Annerton Pit Page 8

  It was like that now. He was holding his cane in his right hand and his shoes in his left and inching forward across the last stretch of the caravan floor. He’d gone quite confidently at first, but now, in the part beyond where he’d reached during Dave’s demonstration, he was suddenly conscious that every fresh inch was taken on the basis of pure guesswork. It was only a guess that Dave had been kidding about the bomb. His sums were mostly guesses too—the water tank might run right back across the axle, and the axle mightn’t be dead in the middle of the caravan, and the wind …

  Each gust made the caravan quiver. Each quiver was like the tremble that would come when the whole thing began to tilt. He slid his foot forward and slowly swung his weight on to it, paused, and slid the other foot. He tried to drain all his senses into his soles, but they were half numb with the chill of the floor. The wind buffeted against the glass in front of him, very near. He let his cane reach a little further and it tapped on metal. He tucked it under his left arm, stretched out his hand and felt the chill of glass.

  This gust was fiercer than most, and as it lulled Jake felt the whole metal box he was in settle slightly. He didn’t even dare step back, but stood tense until the next gust seemed to lift the caravan again. The movement hadn’t been the first stirring of weight round the axle, then, but the wind actually helped him, holding the caravan at its proper angle. He took a quick, short step, slid his hand down to the window-rim and along it and found the catch. He twisted it and pushed. The glass, hinged at the top, swung open.

  It was like loosing a kennelled dog. The wind rushed hooting through the gap and rampaged round the caravan. The whole box bucked at the first impact and, as he pushed the window further, felt as though it were trying to take off like a kite. Hurriedly he dropped his shoes through the gap, swung a leg to the sill and twisted himself over, letting go with his hands the moment his feet were swinging down. His ankle banged on the tow-bar, tilting him face first on to trampled grass. Shuddering with the release of tension he reached for the window and pushed it to. There was no way of latching it.

  His stick was still in his hand, clutched tight by instinct. He used it to find his shoes, then put them on and stood shivering in the hissing salt wind. The outer layers of his body protested at the onslaught of cold, but before the fit was over he started to move, zig-zagging down the slope, guided by the thin, continuous booming where the wind pressed and released the flanks of the other caravans. The loom and boom of them guided him between the gaps, while to his left, giving him his general direction, the North Sea growled and grunted on the shore and every now and then, where a wave slashed into some cleft of rocks, yelped like a huge ghost hound.

  Beyond the last line of caravans the wind came unhindered. In its first impact it felt as though it were trying to bundle Jake off his path and make him wander till dawn on trackless slopes, but he leaned into it and walked steadily down, though his ankle still hurt where it had banged the tow-bar. The wind, so apparently unfriendly, was a real help, picking out details round him in a series of hisses and booms and whistles. When he reached the bottom of the slope he could hear it nagging at the bridge, a few yards to his right, and once there he was able to put out a hand and grasp the guard-rail without groping. Below him a middle-sized stream—it must be Annerton Dyke—muttered its last few yards towards the sea. On its far bank the path, deep-rutted with car-tracks, climbed steeply. Jake went carefully up and halted at the edge of the cobbles.

  Would there be any light coming from the hotel? Granpa had said that the night was pitch dark, but he hadn’t actually been able to reach a window which looked out in this direction. Would it be best to cross the sea wall and scramble along the rocks out of sight from the hotel window? No. The tide was up, and the smaller harbour waves were sloshing with a regular sound along a straight unbroken line, which must be the wall itself. There was no way through there. Someone at last must have become maddened by the tap of the halyard on the yacht’s mast and had tightened it so that now it whined shrilly, a gap in the teeth of the wind. That meant that the boat was something to do with the enemy.

  What about a dog? Nothing had barked when the BMW drove up that afternoon. That didn’t prove anything. They might have a guard dog which they let roam around at night. Hell, Jake thought, I’ve got to go on. I’d better act feeble for a bit, so that if they do see me I can say I came to look for Martin.

