Working Wonders (32 page)

‘Can I jump up?’

‘Be my guest.’ And Rafe held up the lamps.

Inside, the trams felt brand-new. Gwyneth sat on one of the red leather seats and felt a broad grin crossing her face.

‘They’re … it’s …’

‘You like?’

‘Can they go?’

‘Sure,’ said Rafe. ‘Get the lines back up and running for a few thousand quid, have a tricky conversation with the road department, and Bob’s your uncle.’

Gwyneth ran up to the open-topped roof. ‘I LOVE them!’

Rafe grinned back at her. ‘They’re just finished. I bought them off some geezer. I thought they might work for us.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Gwyneth. ‘I’m sure they will. I want a shot in this one right now.’

‘Not possible, I’m afraid,’ said Rafe, looking at his watch. ‘We need to get on the road.’

Gwyneth leaned over the top railing, looking down on him. ‘Oh. Oh, yeah.’

‘You are coming, aren’t you?’

She closed her eyes for a second. ‘Yes,’ she said.

They looked at each other. Gwyneth rubbed the barrier under her hands. They were both thinking of how much of a hope they were going to have out there.

‘It’ll be fine,’ she ventured.

‘I know!’ said Rafe. ‘Come on, then. If we’re too late, they’ll sneer.’

‘The office runs on sneer,’ said Gwyneth. ‘It’ll help. Look.’ She indicated a wing mirror. ‘That mirror’s cracked,’ she said.

‘Can’t finish everything,’ said Rafe. ‘And we have to go.’

What is fate, anyway? wondered Gwyneth, following him out.

‘Are we there?’ said Sven as the Landrover slowed from a crawl to a waddle.

‘No,’ said Arthur. ‘The fact that this is the sole point of light in the last seventy miles is a mere coincidence.’

‘Alright, alright,’ said Sven, rubbing his dog’s ears. ‘No need to get grumpy just because we’re stuck in the pissing rain in the middle of nowhere and we’re three hours late for a competition we probably can’t win.’

Arthur closed his eyes tight in exhaustion, but opened them again and parked next to the low bothy-style wooden building.

‘This is the place,’ he said. ‘Now, get your stuff and march in, and at least
try
and look cheerful.’

‘We’ll follow your lead, then,’ said Marcus.

Arthur stretched his neck and cricked it. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. Then he pasted a huge smile on his face. ‘Come on, everyone! This is going to be the most fun of our lives!’

The bothy was tiny and looked completely functional – like a wigwam made out of wood. The darkness was the type that’s never seen in the city; as soon as the car’s headlights were turned off, the world receded into complete blackness, barring a solitary oil lamp. One had the sense of hills, of infinite blackness somewhere out there, and no sense at all that there was civilization remaining somewhere far, far behind them.

Arthur pushed open the wooden door cautiously. He could hear voices. As they entered the room, the voices stilled and all heads turned round.

The room was as unprepossessing inside as one might have guessed from the outside. Straw had been strewn on the floor, and round the top of the teepee shape was a platform that could presumably be used for sleeping on. The sweet smell of the wood and the straw mixed uncomfortably with the scent of generations of smelly hiker. Cheeringly, however, a fire burned brightly in the grate.

‘Oh, how kind of you to join us!’ said Ross. He was dressed in all-new Alpine outdoor gear in purple, black and green, with brand-new boots and rucksack. He looked a dick.

‘Good evening, Dick,’ said Arthur. ‘I mean, Ross.’

‘Good evening,’ said another voice. D’Aragon. He was dressed in an understated grey fleece. Hard, thought Arthur, to make fleece menacing, but he’d somehow mastered it.

‘This is your team?’ he asked, with a hint of disbelief as the others slunk in. Cathy was wearing several brightly coloured mohair sweaters, one on top of another.

‘I only count four of you. The notes specify five. I’m afraid the dog cannot be accepted as a team member.’

‘He’s got more brains than most of them,’ said Ross. ‘You should let him in.’

Sandwiches tried to growl menacingly, but let himself down by trying to eat some straw at the same time.

