The Boy Who Wasn't There

by K. M. Peyton

  Both cars pulled into the car park.

  Ferretface and Mrs Turkin got out, slamming their doors behind them. Ferretface stood by his door with the revolver, while Mrs Turkin went to confer with her husband.

  ‘Hm, nice view,’ Nutty commented. ‘Pity there’s not a hotdog van.’

  ‘I’m dying of hunger!’ Hoomey wailed.

  Better than dying of something else, more quickly, Christian thought. He didn’t like the look of it. He caught John Pike’s eye and turned away. Nothing to say. They were all locked into a valueless van on the edge of a precipice. Had Hoomey not noticed? No. Jodie was actually combing her hair with a comb out of her skirt pocket. Christian groaned.

  ‘Your arm hurting?’ Nutty asked.

  He couldn’t reply.

  Mr Turkin nodded to Ferretface who got back into the driving seat. He still had the revolver, which he put on the dashboard. He leaned over and fiddled with the passenger door lock, and then started the engine again. He drove out of the car park and, more or less, into the view. The ground fell away beneath them in a great sweep of scree to the lip of a deep gorge, no doubt a cousin of the one they had encountered the day before, only lower down the valley and bigger and better than higher up. A few battered trees clung here and there to the scree and way below them tops of trees stuck up above the lip of the gorge, showing how deep it was. There was no path down to it and no doubt few people went down.

  They were going down, Christian knew. Like into a deep hole, their remains not to be found for days.

  It still hadn’t dawned on the others, only John Pike.

  ‘Oh no!’ he whispered.

  He looked at Christian, who recognized the appeal: he, the General’s son, had to think of a way out of this, or else. There wasn’t a way.

  The Turkins had turned the Citroen round to go back, and were waiting with the engine running for Ferretface.

  He had his door open now. He reached for his revolver, let off the handbrake, put the car in gear and jumped out. As he went he slammed the door behind him. The old van took off, found the incline to its liking and plunged down like a horse let out in a field.

  Christian had a glimpse of Nutty’s face – her expression of unbelieving horror. Hoomey began to scream. Jodie dropped her comb.

  ‘Drive it!’ said John Pike. ‘For heaven’s sake, Chris, drive it!’

  He crashed his shoulder against the back door but it was resolutely locked.

  Nutty stood up and started to beat her fists against the side as if she could batter them in. Christian shoved past her and started to climb into the front seats, which was difficult. John Pike bunked him from behind.

  ‘The brake! The handbrake!’

  Christian reached for it and hauled it up, but the van still kept going – it made scarcely any difference. The slope was a bare sheet of small grit, which just moved down inexorably under the gripped wheels. From the front seat Christian had a clear view of an uninterrupted slide to total disaster – the lip of the gorge and the tops of the fir trees on the far side just showing. There seemed to be no trees on their side which might possibly break their fall. And it was a long fall, into a maelstrom of water in flood – he knew it only too well.

  John Pike was leaning over, trying to open the passenger door, but it would not give, locked in some way which he could not find. The van was going too fast now to make opening the window any sort of an option. It bounced and swayed and in the back they started to get thrown off balance. Low gear made no difference to their relentless progress, the land steepening and their speed increasing. The old van started to sway alarmingly.

  ‘Steer it, Chris – sideways!’

  ‘It’ll turn over!’

  ‘Not too suddenly. Try it.’

  Chris eased the wheel so that the tyres slewed on the gritty slope. There was a strong smell of burning rubber. The van lurched horribly. Everyone in the back screamed.

  ‘Get the weight on this side!’

  John Pike had grabbed Arnold by the arm, pulling him to the upside of the van. The girls scrabbled to follow. It was sailing dinghy practice, but made very little difference.

  Christian, afraid the van would turn over, straightened it out again. But he could see that to turn across the slope was their only chance. And time was running out. The van was gathering momentum as the land fell away. He eased the wheel round again.

