Ivy Tree (41 page)

Con had swung the car slightly left-handed as it stopped, and he left the headlights on. They lit the scene with hard clarity; the huge clouded mass of the tree, its leaves glittering and dripping with the rain, among which the scattered masonry showed white: the raw new gash of the split trunk, where the black trail of the lightning could be clearly seen; and, sticking up through the boughs with a sickening kind of irrelevance, those fragments of the building that still stood. The surviving end wall and its chimney were intact, and half the front of the house, as far as the door with the heavy carved lintel, and the date, 1758 . . . We thrust ourselves out of the car, and ran to the black gap of the doorway. In my haste I had only found one torch to bring, but there had been another in the car, and with this Con led the way through the doorway, where the car's headlamps served only to throw deeper shadows. Inside the wrecked walls was a black chaos of smashed masonry and tangled wet boughs and splintered beams. Con hesitated, but Julie pushed past him, one hand up to keep the whipping boughs from her eyes as she thrust through the debris that blocked the hallway.

She called: "Donald! Donald! Are you all right!"

It was Adam who answered her, his voice sounding muffled and strained. It came from somewhere to the left of the hallway and below it. "He's all right. Have you brought help?"

"Con and Annabel. Here. Con, they're down here."

Con had shoved after her, stooping under the barrier of one biggish branch, and was kneeling by what seemed in the torchlight to be a gap in the left-hand wall of the passage. I followed him. This was, I suppose, where the door to the cellars had stood. Now there was merely a hole through the shambles of broken masonry, not quite big enough to admit a man. It gave on darkness. Con flashed the torch into the gap, lightning the flight of cellar steps. Twelve steps led steeply downwards, looking undisturbed, and solid enough; at the bottom was a short length of stone-flagged passage which must have led to the cellar door. Now, the doorway had disappeared. Where it had been, was a pile of stones and rubble where the ceiling and one wall had collapsed, taking with them the splintered wreckage of the doorposts. But the crossbeam still held. It had fallen when the uprights collapsed, and was wedged now at an angle, within a foot or so of the floor, roofing a narrow, triangular gap of darkness which was the only way through to the cellar beyond. Above the beam pressed the weight of the broken wall, and the broken building above, all thrust down in their turn by the pressure of the fallen boughs. Stones were still falling here and there: I heard the patter of loose stuff somewhere; the other passage-wall showed a frightening bulge; and there was fresh dust dancing in the torchlight.

Adam was lying right underneath the beam, face downwards. His feet were towards us, and the top half of his body was out of sight. I recognised the faded brown corduroys, his working-garb, now thick with dust. For one sickening moment I thought that the great beam had fallen clean across his back, then I saw there was a gap of perhaps four inches between it and his body. He must have been somewhere on the cellar steps when the crash occurred, and he had been trying to creep under the fallen stuff to reach the place where Donald lay.

And, for the moment, the crossbeam held.

"Forrest?" Con's voice was subdued. A shout, it seemed, might bring the whole thing down, irrevocably in ruins. Even as he spoke, there was the slithering sound of something settling, and the whisper of dust chuting on to the steps below us. Somewhere, some timber creaked. I think it was only a broken bough of the ivy tree, but it lifted the hair along my arms. "Forrest?" called Con softly. "Are you all right?"

"I'm all right." Adam spoke breathlessly; it was as if he was making some violent effort, like holding up the beam with his own body; but he didn't move. "Seton's inside here; there's another pile of the—stuff—just in here, past the beam, and I can't—get any purchase—to move it. He'll be safe enough . . . it's a groined ceiling, it won't come down in there, and he's lying clear of this ... I can just reach him if I lie flat, but I can't get—any further—and we'll not get him out till this stuff's moved. How long will the doctor be?"

"We couldn't get him. The lines are down."

"Dear God. Didn't Julie say—?"

"Look, if Seton's not badly hurt, you'll simply have to leave him, and come out, for the time being." Con had propped his torch where it could light the gap, and was already, gingerly, beginning to widen this. "You say the roof's safe over him; if you come back, we could probably shift enough stuff between us to get clear through to him. In any case, first things first, if this place isn't shored up pretty damn quick, I wouldn't give twopence for your own chances. That stuff's settling while you wait." I heard Julie take in her breath. Adam said painfully: "My dear man, you'll have to prop it round me as best you can, and take the chance. Otherwise it's a certainty. I can't leave him. He's torn an artery." Beside me, Julie gave a little gasp like a moan. I said: "Julie! Get a way cleared back to the car, and fetch the props. Pass them to me under that bough."