  He stepped forward at an old man’s shuffle, wavering his stick in wide arcs above the cobbles and from time to time groping in front of his face. Deliberately he chose a crooked and uncertain-seeming path, but let it take him towards the front wall of the hotel, where he thought there might be shadow even if a light was on. The thud of the wind on the building came clearly through the sea-roar. The window where the curtain had flapped that afternoon was now closed, but the wind had risen enough to set up a new vibration in a length of guttering so that it complained with a shallow, throbbing note. Jake’s cane met the stonework of the hotel’s corner within six inches of where he expected it.

  He paused. The temptation was to make a dash for it. The longer he doddered about in front of the building the more chance there was of being spotted. But if he was seen moving quickly and confidently, then the rest of his story, about coming to get help for Granpa, wouldn’t work. He forced himself to shuffle hesitantly along, keeping close to the hotel wall, where at least he might be missed by anyone glancing out of an upstairs window. He hesitated again at the front door, trying to look as though he was making up his mind whether to try here or to go on round to the side door which Mr Andrews had used. Nothing moved. The space in front of the hotel had nothing in it to muddle the rush of the wind.

  Martin’s bike—the BMW. That should have been standing here. They’d hidden it, of course, in case anyone came and asked whose it was. They hadn’t any right! It was strange how angry this made him. The other things they’d done were much worse—taking people prisoner, chaining Granpa to his bed and letting him get ill and not fetching a doctor—but those had only made him afraid. Mucking around with Martin’s bike was different. Martin loved it so much. They hadn’t any right! When I get to Newcastle, he thought … he clenched his hand round his stick as if it were a weapon. Then he thought, come on, you’ve got to get to Newcastle first.

  He dropped the invalid shuffle as soon as he was past the corner and strode firmly half-right towards the cliff, misjudging the angle slightly so that he reached it where the cobbles swung off round the back of the hotel and were separated from the cliff road by a brick outbuilding. He tapped his way back along the front of this and started to climb.

  The road surface was very rough, churned down the middle with the passage of caravans and holiday-makers’ cars and lorries. Jake had to choose between the outer edge, above the steadily increasing drop, or the edge by the cliff to his right where the path was loose with fallen rubble and where the occasional jagged boulder stuck out to bar his path. Even so it was obviously safer than the outside edge, so he probed his way carefully up with his stick, still moving as quietly as possible, though he thought that by now he must be well out of earshot of the sleepers in the hotel. The wind swirled and eddied against the cliff above him, breaking into sudden downdraughts and strange little pockets of calm. The surf-roar changed its note as he climbed; now, through its thunder against the rocks, Jake could hear the movement of the whole reach of sea beyond, with the ceaseless hiss of the wind along the wave-ridges and the long mutter of marching waters below. And now he could feel the altered run of the wind where, only a few feet above him, it ceased to drive against the barrier of the cliff but bucketed across the jagged edge and roared inland. Nearly there.

  Jake stopped. It was the natural thing to do, at the point between one stage of his journey and the next. Perhaps it was natural in another way too—an instinct of care inherited from far-back ancestors, hunters and sometimes hunted. He didn’t notice that his head had tilted slightly an
d his ears were wary for slighter sounds than the uproar of the gale. They heard nothing, though he was standing in one of the sudden pockets of calm. He shrugged again and was about to move on when the wind whipped brusquely sidelong down the cliff face. Briefly but unmistakably it brought him the smell of a cigarette.

  It was only the faintest tang, almost smothered by the salt and seaweed, but it was there. It was smoke, too, and not the stale remains of a damp fag-end. Jake stayed where he was, waiting and listening, while the wind blew violently the other way, stilled, and slammed in again from the sea. At last it chose to gust along the cliff and the smoke was still there. The night was colder than ever, and the surface of Jake’s flesh was ready to break into shivers, but fear kept him still.

