Allie sobbed. Liquid squirted from her eyes and nose. Hundreds of hours of work destroyed.
There was a twist of cloth on the frame of the greenhouse. Lytton examined it: a tie-dyed poncho, dotted with emblem badges of marijuana leaves, multi-coloured swirls and cartoon cats.
“Hippies,” Allie yelled. “Fuckin’ hippies.”
Susan appeared at the gate. She swayed, almost in a swoon, and held the gate to stay standing.
“Hippies didn’t do this,” Lytton said.
He lifted a broken tomato plant from the paved area by the greenhouse door and pointed at a splashed yellow stain.
“Allie, where’ve you seen something like this recently?”
It came to her.
“Terry Gilpin. When he spat at thic letter.”
“He has better aim with his mouth than his gun,” Lytton commented, wincing. “Thankfully.”
~ * ~
Lytton stood by his Norton, lifting his gauntlets out of the pannier.
“Are you leaving?” Allie asked.
“No,” Lytton said, taking his gunbelt, “I’m going down to the pub.”
He settled the guns on his hips and fastened the buckle. The belt seemed to give him strength, to make him stand straighter.
Susan, still shocked, didn’t protest.
“Are you’m going to shoot Squire Maskell?” Allie asked.
That snapped Susan out of it. She took Allie and shook her by the shoulders, keening wordlessly.
“I’m just going to have a lunchtime drink.”
Allie hugged Susan fiercely. They were on the point of losing everything, but gave each other the last of their strength. There was something Maskell couldn’t touch.
Lytton strolled towards the front gate.
Allie pulled away from Susan. For a moment, Susan wouldn’t let her go. Then, without words, she gave her blessing. Allie knew she was to look after Lytton.
He was halfway down the street, passing the bus shelter, disused since the service was cut, when Allie caught up with him. At the fork in the road where the village oak stood was The Valiant Soldier.
They walked on.
“I hope you do shoot him,” she said.
“I just want to find out why he’s so obsessed with Gosmore Farm, Allie. Men like Maskell always have reasons. That’s why they’re pathetic. You should only be afraid of men without reasons.”
~ * ~
Lytton pushed open the door, and stepped into the public bar. This early, there were few drinkers. Danny Keogh sat in his usual seat, wooden leg unslung on the floor beside him. Teddy Gilpin was swearing at the Trivial Pursuit machine, and his brother was nursing a half of scrumpy and a packet of crisps, ogling the Tiller Girl in UI.
Behind the bar, Janet Speke admired her piled-up hair in the long mirror. She saw Lytton and displayed immediate interest, squirming tightly in an odd way Allie almost understood.
Terry’s mouth sagged open, giving an unprepossessing view of streaky-bacon-flavour mulch. The Triv machine fell silent, and Teddy’s hands twitched away from the buttons to his gun-handle. Allie enjoyed the moment, knowing everyone in the pub was knotted inside, wondering what the stranger—her friend, she realised—would do next. Gary Chilcot, a weaselly little Maskell hand, slipped away, into the back bar where the Squire usually drank.
“How d’ye do, Goodman,” said Janet, stretching thin red lips around dazzling teeth in a fox smile. “What can I do you for?”
“Bells. And Tizer for Allie here.”
“She’m underage.”
“Maskell won’t mind. We’re old friends.”
Janet fetched the whisky and the soft drink. Lytton looked at the exposed nape of her neck, where wisps of hair escaped, and caught the barmaid smiling in the mirror, eyes fixed on his even though he was standing behind her.
Lytton sipped his whisky, registering the sting in his eyes.
Janet went to the jukebox and put on Portishead. She walked back to the bar, almost dancing, hips in exaggerated motion. Music insinuated into the spaces between them all, blotting out their silent messages.
The door opened and Reeve Draper came in, out of breath. He had obviously been summoned.
“I’ve been meaning to call again on Goodwife Ames,” he said to Lytton, not mentioning that when last he had seen Lytton the newcomer was on the ground with a bullethole in his shoulder put there by the Reeve’s Constable. “Tony Jago, the Traveller Chieftain, has escaped from Glastonbury with a band of sheep-shaggin’, drug-takin’ gyppos. We’m expecting raids on farms. Susan should watch out for them. Bad lot, gyppos. No respect for property. They’m so stoned on dope they’m don’t know what they’m doin’.”
Lytton took a marijuana leaf badge from his pocket. One of the emblems pinned to the poncho left in the ravaged garden. He tossed it into Terry Gilpin’s scrumpy.
“Oops, sorry,” he said.
This time, Terry went for his gun and fumbled. Lytton kicked the stool from under him. Terry sprawled, choking on crisps, on the floor. With a boot-toe, Lytton pinned Terry’s wrist. He nodded to Allie, and she took the gun away. Terry swore, brow dotted with cider-stinking sweat bullets.