"Yes," she said, "yes," and began, with savage but barely effectual hands, to push and break a way back through the tangle to the doorway.

"I've got a tourniquet on, of a sort." Adam's voice was still muffled, so that I hoped Julie, working a yard or two away, couldn't hear it. "And it's doing the trick. I don't think he's losing much, now. But it's tricky in the dark, and I can't hold it indefinitely. You'll have to get the doctor straight away. Annabel?" "Yes?"'

"The car's there?" "Yes."

"Will you go? If you can't find Wilson straight away—" Julie had heard, after all. She turned among the wet branches.

"The tree's down across the road, too. We can't take the car, and

it's four miles."

I said : "The telephone at West Lodge, Adam? It's the same line as Whitescar, isn't it?" "I'm afraid so." I was on my feet. "I'll go on foot. It's all right, Julie, once I get to the road I'll get a lift."

"There's never anything along the road at this time of night," said Julie desperately, "you know there isn't!

If you drove the car into the field, couldn't you get it round the tree, and—?"

"No use. We've nothing to cut the wires with, and anyway she'd bog down in a yard. We're wasting time. I'm going. I'll run all the way if I have to."

Con said: "It's more than four miles, it's nearer six. And you might get a lift or you might not. Your best chance is Nether Shields."

"But there's no bridge!" cried Julie.

"No," I said, "but I can drive right up to the footbridge at West Lodge, and then it's barely two miles up to the farm. Yes, that's it, Con." I turned quickly back. "Adam?"

"Yes?"

"Did you hear? I'm going to Nether Shields. Their telephone may be working, and I can get Dr. Wilson from there. If it's not, one of the boys will go for him. I'll send the others straight over here." Julie said, on a sob: "Oh, God, it'll take an hour. Two miles up from West Lodge, and all uphill. You'll kill yourself, and it'll be too late!"

"Nonsense!" I said. "Run and open the gate."

"It's open. Con left it open."

"Not that one. It's quicker if I go by the top track through the Park. If I go down by Whitescar, I've to use the little track up behind the house, and there's three gates on that Hurry, let's go!" But she didn't move. "A horse! That's it!" I was propping my torch where it would help Con. I turned.

"What?"

"A horse! If you took the mare you could go straight across the ford and across the fields, and it's hardly any further than from West Lodge, and you'd be there much quicker I" Con said: "That's an idea," then I saw it hit him. He paused fractionally, with his fingers curled round a lump of sandstone, and I caught his bright sidelong look up at me. He said: "The mare's not shod." Julie cried: "That doesn't matter! What does the mare matter?" I said impatiently: "She'd be lame in half a mile, and I'd get nowhere." Con said: "Take Forrest's colt. He'll let you." Even then, it took me two heartbeats to realise what he was doing. Then I understood. I had been right: none of this touched him. The agonising emergency was nothing more to him than an exciting job. In this moment of terror and imminent death, he was unscathed. By everything that had happened, he was untouched. And I had liked him for it; been grateful for it. Well, he still had to get Adam out.

I said shortly: "It would save no time. I'd have to catch him." Adam's voice came again from beyond the beam. It sounded, now, like the voice of a man at the limits of his control. "Annabel, listen, wait, my dear . . . It's an idea. The colt's in the stable at West Lodge. I brought him in today. Take the car across there ... if he'll face the water . . . only a few minutes to Nether Shields. He'll go, for you, I think . . ."

The gap in the wall was open now. Con laid a stone down, and sat back on his heels. The twin torchbeams held us, Con and myself, in a round pool of limelight, one on either side of the gap. We stared at one another. He was no longer smiling.

I said to Adam, without taking my eyes off Con: "All right I'll manage."

"The second door in the stableyard. You know where the bridles are." "Yes. I know." Adam said: "Take care, my dear. He doesn't like thunder." "I'll be all right." I said it straight to that stare of Con's. "I can manage him. Don't worry about me." "You'll take the horse?" cried Julie.