‘No,’ said Arthur. ‘One of our team-mates has been delayed. He’ll be with us shortly.’

He fervently hoped this was true.

D’Aragon blinked. ‘Very well. But I shall have to outline the rules now, and you will be responsible for making sure he understands later.’

Sven and Marcus struggled to see who could be the first to programme the right recording facility on their palm pilots.

‘Okay,’ said Arthur.

D’Aragon unfolded a huge Ordnance Survey map.

‘As you should already recognize, this is a map of our surrounding area.’

Arthur’s team leaned over and nodded knowledgeably, as if it meant something to any of them.

‘Here is the bothy.’ The bothy looked very very small in the vast undulations of the Welsh mountainside. He indicated two crosses equidistant – and both far – from the building. ‘These are going to be your camps. You will be making your way to them at first light tomorrow morning.’

Arthur thought about it. That was about five thirty. It was after midnight now.

‘There are several things hidden you have to pick up on the way – there are clues to what these things might be and where you might find them in these envelopes here.’ He handed huge cardboard folders to Ross and Arthur. ‘Once – and only once – you have everything, you, Maudrin, are setting up camp
here
and Pendleton, you’re over here. Both settlements are in sight of this point here.’ He pointed to a small sign on the top of a hill. Arthur craned in to see. ‘That is the castle. The following morning you will fight your way in there with the paint guns you’ll find at your campsites and rescue the treasure from within. Then,’ he stood back, ‘then it will be over.’

There was a silence.

‘Not that I mind,’ said Arthur, ‘but did you say, “guns”’?

‘Paintball! Yes!’ said Ross.

‘Uh huh,’ said Arthur. ‘It’s a shame they didn’t throw in ten pin bowling and an Imax cinema, then you could have had the full out of town leisure complex experience.’

‘What!?’ said Ross, his face lighting up. ‘You mean you’ve never done it?’

‘Yeah, nor paintball neither,’ said Dave, sniggering to himself. It was obvious that their team could not contain their glee.

Sven turned puce.

‘Oh, God,’ said Cathy. ‘This is just
awful
.’

D’Aragon fixed them with a look. ‘And if any team wishes to withdraw at this point, thus forfeiting …’

‘No!’ said Arthur. ‘We’ll be fine.’

‘Very well, then. I suggest you get some sleep. You have a busy couple of days. Remember: five people per team. Oh, and if you were thinking of getting help, your mobiles won’t work up here.’

And with that he left the room and was gone. Arthur listened for a car, but didn’t hear one. And then, by the time he’d turned round, he realized that Ross’s team had already colonized the sleeping platform that ran, warm and dry, entirely around the upper area of the bothy.

‘Goodnight you lot!’ giggled one particularly obnoxious older woman from her sleeping bag.

They looked at each other.

‘No way,’ said Sven. He lifted Sandwiches up in the air. Sandwiches immediately ran to the nearest sleeping bag and made to cock his leg. The man let out a yelp.

‘Get this beast away from me immediately.’

‘Sorry!’ said Sven innocently. ‘Unfortunately, due to a medical condition, Sandwiches always has to pee up high.’

Sandwiches grimaced, trying to look as though he was about to do an enormous crap.

‘Get that filthy dog down at once,’ said Ross.

‘You’re more than welcome to try and hold onto him mid-crap if you like,’ said Sven. ‘I’m not.’

There was a moment of flurry, which Sven watched very carefully in case anyone laid a finger on his dog, in which case they would have to die and the team competition would be over as soon as it began, until, grudgingly, the man slipped down the ladder.

‘Okay,’ said Arthur. ‘Why don’t we say that the women get to sleep up there and the menfolks sleep down here?’

‘Normally I would say that was sexist,’ said Naimh, the nasty-looking woman on Ross’s team, ‘but tonight I’m very grateful.’

‘I’m not trying to be sexist,’ said Arthur. ‘I’m trying to share without blood being spilled.’

‘That’ll do for me,’ said Cathy, hopping up the steps.

