Rest and Be Thankful
Read Rest and Be Thankful Online
Authors: Helen MacInnes
Tags: #Fiction, #Thrillers, #Espionage, #Romance, #General, #Suspense
ALSO BY HELEN MacINNES
AND AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS
Pray for a Brave Heart
Above Suspicion
Assignment in Brittany
North From Rome
Decision at Delphi
The Venetian Affair
The Salzburg Connection
Message from Málaga
While We Still Live
The Double Image
Neither Five Nor Three
Horizon
Snare of the Hunter
Agent in Place
Ride a Pale Horse
Prelude to Terror
The Hidden Target
I and My True Love
Cloak of Darkness
Friends and Lovers
(January 2014)
Home is the Hunter
(February 2014)
MacINNES
REST AND BE THANKFUL
TITAN BOOKS
Rest and be Thankful
Print edition ISBN: 9781781161579
E-book edition ISBN: 9781781161630
Published by Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP
First edition: December 2013
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Copyright © 1949, 2013 by Helen MacInnes. All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
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To
Gilbert and Keith
My favourite cowboys
7. One to Get Ready, Two to Get Steady...
23. The Bear and Mr Jerks Share an Evening
ROAD TO NOWHERE
The road climbed westward, twisting through the green hills and high pastures. Ahead lay a towering wall of mountains buttressed by rock, covered by dark green fir-trees. The paler grass from the meadows stretched round the mountains’ base like a sea, forming inlets here and there, as the forest receded, or an isolated lake where the trees had marched down to encircle the invader.
Then the road stopped climbing, as if it had decided it had wasted quite enough breath, and turned abruptly to run in crazy twists along the high valley which suddenly opened out under the shadow of the mountains.
“How very unexpected!” Mrs. Margaret Peel murmured, and sat forward with interest, as if she were trying to catch a better glimpse of the stage in a crowded theatre. Sarah Bly, who shared the back seat of the touring car and all the bumps and jolts, held on to her hat with one hand and on to the map with the other, and wished Margaret were a little more conscience-stricken and less delightfully surprised. To run into an unexpected valley following an unexpected direction was slightly depressing at six o’clock in the evening. If this were Switzerland or the Austrian Tyrol you could depend on reaching a little village every hour on the hour, and it would only be a matter of deciding which one had the best inn for a well-cooked meal and a comfortable bed. But this was Wyoming. And here was Margaret, who once insisted on taking her doses of Nature by well-diluted teaspoonfuls, now drinking it in by the gallon and becoming so intoxicated that she had quite forgotten this road was all her fault. It was a short-cut, she had said, three hours ago.
Sarah Bly said, “We are now fifty miles from nowhere, heading for Canada. We might as well admit we took the wrong road and tell Jackson to turn around and drive us back to the State Highway.” She glanced at the stolid neck of Jackson in front of her, and noted that he was still registering disapproval in his own persevering way. He hadn’t once admired the view, and he was no doubt wondering if they would ever reach San Francisco in time to let him have his two weeks at Atlantic City before the snows set in. Jackson’s idea of a journey across America was a smooth highway white-lined, and eighty miles an hour.
“It is quite incredible!” Margaret Peel said, as if she hadn’t heard her friend’s suggestion. She was watching the golden peaks, the blue-shadowed canyons, the continuous rise and fall of pasture-land and forest. Then she added consolingly, “At least, we’ve left these miles of plains behind and all these herds of white-faced bulls. After a few days of that I’d thought I’d scream. Nothing but eyes and eyes, all watching me speculatively. Reminded me of a lecture I once gave, somehow.”
“They were cows, darling. There just can’t be so many bulls in the
whole
of America.”
“Well, they didn’t look like cows.” Her voice became less doubtful as she abandoned that problem for their more immediate one. “We must be fifty miles from
somewhere,
Sarah. And we haven’t reached Montana yet, far less Canada.”
“I was only trying to drop the gentle hint that we may be lost. I just can’t find anything recognisable on this map.” Sarah Bly had all the assets of beauty—fair hair, fine skin, blue eyes, regular features—but she had chosen to ignore them; or, rather, control them. (“Pretty?” her friends would say, startled. “Why, I suppose so!”) Now, at this moment, the rebellion in her eyes and mouth, the tilt of her head with its neatly arranged hair, the heightening of colour on her cheeks, brought her face into life.
“Sarah,” Mrs. Peel said affectionately but firmly, “the man in New York said
everything
was clearly marked on that map. Perhaps you aren’t looking in the right place. This is Wyoming, dear. Let me see.” She studied the map in between increasingly wild lurches of the car. “Why, here we are. Or almost.” She pointed to the town where they had slept last night. “The pass over the mountains lies just west of there.”