  The vehicle lurched violently and, with great deliberation, still hurtling downhill, fell over on its side, and then on its roof. Inside they were flung up and over like washing in a tumble drier, a mix of soft body and hard metal, painful . . . crunch, jab, crack . . . no knowing where was what. Christian had a glimpse of the lip of the gorge out of a window that seemed to face the sky, and heard a tearing, scraping noise of metal on rock: then a tree in his vision, branches against white clouds. He thought he had died.

  There was a smell of burning rubber again, and petrol, strongly. The engine had stopped, the grating gravel noise had stopped. There was a dripping noise and human groaning.

  But there had been no fall. Christian couldn’t work out which way up he was or what had happened, but felt, somehow, a slight swaying, as if he lay in a hammock. He instinctively did not move, only his eyes, looking.

  It took some time to take stock, mainly because he was underneath John Pike, who was either dead or unconscious. Christian determined that the van was on its side, the driver’s side; he lay against the door with John Pike on top of him. Out of the driver’s window he could see branches, not big ones, only twigs, and out of the far side window there was nothing but sky. A bird was passing, it looked like a buzzard, with frazzled wing tips. In any other situation he would have been keenly interested.

  He managed to push himself up on one elbow, in spite of the pain in his upper arm. It mattered to see who was dead and who was alive. From the twittering, whimpering, sighing noises behind him the omens were good: no actual screaming, nor dead silence either. Also, John Pike was breathing, he ascertained as he tried to manoeuvre out from under him – no mean feat under the circumstances. The swaying sensation came again, which – for some reason – he found very frightening.

  He sat up, on the door, and looked down. What he saw nearly made him pass out.

  He was looking straight down into the gorge. Far far below a white stream roared down between the rock cliffs with ten times the vigour he had withstood in his rescue the day before, sending up a white spray that hung over the abyss like mist. Immediately below him the ground fell sheer. But underneath the van, on the very lip of the chasm, there appeared to be a sort of rocky knob, with one puny alder tree growing out of the cup of earth that had collected in the rock’s lee. It was this that had stopped the van’s roll to destruction. The van was balanced – hence the swaying sensation – against the trunk of a slender tree holding on to a crevice in a large rock, above a forty-metre straight drop to certain death.

  Christian shut his eyes. It was too awful to contemplate.

  He heard Jodie’s voice, shrill, ‘Let’s get out of here!’

  ‘Don’t move!’ he yelled. ‘Nobody move!’

  Just when he needed him most, John Pike was not available, damn him. John Pike was the steady, the sheet anchor, the one to think of a way forward. Without him, Christian had to fight down panic and sheer terror. The others couldn’t see what he could see. He tried to keep his voice calm.

  ‘Jodie, don’t move! Nobody move! The van is balanced on a tree trunk over the drop. If you move it might tip off. Just lie still. Is anybody hurt, Jodie?’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Nor me,’ said Nutty, somewhat dubiously.

  ‘Arnie’s cracked his head. It’s bleeding and he’s all dopey.’

  ‘I think Hoomey’s died of fright,’ said Nutty. ‘No. He’s breathing. Complaining again, Hoomey? You’re not dead so don’t worry. Just keep still. General’s orders.’

  A whimpering noise indicated that Hoomey was taking notice.

  ‘Where
are we?’

  ‘Don’t ask,’ said Jodie. ‘Can’t we even sit up?’

  ‘If we never move,’ Nutty said, ‘and nobody finds us, where does that get us?’

  ‘One at a time, try getting comfortable. But don’t shift the balance. Very, very carefully.’

  It was true they had to help themselves. Things might be better than he knew.

  ‘Jodie first.’

  The sickening, slight swaying proved the importance of his warnings more than any words. Once they recognized the situation they acted with commendable calm and sense; it was, after all, a matter of life and death. One only had to look. When they came upright they too, could look down into the gaping abyss below.

  They sat, eventually, in a row on the driver side of the van, which was their floor. Through the window was the dreadful view, but only Christian and Jodie, sitting nearest, could see it properly. Nutty, having had a white-faced glimpse, made sure Hoomey was at the back. John Pike was still unconscious and Arnold too groggy to take any interest.

  ‘Now what?’ said Nutty quietly.