‘But what about that dog?’ said Naimh.

‘Hup!’ said Sven, and Sandwiches gracefully launched himself over the platform and into Sven’s arms. ‘I’ll just take him outside …’

Ross swore briefly, but unrolled his sleeping bag on the ground, right next to the fire. ‘I think I’ll save our fights for the next couple of days, eh team?’ he shouted.

‘Yay!’ they shouted.

Marcus looked at Arthur. ‘Have we got anything for dinner?’

Arthur had already thought of this, with growing alarm at his abilities to lead a patrol out in the mountains. ‘No!

‘Right,’ said Marcus. ‘Well, I’m sure we were doing the right thing, passing that pub and not going in.’

Arthur lay down on the hard ground, thinking about sleep, but knowing for a fact he wasn’t going to get any.

The wind was getting up. Gwyneth huddled down in the bucket seat of Rafe’s car as they sped along an almost deserted motorway, hopefully in the right direction.

‘Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea,’ she said. ‘There isn’t going to be a lovely country hotel at the end of this, is there?’

‘Nope,’ said Rafe, ‘And I wouldn’t hold your breath for pizza delivery, either.’

Gwyneth stared out of the window. Where was Arthur? What was he thinking?

The elements weren’t on their side as they drew deeper and deeper into Wales. The rain was now driving against the window and visibility was extremely poor. Rafe was pushed forward in his seat, struggling to make out the number of the road ahead.

‘I thought you were Welsh,’ he said to Gwyneth, who was poring over the map.

‘And that means I should have memorized all the roads, does it?’

It was now after two o’clock in the morning; they had been lost six times, and they were finding it very hard going.

‘Look, we’ll just … I mean, either we can stop …’

‘And sleep by the side of the road? Isn’t that how you get yourself murdered? Haven’t you ever heard any urban myths?’

‘I’m sure we could find a hotel.’

‘You’ve never been to rural Wales late at night, have you?’

‘Hmm. Anyway,’ said Rafe, ‘we don’t know what time they’re setting off in the morning. We might miss them altogether.’

‘And
then
we could find a hotel, having tried our best!’ said Gwyneth. ‘Ooh, we could go to Portmeirion.’

Rafe shot her a look and they continued onwards into the night.

Marcus found himself contorted into an unlikely angle, freezing cold and desperate for the toilet, on cold stone ground in the pitch darkness. At first he had no idea where he might be, or why. It didn’t feel like the kind of place he’d choose to wake up.

‘Get up!’ a voice was screeching. There was groaning and cursing coming from all around him. Perhaps, he mused, he’d died in the night and awoken in the pits of hell. Blinking, he attempted to sit up without removing his arms from his sleeping bag. In the dim light, in various degrees of disarray, the men of his team and Ross’s were sprawled all over the floor. The fire had long gone out, and the straw had proved to be pretty much decorative.

‘Get ready!’ screamed the voice again. Marcus blinked up at the door. There stood a man who appeared to fill the doorway. Next to him was d’Aragon, again looking natty, this time in a slate-coloured anorak.

‘This is your unit commander,’ said d’Aragon. ‘You can call him Sergeant. You do as he says at ALL times. This course may be tough, but we don’t want anybody dead. Well, not literally.’ His mouth curled in a faint smile.

‘Out to the stream and get ready!’ screamed the man again. The men immediately made a burst for the door.

Outside made inside feel like a sauna. It was shockingly cold; it penetrated to their very marrows. It was dark still, with the stars freezing in the sky above them, and one faint line of grey at the edge of the hills to the east.

‘Hey,’ said Arthur, as they both ran round the side of the gate to have a slash. ‘Bet you didn’t think things could get this great when you went to accountancy school, huh?’

Marcus didn’t answer, as they both concentrated on emptying their bladders without snapping off their penises in the cold.

‘I’m worried about food,’ he said eventually, as they knelt by the stream and threw water over their faces, wincing.

‘Yes,’ said Arthur. ‘I think I’ll go through the Landrover, see if any other intrepid explorers have left some muesli or something behind.’