Ribblestrop (10 page)

Henry seemed upset when he heard that. The whistle drooped from his lip and he started to rock backward and forward. Asilah put his hand on his shoulder and the orphans all huddled closer.

“Look,” said Sanchez. “This is the Edge, isn't it? This is what Captain Routon was talking about.”

Anjoli said, “We can climb down, no problem.”

Ruskin peered over the lip again. “You know, it must be. I mean we are on
an edge
, aren't we? It's a big—what do you call it? An
outcrop
.”

“Hey,” said a voice. “Look.”

The speaker was a small, earnest-looking boy, who had so far been very quiet. He had a fine stubble of hair under a cap he'd turned backward. He was staring into the distance, his eyes mere slits. Sanjay was his name, and he'd been a ship's boy for most of his life, navigating container vessels over the South China sea. “Railway,” he said, pointing. As soon as he spoke, everybody saw it. Just beyond a great tilted slab of rock ran a shoulder of track.

“The old railway,” said Ruskin. “I know where we are!”

“Yes,” said Sanchez. “I think Captain Routon said we would come to the railway line. From the quarry . . .”

“Which is—yes!” cried Ruskin. “That's where we've come to.
Well spotted, Sanjay! That must be the railway that was built to move the stone to the mansion building, so all we do is follow the tracks back . . . through the rock. I'm sure.”

Anjoli had followed most of this and he had certainly picked up Ruskin's excitement. He translated quickly and smiles of relief spread down the line like lights coming on. He was on his feet, pushing back his hair and pulling on his shirt. “Let's go!” he cried.

“Hang on!” said Sanchez. “This is dangerous. Why don't we rope ourselves together, with our ties? Then, if we fall . . .”

As he spoke, Anjoli jumped. One second he was there, and the next he was falling. Sanjay was right behind him, and—one by one, like highly trained paratroopers—the orphans dived into space. The joy of fallen rock is that there are always footholds and ledges, and in seconds they were virtually cartwheeling downward. Nobody had realized that these children had been born into a terrain far more rugged than this one, and that they'd learned to climb before they could toddle. They rolled, they skipped, they threw one another. As soon as they reached the bottom, they came back up for another go.

The difficulty was handling Sam, but that was soon overcome by the Sanjay-Anjoli partnership. Henry lowered him gently down and the orphans took over, passing him between them like a precious parcel. It wasn't long before everyone was on even ground and stood looking up at the distance they'd traveled. Ruskin was astonished at how far they'd come and did a drawing of the trail—a beautiful, highly detailed sketch, which he sent to his parents. It became a minor exhibit later on, when the police brought their final prosecution.

At three forty-three precisely, they got to the railway.

Sanchez did a head count and led them on. The direction was obvious: to the left, the railway went into a copse. To the right, it shouldered around under the Edge, just as Ruskin had predicted, in the direction of the school. The only problem ahead now was the fact that a little way down the line was a tunnel. One can't get lost in a tunnel—but it was very, very dark. Flashlights, perhaps?
In every schoolboy's blazer, surely, a pocket knife and a flashlight, along with conkers and pet mice? Alas, the Ribblestrop blazers were new and their owners had in them only crayons and a copy of the school rules. Had they stopped to study those rules they would have seen rule twelve:
No Ribblestrop student will ever put him or herself in danger, or endanger the life of any other Ribblestrop student
. A fatuously vague rule . . . so easy to break.

“Shall we hold hands?” said Ruskin, as they entered the tunnel.

The darkness drew them in and rule twelve was thus broken.

“Henry?” called Sanchez. “You stay at the back, yes? You whistle, and that way everyone stays in front of you. Okay?”

“How long is this tunnel?” said Henry, slowly.

“It's not that long, actually,” said Ruskin. “We were told. Twenty miles rings a bell.”

“That's too long,” said Caspar. He was sounding tearful. “I can't walk that far!”

“Walk between the rails,” said Ruskin. “Then you really can't get lost. And the sleepers are firm, too, you can sort of . . . get into a rhythm. Lucky they didn't tear all this up when it went out of use. You'd think, really—” Ruskin's voice took on an echo as they went deeper, “—you'd think really that people would want to salvage all the old materials. Let's sing as we go: how about the school song? We can teach it to Sam again!”

