I’d walked about two miles when I heard the motor car engine. It was an old-fashioned sound, long since abolished from the streets of London. I’d heard it many times in Chicago, when it had invariably heralded a peremptory shepherding by the police of every pedestrian off the streets. I heard the car several minutes before I could have seen it. I didn’t bother trying to see it, but continued forward with my head down. The sound was from behind me. I did think to get myself off the road and try hiding. But this stretch had neither hedge nor ditches. If I did turn off, it would only be onto bare fields. I walked slowly forward until the car was right behind me. I went through the motions of getting out of its way. But there was no intention of passing me. The engine idling loudly, it came to a halt not more than a few yards behind me.
“Dr Markham?” It was a polite, well-spoken voice. It might be the police. It probably wasn’t anyone wanting to spread me in the muddy track of the road and push a gun against the back of my head. I turned. “Dr Anthony Richard Markham?” I turned. I was looking at a young man, perhaps a few years younger than me. He was leaning out of the front passenger window of a very large, very shiny car. It was one of those hand-built luxury vehicles that last had a ready market in the late ‘40s, before electrification had got properly under way in the towns. Diesel engines were still occasionally used in the country. But, except for export markets, petrol-powered vehicles nowadays were always much smaller or more decidedly for use than display.
“And if I am, what might you be wanting?” I asked. The young man still didn’t reach for a gun. Instead, he grinned and put his head back inside the window. A moment later, the door opened, and he got carefully out.
“Well, we’re certainly glad to have caught up with you,” he said. He looked up at the sky and put his hat on. “You’ve really been as elusive as any number of Pimpernels.” He grinned again and turned to open one of the back doors of the car. “We’re glad we’ve found you. I think you can count yourself lucky we’ve found you before—before anyone else could think to come out looking.” He waved into the interior of the car. It must have been warmer than where I was standing. It couldn’t have been wetter. “Do please get in, Dr Markham,” he said again. “If we have to run into any of our competitors for your company, I’d rather have a car chase than a gun battle.”
Since the end of tar spraying, English roads haven’t been much good for long journeys by car. This was, as I said, a luxury vehicle, and its suspension was good for anything. Still, we made slow progress until we reached a wider paved road. We continued somewhat faster along this, though still had to slow down or swerve to avoid the inevitable potholes. For about half a mile, we found ourselves stuck behind a line of horse-drawn carts, all carrying sealed bags of something. Once or twice, we passed cars that had run out of electricity, and the drivers were in the rain, slowly cranking up charges from the emergency generators. Once, we passed a signpost that said Nottingham was twenty miles away. We didn’t go to Nottingham, however, but turned off onto another muddy road. The next signpost I saw said we were heading towards Northampton. Another told me we were approaching Oxford. Another said Newbury. After this, the light faded. Except we were still headed south and south east, we might have been going anywhere. We avoided every main town. Even on the main roads, there weren’t now more than a dozen other vehicles in any one hour.
There was no point plying the young man or the driver with questions. Though polite enough, and even sympathetic as I described my encounters on the railway train, he was letting nothing slip about who he was or where we were going. We stopped once for a late lunch. This was at a pub somewhere between Buckingham and Aylesbury. The driver came back with sandwiches and beer, and we lunched in the car. After this, we were off again. There was another stop just after dark in a village somewhere. There was no lighting, and I missed the village name as we swept in. We stopped by a Church of Saint Cuthbert, where the driver got out and made a short call from the village telephone box. Then it was off again on our endless journey through England. Rather than keep asking questions that wouldn’t be answered, or try to find something else to talk about that didn’t sound too contrived, I eventually pretended to sleep. After a while, I even did sleep. Still in wet clothes, now increasingly stiff and uncomfortable from the battering of my fall from the railway train, I swayed gently along roads that, even in my late boyhood, had still been smooth conduits for the traffic of a future that never came. I dozed. I slept fitfully. I dreamed on and off—disconnected fragments of dreams they were, involving railway trains and Pakeshi and second class carriages filled with grim-faced old men, all smoking cannabis in Germanic pipes.
I woke as we were driving over a smoother road. We were in another village. I saw a church in the car headlamps. I thought we’d pass through here as we had everywhere else. But we turned off the mainish road onto another that was also well-maintained. We stopped at some iron gates. There was a brief sound of the car horn, and the gates opened. As the headlamps went out, I felt the crunch of rubber on gravel. A dark building loomed ahead, dim lights in some of its windows. We were set down by the main entrance.
“Do you feel the need of a helping hand, Dr Markham?” the young man asked with a return of his friendly manner. I took his hand and stepped down onto the gravel. Someone deferential in a black coat met us in the main hall. I looked about me. If the main hall was any indication of the rest, this was an impressive building. The lighting was too dim for me to see any details of the paintings that covered the walls, and lined the grand staircase that led to the upper floors. But the smell of wax polish, and the ticking of the hallway clock, and the hushed, deferential tone of the butler who took my ruined coat—and didn’t once look at my ruined and decidedly cheap shoes—told me nearly everything I could reasonably have asked about where I was.
“I’ll leave you now,” the young man said with one of his reassuring smiles. “But I’m sure we’ll meet again tomorrow.” I remembered to thank him. I even remembered myself not to gawp around as if I’d just paid half a crown for a guided tour of the house.
“If Sir would care to come this way,” the butler said. He motioned me towards a closed door in the panelling just to the right of the staircase. We went through into a narrow corridor, also panelled. At the end of this, we turned left and went though another door. We were now in a high, darkened room with what looked like a billiard table in its centre. The butler opened another door, and I stepped through into a room where the lighting was average, but that dazzled me after so long in darkness and semi-darkness. I was in a small study. Books lined every wall beneath the pictures. I thought for a moment I was to be left alone here. But there were a couple of armchairs over by the fire, their backs to me. As the butler politely coughed, a man got nimbly out of one of the chairs and stepped across the room.
“My dear young fellow,” he said, holding out a hand. “You will not credit how relieved I am to see you, alive and in one piece. Ever since you vanished from your flat yesterday morning, we’ve been turning the country upside down to get to you first.” He stopped and looked at me. “Poor Anthony,” he said with a weary smile. “For a man who normally takes such care with his appearance, you really do look ghastly. Have you been shopping in Marks & Spencer?”
I took the limp right hand of the Foreign Secretary, Harold Macmillan.