The Painted Tent (18 page)

He winked at Smiler and drove on. But Smiler, who, in the last year had developed an ear for insincerity, and could see through a deliberate casualness, was not deceived. The police wanted Jimmy Jago. He wondered why. Then he told himself, ‘No business of yours, Samuel M. Forget it.'

After supper he went up to his room and opened his Latin dictionary, but before he began to force himself to study he decided that he would much rather be learning the Romany gypsy language which the Duchess and Jimmy spoke together. No hope of that. Meanwhile there was the Latin waiting and, unless he made a good showing in the next few weeks, he knew the Duchess well enough to realize that he would get no holiday during Laura's visit. Gosh, that would be terrible.

He shut the thought from his mind and began to do the translation Mr Samkin had set him …
Abhinc annos tres … Three years ago
… His mind wandered. ‘Three years ago, Samuel M.,' he told himself, ‘you were thirteen and kicking around the streets of Bristol, pinching milk bottles off doorsteps and comics from shops and not a blind idea in your head of what was going to happen to you or what you wanted to do.' He bit the end of his pen and stared out of the window at the night sky and wondered what he would be doing three years from now and then, on the point of sliding into daydreams, he jerked himself back and, groaning, got down to his Latin again.

At ten o'clock that night Maxie came out of his pine-bough hide. He stretched and did some toe-touching to take the stiffness from him. Then, pack on back, he went through the darkness down to the river. There was hardly a length of the river from this point to the sea where, either on one bank or another, trout and salmon fishermen had not made a pathway to move from one pool or fishing-beat to the next. Maxie drank from the river which had dropped now to almost normal level and was clear of all spate colouring. Maxie moved quietly, a dark shadow following the river. He had twenty miles to go and all the night before him. There were a few high clouds but plenty of starlight to help him, and his eyes rapidly accustomed themselves to the gloom, and memory of past forays along the river served him well. He knew each bridge, each weir, each small road-crossing and he recalled the places where the railway hugged the river and the road the railway. So far as he could he kept on the left bank to avoid both. He rested once, sitting below the steep river-bank to smoke a cigarette and take a few sips from his brandy flask.

Sunrise he knew was somewhere around half-past six. At half-past five he reached Eggesford bridge and crossed the road a hundred yards back from the river, knowing that there would be a man on duty in the high-perched signal box at the level crossing by the station. Ten minutes later he was climbing the hill and reached the Highford House parkland. He knew Highford House and its tower well, though it had been ten years since he had seen them.

He climbed through the empty window which Jimmy Jago had always used to leave the house, picked his way over the rubble and down a broken flight of steps to the old cellars under the house. His feet left prints in the thick dust on the steps. Grinning to himself he took his cap off and reached back and dusted the marks away behind him. It had taken Jimmy six months to pass information to him, principally by leaving notes around the fields and quarries where the prison parties worked, notes that were read and then swallowed at once. Jimmy, when he planned something, was always thorough.

Maxie, now safe from observation below ground, switched on his pencil torch and went along the passage which was littered with broken masonry blocks – some conveniently arranged long ago by Jimmy – so that he could use them as stepping-stones to avoid leaving traces. The passage took a right-angle turn and opened into what had once been a wine vault. Brick-arched bin recesses were cut into three sides of the vault. Maxie flicked his torch along them from left to right and counted. His light stopped on the fifth recess. The floor was covered with some broken planks and the section of an old door. Maxie lifted aside the door section. Underneath was a round manhole.

He raised the hinged manhole lid and shone his torch down a short run of iron ladder-way which led to the main sewer system. He climbed down the ladder and lowered the manhole cover, against which he had leaned the door section. The cover closed and the door section dropped with it and masked it.

At the foot of the ladder there was an open space, shaped liked an inverted bowl, its sides and roof brick-lined. Regularly spaced around it were four entrance and exit tunnels about two feet high which in the years long past had conducted the house drainage and storm water away. The place now was dry and well ventilated by the tunnels that breathed air through broken manholes and ventilation shafts set in the outside walls.