Seventeen voices sang:

“
Ribblestrop, Ribblestrop, precious unto me;

This is what I dream about and where I want to be.

Early in the morning, finally at night,

Ribblestrop, I'll die for thee, carrying the light.
”

At the end of the verse, Henry blew the whistle. Again and again they sang, and this time it was a work song: the kind of song a chain gang would sing as it labored. Thus the party moved into the depths of the rock.

*

Four miles away, had you been in the cab of the 13:06 Intercity Penzance-Paddington service, you would have heard the slamming
of a connecting door and the following conversation:

“Hello, Arthur! You haven't checked all those tickets already?”

“I have, Darren. Not many punters today for some reason, just the one gets on at Par. They all join at Exeter, that's when my feet don't touch the ground.”

“Better sit down, then. Break out that tea.”

“In your bag here, is it?”

The cab is small, but comfortable. It can accommodate driver and guard easily, and there's always room for a trainee or inspector. The hydraulic driving seats command a marvelous view of the countryside whipping by and, as the glass is an inch thick and bulletproof, very little sound gets in to disturb conversation.

“Any more news on that mess yesterday?” said Darren. He was a thin, wiry little man with a lot of woolly white hair. New dentures allowed him to smile happily: he was a gentle soul and had been driving trains for nearly forty years.

“Not yet. Young girl, apparently—she pulled the lever on the other train. Then she jumped.”

“I couldn't see if it was boys or girls. Black-and-yellow uniforms, I'm pretty sure about that.”

“They're checking the Reading schools, they might find 'em yet.”

“She had a
very
narrow escape.”

“Hopefully they got a scare, those kids. You won't find them on the railways for a while! Look at that view, Arthur.”

“Take your tea.”

“See that piece of rock to the right? That's Ribblestrop Edge. I've been up there. You can see clear over the county—see Wales on a clear day. And then we bend round to the west and go through the Ribblestrop Pass, which is one hundred and thirty meters—excavated in, oh . . .”

“Signal, Darren—put your lights on.”

“Thanks, Arthur.”

Darren flicked a switch and the main beam came up like a searchlight.

“Irish built it, I do know that. It cuts through Ribblestrop
Towers, where old whatshisname lived, the murdered scientist. I'm supposed to whistle here, just in case some poor badger's got itself halfway up the tunnel.”

“I wouldn't like to be a badger up that tunnel. Can I blow the whistle, Darren?”

“Be my guest, Arthur—it's above you. I tell you, I can really get some speed up in this tunnel, it's straight as straight. We're touching eighty miles an hour, you wouldn't believe it though, would you?”

“What's that up ahead?”

“Where?”

*

“
Ribblestrop, Ribblestrop, precious unto me;

This is what I dream about and where I want to be.

Early in the morning
—”

“Shush!”

Sanchez stood still.

“Henry!” he shouted. “Was that you whistling, man?”

Silence.

“Did someone whistle?” said Sanchez, again.

“Stand close, everyone,” said Ruskin. “Gather round. This is interesting: can you feel a sort of vibration? It's like a little earthquake almost, can anyone else feel it?”

“I can,” said Sam. He was sitting on the rail, head in hands.

The children moved into a tight cluster.

“Maybe it's blasting from the quarry,” said Ruskin. “You don't think it's a train, do you? I know there are two railways in the park, because one of them's the mainline between Cornwall and London. We used to go down to the fence and wave. I hope I haven't got the two lines confused, that would be a real gaffe . . .”

Ruskin stopped there, not because he'd run out of things to say, but because the tunnel was filling rapidly with the most monstrous scream. The sound was spiraling round the walls of the tunnel, echoing on itself until it became an electrifying howl. It was the sound sheet metal makes when it is being torn apart by
circular saws. The sound gets so far into your ears the very eardrums can split and all those little bones, the smallest in the body, simply fragment. It's the sound of an express train with eighty iron wheels hurtling through a tunnel at eighty-two miles per hour.