  The man coughed. Jake’s ears had been straining after minute fragments of sound; the noise, so near and violent, almost made him drop his stick. The man swore at himself, stamped his feet and slapped his arms against his side. For a moment Jake thought he was going to come down the road, and of course he’d have a torch in order to pick his way, but he fell back into silence. Jake realised that the enemy were short of men and could only afford one sentry, so naturally they’d put him up here, at the only entrance to the bay.

  It was tempting to stay, to look for a boulder by the road and crouch behind it, in the hope that the man would have to go down to wake the next sentry and so pass safely by, but Jake knew this wouldn’t do. He’d long ago learnt that blind children are no good at hide-and-seek—no good at either half of the game. In fact they are better at seeking than hiding, because touch and smell and hearing have a chance there. But to hide you need to see, because that’s the only way of knowing whether you can be seen. Very carefully he started to pick his way back down the cliff road, towards the hotel. Now that he knew there was a listener so close it seemed harder to move in silence than it had been when he’d climbed the road thinking that all the enemy were behind him, asleep in their beds.

  Surely there must be a way round the sentry! As soon as he thought he was out of the man’s earshot Jake stopped to explore the rock face on his left. He could hear the wind’s hiss among the grass stems at the top, a good twenty feet above him. The rock itself seemed smooth and sheer. Jake shook his head and stole on down. The best bet would be to wait by the brick shed he’d found at the bottom and hope that when the sentry went for his relief there’d be time to get up the road while it was unguarded. He hadn’t reached the bottom when he heard the hotel door slam.

  He crouched so that a fall wouldn’t jar him too much and scuttered down on to the cobbles. As he raced along the front of the shed he could hear the footsteps coming towards the corner of the hotel, and reaching the end just as he ducked round into the back yard and flattened himself against the inner wall. The stride of the newcomer didn’t falter. He wore nailed shoes which struck grittily on the cobbles. He yawned as he passed the courtyard entrance. A couple of minutes later the other man, wearing gumboots, came back down the road. He was muttering about something as he passed. The hotel door opened and shut. Jake gave a long, tired sigh.

  What now?

  All of a sudden he’d had enough of action. He’d proved himself that he could do as much as any sighted boy could have done—more, because a sighted boy would have stumbled to the arms of the sentry. Wasn’t that enough? Couldn’t he go back now to the warmth of his bunk and the comfort Granpa’s presence and say that he tried, and it wasn’t any good?

  He started to sigh again, but on the indrawn breath he was suddenly aware of the faint tang of petrol. It wasn’t surprising. This shed was probably a garage—in fact very likely Martin’s bike had been wheeled away inside there. The thought of made his anger flare inside him again, not warming his shuddering flesh at all but somehow warming his mind. There must be another way past the sentry. What had Granpa said? “ … didn’t seem worth going all the way back to the lane … sheep path running down that side of the tip coming out behind some derelict buildings … bit of a scramble …”

  I’ll try that, thought Jake. I expect they’ve locked the shed for the night.

  He allowed himself one more good shiver, and made his way across the cobbles to the corner of the hotel, then turned sharply away and walked with the sea-roar on his left until his stick touched a scraping barrier, a low cement wall by the feel of it. Yes, coming with Martin he’d have started a little further out from the hotel front. He moved crabwise a couple of yards into the buffeting wind until his stick found the gap in the wall where the path began. It felt like the one he remembered, slimy and rutted, with patches of loose shingle in the worst hollows. It dipped almost to the level of the muttering harbour surf, then rose to the point where the schoolmaster had stopped them. There ought to be a bridge soon.

  There was. The wind caught a hand-rail on either side. Water tinkled below. It was almost a replica of the bridge into the caravan field, but something was different, an inexplicable tiny whine in the wind, low down, too regular to be anything like a grass-blade. Jake moved forward very slowly with his stick held lightly between his finger-tips, probing almost at ground-level. Half way across he felt a slight resistance, a hard line running from side to side of the bridge only a few inches above the timbers. He stopped and explored it delicately from end to end. A trip-wire, he thought—connected to an alarm bell or something.