In the domed chamber itself was a nondescript chair and a low canvas safari folding-bed with a pile of blankets and a pillow on it, and there were three boxes stacked against one of the walls close to a niche which held three candlesticks already fitted with new candles.

Maxie crossed to the candlesticks, lit them, and, leaving one in the niche, set the others on the boxes. At the back of the niche a plain white envelope was propped.

As the light from the candles grew stronger from a few minutes' burning, Maxie dropped his haversack on the chair and then took the envelope.

Sitting on the bed he opened the letter. Inside was a large single sheet of paper covered back and front with typescript. At the sight of the typescript Maxie smiled. Jimmy was a careful man. He would never had risked using his own handwriting. Maxie was sure that the typewriter he had used would have long ago been destroyed or sunk in some bog or river. One glance at the typing showed that it had been an old, well-worn machine. He knew, too, that nothing in this chamber could ever be traced to Jimmy. Oh, Jimmy was a loyal man and a careful one and when the fire burned in him trouble for a blood brother meant nothing … they had shared enough in their time.

Maxie sat and read the letter. It was long and full of instructions and cautions. Maxie read it all carefully, and to some paragraphs gave particular attention.

Nobody comes up here much, except the farm blokes and later maybe weekend picnic parties so you must stay fixed until after sunset. Can't say how long things will take once I know you're away from the moor, but will make short as poss and let you know next move which I'm already working on …

… you've got food for over a month, water outside from roof, you'll see. Not likely to have a drought this time of year so no worry …

If anything goes wrong and you have to run for it you must take a chance on you-know-who – and the climate isn't healthy there at the moment but I don't see you being turned away.

When he had finished reading the letter Maxie burnt it, and then set about making himself comfortable. He unpacked the stores from the boxes and sorted them and he blew out two of the candles. He might be a long time here and the light from one was enough for him. He whistled softly to himself as he moved around. The first stage was over. Everything now depended on Jimmy. The thought of having to live in the chamber for weeks and weeks gave him no qualms. After prison life it meant nothing. He would be free to leave it between sunset and sunrise. There were plenty of animals who lived a nocturnal life – now he had joined them.

Just after sunrise the next morning, as Fria was sitting on the tower-top, the tiercel returned. He flew high above her, circling and calling. Fria looked up, bobbed her head and did a little shuffling dance on the tower bricks, but she made no sound. The tiercel stooped and threw up ten feet above her head. As he shot skyward Fria called
kek-kek-kek.
The tiercel swung away down river and passed out of sight. Fria waited immobile on the tower and at ease, as though she knew he would be back, as though she knew that the desire in him to return to his old eyrie was weaker than the blood drive in him to find a mate.

She saw him as he came back, two thousand feet up. She launched herself from the tower and flew easily up to meet him. When she was five hundred feet below him he dropped a bird for her. It was a golden plover. As it passed by her Fria went down after it, caught it, and flew with it to a lower, thick branch of an oak on the edge of the wood, settled, and began to eat it.

The tiercel came down and sat two yards away from her on the outer end of the branch. He watched her eat. When she had finished Fria sat facing the tiercel. They watched one another, still as carved figures, while the Spring morning grew around them. After half an hour the tiercel suddenly wailed, stretched his wings high over his back and then flew off to the ruined house. Fria sat on the oak branch and watched him. He moved about the parapets and ruined roof of the house, exploring the niches and ledges, a restlessness driving him on. Often he was lost to Fria's sight Sometimes he flew half-way back to her, wailed or called softly as though to entice her, and then turned back to the house again. He flew to the tower and worked his way over the leads and then dropped down to the recess ledge and shuffled inside. Fria made no move, but something of his restlessness and excitement was slowly communicated to her, though she gave no outward show of it.

Smiler came up to Highford House after lunch. There was no sign of Fria on the tower-roof. He climbed up to his favourite observation spot on the roof of the ruined house and began to search the surrounding countryside with his field-glasses.

Then, lying on his back and scanning the sky, he found Fria, and with her the tiercel. For a moment he could not believe his eyes and his hands trembled so much that the glasses shook and he lost both birds. Steadying himself by leaning backwards against a parapet stone, he picked them up again and a long sigh of pleasure broke from him as he realized that the thing he had longed for might have happened. ‘Samuel M.,' he told himself, ‘don't be too sure, but … oh, let it be.'

