set him ablaze it would be a fairly easy shot. I should be able to wound him, on the backside or leg, and take the consequences of the arrow being found afterwards.
Hank returned then, the torch in his hand, pushing his way back through the circle of dancers. He flourished the burning stick like a metronome in front of the African’s face for half a minute. Then he brushed the man’s good profile with the red-hot branch, from top to bottom, singeing the hair and flesh.
The African screamed.
And I could stand it no more. Hank had his back to me. I drew the string quickly, aimed for his legs, and loosed the arrow. But in my anger I drew too hard. The arrow went high. It must have transfixed Hank, going right through his chest, so that he fell forward onto the pyre, dropping the burning torch which instantly set the brambles alight at the base of the pyre.
The African was struggling now, seeing a chance of escape, Hank’s body lying half across him as he slipped gradually down, smothering the flames. His friends came for him, trying to drag him away, while another, with a knife, moved behind the African and started to cut him loose from his bonds.
The others had all panicked meanwhile, for the flames had taken hold around the base of the pyre and had begun to spread outwards over the glade, along the fuses of drier grass. The whole place was suddenly empty. And the youth who had been trying to free the African had run as well, leaving his job half-done. But it was enough. The African was suddenly free of the burning post and there was only one man left in the glade who couldn’t run: Hank, still sprawled to one side of the pyre.
The African had been slightly burnt about the feet. But he was still perfectly active. He should have run himself, for the flames were spreading quickly now all over the glade. But instead he stayed a moment, turned and, as a last gesture, pulled Hank’s body right over the blazing pyre, so that it would roast there properly, the black leather jacket and the paint of its gold swastika already burning fiercely. Then the African was gone, running between the gathering sheaths of flame, the little firestorm that was engulfing the tents, the motorcycles, everything that was in the glade.
But soon the flames had risen beneath us too, and caught some of the dry beech leaves on the lower branches of the tree we were hiding in. They began to feed on the leaves, moving towards the other trees in the valley, on the very things that had hidden us happily from the world for the past two months, the basis of our security, our existence.
And there was no way of stopping it. The fire raged upwards through the trees around the glade, so that Clare and I were moving quickly back along the branches and walkways towards our tree house, the wood beginning to crackle and roar as the flames lit up the valley behind us. And suddenly we were like hunted animals in the forest, leaping from branch to branch, running from the holocaust.
Thirteen
Clare and I were back in the great house, hidden in Alice’s tower, next morning: we could see over most of the burnt valley to the east. The fire had destroyed half a dozen of the trees there, round the lake, and must have burnt every remnant of our own life in the place as well — our tree-house, the makeshift furniture, the old nursery-stained copy of Pigling Bland, Spinks’s Good Beer Guide and French letters, along with the ropes and aerial walkways which had been paths out of our house into a green web, a remote world hidden in space, yet where the shapes of branches, the pattern in a particular cluster of leaves, had become familiar to us as if they’d been the garden round our cottage on earth. All this must have been burnt to a cinder by now.
I had only managed to rescue Spinks’s fibreglass bow, and his backpack filled with a few things that wouldn’t burn and could have identified us afterwards — the army binoculars, the gas burner, the metal pots and pans. Of the rest, of all the haphazard bits and pieces which had been vital adjuncts to our life in the woods, there could have been nothing left. And I felt homeless once more, looking out on the ruined valley from the carefully arched Gothic windows in the tower, back in a contrived world, at risk again. Clare was beside me, the two of us crouching down, noses almost on the windowsill. She was sucking her thumb, bereft herself once more, looking out over the valley where there was nothing left of her content, nothing but the central trunks and a few of the larger branches of the great beech trees, blackened, still smoking in the blue summer light. I held her hand as we watched, but it was inert like the hand of a doll. The firemen were still pumping water on the smouldering ruins from the lake and the police were downstairs with Alice again.
We had escaped the flames a few hours earlier, running from the valley up the path from the lake, into the greenhouse and walled kitchen garden, and from there we’d made our way into the house by the back door, which Alice had arranged always to leave open for us in case of just such an emergency.