‘Do you mean mines, Randall? Is that where we are? An old shale mine?’
‘Aye,’ said Randall, patiently. ‘I telt you. It’s supposed to be all blocked up but there’s holes everywhere where it’s collapsin’.’
I took a huge breath and let it out in a tune of little puffs.
‘And there’s miles of it?’
‘Yell have to take me,’ he said. ‘Or yell get lost.’ I think I must have relaxed my grip on him while I tussled with this because suddenly he ducked away from me and I heard his feet pattering lightly down the rungs of a ladder.
‘Stop at the bottom and wait,’ I ordered, fear making me harsh. I felt around for the edge of the hole and, finding it, began to search for the top of the ladder with a foot. It felt rather soft.
‘Bunty, I can’t carry you, darling,’ I said. ‘So you must decide for yourself whether you feel like jumping.’
The ladder was on its last legs and I slipped a couple of times at the start of my descent as the rungs gave way under my feet. Bunty was whining at the sound of me moving away from her and, as I looked up to speak some reassurance, I suddenly shot all the way down, scraping my chin against the rocky side of the shaft as the ladder disintegrated. There was a thump as I landed and I swore viciously, making Randall giggle.
Once I had righted myself he took my hand, squeezing it as though he were exhorting me to be brave, and we set off feeling the dank walls on either side of us as close as breath and the weight of the earth above us lowering down. When we had gone no more than a yard, there was a slithering and yelping behind us, then the click of Bunty’s toenails on the stone floor.
‘Oh, good girl,’ I said. ‘She’ll take care of both of us. Walk on, Bunty.’
‘I dinnae need tooken care of,’ said Randall, but his voice had a little lift as he grabbed Bunty’s lead again and I thought I could hear a slightly more determined note as his feet struck along behind her.
It seemed hours that we tramped along like that, our feet ringing on stone or crunching in slivers of shale, our heads being dripped on from above and always with the fetid, filthy-smelling damp all around us. Once or twice a heap of earth and shale in our path cut us off and we had to retrace our steps and strike out in a different direction.
‘It’s like a maze,’ I whispered.
‘Aye,’ Randall whispered back. ‘They had tae make wee tunnels and leave bits in between so it didnae all jist collapse.’
I wished I had not spoken. Every so often, a faint breath of fresher air would tell us we were passing a ventilation shaft. At least that is what I told myself, preferring not to think that these were unofficial holes caused by subsidence. Randall was still fairly jaunty however, on his home ground, and Bunty seemed to view this new kind of walk with perfect equanimity. I could tell from the sound of her snuffling that she was pacing forward with her nose down. I wished Hugh could see her now.
After a while, although there was nothing new to be heard around us, and certainly nothing to be seen, Randall paused and hissed to me to be quiet. I reached forward and caught Bunty’s muzzle in my hand, guiding her head and holding her face against my leg to keep her quiet too. Then I heard it. Breathing, and the slap of bare feet on the dank stone as someone not far from where we stood moved away. If this was a ghostie, it was a much more fleshly ghostie than any I had ever imagined.
‘Stay here!’ I said to Randall, holding him hard by both arms and shaking him in time with each word. ‘No more nonsense. Do you promise?’ Randall, ten years old again, the intrepid sherpa quite driven off by the sound of fear in my voice, trembled and nodded.
‘I’ll stand guard and keep an eye on Bunty,’ he said, which was much better psychology, of course.
‘Excellent,’ I told him. ‘Now point me in the right direction.’ Randall stretched out his arm and I felt along it then, with some difficulty, I let go of him and walked away. It was a narrow passageway and I bumped against the walls a couple of times as it twisted around corners. It was lower too than the main corridor where I had left the boy and soon I was walking slightly hunched and wondering also if I was only imagining the downward slope under my feet. I could hear Randall murmuring words of encouragement to Bunty and could just about hear, if I strained, the sweep of her tail forward and back across the floor. It was while I was straining to hear that comforting sound that I became aware of the breathing again. I stopped, fumbled in my pocket and struck a match.
When it flared I caught sight of a face, deathly pale, or rather half a face above a beard, before a bare arm rose to shield its eyes from the light.
‘Put it out,’ said a cracked and muffled voice. I shook the match and pinched it carefully with wetted fingers before dropping it. ‘Who are you?’ said the voice. ‘What do you want?’
‘Billy?’ I said. ‘How long have you been down here?’
‘You tell me,’ said Billy Brown, in a lost voice. ‘What date is it? You tell me.’ He was shaking, but whether from fear or cold I could not say. I walked towards his voice with a hand outstretched but when I touched his flesh he flinched away.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’ve only just worked it out, or I would have come sooner.’
I crouched down before him. ‘Your father’s been hiding you? Keeping you safe here?’
Billy gave a short sound that could have been a laugh.
‘Safe?’ he said. ‘He’s been keepin’ me prisoner. But then, I’m a deserter, you know, so I deserve nothin’ else.’
‘But if he wanted to punish you -’ I began.
‘Why didn’t he turn me in?’ said Billy. ‘Easy Because if he’d turned me in everyone would ken and he’d nivver hold his head up again. This way I get what I deserve and none of it washes off on him.’ I could tell that this was a litany he had rehearsed to himself many times down here in the dark.
‘But why didn’t you just run away?’ I said.
Again he croaked a laugh and then I heard a dull knocking sound.
‘What was that?’ I asked.
‘For a start, I’m naked,’ said Billy. ‘He took my clothes away. And then there’s this.’ Again there came the same dull sound.
‘What is it?’ I said, but I could guess. Only it was such a horrid, such a ludicrous, idea I could hardly believe it.
‘It’s a ball and chain,’ said Billy. ‘A good one too. A while back I tried tae smash it open and ended up smashin’ my ankle instead. So now, even if I got the thing off me…’ He had the offhand way of talking that one puts down to bravery, the just-a-broken-arm-old-chap air that I was used to hearing from officers in the rest home where I volunteered but which I never expected to find in a deserter, and this tone as much anything else was making the scene as unreal as a pantomime.
‘Where on earth did your father get a ball and chain?’
Billy laughed. ‘Ye’d be amazed what ye can find lying around,’ he said. ‘It was likely out of the old castle.’
‘The old castle?’ I said. I knew he must mean Cassilis and if Shinie Brown had raided the dungeons before Cad and Buttercup had arrived on the scene…
‘Billy,’ I said again. ‘How long have you been here? It’s August now. 1923. How long has it been?’
‘August ’23?’ said Billy. ‘Really? I was tryin’ to keep track but it’s hard, you know, in the dark. It was winter when he put me down.’ I waited. I could not begin to imagine the journey he must have made, from France five years ago to here and I could not demand that he tell me, so I waited.
‘The worst bit of all,’ he said, ‘is bein’ on ma own. I wis nivver supposed to be all on ma own. Ma pal and me had a plan. I should say, ma pal and me had a new plan, after the old plan didnae work. An’ that was after the first plan didnae work. At first, we were goin’ south. Bobby said that would keep us safe. Everybody was on the watch for deserters headed north, so we went the other way. We were goin’ to Spain, to Morocco, to live in the sunshine.’ This time the laughter went on so long, ragged croak after ragged croak, that I feared he would never stop. ‘Live in the sunshine,’ he said at last. ‘An’ look where I ended up.’