“It’s not bad,” said Sally, “honestly. It’s just a sort of thin bruise. Crimminy though, this thing’s sharp on the other side.”
At Baydon there was some sort of merrymaking or religious procession or something in the main street (which is all Baydon consists of). Anyway it involved a lot of hand-drawn carts with a ring of candles round the rim of each, very pretty in the dusk-tinged night. The villagers were all in fancy dress, looking like dolls on a souvenir stall, but jumped squawking for safety as Geoffrey, still stupid with rage at a society where grown men felt it was proper to throw deadly tools at his kid sister, clove into the procession. The ram splintered the handcarts. Candles cartwheeled into the shadows. Women shrilled and men bellowed. On the other side of the village they were in blackness, real night, with a lot of stars showing.
“Time to find somewhere to sleep, Sal. See if you can spot a place which looks empty on the map. I don’t mind turning off this road if we have to.”
“Anywhere for the next six or seven miles, I think.” (Sally had Arthur’s pencil torch out.) “After that we come to a sort of plain which seems absolutely crammed with villages, and then we’ve got to turn off and start wiggling, which I’d rather not do in the dark.”
They found a spot, a couple of miles on, where the road dipped over the shoulder of a hill and eased to the right to take the gentler slope. But a still earlier age had preferred to cut the corner, and it was possible to drive down the old track — as old, perhaps, as the Romans — into a natural pull-off. They were only fifteen yards from the road, but hidden by a thorn thicket. Geoffrey left the engine running and scouted off into the dark to make sure he could get out at the far end, if need be. Then, while Sally rummaged for a cold supper and the engine clicked as it cooled, he unrolled a ball of twine and rigged a kind of trip wire all round the car. They sat, backs to the warm radiator, in the balmy dark and ate garlic sausage, processed cheese, bread and tomatoes, and drank the last of the Coca-Cola.
“You aren't frightened of this car, Sal?"
“No. Not any longer. Really it’s more like an animal — a super charger for rescuing princesses with. We’ve been frightfully lucky so far, haven’t we, Jeff?”
“I suppose so. That was a nasty bit when we found the wagon across the road, and I suppose the other man could have hit you with the sharp side of his sickle.” (He’d found it on the floor of the car, and it really had been sharp, honed like a carving knife.) “And other places too, honestly. I was scaredest at that first toll bridge, because it was something we’d planned for and didn’t seem to be working. But we’ve got to be lucky, Sal, so there’s no point in thinking about it.”
“You’re all like that. Boys and men, I mean. If there’s no point in thinking about something, you don’t. Are we going to sleep on the grass or in the car?”
“In the car. We aren’t really far enough from
Baydon for comfort. I’ll prime the cylinders and put a bit of pressure in the tank, just in case we have to be off in a hurry. I wonder whether it’s worth making a hill fog. It wouldn’t be difficult tonight.”
“Funny how you know about that when you can’t remember anything else.”
“I don’t have to remember it. I just know.” “Anyway, don’t let’s have a fog. It would be a pity to spoil the stars.”
It would too. It was a night when it was easy to believe in astrology. He tucked Sally into the back seat, filled the tank with petrol, put a quart of oil into the engine, looked into the radiator and realized they ought to stop for water at the first stream they came to, primed the cylinders, pumped the tank, tied the loose end of his trip string round his thumb and attempted to find a comfortable position across the front seats. He tried several positions, but really he was too long for the width of the car — it was as if a grown man was lying down in a child’s cot. In the end he lay on his back, knees up, and started to count the ecstatic stars.
He was woken by Sally pinching his ear. It was still dark.
“Don’t do that. Go back to sleep at once. Did you have a bad dream?”
“Sh. Listen.”
League upon league the fields and woods lay round them, silent in an enchantment of dark. No, not quite silent. Somewhere to the south there was a faint but continuous noise, a rising and falling hoot, or howl, very eerie.
“What’s that?”
“Hounds. Hunting. I’ve heard them before.”
His mind flickered for an instant to the dog that had bayed on the banks of Beaulieu estuary, but whose cry had gone unanswered.
“What on earth are they hunting at this time of night?”
“Us.”
Yes, possibly. The village of Baydon might have come swarming after them, like a hive of pestered bees. More likely the man with hawk had sent a messenger to Hungerford and got a thorough pursuit organized. If he was important enough he could have commandeered fresh horses, fresh hounds even, all the way up. It wasn’t all that distance.
“How far away are they? What time is it?”
Sally looked at the stars for a moment.
“Between three and four. I don’t think they’re as far off as they sound.”
She was right. The hound cry modulated to a recognizable baying, only just up the road, a noise whose hysterical yelping note told that the dogs had scented their presence and not just their trail. The best bet was to start on the magneto: he switched on and flicked the advance and retard lever up and down. Too fast. He took it more slowly and the engine hummed alive. As he moved off there was a sudden biting pain in his right thumb. The damn string. He declutched and tugged. No go. He leant over and tried to bite the taut cord free, but achieved nothing more than saliva-covered string, as strong as ever. Suddenly the cord gave and something bonked into the bodywork beside his head — Sally had slashed the cord through with the sickle. The hounds sounded as if they were almost on them as Geoffrey eased the car over the loose rubble of the old road, jerked up on to the newer tarmac and accelerated downhill. The white dust of the road (limestone here) made the way easy to see under a large moon. They whined down the incline and curved into a long straight, overhung with beeches on the left and with a bare, brute hill shouldering out the stars on the other side. The surface was almost unpocked, and Geoffrey did fifty for six miles on end.
“Jeff! Jeff! You must slow down. I can’t read the map in the dark at this speed. We’ve got to turn off somewhere along here and there’s a stream just before. It may be another gate. No, it wasn’t — that must have been it. Now we turn right in half a mile and then left almost at once, and then — oh, I see, you've only done that to get round Stratton St. Margaret. It’s awfully wiggly. Couldn’t we go straight through at this time of night?”
They did, the exhaust calling throatily off the brick walls down the long street. Half the roofs showed starlight through them.