‘Yes, I understand. This young man, is he wide?’
‘Not very. As a matter of fact, he’s quite thin.’ I caught at myself. ‘Is he what?’
‘Wide.’ He waved towards the upper track. ‘This is not right, no? In German, weit. Is he wide from here?’
‘Oh, far . . . Is he far! Not very, only a little farther – more far – beyond the tunnel, the first tunnel.’ How the devil did one pantomime a tunnel? Frantically I tried, and somehow he seemed to understand even this – or else perhaps he by-passed the explanation and was content to act on what he certainly had understood.
‘You will show us. We shall now the auto off bring.’
It didn’t seem to take those three burly men long to shift the Mercedes. I made no attempt to help them. Reaction was hitting me, and I simply sat down on a pile of sleepers and watched without seeing them as they strained and rocked at Lewis’s poor car until at last she came clear and was shoved away from the rails. Then between them, almost as if I were a parcel, they heaved me up into the cab of the engine, and with a positively horrifying eruption of vile black smoke and a straining shriek of cog-wheels ‘Fiery Elijah’ resumed his slow ascent.
I suppose there is something in every one of us, boy or girl, which at some level, or at some age, makes us want to drive an engine. Now that my apprehension had lifted, I almost enjoyed the ride, and indeed, of all the engines that I have ever seen, this one, though certainly not the most exciting, was the most entertaining, being a nineteenth-century relic and possessing all the almost forgotten charm of the nursery trains of childhood. Its steep tilt, so absurd and pathetic on the flat, meant that on the upward climb the floor of the cabin was level. The tank was squat and black, the smoke stack enormous and funnel-shaped, and every available inch of the engine, it seemed, was festooned with tubes, wires, and gadgets of unimaginable uses. The paint was black, the wheels scarlet, and the whole thing was smelly, dirty, diabolically noisy and entirely charming. If the baroque age had produced a railway engine, this would certainly have been it.
We were soon clear of the trees, and ahead of us in the morning sunlight the line lay like a deeply clawed triple scratch through the white limestone. We threaded our way along a naked curve of hill clothed with the tufted turf thick with gentians, and then the line ran into a cutting, and rough perpendicular walls of rock crowded us from either side to a height well above the roof of the truck; so closely indeed that I shrank back into the cabin, but not before I had seen, some hundred yards ahead of us, the black mouth of the first tunnel.
I shouted as much, quite unnecessarily, to the driver, who grinned and nodded and made signs that I should keep back in the cabin and under the cover of the roof. He could have spared himself the pains. I had ducked already. The tunnel looked singularly uninviting and not nearly big enough, but through it we went, with what I’ll swear was not more than a foot to spare.
It was quite a long tunnel, and if I had been digging it myself I would certainly not have dug it any bigger than need be, but going through it was like being threaded like cotton through a narrow bead. In the tight, heavy blackness the din was horrifying. The enormous beating bursts of smoke from the engine, magnified a thousand times, volleyed and echoed back from the sides of the rocky tube. And there was the steam. Within twenty seconds of our entering the tunnel the place was like a steam bath, and a dirty one at that. It was enough to beat the wits out of anybody, and when the driver put his hand on the throttle and reduced speed I could – Tim or no Tim – almost have screamed at him to go on as fast as he could out of this inferno of heat and blackness and shattering noise. I am certain that no guard – even if his eyes would have adjusted to the sudden light after this utter blackness – could have kept a lookout forward and been in time to see Timothy on the line.
Light was running now through the filthy clouds of smoke that lined the tunnel. One could see the fissures and bulges of the rock. It grew stronger. The air cleared. As I pulled myself up to look, sunlight struck suddenly straight ahead of us, and then our front, the nose of the truck, was out in it, and the sharp edge of black shadow was sliding back over the shining roof towards the engine.
A bell clanged, sharply. Again I heard the sliding screech of brakes, and the scream of steel on steel. The train stopped with a great puffing sigh, then a long hiss of escaping steam which shut off sharply, leaving the engine simmering gently in the still mountain air like a steam kettle.
I put a hand to the rail and vaulted down to the gravel.
‘Tim, Tim, it’s me! Are you all right?’
He was still there, his foot still wedged under the rack. When I ran up to him he was slowly uncurling himself from what looked like some desperately cramped position, and I realised that, hearing the train, he had tried to cram his long body down between the rack and the rail, hoping that if the worst happened and the train ran over him unseeing he might escape one or other of the wheels. That he could not have done so was quite obvious, and this he must have known. If he had been white before, he now looked like death itself, but he pulled himself back into a sitting position and even managed, lit by relief as he was, some sort of a smile.
I knelt beside him. ‘I’m sorry, you must have heard it coming for miles. It was the best I could do.’