Allie had held guns before, but not since Susan took her in. She had forgotten how heavy they were. The barrel drooped even though she held the gun two-handed, and accidentally happened to point at Terry’s gut.
“If I made a complaint against this man, I don’t suppose much would happen.”
Draper said nothing. His face was as red as strawberry jam.
“I thought not.”
Terry squirmed. Teddy gawped down at his brother.
Lytton took out his gun, pointed it at Teddy, said “pop,” and put it back in its holster, all in one movement, between one heartbeat and the next. Teddy goggled, hand hovering inches away from his own gun.
“That was a fair fight,” Lytton said. “Do you want to try it again?”
He let Terry go. Rubbing his reddened wrist, the Maskell man scurried away and stood up.
“If’n you gents got an argument, take it outside,” Janet said. “I’ve got regulars who don’t take to ruckus.”
Lytton strolled across the room, towards the back bar. He pushed a door with frosted glass panels, and disclosed a small room with heavily-upholstered settees, horse-brasses on beams and faded hunt scenes on the wallpaper.
The Squire sat at a table with papers and maps spread out on it. A man Allie didn’t know, who wore a collar and tie, sat with him. Erskine was there too, listening to Gary Chilcot, who had been talking since he left the bar.
The Squire was too annoyed to fake congeniality.
“We’d like privacy, if you please.”
Lytton looked over the table. There was a large-scale survey map of the area, with red lines dotted across it. The corners were held down by ashtrays and empty glasses. The Squire had been illustrating some point by tapping the map, and his well-dressed guest was frozen in mid-nod.
Lytton, stepping back from the back bar, let the door swing closed in the face of Erskine, who was rushing out. A panel cracked and the Constable went down on his knees.
Allie felt excitement in her water.
Terry charged but Lytton stepped aside and lifted the Maskell man by the seat of his britches, heaving him up over the bar and barrelling him into the long mirror. Glass shattered.
Janet Speke, incandescent with proprietary fury, brought out a shotgun, which Lytton pinned to the bar with his arm.
“My apologies, Goodwife. He’ll make up the damage.”
There was nothing in the barmaid’s pale blue eyes but hate. Impulsively, Lytton craned across and kissed her full on the lips. Hot angry spots appeared on her cheeks as he let her go. He detached her from the shotgun.
“You should be careful with these things,” he said. “They’re apt to discharge inconveniently if mishandled.”
He fired both barrels at a framed photograph of Alder’s victorious skittles team of ‘66. The noise was an astound
ing crash. Lytton broke the gun and dropped it. Erskine, nose bloody in his handkerchief, came out of the back bar with his Webley out and cocked.
This time, it was different. Lytton was armed.
Despite the hurt in his left shoulder, Lytton drew both his pistols in an instant and, at close range, shot off Erskine’s ears. The Constable stood, appalled, blood pouring from fleshy nubs that would no longer hold his helmet up.
Erskine’s shot went wild.
Lytton took cool aim and told the Constable to drop his Webley.
Erskine saw sense. The revolver clumped on the floor.
In an instant, Lytton holstered his pistols. The music came back, filling the quiet that followed the crashes and shots. Terry moaned in a heap behind the bar. Janet kicked him out. Erskine looked for his ears.
Lytton took another sip of Bells.
“Very fine,” he commented.
Janet, lipstick smeared, touched her hair, deprived of her mirror, not knowing where free strands hung.
Lytton slipped a copper-coloured ten shilling note onto the bar.
“A round of drinks, I think,” he said.
Danny Keough smiled and shook an empty glass.
~ * ~
Outside, in the car park of The Valiant Soldier, Allie bubbled over. It was the most thrilling thing. To see Terry hit the mirror, Teddy staring at a draw he’d never beat, the Reeve helpless, Janet Speke and the Squire in impotent rage and, best of all, Barry Erskine with his helmet-brim on his nose and blood gushing onto his shoulders. For a moment, Alder was like The Archers, and the villains were seen off.
Lytton was sombre, cold, bravado gone.
“It was just a moment, Allie. An early fluke goal for our side. They still have the referee in their back pocket and fifteen extra players.”
He looked around the car park.
“Any of these vehicles unfamiliar?”
Maskell’s ostentatious Range Rover was parked by Janet’s pink Vauxhall Mustang. The Morris pick-up was the Gilpins’. The Reeve’s panda car was on the street. That left an Austin Maverick Allie had never seen before. She pointed it out.
“Company car,” he said, tapping the windshield.
The front passenger seat was piled with glossy folders that had ‘GREAT WESTERN RAILWAYS’ embossed on their jackets.
