Kindling (5 page)

“Got enough money?” asked Warren without moving.

“Quite all right, sir.”

Warren turned his head. “What place is this?”

“Grantham.” The chauffeur hesitated. “Would you like a cup of coffee, or tea, sir? There’s a place open up the road.”

“No thanks. Get one yourself, if you like.”

“I’m all right for the present, thank you, sir. Still straight on north?”

“Straight on,” said Warren. “Get up into the hills north-west of Newcastle. Between Newcastle and Carlisle.”

“Very good, sir,” said the chauffeur. He closed the door, and turned to pay for petrol.

“Going far?” enquired the garage hand.

“Two hundred bloody miles, or so,” said Donaghue. “I wish I was a dog with a good home.”

He drove out on to the deserted roads in the dark night. From time to time he passed a lorry or an all-night coach roaring along at sixty in a blaze of headlights; there was nothing else on the road. At Newark he screwed round and peered through the screen behind his back; Warren appeared to be asleep again. He glanced at his watch; it was a quarter to two. Donaghue drove on.

He passed through Tuxford and Retford. Near Bawtry he got out the sandwiches that Elsie had put up for him, and ate them as he drove. It was rotten about the picture he was taking her to; looked as though he’d have to send a telegram. He thought she’d understand. He ate her seed cake. He passed through Doncaster.

“Another of these bloody towns,” he said. “Wonder how many more there are?”

He was a young man of a good physique; he was growing tired, but he was not sleepy. He left Ferrybridge behind him, and Wetherby; in Boroughbridge it was pitch dark but there were one or two people in the streets, to his surprise. “They get up early in these parts,” he thought. It was about half-past four, and still raining a little.

The limousine went flying up the long stretch of Roman road to Catterick, twenty miles away, past Middleton and Leeming Bar. At Scotch Corner he kept north and did not bear away, through Piercebridge and skirting Darlington. He was driving slower now, by map, through Witton-le-Wear and Dan’s Castle, where he began to see the shadow of the hedges in the dawn. It had stopped raining. He bore away towards the north-west, leaving Newcastle on the right by ten or fifteen miles; at Rowley it was light enough for him to drive without his lights. Presently he dropped down into Broomhaugh, and drove on a little up the valley of the Tyne.

He screwed round stiffly and looked over his shoulder; Warren was awake. “This is the Newcastle to Carlisle road, sir,” he said.

“Stop here,” said Warren. “Let me see your map.”

The chauffeur drew up by the roadside and handed his map through the glass partition. It was about seven o’clock, quite light enough to see the countryside; a raw, windy morning with a wrack of low, scudding cloud down on the hills.

Warren asked, “Where are we now?”

“That’s Corbridge, sir, just over there. The river is the Tyne.”

“I’ve got it,” said Warren. He studied the map for some minutes, then gave it back to Donaghue. “Go on towards Carlisle,” he said. “Stop when you get to that place Greenhead at the top of the pass.”

Donaghue studied the map for a minute, and said, “Very good, sir.” He slipped round to his wheel again, and drove on.

In half an hour he drew up by the side of the road. “This is the place you said, sir.”

Warren laid aside his rugs, stretched a little, and got out of the car. The morning air was crisp and bracing to him; he had slept most of the night through, and he was feeling well. He looked around to see what sort of place this was. He saw black, heather-covered hills, a junction of two roads, a railway and a wayside station, one or two houses. The grey clouds went racing past only a few hundred feet above his head to wreathe about the hills; it was infinitely desolate.

“This will do,” he said aloud. He turned back to the car.

“You can leave me here,” he said to Donaghue. “I’m going to walk a bit. Go down into Carlisle and put up there. I shan’t want you any longer. Get some sleep, and then get along back to London.”

“Very good, sir.” The chauffeur hesitated. “Can I get you anything before I go? Some breakfast, sir?”

“That’s all right, thanks. Wait—leave me your map.”

Donaghue offered a selection; Warren picked out a couple of the Ordnance Survey and stuffed them in the pocket of his ulster.

“That will do,” he said. “Now, off you go. Tell Evans I’ll be back in London in about a week.”