‘A bit . . . over-dramatic, I’d say.’ He was making a magnificent effort to take it undramatically, but his voice was very shaky indeed. ‘I felt like Pearl White or somebody. I’ll never laugh at a thriller again.’ He straightened up. ‘Actually, I’d say it was a pretty good best. Transport and reinforcements for Lewis, all at one go. Did they let you drive?’
‘I never thought to ask. Maybe they’ll let you, on the way down.’
I put an arm round him and helped to prop him up. The men had run up the track with me, and, though I could see Timothy was trying to pull himself together still more and dig out his fund of German for explanations, there was no need. The driver and guard lost no time in starting efficient work on his shoe, and in a matter of seconds had the laces cut from the now badly swollen foot and were beginning, very gingerly and gently, to cut the leather of the shoe. The co-driver was also a man with a fine grasp of situation. As the others started work he vanished back in the direction of the truck, and now appeared with a flat green bottle which he uncorked and presented to Timothy with a phrase in German.
‘The flask, she was for the Gasthaus,’ explained the driver, ‘but Johann Becker he will not speak no.’
‘I’m dead sure he won’t,’ said Tim. ‘What is it?’
I said: ‘Brandy. Go on, it’s what you need, and for pity’s sake don’t drink it all. I could do with half a pint myself.’
And presently, as the brandy went round – the railwaymen had evidently felt the strain of the recent excitement quite as much as Timothy or I – Tim’s foot was drawn gently out of the wreck of his shoe, and willing hands were half carrying, half supporting him back towards the waiting train.
The truck, where they deposited us, was stacked high with stores, but there was just room to sit on the floor, and the doors (I noticed) could be locked.
‘We will now,’ said the driver to Timothy, ‘take you straight up to the Gasthaus. No doubt Frau Becker will attend to your foot, and Johann Becker will give you breakfast.’
‘If you have the money,’ said the guard sourly.
‘That is no matter, I shall pay,’ said the driver.
‘What are they saying?’ I asked, and Tim told me.
‘Well, I wouldn’t guarantee the breakfast,’ I said, ‘but actually, we could hardly do better than go straight up with them. I can’t think of a better way to bring those thugs down to the village than in this truck. And we’ve even provided the escort of solid citizens Lewis asked for – the driver’s the policeman’s brother, and they’re none of them great friends of Becker’s, from the sound of it. Do you suppose you could explain to them before we start, that when we get up there, they’re going to find my husband with the Becke
rs and another man at the other end of an automatic pistol, and that they, as solid citizens, must render him every assistance and take the whole boiling down and hang on to them till the police come?’
‘Well, I could try. Now?’
‘If you don’t tell them before we start you’ll never make yourself heard. “Fiery Elijah” rather makes his presence felt. Go on, have a bash – that is, if you’ve got the German to tell them with?’
‘OK, I can but try. I wish I knew the German for cocaine . . . What’s the matter?’
‘The cocaine,’ I said blankly. ‘I’d forgotten all about it. I left it in my pockets in the back of the car.’
‘You what? Well, if the car’s locked—’
‘It isn’t. In fact, the key’s still in it,’ I said.
We stared at one another for a long moment of horror, then suddenly and with one consent began to laugh, a weak, silly sort of laughter that turned to helpless giggles, while our three friends stood over us looking sympathetic and filling in time on the bottle of brandy.
‘Well, I only hope,’ said Timothy at length, dabbing his eyes, ‘that you’ve got the English to explain to Lewis in.’
And so it was that Lewis, sitting on the edge of Frau Becker’s kitchen table drinking Frau Becker’s coffee and holding Frau Becker, her husband, and her husband’s friend at the business end of the Beretta, was relieved of his vigil, not by the cold-eyed, tight-jawed professional men he must have been expecting, but by a peculiarly assorted gang of amateurs, two of whom were slightly hilarious, not to say light-headed, and all of whom smelt quite distinctly of Herr Becker’s brandy.
It was some four hours later.
The cocaine had been recovered, our prisoners had been delivered to the correctly tight-jawed, cold-eyed professionals, and the battered Mercedes had somehow brought us all home to the Schloss Zechstein where Timothy’s foot had been fixed up by a doctor who had talked soothingly about sprains and a day in bed; and I had had a bath and (feeling genuinely fragile now) was floating in a happy dream of relief and reaction towards the bed, while Lewis dragged off his wrecked clothes and fished in his case for a razor.
Then I remembered something, and stopped short.
‘Lee Elliott!’ I said. ‘That’s who they’ll think you are! Did you register as Lee Elliott?’
