‘What are you going to do?’ she asked.
‘I like watching birds,’ he said. ‘See you later.’
I hope it rains, thought Zeugma maliciously as she drove away. I hope it pees down.
But the clouds at present were being whipped far too rapidly across the sky to have much time to shed their loads and she was concentrating too hard on her driving to bear malice for long. The terrain up here was exceptionally treacherous and Leo would not be pleased if she got the Range Rover stuck or, worse still, damaged it. At least there was no other traffic to bother about, and precious few pedestrians.
As though conjured up by her thought, one of the latter now appeared. He was about two hundred yards off and below her and being chased by a wolf. No, she corrected herself as the running order changed, he was chasing a wolf. Fascinated by this sight, she let the front nearside wheel sink into one of the soft patches and only a rapid bit of gear manoeuvring kept her out of trouble. With her full attention returned to driving, she only caught occasional glimpses of the strange pursuit (if such it was) going on ahead.
She finally overtook them on a line about fifty feet to their left and risked a sideways glance. The wolf was not, she deduced, really a wolf but the nearest thing you could get to it this side of the Steppes. It was as though someone had started with a pair of Alsatians and gradually bred out the refinements.
There was something lupine about the man also. Head thrust forward and held low, large yellow teeth bared with the effort of running, a wildness round the eyes deep sunk in a weather beaten leathery face, he could have been almost any age. He was clad in what looked like a pair of cream-coloured tights with cross-over braces, a costume she recalled seeing Cumberland wrestlers wear at some of the local games.
Then the ground fell away steeply but more smoothly in front of her and she was able to let the Range Rover surge away from the strange pair, neither of whom had shown the least awareness of her presence.
The site of the dig was a quarter of a mile further on, in the trough of a shallow basin. Zeugma aproached it with an unenthusiasm that troubled her for all sorts of reasons. Lakenheath had been right. Being out of touch with Leo like this had upset the whole balance of her being. She had not been able to finish the three eggs and half pound of bacon which Charley set as a matter of course before those privileged to be his guests. But loss of appetite was only a symptom. More important was the loss of that feeling of self-sufficiency which had been one of the compensations for five years spent moving at speeds too great for the setting down of roots. Of course she had met a lot of people, some pretty important, that was inevitable when you worked with Leo. And there had been men as well. Two anyway.
The latest had been the ‘Keats’ autumn episode with a medieval history student helping with the dig at Cadbury, a relationship broken off by Pasquino’s intuitive decision that there was nothing more to find there and the quest for Arthur must be pursued to the north. She sometimes flattered herself with the thought that perhaps it was Leo’s desire to keep her away from the student as much as Arthur’s erratic movements which had caused the change of plan. But Leo had not said or done anything to confirm this hypothesis.
He hadn’t approved (she suspected) of her earlier and much more serious affair either. It was five years ago now, she realized. Five years since she had met, loved, gone to bed with, and, without explanation or farewell, been abandoned by Hasan bin Radhauri. It was through Leo that she had met Hasan in Cairo. Suave, urbane, highly educated, about ten years older than herself, he had seemed an unlikely candidate for the favours of a plump, rather awkward and freely perspiring English girl. Yet it had happened and had continued to happen for five short weeks which now had the flimsy quality of a pleasurable dream.
Then he had gone and a few days later Leo had had another of his famous intuitions and whisked her off to southern Ireland. The next few years had been busy ones, too busy for anything more than an occasional grapple with a superannuated academic at some archaeological conference. Even the medieval history student affair had not really touched her. She was, she had begun to think, completely self-sufficient. And now just because of Leo’s perfectly in-character disappearance for a couple of days, she was feeling like Marianna in the Moated Grange and even taking up with shits like Lakenheath just for the sake of company !
A day’s good hard work should get this nonsense out of my system, she told herself angrily, and sent the Range Rover bouncing over the lip of the basin where the dig was located.
Someone was there already.