The chauffeur was uneasy. He would have liked to have stayed, to have seen his master left in better circumstances, but he had little option in the matter. He said, “Good-bye, sir,” and let in his clutch, and went running down the hill towards Carlisle.

He was a young and vigorous man, not unduly tired by having driven a good car all night. He was three hundred miles from London, where a girl was waiting for him; as he ate his breakfast an idea was forming in his mind. He could make a quick run down the North road in the limousine, average forty-five, easy. Forty-five into three hundred miles, that made six and two-third hours. Allow a bit for going into London—call it seven hours. He looked at his watch; be on the road again by half-past eight. That meant home by half-past three, an hour late, but still with most of her half-day to go. And it wasn’t as if he was really tired.

A girl would like a chap to put himself about like that for her.

He paid his bill, and started on the London road.

In the middle of the morning, running at a high speed three miles short of Retford, a small car turned out suddenly across his path. At eighty miles an hour you cannot swerve and dodge; the limousine hit the near-front wheel to off-front wheel and threw the small car to the hedge. Itself it was deflected to the right side of the road to hit a five-ton lorry coming from the town. When finally they got the wreckage off him, Donaghue was dead.

Elsie sat waiting for him all that afternoon. I believe she is waiting for him still.

W
ARREN
was hungry. He watched the car depart, then walked down to the station to enquire where he could get some food. A solitary porter cleaning lamps directed him to a cottage half a mile away that in the season sold meals to summer visitors. Warren set out up the road.

As he went, his hand strayed to his unshaven chin. He had no razor, and to get one in this district would be practically impossible; he must give up that. He would have to do something about his teeth, though; washing could wait an opportunity. Savages cleaned their teeth on bits of stick; he could not see himself performing with a bit of heather. It was altogether in a lighter mood that he arrived at the cottage.

A woman, not very old but bent with rheumatism, opened the door to him. Warren asked for breakfast. “I could do a pair of eggs an’ a cup o’ tea,” she said doubtfully. “I haven’t any baker’s bread this time o’ year. Ye’ll have to have just what we have ourselves.”

He sat at her kitchen table while she busied herself to get him breakfast. As he waited, he studied the map; he found that he was very near the Wall. Northeast seemed to be the best direction if he wanted exercise; a track led up across the moor in the direction of Bellingham and the Cheviots. From the contours it appeared that that would give him all the exercise he wanted for a week or two.

She brought him two fried eggs, a flat home-made loaf of brownish bread, butter and jam and a pot of strong tea. He ate ravenously at first but with a quickly fading appetite; it was all that he could do to get through the second egg. He had several cups of tea, however, and felt satisfied and well, although he had not eaten very much.

He lit a pipe, paid her the shilling that she asked him for the meal, and, as an afterthought, bought one of her flat and dirty-looking loaves for twopence. From the look of the map it seemed unlikely that he would find a restaurant for lunch; it would be better to take what food he could with him. He broke the loaf into two halves and put one in each pocket of his ulster. Then he set out along the track up on to the moor.

He walked all day, striding along over the black sodden moors, his ulster pulled about his ears. It rained most of the day; a thin, persistent misty drizzle that cleared in the evening as he dropped down into Bellingham. All day he kept to a rough track that wound among the heather-covered hills, always in seeming danger of obliteration, never entirely disappearing. He was not hungry, rather curiously. He ate a few mouthfuls of his bread in the middle of the day; the remainder crumbled in the pockets of his ulster.

He got to Bellingham at about five o’clock after walking for eight hours or so; he covered the last mile in semi-darkness. He was very weary physically, and that same weariness gave him an easy mind; he knew that if he got a decent bed he would sleep naturally that night. Moreover, he was far too tired to think, and that to him was relaxation and relief. He found an inn in the
village, where they looked at him askance, wet and unshaven, dirty and with no luggage.

“Aye,” said the landlord, “we’ve got beds. Maybe you’ll find the house a bit expensive. We charge ten shillings deposit for them as comes without bag or baggage.”