‘I didn’t register as anything. There was a female in the hall who bleated something at me, but I just said “Later” and pressed the lift button.’ He threw his sweater into a corner and started on his shirt buttons. ‘Come to think of it, the porter did start in the other direction with my case, but I took it from him and came along here.’
‘Lewis – no, just a minute, darling . . . Hadn’t you better go down straight away and get it cleared up?’
‘I’ve done all the clearing up I’m doing for one day. It can wait till morning.’
‘It’s morning now.’
‘Tomorrow morning, then.’
‘But – oh, darling, be serious, it’s after ten. If anyone came in—’
‘They can’t. The door’s locked.’ He grinned at me, and sent the shirt flying after the sweater. ‘If we need to reopen communications, we can do so later – by telephone. But for the present, I think it can come off the hook . . . There. First things first, my girl. I want a bath and a shave, and – didn’t you hear what the doctor said? A day in bed’s what we all need.’
‘You could be right,’ I said.
Epilogue
His neigh is like the bidding of a monarch, and his countenance enforces homage.
Shakespeare: Henry V
The hall was white and gold, like a ballroom. The huge crystal chandeliers, fully lit, glowed as ornaments in themselves rather than as light, for the September sunshine streamed in through the great windows. Where there should have been a polished dance floor there was a wide space of sawdust and tanbark. To begin with it had been cleanly raked into a pattern of fine lines, but the hoofs had beaten it into surfy shapes as the white stallions paced and danced and performed their grave, beautiful patterns to the music.
And now the floor was empty. The five white horses had filed out through the archway at the far end of the hall and vanished down the corridor towards their stable. The Boccherini minuet faded into a pause of silence.
The packed alcoves of people craned forward. Every seat was full, and in the gallery people were standing, trying to see past one another’s shoulders, the movement and the whispering and the crackling of programmes filling the sunlit pause. Beside me Timothy leaned forward, taut with excitement, and on my other side sat Lewis, relaxed and sunburned, reading the programme as if nothing else mattered in the world but the fact that on this Sunday morning in September the great Neapolitano Petra was back at the Spanish Riding School, and the Director himself was going to ride him, and all Vienna had come to see.
Beyond the archway the lights grew to brightness. The half-door opened. A horse appeared, his rider sitting still as a statue. He paced forward slowly into the hall, ears alert, nostrils flared, his movements proud and cool and soberly controlled, and yet somehow filled with delight.
There was no hint of stiffness now. Round he came, the dancing steps made even more beautiful by their silence: the beat of the music hid even the muffled thudding in the sand, so the high floating movements of the hoofs seemed to take the stallion skimming as effortlessly as a swan in full sail. The light poured and splashed on the white skin where the last shadows of black had been polished and bleached away, and his mane and tail tossed in thick fine silk like a flurry of snow.
The music changed: the Director sat still: the old stallion snorted, mouthed the bit, and lifted himself, rider and all, into the first of the ‘airs above the ground’.
Then it was over, and he came soberly forward to the salute, ears moving to the applause. The crowd was getting to its feet. The rider took off his hat in the traditional salute to the Emperor’s portrait, but somehow effacing himself and his skill, and presenting only the horse.
Old Piebald bent his head. He was facing us full on, six feet away, looking (you would have thought) straight at us; but this time there was no welcoming whicker, not even a gleam in the big dark eye that one could call recognition. The eyes, like the stallion’s whole bearing were absorbed, concentrated, inward, his entire being caught up again and contained in the old disciplines that fitted him as inevitably as his own skin.
He backed, turned, and went out on the ebb-tide of applause. The grey half-door shut. The lights dimmed, and the white horse dwindled down the corridor beyond the arch, to where his name was still above his stall, and fresh straw waiting.
Also by Mary Stewart
Madam, Will You Talk?
Wildfire at Midnight
Thunder on the Right
Nine Coaches Waiting
My Brother Michael
The Ivy Tree
The Moonspinners
This Rough Magic
The Gabriel Hounds
Touch Not the Cat
Thornyhold
Stormy Petrel
Rose Cottage
THE ARTHURIAN NOVELS
The Crystal Cave
The Hollow Hills
The Last Enchantment
The Wicked Day
The Prince and the Pilgrim
POEMS
Frost on the Window
FOR CHILDREN
The Little Broomstick
Ludo and the Star Horse
A Walk in Wolf Wood
Mary Stewart, one of the most popular novelists, was born in Sunderland, County Durham and lives in the West Highlands. Her first novel, Madam, Will You Talk?, was published in 1955 and marked the beginning of a long and acclaimed writing career. All her novels have been bestsellers on both sides of the Atlantic. She was made a Doctor of Literature by Durham University in 2009.
Mary Stewart, Airs Above the Ground
(Series: # )
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