Vintage Stuff (13 page)

So the morning passed with Glodstone snoring in his sleeping bag and Peregrine eyeing the
world for lethal opportunities. The afternoon was left to Glodstone. Leaning on the gate and
sucking his pipe, he planned his campaign. Once the base was found, they would need enough
supplies of food to keep them off the roads and away from towns for several weeks if necessary.
He took out a notebook and made a list, and then, deciding that their purchases should be made as
far from the Château as possible, he woke Peregrine and they drove on to the next town. By the
time they left it the back of the Bentley was filled with tinned food, bottles of Evian water, a
comprehensive first-aid kit and a quite extraordinarily long strand of nylon rope.

'And now that we are well prepared,' said Glodstone, stopping to study the map again, 'we'll
make a detour so far to the south that no one will suspect our destination. If anyone should ask,
we're on a mountaineering holiday in the Pyrenees.'

'With all these torches and candles I'd have thought potholing would be more likely,' said
Peregrine.

'Yes, we'd better get them out of sight. What else? We'll need a good supply of petrol to see
us there and out again without using local garages. And that requires two jerrycans as a
reserve.'

That night, they took the road again but this time their route was further east and through
wider and more barren country than any they had seen before. By four in the morning Glodstone was
satisfied they had come sufficiently far to turn towards the Château again without risk.

'They'll be watching the north-south roads,' he said, 'but we are coming from the east and
besides, the Floriac road is off the beaten.

It was. As the sun rose behind them, they breasted a hill and looked down into a shallow
wooded valley beyond which a panoply of oaks and ancient beeches rose to a crested range before
falling again. Glodstone brought the Bentley to a halt and took out the binoculars. But there
were no signs of life on the road below them and no habitation of any sort to be detected among
the trees.

'Well, now we have our route in and out secure and if I'm not mistaken, there's a track down
there that might prove useful.' He let in the clutch and the Bentley slipped forward almost
silently. When they came to the junction, Glodstone stopped. 'Go and take a look at that track,'
he said, 'see if it's been used lately and how far it leads into the woods. By my reckoning it
points towards the Château Carmagnac.'

Peregrine got down, crossed the road and moved through the trees with a silent expertise he
had learnt from Major Fetherington on the Survival Course in Wales. He returned with the news
that the track was almost overgrown with grass and ended in a clearing.

'There's an old sawmill there but it's all tumbled down and no one has been down there for
ages.'

'How can you tell?' asked Glodstone.

'Well if they have, they didn't use a car,' said Peregrine. 'There are two trees down across
the path and they'd have had to move them to get past. It's not difficult because they're not
heavy but I'd swear they had been like that for a couple of years.'

'Splendid. And what about turning-room?'

'Plenty up by the sawmill. There's an old lorry rusting outside the place and you can put the
Bentley in a shed behind it.'

'It sounds as though it will do for the moment,' said Glodstone and presently the Bentley was
stealing up the track. As Peregrine had said, it was overgrown with tall grass and the two fallen
trees were light enough to move aside and then replace. By the time they reached the disused
sawmill, Glodstone was convinced. An atmosphere of long disuse hung over the crumbling buildings
and rusty machinery.

'Now that we're here, we'll use the track as seldom as possible and for the rest we'll move on
foot. That's where we'll score. The sort of swine we're up against aren't likely to be used to
fieldcraft and they don't like to leave their cars. Anyway, we came here unobserved and for the
moment they'll be occupied watching the roads for a Bentley. I'd say they'll do that for two days
and then they'll start to think again. By that time we'll have proved the ground and be ready to
take action. What that action will be I don't know, but by nightfall I want to be in a position
to observe the Château.'

While Peregrine unloaded the stores from the Bentley and put them in neat piles in what had
evidently been the manager's office, Glodstone searched the other buildings and satisfied himself
that the place was as deserted as it seemed. But there was nothing to indicate that the sawmill
had been visited since it had closed down. Even the windows of the office were unbroken and a
calendar hanging on the wall and portraying a presumably long-dead kitten and a bowl of faded
flowers was dated August 1949.

'Which suggests,' said Glodstone, 'that not even the locals come here.'

