John glanced at the other two; he read anger in Roger’s face, but acquiescence. Pirrie looked his usual polite and blank self.
“O.K.,” John said. “Ann, you will have to wake Mary, I’m afraid. Bring her out for a moment.”
They huddled together while some of the men began ransacking the insides of the cars and the boots. They were not long in unearthing the weapons. A little man with a stubble of beard held up John’s automatic rifle with a cry.
The man in tweeds said: “Guns, eh? That’s a better haul than we expected for our first.”
John said: “There are revolvers as well. I hope you will leave us those.”
“Have some sense,” the man said. “We’re the ones who’ve got a town to defend.” He called to the searching men. “Stack all the arms over here.”
“Just what do you propose to take off us?” John asked.
“That’s easy enough. The guns, for a start. Apart from that, food, as I said. And petrol, of course.”
“Why petrol?”
“Because we may need it, if only for our internal lines of communication.” He grinned. “Sounds very military, doesn’t it? Bit like the old days, in some ways. But it’s on our own doorsteps now.”
John said: “We’ve got another eighty or ninety miles to do. The Ford can do forty to the gallon, the other two around thirty. All the tanks are pretty full. Will you leave us nine gallons between us?”
The man in tweeds said nothing. He grinned.
John looked at him. “We’ll ditch one of the big cars. Will you leave us six gallons?”
“Six gallons,” the man in tweeds said, “or one revolver—the sort of thing that might make the difference between our holding this town and seeing it go up in flames. Mister, we’re not leaving you anything that we can possibly make good use of.”
“One car,” John said, “and three gallons. So you don’t have three women and four children on your consciences.”
“Nay,” the man said, “it’s all very well talking about consciences, but we’ve got our own women and kids to think about.”
Roger and Pirrie were standing by him. Roger said:
“They’ll take your town, and they’ll burn it I hope you live just long enough to see it.”
The man stared at him. “You don’t want to start spoiling things, mister. We’ve been treating you fair enough, but we could turn nasty if we wanted to.”
Roger was on the verge of saying something else. John said:
“All right That’s enough, Rodge.” To the man in tweeds, he went on: “We’ll make you a present of the cars. Can we take our families through the town towards Wensley? And do you think we could have a couple of old perambulators you’ve finished with?”
“I’m glad to see you’re more polite than your friend, but it’s no—to both. No one’s coming into this town. We’ve got our roads to guard, and the men who aren’t guarding them have got work to do and sleep to get. We can’t spare anyone to watch you, and it’s damn certain we’re not letting you go through the town unwatched.”
John looked at Roger again, and checked him. Pirrie spoke:
“Perhaps you will tell us what we can do. And what we can take—blankets?”
“Ay, we’re well enough supplied with blankets.”
“And our maps?”
One of the searchers came up and reported to him:
“Reckon we’ve got everything worth having, Mr Spruce. Food and stuff. And the guns. Willie’s syphoning the petrol.”
“In that case,” Mr Spruce said, “you can go and help yourselves to what you want. I shouldn’t carry too much, if I were you. You won’t find the going so easy. If you follow the river round”—he pointed to the right—“it’s your best way for getting round the town.”
“Thank you,” Roger said. “You’re a great help.”
Mr Spruce regarded him with beady benevolence. “You’re lucky—getting here before the rush, like. We shan’t have time to gossip with ’em once they start coming in fast.”
You’ve got a great deal of confidence,” John said. “But it isn’t going to be as easy as you think it is.”
“I read somewhere once,” Mr Spruce said, “how the Saxons laughed and chatted together before the Battle of Hastings{109}. That was when they’d just had one big battle and were getting ready for the next.”
“They lost that one,” John said. “The Normans won.”
“Maybe they did. But it was a couple of hundred years before they travelled easy in these parts. Good luck, mister.”
John looked at the cars, stripped already of food and weapons and with Willy, a youth lean and gangling and intent, completing the syphoning of the petrol.
“May you have the same luck,” he said.
John said: The important thing is to get away from here. After that we can decide the best plan to follow. As far as our things are concerned, I suggest we take three small cases for the present. Rucksacks would have been better, but we haven’t got them. I shouldn’t bother with blankets. Fortunately, it’s summer. If it’s chilly, we shall have to huddle together for warmth.”
“I shall take my blanket roll,” Pirrie said.
“I don’t advise it,” John told him.
Pirrie smiled, but made no reply.
The Masham men, having removed their booty, had faded back into the shadows that lined the road, and were watching them with impassive disinterest. The children, sleepy-eyed and unsteady, watched also as their elders sorted out what they needed from what had been left. John realized that he no longer counted Mary as one of the children; she was helping Ann.
They got away at last. Looking back, John saw that the Masham men were pulling the abandoned cars round to reinforce the barrier they had already set up. He wondered what would happen when the cars really began to pile up there—probably they would shove them into the river.
They toiled up rising ground, until they could look down, from a bare field, on the starlit roofs of the town lying between them and the moors. The night was very quiet. “We’ll rest here for a while,” John said. “We can consider our plans.”
Pirrie dropped the blanket roll; he had been carrying it, at first awkwardly under his arm and then more sensibly balanced on his shoulder.
“In that case, I can get rid of these blankets,” he said.
Roger said: “I wondered how long it would be before you realized you were carrying dead weight.”
Pirrie was busy undoing the string that tied the roll; it was arranged in a series of complicated knots. He said:
“Those people down there… excellent surface efficiency, but I suspect the minor details are going to trip them up. I rather think the man who went through my car wasn’t even carrying a knife. If he was, then his negligence is quite inexcusable.”
Roger asked curiously: “What have you got in there?”
Pirrie looked up. In the dim starlight, he appeared to be blinking. “When I was considerably younger,” he said, “I used to travel in the Middle East— Trans-Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia. I was looking for minerals—without much success, I must add. I learned the trick there of hiding a rifle in a blanket roll. The Arabs stole everything, but they preferred rifles.”
Pirrie completed his unravelling. From the middle of the blankets, he drew out his sporting rifle; the telescopic sight was still attached.
Roger laughed, loudly and suddenly. “Well, I’m damned! Things don’t look quite so bad after all. Good old Pirrie.”
Pirrie lifted out a small box in addition. “Only a couple of dozen rounds, unfortunately,” he said, “but it’s better than nothing.”
“I should say it is,” said Roger. “If we can’t find a farmhouse with a car and petrol, we don’t deserve to get away with it. A gun makes the difference.”