We were anxious to continue our journey to the north as soon as possible. It was nearly three miles back to the car, the best part of an hour’s walk, so we decided to try to get a lift from a passing motorist. Because there wasn’t too much traffic, and because most cars might only have room for one of us, we split up. I went about four hundred yards ahead, climbed up a steep little bank and lay out on its top, leaving John to deal with the motorists. Within ten minutes he had a lift. He gave a triumphant wave as the car passed by. We had been wise for there certainly wasn’t room in it for me.
The minutes lengthened to half an hour. Every so often a car came around a corner in the road about two hundred yards ahead of my little bank. I could hear them before they came into view. Each one I expected to be ours. An hour went by and still no sign of John. Obviously our borrowed car had failed to start. There was nothing for it but to walk after all. As I stumped the hard road I wished I had not given John my rucksack, not because it was heavy, but because I could have changed into rubbers and then I could have trotted the distance in twenty minutes or so.
The car was there, exactly as we had left it. John was not to be seen, plainly he had gone for help, probably to a garage in Brough. I sat down to wait and another hour went by. What the hell was going on? Why hadn’t John left a note, or left the keys so that at least I could get into the damned car? I began to curse these impractical scientists. Reluctantly I set off to walk the further mile to the caravan. John had the key to that too but we had left a window open and I managed to climb in without much trouble. Thereafter, I washed and tried to soothe my nerves with a big pot of tea and a further chunk of cake.
But this wasn’t funny any more. By three o’clock I was striding my way into Brough in a high old temper. I found two garages and drew a blank at both. It was another hour before I could persuade a mechanic to drive me to our car. He somehow opened it and soon had the engine going. I paid him £1 and he drove away plainly thinking I was daft. What to do now? I had heard of motorists in the United States who gave a lift and then beat up and robbed their unsuspecting passenger but I could recall no such case in Britain. Yet something like this must have happened. I drove to the place where we had come down off the ridge of Mickle Fell, then back again the whole six miles to Brough, very slowly. At that stage I reported the whole business to a police sergeant. He took it all down in a grave manner which I suspected to be routine. He asked where I was staying and I told him the position of the caravan up on the moor. The police, he said, would get on to the matter immediately and someone would come up to the caravan as soon as they had any information.
There was nothing to be done now but drive back to the van. It was coming up to six o’clock by the time I got there. I was in two minds about cooking dinner. Underneath I was hungry but the worry of the situation dulled my appetite. I decided to stretch out on a bunk for half an hour or so before starting preparations for a meal. As far as I was aware this was exactly what I did. It wasn’t until I had eaten and washed up that I saw from my watch it was already nine o’clock. Shortly after, there came a powerful knock at the van door.
It was an inspector in plain clothes, from which I guessed this had become a CID matter. He asked me a lot of questions about myself. They were not taking John’s disappearance lightly now. His reputation as a scientist would in itself have forced them to take it seriously but I suspected there might also be a security aspect to the matter. Hence the questions about myself. I guessed the police wanted to satisfy themselves that I had no part in the business, whatever it was. After about an hour of the questioning the man prepared to leave. I remembered to check my watch with his before he did so. There was nothing wrong with it.
Darkness came on and I settled down for the night. If I had been thoroughly fit I suppose I would quickly have fallen asleep. Now I tossed around uneasily wondering about John Sinclair. Of course I didn’t know much about him as he was now, only as he used to be. It certainly seemed as if the intervening years had never existed. We had resumed the old free and easy days of school and university. Yet the intervening years were real enough. John’s life must have become more complicated, professionally and socially, than it was when I knew him. To me he might seem the same person but to the world at large this would not be so. These speculations, sensible enough in themselves, got me nowhere.
Suddenly my attention was caught by approaching footsteps. I wriggled out of my bag, found a box of matches and started to light the little gas lamp over the kitchen stove. I was still fumbling when the door opened. Then the light came on and I saw it was John, his face not a foot from mine. The slightly worried look, which I had already remarked the first evening, was more obvious now.
‘Where in the hell have you been?’ I asked.
He came into the van, slumped on to his bunk, and began to unlace his boots.
‘I haven’t the slightest idea, Dick. That’s the truth.’
It was my impulse to press the matter further. But if what John said was indeed true, if he really had no idea what had happened, it was pointless to argue. Probably it was some kind of blackout. I didn’t know whether he had become subject to temporary losses of memory but it was at least a possible explanation. Hard exercise, taken suddenly without any previous training, might have brought on some kind of attack. Anyway he was safe, which was the main thing.
‘Hungry?’
‘Devilishly so.’
I had a feeling that what he wanted was silence and food. I wasn’t averse to another snack myself. With an impressive display of energy I had the table set. Wild and wonderful smells pervaded the caravan within a few minutes. John ate more or less silently. I had a big mug of tea and a piece of cake. I told John about the police. With his agreement I drove to a phone box about half a mile down the road. I put through a 999 call telling the constable on duty that John had turned up and that he seemed to have suffered a temporary amnesia but was quite recovered now. When I returned to the caravan I found him in a deep sleep.
We were very late up the following morning. Partly for this reason, and partly because we had another visit from the inspector, it was on midday before we resumed our journey to the north. What was said between John and the inspector I do not know. They went off for a walk together, returning after about an hour, an hour which I spent cleaning up the van. At all events the inspector seemed satisfied now, which was all that seemed to matter.
We took the outfit straight through the centre of Glasgow. Because we were slow-moving this was probably the quickest way. We managed to find the road to Loch Lomond without much difficulty. We passed various camping sites intent on reaching Glencoe if we possibly could. It seemed a long pull up to Crianlarich and the distance to Tyndrum was somewhat longer than I remembered it. Then we were out on to the beginning of Rannoch Moor. John who was driving muttered something about the caravan being wrong. The outfit began to weave rather violently. He brought it to a quick halt. Inspection showed a puncture on the nearside back wheel of the car. As we got out the jack and spare wheel clouds of midges descended on us in their thousands. We were back in Scotland. It took less than a quarter of an hour to change that wheel. Yet we were practically eaten alive.
We had been fighting time to get to Glencoe in the light. I knew the exact spot where I wanted to go, on to the old road which crosses the new road about two miles the other side of Kingshouse Inn. By the time we reached the place the last of the light was gone. It was impossible to execute any complicated movement with the caravan. All we could do was simply drive straight ahead on to the old road. This meant the caravan would be the wrong way round for making an exit. We would have to turn it by hand. Worse, the car was wedged in on the wrong side. After uncoupling, there was no possibility, because of the narrowness of the road, the unsurfaced old road, of getting it back on to the highway. We would need the car itself the following morning to drive about four miles down the glen to the beginning of the ordinary route up Bidean nam Bian. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.