"Yes. Open the top gate for me. Hold on, Adam, darling." As I went, I saw Con sitting there, back on his heels, staring after me.

The water is rough and wonderful steepe, Follow, my love, come over the strand—

And in my saddle I shall not keepe, And I the fair flower of Northumberland.
 

Ballad: The Fair Flower of Northumberland.

IT was important not to think about the scene I was leaving behind me in the dark lodge; to blot out Donald, his life ebbing slowly behind a wall of debris; Julie, helpless, holding panic on a thin thread; Adam, prone in the dust under that settling mass...

And Con there to help. I mustn't even remember that. I didn't know how that quick brain would work; what he would seize for himself out of this new situation. Con, if it suited Con, would work like a galley-slave, and do miracles; but if it didn't, God alone knew what he would do. But I put it out of my mind, and ran to the waiting car.

It seemed to take an hour to turn her, reversing out between the pillars of the gateway, over mosses made slimy with rain, and liberally strewn with fallen twigs, and fragments of rotten timber, and stray stones scattered from the smashed lodge. I made myself take it slowly, but even so, the wheels spun and slithered crazily among the fallen rubbish, and my hands and arms, shaking now as if with fever, seemed powerless to control the car. I heard the ominous sound of metal scraping stone, then we were free of the driveway, and swinging to face west again, and Julie had run across to open the gate to the upper track. As I passed her, I called out: "Keep your eye open for the doctor's car! He may already be on his way to see Grandfather."

I saw her nod, looking pale as a ghost in the momentary glare of light, and her mouth shaped the one word:

"Hurry!"

I drove my foot down as far as I dared, and tried to remember what I could of the road. It was eight years since I had driven along the upper track to

West Lodge. Two fields first, I remembered, then trees bordering the track, young firs, waist-high, that the forestry people had put in; for even then Adam had been trying all means to make the estate pay its way. It was a shock to run suddenly between black walls of spruce that shut out the lighter night, and towered well above the roof of the car. Time was, and they had grown a foot a year. The headlamps lit a narrow black canyon through which we ran at a fair speed, as the track was paved with pine-needles which had acted as drainage, and the walls of trees had kept off the worst of the storm.

Then a gate, standing open; a long hill curling down between high banks; an avenue, planted in more leisurely days, of great beeches that soared up silver in the lights, then a twisting, up-and-down quarter-mile along the gully cut by .some small stream, where all I could do was hang on grimly to the controls and hope that the track was reasonably well-drained.

It wasn't, and I soon throttled down to a safe and cowardly fifteen miles an hour, which felt slower than walking, and brought the sweat out on my body till my hands slipped on the wheel. Then a gate, shut, hanging a little crookedly across the way.

It was almost a relief to be out of the car, and running to open it. The lever was stiff, jammed by the sagging of the hinges, but I fought it out of its socket at last, and shoved at the heavy gate. This shifted a couple of inches, and stuck. It had sagged into a muddy rut, but that was not what prevented it from opening. As I bent to heave it forcibly wider, I heard the rattle of a chain. A loop of chain, dark with rust, and with a rusty padlock tightly locked, was fastened round gate and gate-post, holding them together. A locked gate: no place to turn the car: the choice facing me of either reversing down that dreadful piece of track till I could turn for the long trail back, and round by Whitescar; or of abandoning the car and running the half-mile between here and West Lodge. Either alternative, unthinkable ... There are times when your body and nerves think for you. Adrenalin, they tell you nowadays. They used to say, 'Needs must, when the devil drives', or even, 'God helps those who help themselves'. I seized the chain and yanked at it, with the fury of desperate need, and it came off in my hands. It had only been a loop, flung loosely over the posts, to hold the gate from sagging further open. I think I-stood for four precious seconds, staring at it in my hands, as if by some miracle I really had snapped its massive links like horsehair. I should have known that Adam wouldn't have let me come this way, if it had been barred. Adam. I dropped the chain into the soaking grass by the gatepost, shoved the heavy gate wide as if it had weighed an ounce, scrambled back into the car, and was through the gate and away before the grasses had stopped shaking.