Leo, she thought for a moment. But only for a moment. Leo was longer, thinner, older than the figure who watched her approach now. Nor did Leo ride a motor-bike and wear black leather. So it wasn’t Leo. But who it was remained quite impossible to deduce even when she drew up alongside the bike as the top half of his face was covered by a huge pair of dust-caked goggles and his chin rested in a casually knotted white silk scarf.
She stared at him silently out of the car window, feeling irrationally that if she spoke first he might pull back the goggles and the scarf to reveal the skull which had disappeared two days before from the canvas-covered trench behind him.
‘Hello,’ she said abruptly. ‘Can I help you?’
He pushed back the goggles and peeled off the leather balaclava which had made his head look like a large black egg. He was young, dark complexioned (which showed off his even white teeth as he smiled at her) and had the unusual combination of jet-black hair and light-blue eyes. He was also very good looking and she fought hard to resist taking an instant liking to him. Distrust first impressions, she had been taught at Whitethorn.
‘Zeugma Gray?’ he said. ‘If you’re Zeugma Gray, I’ve been assured you will provide me with coffee, one of Charley’s pork and crackling sandwiches, and intellectual conversation.’
‘Assured who by?’
‘By Leo, of course. I’m Jonathan Upas.’
He held out a hand, raised his eyebrows apologetically, unpeeled the tight black glove, and offered it again. She took it instinctively. At Whitethorn good manners became instinctive in order that snubs should be purposeful.
‘Where is Leo?’ She looked round absurdly, as though expecting him to rise from the trench. Not that that was impossible. In the right mood he was capable of anything.
‘There’s a fishing party organized up the water a ways. Satisfaction guaranteed, I believe. Trout leaping into your bucket.’
‘Leo fishing?’ said Zeugma. ‘What about his work?’
It came out rather more bitterly than she intended.
‘He’s been feeling guilty about you,’ Upas assured her. ‘We all have. I was sorry I missed you at the pub yesterday so I thought I’d ride over here today and see if I could spot you. I do a bit of scrambling and trials riding too when I get the chance and this bit of countryside’s the perfect practice course.’
It was not a way of considering the countryside which Zeugma found much more endearing than Lakenheath’s industrial vision. Upas was indicating his bike with some pride, and looking more closely at it even Zeugma’s inexpert and uninterested eye spotted one or two modifications to the normal road model. The rear tyre seemed at least twice as wide as the front and looked very flat. The handlebars were high, nothing like so much as ‘chopper’ bars, but higher than normal. Indeed the whole machine seemed rather higher with several inches more ground clearance than a normal road model, and the wheelbase was noticeably shorter too. The exhaust system was raised. All in all it possessed much of the kind of ‘machine-savagery’ which sometimes made Zeugma afraid.
‘It’s basically a Bultaco Sherpa, with a few modifications of my own,’ said Upas. ‘It’s a fine sport. Tests the nerve and keeps you fit. Something like this between your legs over a bit of rough terrain, well, it strains every muscle in your body to keep it under control.’
He glanced at her boldly to make sure she took the innuendo.
‘I tend to regard machines as admissio
ns of defeat,’ she said. ‘Men use them to compensate for their shortcomings.’
‘You put it too lightly,’ he answered. ‘They don’t merely compensate. They transcend ! Perhaps I’ll take you for a ride some time. You’ll see ! Look, why don’t you come up to our little place for dinner? Tomorrow night, say. Better still, bring your kit and stay over. What’s sauce for old Leo …’
‘Our place?’ enquired Zeugma politely.
Upas frowned at her.
‘Well, my brother’s really. Malcolm. But it belongs to the family. He just happened to come along thirteen years before me.’
‘Malcolm Upas,’ said Zeugma, wondering if he were cast in the same mould as his brother. There was something naggingly familiar about Upas. Omar Shariff, perhaps. Or Sheikh Yamani. She hoped that perhaps first impressions could sometimes be trusted after all.
‘Yes. What time shall I call on you?’
Their discussion was interrupted by another arrival.
The wolf-dog bounded into the dip, ignored the human beings entirely, but paused to cock its leg against the motor-bike.