The tiercel was flying high above Fria, but Smiler could see that it had to be a tiercel. It was much smaller than Fria and much faster. Above him both birds had long seen Smiler but were unconcerned with him.

As he watched now. Smiler was treated to one of the rare sights of Nature. The tiercel was giving a courting display of his powers to Fria. He stooped vertically and plunged a thousand feet down to Fria in less than seven seconds, threw up alongside her and soared high again in an angled, elongated figure of eight and rolled out of the bottom of the figure to dive to her again with rapid wing-beats and swing about her in a tight circle. For five minutes the tiercel cut and winged and dived and stooped, knifing his way into and out of figures and manoeuvres with a terrifying mastery of flight. Fria circled on a steady pitch and gave no sign that the aerobatics meant anything to her. But down below Smiler held his breath in an agony of delight at the display, the sound of the tiercel's occasional wailing and calling and the air-hiss of his stoops coming faintly down to him. At the end of the display the tiercel winged up and, as though drawn after him by some irresistible pull, Fria rose too. In a few seconds both birds were gone, lost behind a slow-moving bank of clouds.

Smiler waited for the rest of the afternoon for them to return. He saw no sign of them, but he was not unhappy. He had a strong feeling that they would be back – but even if they did not come back he knew that he would still be happy because Fria with a mate would have found the life which was her true destiny. He climbed down from the roof and went back to the farm with a light step, singing to himself.

Just before sunset the peregrines came back, flying in from the south together and landed on the recess ledge a yard apart to roost for the night.

When darkness was full, and the last of the Sunday traffic on the main road in the valley had thinned to an occasional car, headlights dusting the night with stiff, golden probes, Maxie came out from the house, drank from the water tank and filled a plastic container to take back down to the chamber with him. He stretched his arms and breathed the night air and then moved quietly away towards the shrubberies. Under the pale starlight, from their tower-top, the two peregrines saw him and watched unmoving. They were soon to know him and accept him as part of the night movements and sounds around them, Fria without concern, for she was used to human beings at close quarters, but the tiercel always with a sense of unease for the shape of man to him was the shape of danger.

In his diary that night Smiler wrote an account of the tiercel's coming, and finished:

… and if he stays and they really mate they might make an eyrie on Fria's ledge and I could get to see the young ones. I might even be able to get up inside the tower sometime and see them through the brick gap, though I wouldn't want to do nothing – bother, anything – what would scare them away.

Anyway, I'm glad for Fria she's got a husband. Crikeys! I'll have to find a name for him.

Saw Sandra and that Trevor as I came down the hill tonight. She made some daft remark and rolled her eyes at me – just to annoy Trevor really. Perhaps she'll stop all that nonsense after Laura's been … Laura – hooray, hooray and three cheers.

The April days lengthened and for Smiler – who had now heard from Laura that she was definitely coming at the end of the month – often seemed unreasonably laggard in their passing. He worked hard on the farm and hard too at his studies – particularly Latin – because he was determined to get a week's holiday for Laura's visit.

Spring took the valley in days of boisterous winds and slashing rainstorms, and then changed mood to clear the skies and summon up balmy southerly breezes that made the hedgerows and meadows and woods alive with the spring fever of wild life and the spring thrust of growth. The adders and grass snakes found warm rock slabs on which to sun themselves, and the little green lizards scuttled in the stone rubble of Highford House. Primroses padded the lane-sides, violets and milkmaids made purple and lilac patterns in the fresh green of new grass, and the trees were hazed with leaf, except for the tardy oak. The dippers, kingfishers and the yellow and grey wagtails were nesting along the river, and with each fair rise of water the salmon and sea trout moved upstream. The larches were suddenly decked with the pale glow of new growth, and the voles, shrews and field mice built their nests and burrows and brought off their naked pink litters of shut-eyed young. The early wild daffodils already showed brown seeding-heads, and tulips flamed precociously in cottage gardens.