  Low though it was it seemed an extraordinary barrier. Once more Jake hesitated, listening and smelling the wind, and once more his nostrils brought him a sense of danger. This new smell came in a lull of the storm, a deep, chill dank odour—not the dankness of decaying vegetation, but the dankness of caves, lifeless and still. After a while Jake decided that it was only the smell of the stream that slid beneath the bridge, and only alarming because all his senses were stretched to respond to anything strange in the night. Come on, he whispered to himself. You’re wasting time.

  He forced himself to step carefully across the trip-wire and off the bridge, but the dank smell lingered in his mind like the shreds of a different nightmare. Or perhaps it was the wire that had frightened him more than he realised, by showing him that the enemy were as careful as they were dangerous.

  Beyond the bridge the path rose steeply towards a big, low building. The wind burrowed at gaps in its roof and flapped a piece of corrugated iron to and fro along a rusty nai1, making it screech with metal pain. Something tall and thin rose nearby—probably a chimney stack, and there seemed be other, smaller buildings or remains of buildings over the right, close under the incurving cliff. But beyond the shed, and higher than the cliffs themselves, rose a large shapeless mass; the wind tore at a steep-sided pile, giving a long-drawn hiss as each gust scrabbled at bushes and brambles along its lower flanks. Annerton Tip, of course, whose weight had caused the Disaster. Good place for a picnic. Martin had said. Looked like an enormous burial mound.

  There was something else about the tip, not just its bigness, its unmoved mass in the swirl and tumult of the night. Jake felt that even on the stillest of days he would have known it is there, would have been aware of its sheer mass piled on the groaning rocks, almost as though it were something more than a heap of unwanted rubble, something that had been deliberately built so that its weight could hold down, prison, trap for ever … trap what?

  Jake shook his head, remembering his stupid fear of the smell of the stream. It’s because I’m so tired, he thought. I think things which aren’t there. I must go on. At least the tip was a good sound-beacon, full of rustles and hisses to guide him on the next stage of his journey.

  He never made that journey.

  The last stretch of track levelled out on to a little plateau below the tip and the cliffs, where the buildings stood. Jake moved carefully towards the front of the shed, probing all the time for trip-wires, and to his surprise found that the big doors were open. This wasn’t so good, he thought. There might be another sentry here, if this is where the work’s being done. He knew th
e doors were open by the sound of the wind swooshing into the hollow cave of the shed instead of beating against a blank surface, but when he reached the near leaf he was relieved to find that there was a reason for it not being shut—it was leaning all askew, half off its hinges, and was far too large and heavy for even a team of men to shift, and probably would have fallen to bits if they’d tried.

  Jake felt his way to the outer edge of the door and stood listening, and breathing in slow, considering lungfuls, so as not to miss the faintest wisp of scent. He smelt nothing beside the wild sea-smell and a little oily metal such as might belong to any workshop; he heard nothing except the waves and the racketing wind; all the same he was afraid. There was something about this place. Ever since he’d crossed the last stream the nature of his fear had changed; before that the bay and the cliffs and the sea had been neutral, and the storm had even been a friend; danger had only come from Jack Andrews and the others. Now everything was dangerous, the wind, the shed, the looming tip, the ground under his feet. Jake shook his head, clicked his tongue softly on his palate to protest against his own stupidity, and walked quickly across the front of the shed. As he did so he became aware that the wind wasn’t booming unhindered into the cave of it, but was having to swirl round a large thing that blocked half the entrance—a truck, he thought; yes, a middle-sized truck backed into the shed.

  The far leaf of the doors was completely off its hinges and only stood at all because it was propped against a pile of loose rubble. Jake went up this on hands and knees and found that it levelled off about four feet from the ground. He stood on his little platform and listened to the wind picking out the details of the slope above him. He prodded with his stick for the edge of the bushes he could hear a little to his left, checked that the space in front of him was clear of any arching spray of bramble, and stepped on to the tip itself. As he did so the world changed.