‘Sod off!’ said Upas amiably, swinging his boot at it. The dog evaded the blow easily and its red-tinged eyes flickered momentarily over Upas’s frame as though, it seemed to Zeugma, deciding which jawful of flesh to tear out first.
‘Twinkle !’ rapped a stern voice, and the dog backed slowly away, growling softly in its throat as the strangely clad runner appeared over the ridge.
‘My God!’ said Upas, staring in amazement at this apparition.
‘I’d prefer you didn’t kick my dog,’ said the man. His voice was harsh and guttural, as though speech did not come easy.
‘I’d prefer your dog did not pee on my property,’ rejoined Upas. ‘And though you may know no better than to appear before a lady in your underwear, at least you ought to know how to control a mangy, flea-bitten, sheep-worrying cur.’
The dog’s unceasing growl rose a semi-tone.
‘Twinkle’s no sheep-worrier,’ denied the man.
‘No? Well, I can believe that. I can’t see a dog called Twinkle worrying anything, not even sheep,’ mocked Upas. ‘Look at him ! What’s he good for?’
‘I race him,’ said the man.
‘Race him?’ Upas was genuinely amazed. ‘What in? He’s not a hound; they don’t let you enter him for trials, do they?’
‘I mean, I race against him. Over the moors.’
Now Upas was really interested. He scents a bit of sport, thought Zeugma.
‘To what end?’ enquired Upas. ‘And who wins? How can the beast know it’s a race?’
‘He knows,’ said the man grimly. ‘And he makes sure he always wins. There’s nought to beat him on these moors. Man, beast. Or machine.’
He looked scornfully at the motor-bike. And Zeugma suddenly had a sense that he was dangling a bait.
‘You’re joking,’ said Upas, following his gaze. ‘Will it race me? On this?’
He pulled the bike upright.
‘Ay. If I tell him to.’
‘And what would be the wager? I only race for money. Can you manage a tenner?’
It was a lie. Zeugma could see that Upas was determined to race whatever happened. The introduction of the money factor was merely an attempt to make the man back down from his certainties.
Quickly she spoke.
‘I’ll put up Twinkle’s tenner.’
Upas grinned at her. He was really very attractive despite everything.
‘A sportswoman too. Fine. Now what’s the mark? It must be mutually agreed. I want no fifty-yard sprint!’
The man cast an assessing eye round the countryside and pointed north.
‘Yon grove of elders.’
The trees he was pointing at were a quarter of a mile away, too far for Zeugma to essay on identification but the only ones in sight in that direction.
Upas examined the terrain between carefully. He was no longer smiling and he no longer looked like the young city gent, patronizing the peasantry. He looked like a professional, weighing all things carefully in the probability scales. It was not a change that was altogether for the better.
To Zeugma’s eye, which under Leo’s tutelage had developed a certain skill in assessing the characteristics of landscape, the odds seemed very much in Upas’s favour. Twinkle would be able to take the more direct route but nothing in the gently undulating moorland seemed to demand an excess of circumnavigation from a skilled motor-cyclist. Upas clearly arrived at the same conclusion.
‘There and back?’ he said. ‘You’re on.’
He climbed on the motor-bike, started the engine first time and drew the goggles down over his eyes.
‘You say the word,’ he said to the man. ‘So the hound understands.’
The man snapped his fingers and when Twinkle came to him he stooped and spoke softly in the dog’s ear.
Upas grinned confidently at Zeugma, the man stood up and said, ‘You ready?’
Upas nodded, the man said quietly, ‘Right, Twinkle,’ and the dog was away. Upas who had been expecting something rather more dramatic was left standing at the post, but he quickly recovered, resisted the temptation to over-throttle and smartly pulled away. In twenty seconds he was up with the dog and in another twenty he was leaving it well behind.
‘He’s a fair rider,’ said the man unworried.
‘Yes, he is. I’m a bit worried about my tenner,’ said Zeugma.
‘No need. I’ll stand the gain or the loss myself,’ he replied brusquely, adding, as if to soften the harshness, ‘Not that he’ll lose.’
‘You seem very confident, Mr …?’