Best of all was the large shed behind the ancient lorry. Its corrugated iron doors were rusted
on their hinges but by prising them apart it was possible to berth the Bentley under cover and
when the doors had been shut there was nothing to show that the place was inhabited again.

'All the same, one of us had better sleep beside the car,' said Glodstone, 'and from now on,
we'll carry arms. I doubt if we'll be disturbed but we're in the enemy's country and it's foolish
to be unprepared.'

On that sober note he took his sleeping bag through to the office while Peregrine settled down
beside the Bentley with his revolver gleaming comfortingly in a shaft of sunlight that came
through a slit in the door.

It was mid-afternoon before Glodstone was prepared to leave for the Château.

'We've got to be ready for every eventuality and that means leaving nothing to chance,' he
said, 'and if for any reason we're forced to separate, we must each carry enough iron rations to
last us a week.'

'I can see why they're called iron rations,' said Peregrine as Glodstone stuffed another five
cans of corned beef into his rucksack. Glodstone ignored the remark. It was only when he had
finished and was trying to lift his own rucksack that its relevance struck him at all forcefully.
By then each sack contained ten cans of assorted food, a flashlight with two sets of spare
batteries, extra socks and shirts, a Calor-gas stove, ammunition for the revolvers, a Swiss army
knife with gadgets for getting stones out of horses' hooves and, more usefully, opening bottles.
On the outside was a sleeping bag and groundsheet beneath which hung a billycan, a water bottle,
a compass and a map of the area in a plastic cover. Even the pockets were jammed with emergency
supplies: in Peregrine's case four bars of chocolate, while Glodstone had a bottle of brandy and
several tins of pipe tobacco.

'I think that's everything,' he said before remembering the Bentley. He disappeared into the
garage and came out ten minutes later with the sparking plugs.

'That should ensure nobody steals her. Not that she's likely to be found but we can't take
risks.'

'I'm not sure we can take all this lot,' said Peregrine who had only just managed to get his
rucksack onto his back and was further burdened by a long coil of nylon rope round his waist.

'Nonsense. We may be in the field for some time and there's no use shirking,' said Glodstone
and immediately regretted it. His rucksack was incredibly heavy and it was only by heaving it
onto a rusting oil drum that he was able to hoist the damned thing onto his back. Even then he
could hardly walk, but tottered forward involuntarily propelled by its weight and by the
knowledge that he mustn't be the first to shirk. Half an hour later he was thinking differently
and had twice stopped, ostensibly to take a compass bearing and consult the map. 'I'd say we are
about fifteen miles to the south-east,' he said miserably. 'At this rate we'll be lucky to be
there before dark.'

But Peregrine took a more optimistic line. 'I can always scout ahead for an easier route. I
mean fifteen miles isn't really far.'

Glodstone kept his thoughts to himself. In his opinion fifteen miles carrying over half a
hundredweight of assorted necessities across this diabolically wooded and hilly country was the
equivalent of fifty on the flat, and their failure to find any sort of path, while reassuring in
one way, was damnably awkward in another. And Peregrine's evident fitness and the ease with which
he climbed steep banks and threaded his way through the forest did nothing to help. Glodstone
struggled on, puffing and panting, was scratched and buffeted by branches of trees and several
times had to be helped to his feet. To make matters worse, as the leader of the expedition he
felt unable to complain, and only by staying in front could he at least ensure that Peregrine
didn't set the pace. Even that advantage had its drawbacks in the shape of Peregrine's
revolver.

'Put that bloody thing away,' Glodstone snapped when he fell for the second time. 'All I need
now is to be shot in the back.'

'But I'm only holding it in case we're ambushed. I mean, you said we've got to be prepared for
anything.

'I daresay I did but since no one knows we're here and there isn't a semblance of a path, I
think we can safely assume that we aren't going to be waylaid,' said Glodstone and struggled to
his feet. Twenty minutes and four hundred yards of wooded hillside later, they had reached the
top of a ridge and were confronted by a dry and rocky plateau.

'The Causse de Boosat,' said Glodstone again taking the opportunity to consult the map and sit
on a boulder. 'Now if anyone does see us we've got to pretend we're hikers on a walking tour and
we're heading for Frisson.'

'But Frisson is over there,' said Peregrine, pointing to the south.