“Seems reasonable enough,” said Warren. He produced his note-case and put down the money; the man’s manner altered for the better.

“We has to be careful,” he explained apologetically, “or you’d be getting some queer company. I never see so many on the roads as there are this year.”

“Out of a job?” asked Warren.

“Aye, walking the roads. They say there’s more work in the south these days, but I dunno. This is your room. I’ll bring up some hot water in a minute.”

He washed and went downstairs to a high tea of ham and eggs, and marmalade, and cherry cake. In the coffee room there was nothing to read but a few copies of the motoring journals of the previous summer, and a queer paper about cattle-breeding that he could not understand. He was tired and disinclined to sit and gossip in the bar with the landlord and his cronies. He went to bed at about half-past seven, leaving his ulster and suit to be dried before the kitchen fire.

He slept in his underclothes, a thing he had not done since the War. It had the pleasure of novelty for him, brought back old times and made him feel a subaltern again. He slept soundly for about five hours, got up and had a drink of water, and then slept again till dawn.

His clothes were stacked outside his door when he
got up. The suit had shrunk a little and the ulster was no longer the fine fleecy garment it had been; Warren smiled quietly at his reflection in the glass. He did not mind, in fact he rather welcomed, the change; it made him look a little less conspicuous. He went down to his breakfast with a lighter heart than he had had for some months.

Again he was not hungry, and ate very little.

It was a better morning, cold and raw, but fine. He paid his bill and set out on the road again. Again he kept to moorland tracks all day, trending north-east; now and again he passed through tiny hamlets in the folds of the black hills, or crossed a road. It was better going; from time to time a watery sun lit up the barren country, and was lost again in racing cloud.

Warren walked steadily all through the day. He was not feeling fit; a stale, tired feeling dulled his pleasure in the exercise. Again he had no lunch except a mouthful of bread from his pocket, and did not feel the need of any. Towards sunset he came out on a hill-top; the sky had cleared and over to the east, some ten or fifteen miles away, he saw a grey line of the sea.

He left the hill and dropped down to the valley, where the smoke of houses rose among the trees. Getting over a gate into the main road he dropped down heavily, and in an instant he was wrung with the same stabbing, muscular pain that he had two days before in the office. He sank down on the grass verge of the road and lay there gasping for a moment, white and shaken; slowly the sharpness of the pain eased, and left only a dull ache behind.

“God, but I’m soft,” he muttered to himself. “I’ll never let myself get down like this again.”

After a time he got up from the grass and walked slowly for the half mile to the village. Again he put up at the inn; he felt rested and refreshed after his tea, and went out to the village cinema.

That night he stripped and examined his abdomen with care, thinking of rupture. He found nothing wrong and came to the conclusion that his pain was muscular alone. He sat for a time in bed studying his maps by the light of a flickering candle. It might well be that he was taking things too hard, bearing in mind that he had taken little exercise for years. To-morrow he would not go on the hills. The coast was not so far; he would go gently down to the sea and strike northwards up the coast; then on the following day he could turn north-westwards to the hills again.

Moreover, there were towns down there. He could buy a razor, or perhaps get shaved.

He turned to sleep. Already London and his house seemed infinitely distant to him; his troubles had sunk deep into the background of his mind, things that had happened to him very long ago, that could not touch him now. If anything were needed to expunge them from his mind the little pain that he had had done it; he rested for the first time in some months with an easy mind, only concerned about the physical circumstances of his present life. He slept.

The morning dawned wet and chilly again. He paid his bill and turned towards the east, tramping in a windy, drizzling rain. The road ran downhill into farming land, a change from the rough moors that he had
traversed for the last few days. Although he kept to the road and it was easy walking he was curiously tired; he went slowly with an ache and heaviness where he had had the muscular pain the night before. He began to have his doubts about that muscular pain.

By the middle of the day his doubts were doubts no longer.

He was perhaps five miles from the coast. Tired, he sat down for a few minutes at a cross-roads to smoke a cigarette, when suddenly the pain flared up and pierced him through. He clutched himself and bent up double on the grass; the cigarette fell from his mouth and lay there smouldering beside him.