‘Crow.’
‘Mr. Crow. Tell me, how on earth does Twinkle know where to go?’
‘He’s a bright dog,’ Crow answered. ‘Even with a name like Twinkle.’
Zeugma, whose own strange name had once caused her many embarrassments, asked with interest, ‘Why did you call him that?’
‘Who’d think he could be beat by a dog called Twinkle?’ answered Crow.
Musing on this, Zeugma returned her attention to the race. Upas was still ahead, but the dog was now holding its own. The bike had been slowed down by a patch of close-growing grassy tummocks and was now pursuing a course at right angles to the flying crow line.
Perhaps, thought Zeugma hopefully, perhaps the terrain will force a very long detour, but the thought was hardly formulated before Upas wrestled the front wheel round and began heading straight for the trees once more. For about thirty yards he accelerated, then with dramatic suddenness he slowed and the wheels span, sending great gobbets of sludge into the air.
‘Is there a bog there?’ asked Zeugma.
‘Looks like it,’ said Crow phlegmatically.
Upas had to dismount and drag his deeply buried wheels out by main force. He had kept the engine going, however, and he quickly remounted and began to move slowly to the right athwart an uphill slope, scanning the ground carefully in search of a safe route.
Twinkle was now in the lead, loping steadily forward with an ugly but ground-consuming gait. Upas suddenly turned the bike round and began running back down the slope. He had realized, Zeugma guessed, that there was no relationship between height and bogginess on these moors. You could scale the highest point and still sink up to your calves.
Twinkle reached the trees at the same time that Upas at last found a route which circumvented the bog. Crow pursed his lips in what might have been a soundless whistle and the dog began the return journey passing within a yard of the man as he sent the bike bucking and bouncing up the slope to the grove. By the time he reached the first tree, conscientiously reached out and touched it, then wrenching the heavy machine round for the return journey, Twinkle had a lead of nearly two hundred yards. It seemed a winning margin.
But Upas was no easy loser, Zeugma realized. He knew the route now, and he had the kind of mind which kept hold of things. And above all he was not afraid of risks.
The note of the
motor-bike engine changed, ran up half an octave, broadened into a chord and the sleek machine began to accelerate down from the trees at a breakneck speed.
Zeugma glanced at Crow who seemed to be talking to himself or perhaps he was murmuring some sub-aural encouragements to his beast. The machine was closing fast on the animal. Upas’s handling was masterly and despite her economic support for the dog, Zeugma had to respond to the supple strength and grace of the man’s control. It was like watching a fine jockey at work, but more than that, for a horse has a rhythm in its running that a rider can learn and respond to, while this assemblage of metal and rubber reacted violently to every dip and knoll.
He caught the dog with fifty yards to go. Crow had stopped muttering. Zeugma felt almost ready to cheer. The bike drew ahead. Out of the grass directly in front of it started a hare.
Upas leaned the bike on its side in a manoeuvre which on a track and at twice the speed might have slid him safely round the obstacle in a flurry of cinder. Here on the tussocky grass there was no chance. He almost got away with it for all that, but at the last minute had to thrust the bike away from under him to avoid getting his leg trapped as its forward momentum failed and it subsided like a shot stag to the ground.
The hare hopped unhurriedly away, passing close to Twinkle who gave it what might have been a promissory glance but came straight on.
Crow nodded approvingly at it but said nothing and the dog lay at his feet, baring its yellowed teeth as it panted slightly from its exertions.
‘Are you all right?’ called Zeugma as Upas approached, pushing the bike. He nodded, smiling. Whitethorn approved a good loser and Zeugma smiled back sympathetically.
‘Hard luck,’ she said. ‘What a pity about that hare.’
‘Yes indeed,’ he said. ‘I thought I was only racing the dog, Mr Crow.’
‘We’ve all to thole our weird, Mr Upas,’ said Crow harshly. ‘Twinkle !’
He turned away.
‘Wait,’ said Upas. ‘I owe you money.’
‘The lass put up the stake. You pay it to the lass.’
Beyond the Bone Page 5