  They had made the casualties as comfortable as they could, and hoped they would shortly come round. They had no visible signs of damage, beyond Arnold’s graze on the temple. John Pike’s colour wasn’t bad and he was making stirring signs.

  ‘Do you think they watched?’ Jodie said. ‘Or drove away?’

  ‘They were driving away,’ Christian said. ‘With luck they never saw. They think we went over.’

  He was trying the window handle, to see if he could open the window. It was like a trap-door into the gorge.

  Jodie said, ‘If people come up here to look at the view, from that car park, they’ll see us and come down. We’ll get rescued.’

  ‘It wasn’t well-used,’ Nutty pointed out. ‘I bet on a day like this nobody comes.’

  ‘It’s a walking area. Walkers might come.’

  On the far side of the gorge Christian could see a track following the contour halfway up the cliff, which was presumably a walkers’ track. It wasn’t so sheer on the far side. Just their luck. Beneath them the rock fell away vertically to a ledge about eight metres below. Below the ledge there was a possible way down, though very steep. They were all wearing hopeless shoes.

  At least they were still alive. Christian put his head back and closed his eyes, trying to take stock. He was in no state to make decisions, but he had to. They could be a very long time waiting to be rescued. It wasn’t in their natures not to try, he knew.

  Jodie said, ‘If we had a rope we could get down.’

  ‘Yeah.’ But there wasn’t a rope. The van was quite bare.

  ‘We could tear our clothes in strips and make a rope,’ said Nutty.

  Christian thought they would all die of cold before a good enough rope could be produced. None of them had a knife and Nutty, although she tried with her skirt, could not even get started ripping it up. The hems were too tough.

  ‘And by the time you’ve knotted it together – the knots take up most of the stuff anyway. How come people do it in books?’

  ‘They use sheets.’

  ‘Ah, well, sheets’d be OK. But we haven’t got any.’

  Christian tried standing up, opening the window the other side that looked to the sky, but it was jammed, nor could he move the door. The only way out was through the trapdoor window beside him. If he lay down and hung Hoomey out at arm’s length, Hoomey might just drop the last seven or so metres to the ledge. Might. Too risky. Hoomey wouldn’t, anyway. Jodie might. Christian did not suggest it. Nutty was getting restless.

  ‘We can’t just sit here!’

  ‘Don’t jump about, for goodness sake!’

  They could all go anyway, if the little tree gave up or the boulder slipped.

  ‘We might just have to sit here,’ he said wearily. His shot arm was throbbing painfully and he didn’t feel like a leader of men any more. Fortunately John Pike was beginning to make signs of returning to consciousness. Christian persuaded him not to leap to his feet and John Pike took in the situation with a quite natural amazement. He lay looking at the square of sky above his head, taking it in.

  ‘If you really tried, you couldn’t get yourself in a fix like this! It’s pure chance.’

  ‘Good luck, strictly speaking.’

  Even turning over on to his side, John Pike could feel the delicacy of the truck’s balancing act. He looked out of the trap-door, considering.

  ‘Just a chance . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You could drop on to that ledge without carrying on down.’

  ‘I wouldn’t like to do it.’

  ‘No. Nor would I.’

  ‘The best chance is somebody coming along that track across the other side and seeing us. Or from above, but we can’t see what’s happening up there.’

  ‘Navratilova’s probably on her way down to give us a push,’ Nutty said. ‘How the hell do they expect to get away with it?’

  ‘Nobody knows about what they did last night, only us. Nobody will connect them with our disappearance,’ Jodie said.

  ‘They’ll all think we went joy-riding. Mildred’ll think so, the way we all dropped her harp and tore off in her car.’

  Blue sky was opening up in their view, with huge white clouds sailing along. A wind was rising, tossing the tops of the fir trees below. Christian did not like to remark on it, but he could feel the van reacting to the buffeting of the wind. It was so tender, a good blast could well finish them. Sitting still doing nothing was the hardest of all their options.

  ‘Look,’ said John Pike. ‘On the track.’