'I know it is but we'll make out we've lost the way.'

'Bit odd, considering we've got maps and compasses,' said Peregrine. 'Still if you say
so.'

'I do,' said Glodstone grimly and heaved himself to his feet. For the next hour they trudged
across the stony plateau and Glodstone became increasingly irritable. It was extremely hot and
his feet were beginning to hurt. All the same, he forced himself to keep going and it was only
when they came to a dry gully with steep sides that he decided to revise his tactics.

'No good trying to reach the Château tonight,' he said, 'and in any case this looks like a
suitable site for a cache of foodstuffs. We'll leave half the tins here. We can always comes back
for them later on if we need them.' And unhitching his rucksack he slumped it to the ground and
began to undo his bootlaces.

'I shouldn't do that,' said Peregrine.

'Why not?'

'Major Fetherington says you only make your feet swell if you take your boots off on a route
march.'

'Does he?' said Glodstone, who was beginning to resent Major Fetherington's constant intrusion
even by proxy. 'Well, it so happens all I'm doing is pulling my socks up. They've wrinkled inside
the boots and the last thing I want is to get blisters.' For all that, he didn't take his boots
off. Instead he unstrapped the sleeping-bag, undid his rucksack and took out six tins. 'Right,
now we'll dig a hole and bury the emergency supplies here.'

While Peregrine quarried a cache in the side of the gully, Glodstone lit his, pipe and checked
the map again. By his reckoning they had covered only six miles and had another nine to go. And
nine more miles across this confoundedly stony ground in one day would leave him a cripple.

'We'll go on for another hour or two,' he said when Peregrine had finished stowing the tins in
the hole and covered them with soil. 'Tomorrow morning we'll make an early start and be in a good
position to spy out the land round the Château before anyone's up and about.'

For two hours they tramped on across the causse, encountering nothing more threatening than a
few scrawny sheep, one of which Peregrine offered to shoot.

'It would save using any of the tins and I don't suppose anyone would miss just one sheep,' he
said. 'The Major's always telling us to live off the land.'

'He wouldn't tell you to go around blasting away at sheep if he were with us now,' said
Glodstone. 'The shot would be heard miles away.'

'I could always slit its throat,' said Peregrine, 'nobody would hear anything then.'

'Except a screaming bloody sheep,' said Glodstone, 'and anyway it's out of the question. We'd
still have to cook it and the smoke would be spotted.'

But Peregrine wasn't convinced. 'We could roast bits of it over the Calor-gas stoves and that
way '

'Listen,' said Glodstone, 'we've come here to rescue the Countess, not to butcher sheep. So
let's not waste time arguing about it.'

Finally they found a hollow with several thorn trees and bushes in it and Glodstone called a
halt. 'We can't be more than three miles from the river and from there we'll be able to view the
Château,' he said as they unrolled their sleeping-bags and put a billycan of water on a stove.
Above them, the evening sky was darkening and a few stars were visible. They ate some sardines
and baked beans and made coffee, and Glodstone, having added some brandy to his, began to feel
better.

'Nothing like the open-air life,' he said, as he climbed into his sleeping bag and put his
dentures in the empty coffee-cup.

'Hadn't one of us better stay on guard?' asked Peregrine, 'I mean we don't want to be taken
unawares.'

Glodstone groped for his false teeth. 'In the first place, no one knows we're here,' he said
when he'd managed to find them and get them back in his mouth, 'and in the second, we've come the
devil of a long way today and we're going to need all our strength when we reach the
Château.'

'Oh, I don't know. We've only come about twelve miles and that's not all that far. I don't
mind taking the first watch and I can wake you at midnight.'

'I shouldn't if I were you,' said Glodstone, and put his teeth back into the mug. He lay down
and tried to make himself comfortable. It wasn't easy. The ground in the hollow was uneven and he
had to sit up again to dislodge several stones that had wedged themselves under his sleeping-bag.
Even then he was unable to get to sleep but lay there conscious that his hip seemed to be resting
on a small mound. He shifted sideways and finally got it settled but only at the expense of his
right shoulder. He turned over and found his left shoulder on a stone. Once more he sat up and
pushed the thing away, upsetting the coffee mug in the process.