He prattled on gaily as they shuddered down a rutted track through a belt of young trees. The hedges on either side were thick and overgrown, brushing against the side of the vehicle.
'I ought to cut 'em back,' shouted Warren. 'Pull 'em out. That's the way with hedges now. But where'd the birds and such like go? And you'll see in a moment why I like a bit of undergrowth.'
Magically the bumping ceased and the Land-Rover shot forward on a smooth road surface which began without warning.
'Perimeter!' shouted Warren, and they roared out of the enclosing hedgerows into the open. 'Airfield!'
A prairie was what it was: an immense unnatural meadow, treeless into the distance where the first blue haze of evening was gathering.
But it was a prairie with aimless highways on it, highways on to which the grass overlapped and pushed from every crack and cranny.
'No sheep this end,' said Warren, bringing the Land-Rover in a great careless sweep leftwards, totally disorientating Audley. 'This is one of the main runways. You can really let her go here–just the place for those go-karts. We'll have a couple when my son grows up.'
Ahead Audley saw a black water tower, with two ugly Nissen huts nearby. Beyond them a series of grassy banks rose unnaturally–
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blast pens? Sheep pens now, though, with their entrances blocked by straw bales and hurdles.
Warren brought the Land-Rover to a standstill, but without turning the engine off.
'This was where the main buildings were. Nissen huts mostly.
Wooden control tower. Only the concrete bases left now, except for a couple I use as food stores. When the bombers were here they kept the bombs over the other side.' He pointed vaguely across the prairie.
'You lived round here then?'
'Born and bred here. Father farmed what was left during the war. I was only little, but I remember them–Hampdens, Beauforts, Bostons and Dakotas. Bostons were my favourites.'
Audley climbed awkwardly out of the cabin and walked a few paces across the tarmac. A slight breeze had risen–or perhaps there was always a breath of wind across this open land; it stirred the young spring grass, rippling over it in waves. He could smell sheep, and everywhere the runway was marked with their droppings. There was a pervasive loneliness about the place. Not the loneliness of the open downland, which had never been truly disturbed. Men had been very busy here once amid the roar of engines, with all the purposefulness of war. Where the downlands were eerie, this was only sad, as though time had not yet been able to wash away the human emotions which had been expended here.
The airfield was not quite dead yet, not quite one with all the other debris of old wars.
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He got back into the Land-Rover.
'Queer old place, isn't it!' said Warren. 'I've sat here of an evening, and I could almost hear the planes. And I've waited for one of 'em to come up from nowhere on the runway down there, like they used to do!'
Audley exchanged a quick glance with Faith. Her face had a curiously frozen look, as though talking of the past could conjure it up again.
'That would be down there, towards the old castle?'
'That's right.'
'Can we go down that way?'
Warren nodded, and started the engine. 'Nothing easier!'
'Do you mind if we get off the runway, though. There should be a taxiing lane to the left somewhere. I'd like to see what that's like.'
Warren slowed down and turned on to a narrower roadway which curved away from the junction of the runways. As far as Audley could see, the airfield stretched ahead of him, dead level. He twisted himself in his seat to look backwards; the control tower had gone and he would have to use the water tower as his point of reference.
'If you want to see the old castle, you're going to be disappointed,'
shouted Warren. ' 'Tisn't a castle at all. It's just a few hillocks on the ground–a Roman camp it was. Not a proper one, either. The archaelogists said it was what they call a practice camp probably.
You wouldn't know what it was just to look at it.'
Audley listened with one ear, both eyes on the receding water dummy4
tower. The Nissen huts dwindled as the taxiing lane unrolled smoothly behind them.
Then slowly the tower began to sink from view. He looked round at the featureless meadow. Sure enough there was a gradual, almost imperceptible slope to it now, a gentle undulation. The Hump!
Steerforth's safe deposit hut must now be somewhere to the left, what was left of it. To the right was the line of the runway, and there'd be no buildings on that side. He looked backwards: the water tower had disappeared completely. On either side the empty airfield stretched, with not a thing in sight.
'Slow down a bit,' he commanded Warren. 'I seem to remember there were one or two odd huts down here, weren't there?'
'Nothing much down here. The old shooting range's over to the left, ahead, near the Roman camp. There was a hut hereabouts, and another down the bottom there for the flare path gear, I think.'
'Where was the hut here?'
Warren braked and coasted to a stop. 'Just over there. There's a bit of concrete still in the grass–it's a damn nuisance every time we're haymaking. I've never got round to grubbing it up — some of those concrete bases are a foot thick and more.'
Audley could just distinguish a break in the waving grass. So there it was: the last known resting place of the golden treasures of Troy.
A few square yards of wartime concrete, annoying an English sheep-farmer! And that was where the real search had to begin tomorrow. It would be easy enough to find the spot again, anyway.
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'Hey! Come to think of it, there's an old map of my father's which has the old buildings and the runways marked on it–at least, I seem to remember them marked on it,' said Warren with a flash of inspiration. 'I'm sure it's in the attic somewhere with his papers. I could look it out for you if you're interested.'
'That would be very civil of you–it would be a great help,' replied Audley. Actually, wherever the boxes were, they were certainly not going to turn up on the site of any demolished airfield structure. But an accurate map of the area was essentiaclass="underline" it had been the one thing which had not been included in the Steerforth file among either the old or the newer papers, understandably, since the airfield itself had been of no significance.
Warren let in the clutch. 'Right, then! We'll be getting back, if you don't mind. I won't be able to find your map straight away–wife's uncle'll be here any moment. I'm making silage for him this year–
but when he's gone I'll get up into the attic and have a look round.
Are you staying round here?'
'We're at the Bull.'
'Phew! Then you'd better have your cheque book at the ready.
Won't let you bend down to pick up your handkerchief at the Bull now, but they don't forget to charge you for it afterwards! Food's good, too–if you can afford it. But it's only the taxpayer's money you're spending, isn't it?'
Warren's combination of self-confidence and casual familiarity grated on Audley's nerves. But the man's grin took the sting out of the jibe. He was being perfectly natural, treating them as he probably treated everybody, and it was impossible to be stuffy with dummy4
such open good humour. And not just impossible–ridiculous too.
Audley suddenly felt tired and very sorry for himself. Somewhere along the way over the last few years he seemed to have lost both his sense of proportion and his sense of humour. Their arrival at the Bull had been a case in point: Faith had seen the joke and he hadn't. And now this.
Then there had been Fred's original warning about the sheltered existence which had divorced him from reality: it had been a delusion of intellectual grandeur which had got him into this business.
Except that Fred wasn't reality either. Nor was Panin. Warren and Faith and Mrs Clark were reality.