“What’s the spanner for?” asked Geoffrey.
“Bang folk with — if it comes to that. You see us out, Art. Follow us sharpish. I dunno how long that bit o’ timber will stand. Reverse her out, Jeff, nice and steady. You got three ton o’metal there, pushing for you. Right?”
“Right,” said Geoffrey, and moved the long lever through the gate into reverse. He let the hand-brake off, revved gently and put the clutch in. There was about five foot to go, and Arthur, standing a little to one side, shone the torch on to the back wall. They were rolling backwards. With a foot to go Geoffrey put the accelerator down a full two inches, so that they would hit the wall slowly but with full power. He felt a dull jar, and at the same time the huge engine bunched its muscles and shoved. Timbers groaned and cracked. Splintered ends of wood screeched against the metal. The air was cold round his neck and shoulders, and he was no longer breathing dust and exhaust fumes. They were out.
He stopped, and Arthur walked out of the black cavern they had left, still holding the torch. The hut leaned a little sideways, but decided to stay up.
“Very nice,” said Basil. “Reckon the drive’s up thataway. You can push straight through that bit of old hedge. No, Art, don’t you stay on the running board. They might clutch you off. I left a spot for you to squat on them cans, so you can look after that side, in case anyone tries to board us.”
“What about the gates?” said Geoffrey.
“They’ll give outwards, easy enough. I noticed that when we come in.”
“OK,” said Geoffrey.
He put the gears into first and drove forwards across the tangle of old lawn at the hedge. The ground was true and firm under the four-foot grasses, and the hedge gave easily. Then up to the drive, which seemed no wider than a bridlepath now that they had the full width of the Rolls to occupy it. He turned towards the gates, outlined against several jigging lanterns, and changed (badly) into second. The villagers must surely have heard the crash.
But suddenly, behind the left-hand wall, stood up a great smoky flame, blazing into the night to a belling of whooping voices.
“Oy-oy,” said Arthur, “they’ve found a spot of petrol. D’you leave a can there, Jeff?”
Before he could answer the tone of the voices changed; someone had heard the crash of gears, and now had seen the Rolls. The gates banged open and the drive was blocked by a barricade of people, black against the glare.
“Keep going,” said Arthur, “fast as you can, remembering you got to get round the corner outside. Don’t you pay no heed to them. They’ll claw us limb from limb if you stop.”
Geoffrey stayed in second, not risking a stall during another gear change, and put his foot down. The people leaped towards him, black and screaming. Arthur leaned forward and squeezed the bulb horn, which pooped its noble note. Basil stood up and bellowed “Out of the road there! Jump for it!” He couldn’t help hitting someone now, but he kept accelerating, remembering the spearman on Weymouth beach. The villagers, it turned out, were fewer than they looked and well inside the gates with room to scatter to safety. The car missed them all, somehow, and a volley of stones clunked into the bodywork as Geoffrey took her through the gate. He braked hard in the entrance, swung left, and re wed again. There was a barrier of burning petrol across the road; a man in priest’s robes and holding a cross leaped for the running board and clung there, screaming Latin, until Basil rapped him fiercely on the knuckles and he dropped off, howling, at the edge of the flame.
They were in it. Through it. In blackness. Geoffrey, blinded after the light, eased to a crawl for fear of going off the road. Arthur passed the torch forward and Basil adjusted its beam to shine twenty feet in front of them. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. They were away.
A couple of miles on they stopped and listened for pursuit. Geoffrey kept the engine idling while the brothers fixed the main acetylene lamps. Then they drove on through the darkness, looking for a glade to hide in for the rest of the night. The road was awful.
V NORTH
THERE was a breakfasty smell when Geoffrey woke, cramped on the back seat. Arthur had built a small wood fire and was frying bacon.
“I wasn’t certain as how I could get the Primus going/’ he said uneasily. “We’d better be starting on the old ram afore we can't tell one end of a spanner from t’other/’
Sally was mooning around in the long grasses of the clearing, not looking at the Rolls. When they sat down on groundsheets for breakfast she made sure she had her back to it.
“Are you really going to be all right, Bas?” said Geoffrey.
“I reckon so. We got some oldish things on, and we are sailors. We can say we’re going looking for work at Buckler’s Hard. On’y thing is, do we look right? They don’t all wear beards, do they, Sal?”
“No. It’s just that they don’t like shaving. It hurts. But the fussy ones go to the barber’s to be shaved once a week.”
The brothers sat around when they’d finished eating, as if they didn’t want to start work. Geoffrey noticed Basil glancing sulkily at the car, and looking away again. In the end he had to say “Come on,” and go and try to drag the ram round by himself. It was heavy and awkward, a pointed prow of cross-braced girders which kept poking sharp corners in under the mat of fallen grass and sticking. After he’d lugged it a few feet, Arthur came and helped. Between them they carried it round to the front of the Rolls, where Arthur tried to line it up back to front. “Are you feeling all right, Arthur?” said Geoffrey. “I dunno. I’m fine in myself, I suppose, but I don’t feel certain of anything no more. Here, catch ahold of this, Bas, and help me hold it up for Jeff to buckle on. He can’t do it hisself, not possibly.”
Basil came across, muttering, and helped his brother lift the contraption and hold it in place while Geoffrey clamped it on to the dumb irons in front of the car and then lay under the machine to fasten the long arms that ran back from it to the chassis. It took much longer than it should have, because the brothers were so awkward, Arthur giggling a little at his clumsiness, Basil sullen and ashamed. When he’d finished he went round to the front and looked at the result. Arthur came and stood beside him, hands on hips.
“Do you think it will really do the trick, Arthur?” “Should do. Leastways we worked it out pretty careful in France. But I wouldn’t be knowing now. Not beautiful, is she?”
Geoffrey wasn’t sure whether he was referring to the ram alone, or (now that the effect of England was clearly beginning to work on him), to the car itself. The ram was certainly ugly, crude in its red-lead paint, brutal, jutting out three foot in front of the proud radiator like a deadly cowcatcher. They’d feel pretty silly if they turned out not to need it at all, Geoffrey thought, as he primed the cylinders and pumped pressure into the tank.
“D’you feel like helping me with the tires?” he said.
“Not really, to speak honest, Jeff. You can manage ’em by yourself, surely.”
“I expect so. I’ll have to take her out on to the road so that the jack doesn’t sink, and perhaps you and Basil could keep a lookout for me. . . . What is it, Sal?”
She came running from the end of the glade. “There’s something enormous in the woods, Jeff. I can hear it crashing about. Do you think it’s a dragon?”
Geoffrey laughed. “Most likely a pony/’ he said. But neither Arthur nor Basil looked amused.
“Best get everyone into the car,” said Arthur. “Think you can start her by yourself, Jeff?”
They could all hear the crashing now. It sounded like a tank blundering about in the undergrowth. Then the noise changed, as the thing began to charge straight towards them, ignoring thicket and brake. Geoffrey swung the engine and ran round to the driver’s seat. They all waited, looking sideways towards the noise, where the mid-morning sunlight stood in shafts of warmth against the darkness under the oaks. A bush convulsed and opened, and in a patch of light stood a prodigious boar, tusked, hairy, slavering, not twenty yards away. It shook itself and swung its low-held head from side to side, inspecting the glade. Its tiny red eyes seemed to blaze as it spotted the car, and it grunted as though that was what it had come for. At once it was careering towards them, a wild, fierce missile of hard muscle and harder bone. Geoffrey let the clutch in with a bang. The wheels spun on the grass, then gripped, and they were moving, accelerating, out over the layer of leaves the brothers had spread to camouflage their tracks, into second, third, doing fifty over the potholes, away.