  Christian held his breath. Over the horizon where the track wound out of sight towards the upper moors, a file of horses and riders could be seen coming down. They would pass directly across the valley in front of them.

  ‘They’re bound to see us!’

  ‘They might think we’re an old accident – we need to send out a signal—’

  ‘A shirt – a blouse – wave it!’

  ‘White’ll show up! Come on, Hoomey, strip off! It’s time you helped!’

  Nutty bullied Hoomey into taking off his shirt. She tore it off over his head and passed it up to Christian. Christian hung it out of the window and waved it backwards and forwards.

  ‘Passing ships,’ said Nutty. ‘S’like being on a desert island.’

  ‘Suppose they don’t look!’

  ‘Oh, go on, they’re tourists! Looking at the view is what it’s all about.’

  ‘People like gruesome accidents. That’s what we are.’

  ‘Not yet we’re not.’

  It helped to talk rubbish, rather than think about the sickly, faint shivering of the poised van. Nutty could feel the cold sweat of fear sticky between her shoulder-blades. Sitting still waiting was the most difficult act of all.

  The file of horses moved on for some time, then the leader halted. It was too far away to see what he was doing, but Christian saw an arm point in their direction. He passed this information back, waving the shirt more vigorously. Then the horses moved on, but at a much faster pace. They moved out of the picture. Christian couldn’t see them any more and gave Hoomey his shirt back.

  ‘It looks hopeful.’

  It helped a lot; good for morale, Christian thought, but he still didn’t see how they were going to be saved without a fatigue party of Royal Engineers who probably weren’t around. Horses usually meant women, and the most he allowed himself to expect was that they would go for help, which would take hours. The wind was rising all the time: for once it was a glorious day, the great white clouds whizzing overhead against a sky of purest blue. Life was very desirable, Christian thought, with a sick shudder. He had never been in such a mess before.

  Arnold had come round but wasn’t happy.

  ‘I’m starving!’

  Nobody told him he was perched in a tree half-way down a precipice. It didn’t seem worthwhile. He might want to look, which would tip the balance. Jodie told him to li
e still because he was concussed.

  They waited.

  Even if they were coming to help, the riders had to cross the river in spate, probably impossible.

  They played I Spy, which wasn’t riveting. Christian thought of D for Death but didn’t say. Then they had a sort of quiz which Jodie organized. Hoomey started to cry. Nutty rounded on him and told him he wasn’t even fit to play the triangle. John Pike, as head percussionist, defended the triangle and they had a quarrel, which Nutty cut off by saying she was dying to have a pee.

  ‘You’ll have to wet your knickers then! Don’t move,’ Christian said.

  He had a nasty feeling that the van was slipping infinitesimally, because he could see more out of the window below him than he could earlier. While he was trying to check on this a movement caught his eye. Emerging from the gorge was a single figure. It was making in their direction but had a daunting climb ahead of it. It seemed to be carrying something on its back.

  He reported back. The atmosphere changed immediately. Hoomey stopped crying and Nutty said she would hang on.

  Whoever their rescuer was, it was some climber, Christian established. Not a horsey woman; it could only be a professional mountain man by the ease and speed of movement. Christian felt better and better by the minute as he watched. He kept up a running commentary and everyone started to get very excited.

  ‘Has he got a rope?’

  ‘I think he has. He’s got something anyway.’

  ‘Wings!’

  He appeared to be a man of about forty, lean and hard, wearing riding boots and breeches. He came up steadily until he was within shouting distance below, when he stopped and looked up.

  ‘How many of you in that thing?’

  ‘Six of us!’

  He swore quite heartily and shouted up, ‘Don’t any of you move!’

  As if we didn’t know, thought Christian.

  Christian could now see that what he carried on his back was a load of stirrup leathers. Brilliant! Buckled together and really strong, they would be better than a rope.

  The man gained the little ledge, his point of no return, and put down the stirrup leathers.

  He looked up. ‘Very dicey,’ he called up conversationally. ‘I can see it swaying from here. I think if we don’t get you out, the wind’ll push it off before proper help comes. You need a helicopter to hold it, ideally.’