“West by the State Highway,” Sarah Bly reminded her. Then she smiled in spite of herself at Margaret’s usually neat hat, now cocked drunkenly over one eye by that last jolt. But Mrs. Peel was too busy frowning over the brown splotches and green patches on the map to notice. She was a handsome woman, considerably older than Sarah. The features in her face were delicately shaped, and the warmth of her quick smile matched the humour in her bright brown eyes. Their vitality offset her white hair and her pale skin.
“I suppose we’ll have to stop the car,” she conceded suddenly. “Don’t worry, Sarah; even if this road isn’t marked on the map it still must lead some place. That’s the nice thing about a road. It’s all my fault, I know. I suppose I just got carried away by a view. Still, you must admit that this
is
one way of seeing something of the country.”
Sarah Bly admitted it, and stopped thinking about the fate of the Donner party as the car halted. Jackson, somewhat melted by Mrs. Peel’s frank admission that she needed his help, began giving his laconic advice. Yes, Sarah Bly thought, as she straightened her own hat, that was indeed the purpose of this tour—to see something of America. And originally it had been her idea: it was she who had persuaded Margaret, last winter in New York, that it was about time they gave their own country a chance.
For almost twenty years—and Margaret, in fact, could recall more than twenty—they had lived abroad. They had kept house in Paris, in Rapallo, in Dalmatia; they had collected people, paintings, and recipes; they had given amusement with their American money, and they had been amused, in turn, by the ideas and customs of foreign lands. It hadn’t been pointless: at least two of the penniless writers who had dined with them so constantly in their Paris flat had become almost famous; and the little press which Margaret had subsidised, had printed some essays and poems which were now collectors’ items. In Italy there always had been a group of writers and painters staying with them. And in the charmingly straying castle which they had rented in 1939 in Dalmatia their guests had over-flowed its ramparts right down into the outskirts of Ragusa. But all that was over: these days were gone now. And gone too were most of their friends.
So many had been killed, Sarah Bly thought unhappily as she stared at the wall of mountains across the valley. Or they had disappeared, or they were shut away behind political boundaries. And those that were left? Post-War politics had embittered or twisted them... So we came home, back to a land we had neglected for twenty years, strangers in our own country except to the few people in New York who had known us abroad. And all that was left of those twenty years was Jackson; and this motor-car; and our zest for travel.
She turned her eyes quickly away from the wall of mountains, back to the twisting, narrow road. At this moment she could wish that Margaret’s zest for travel had not become quite so uncontrolled. And the car too was as good as ever, even if it were of a 1933 vintage. But where was Jackson? While she had been daydreaming he had disappeared.
“I’ve sent Jackson to spy out the land,” Mrs. Peel explained. She was walking round the car slowly, breathing the fresh cool air with maddeningly obvious enjoyment. “You really did get lost among those mountains, didn’t you? Now, do get out and stretch your legs, Sarah. You’ll feel much better.”
But Sarah Bly kept her eyes on the road and waited for Jackson.
“Yes, it was all my fault,” Mrs. Peel admitted. “Still, Jackson has quite forgiven me.” She looked reprovingly at Sarah. She held out two candy bars wrapped in metallic paper. “Look, he brought these along specially for us. What would we do without Jackson?”
Sarah Bly took the candy and unwrapped it. “Oh, no!” she cried. She held up the boldly printed name on the silver paper. “Goodie Two Chews... Oh, Margaret!”
Mrs. Peel studied the legend in silence. Then she unwrapped her portion and began to eat it. “I simply will not be depressed,” she said to the nearest mountain. “Look, what on earth are these brown things bouncing over that piece of hillside? Antelopes? There you are Sarah. We’ve got antelopes playing, skies that are not cloudy all day, and all we need is the seldom discouraging word.”
Sarah Bly smiled in spite of herself. Besides, the candy was good. And Jackson would be back any moment, and the car would be turned round—for just at this point in the road it could be turned safely. Here grass edges had taken place of steep banks and sharp cliffs; the hillside to the right of them was joined to the road by a sloping stretch of ground, and to the left of them the green slope continued into a broad meadow. As if the road, at this point, did not separate hill from valley but formed a natural bridge. It was impossible to deny that this view, with its mountains and teeth of rock, bore a decided resemblance to the Dolomite country in the South Tyrol. Perhaps the Dolomites, with a strange touch—in these neat, pointed green hills and rich forests—of the Côte d’Or. And surely in these steeply sloping fields, folding into each other, dipping, rising, a decided reminder of Scotland: here there was sage instead of heather. And the boulder-studded grass had its thistles too. “And blue lupines, and wild roses, and what’s that flame-coloured flower?” she said aloud.
“Thank you, Sarah,” Mrs. Peel said. “That’s much better. But what has happened to Jackson? I suppose it is all the fault of these turns in the road. They keep enticing you on.”