*

Darren the driver's accident report was not a long document. The handwriting was more wobbly than young Sam Tack's, because the writer had temporarily lost all coordination. Arthur, the guard, was barely able to speak let alone write. He told only a police inspector what he had seen at one minute past four in the Ribblestrop tunnel: he never spoke of it again. Some memories have to be suppressed.

We were proceeding through the tunnel and I had whistled and illuminated my headlight prior to entry. I remember increasing speed because the restrictions had changed. My colleague and I were looking down the track and we saw upward of a dozen small children all dressed in distinctive black-and-yellow school uniforms. I remember there was one lad, closest to us, who seemed bigger than the rest. Some of the little ones, I remember, were
(the handwriting breaks down here)
were holding hands
 . . .
One little fellow waved his cap. I applied the emergency lever but there was no way we could stop in time. They never stood a chance
.

What had happened to Millie?

She had left Sam's bedside, if you remember, after two ugly fights. The first she'd won handsomely. The second had humiliated her and she'd been thrown out into the corridor. She had sat for ten minutes or so, waiting for the throbbing in her head to die down. She calmed herself. Clearly, Sanchez was quick and well trained: some kind of martial artist, she imagined. Next time she would find an appropriate weapon.

Comforting herself with this thought, Millie stood up. It was dinnertime after all, and time to find again the bomb site that the strange cook had called a dining hall. She descended the main staircase and set off along one of the school's many long, poorly lit corridors.

Everybody makes mistakes, particularly in new surroundings. Millie had never mastered her left and her right and she
should
have taken the first turning. That would have brought her to the steps down to the hall. A right turn would have brought her into the yard, and there she would have been in time for the headmaster's speech. Alas, Millie went straight on and turned left at the
end
of the passage. There was no right turn to be seen, so she continued, past a suit of armor without a head. Someone had lit a candle at the far end, which seemed promising—so she pressed on, knowing that soon she'd spot something familiar. At the end of the passage, she came to a landing of some kind, with another
staircase down. This would lead to the kitchens, she thought: the place she'd first met Captain Routon when they repaired Sam.

Down she went.

“Hello?” she cried. She was a confident girl.

Left turn into what she thought would be the kitchen's preparation area. Something rang a bell: she could see a chair that looked familiar. Right turn, toward a glow of light—a couple of right-angle turns that didn't seem likely, but now she'd come so far she'd soon bump into someone. Left, then right through an unlocked grille she'd definitely never seen before. A staircase down: not the way, but she heard some footsteps, so that suggested a human presence. She hurried down them and found herself in a narrow passage. No carpet anymore, no boards even: the floor was stone flags. She knew she must be well under the mansion, in deep cellars. They would—they should—link up with the kitchen . . .

“Hello?” she called, again. “Can someone answer, please?”

A very dead sound; a rather damp sound. In the distance, she could hear singing. It was low and mournful, like the chanting of monks. Even as she listened it stopped.

In her mind she was thinking,
This school is a madhouse. Only in a place like this could you get so stupidly lost in a few minutes 
. . .

“Is anyone there?” she yelled.

Then she listened to the silence. Somewhere far off she heard a key turning in a lock, then—possibly—the shooting of a bolt. They weren't comforting sounds.

Millie turned around nervously and tried to find her way back. But after a few minutes the ground sloped away downward and she knew it was hopeless. She lit Mr. Sanchez's silver cigarette lighter and inspected the sandy floor.

There were bootprints pacing away downhill. She followed them. An iron gate stood on the left, all bars and chain; through the gate she could see empty wine racks. Opposite was an archway, with a broken door that stood open. Either side, soaring up high into the gloom, were marble shelves. It was a cold and
clammy place, and Millie inspected it with her lighter. True, it
felt
like a tomb—but it wasn't one. There were no headstones or bodies and the smell was only a little bit musty. She worked hard at logic, forcing herself to be calm: this was simply a larder, surely, where cold cheese and meat would be stored. Wine store, cheese store. Everything has its place, and she was simply in the kitchen cellars of a huge house where years ago they'd had dinners for a hundred guests. They would have had food and booze to last half a year . . . and they would also have staircases to get you back to the kitchens quickly, so Millie walked on, confident that in a short time she'd find those stairs.