“The clouds of mystery clear,” he mused. “Do you have one of your nails?”
Puzzled, she took a nail from her purse and handed it over.
“Perfect,” he said, crouching by the car door, working the nail into the lock. “This is a neat trick you shouldn’t learn, Allie. There, my old sapper sergeant would be proud of me.”
He got the door open, snatched one of the folders, and had the door shut again.
They left in a hurry, but slowed by the bus stop. The rusting shelter was fly-posted with car-boot sale announcements. Lytton sagged. His shirt-shoulder spotted where his wound had opened again. Still, he was better off than Earless Erskine.
“It’s choo-choos, I’ll be bound,” he said. “The track they run on is always blooded.”
There was activity at the pub as Maskell’s party loped past the village oak into the car park. Maskell was in the centre, paying embarrassed attention to his guest, who presumably hadn’t expected a bar brawl and an ear-shooting to go with his ploughman’s lunch and a lecture on local geography.
The outsider got into his Maverick and Maskell waved him off. Then, he started shouting at his men. Allie smiled to hear him so angry, but Lytton looked grim.
~ * ~
That evening, after they had eaten, Lytton explained to Susan, showing her the maps and figures. Allie struggled to keep up.
“It’s to do with Railway Privatisation,” he said. “The measures that came in after the War, that centralised and nationalised so many industries, are being dismantled by the Tories. And private companies are stepping in. With many a kickback and inside deal.”
“There’s not been a railway near Alder for fifty years,” Susan said.
“When British Rail is broken up, the companies that have bits of the old network will be set against each other like fighting dogs. They’ll shut down some lines and open up others, not because they need to but to get one over on the next fellow. GWR, who are chummying up with the Squire, would like it if all trains from Wessex to London went through Bristol. They can up the fares, and cut off the Southeastern company. To do that, they need to put a branch line here, across the Southern edge of Maskell’s farm, right through your orchard.”
Susan understood, and was furious.
“I don’t want a railway through my farm.”
“But Maskell sees how much money he’d make. Not just from selling land at inflated prices. There’d be a watering halt. Maybe even a station.”
“He can’t do the deal without Gosmore Farm?”
“No.”
“Well, he can whistle ‘Lillibulero’.”
“It may not be that easy.”
The lights flickered and failed. The kitchen was lit only by the red glow of the wood fire.
“Allie, I told you to check the generator,” Susan snapped.
Allie protested. She was careful about maintaining the generator. They’d once lost the refrigerator and had a week’s milk quota spoil overnight.
Lytton signalled for quiet. He drew a gun from inside his waistcoat.
Allie listened for sounds outside.
“Are the upstairs windows shuttered?” Lytton asked.
“I asked you not to bring those things indoors,” Susan said, evenly.
“I won’t have guns in the house.”
“You soon won’t have a choice. There’ll be unwelcome visitors.”
Susan caught on and went quiet. Allie saw fearful shadows. There was a shot and the window over the basin exploded inwards. A fireball flew in and plopped onto the table, oily rags in flames. With determination, Susan took a flat breadboard and pressed out the fire.
Noise began. Loudspeakers were set up outside. Music hammered their ears. The Beatles’ ‘Helter Skelter.’
“Maskell’s idea of hippie music,” Lytton said.
In the din, gunshots spanged against stones, smashed through windows and shutters.
Lytton bundled Susan under the heavy kitchen table, and pushed Allie in after her.
“Stay here,” he said, and was gone upstairs.
Allie tried putting her fingers in her ears and screwing her eyes shut. She was still in the middle of the attack.
“Is Maskell going to kill us?” she asked.
Susan was rigid. Allie hugged her.
There was a shot from upstairs. Lytton was returning fire.
“I’m going to help him,” Allie said.
“No,” shouted Susan, as Allie slipped out of her grasp. “Don’t...”
~ * ~
She knew the house well enough to dart around in the dark without bumping into anything. Like Lytton, she headed upstairs.
From her bedroom window, which had already been shot out, she could see as far as the treeline. There was no moon. The Beatles still screamed. In the orchard, fires were set. Hooded figures danced between the trees, wearing ponchos and beads. She wasn’t fooled. These weren’t Jago’s Travellers but Maskell’s men.
Allie had to draw the line here. She and Susan had been pushed too far. They’d lost men to Maskell, they wouldn’t lose land.
A man carrying a fireball dashed towards the house, aiming to throw it through a window. Allie drew a bead with her catapult and put a nail in his knee. She heard him shriek above the music. He tumbled over, fire thumping onto his chest and spreading to his poncho. He twisted, yelling like a stuck pig, and wrestled his way out of the burning hood.
It was Teddy Gilpin.
He scrambled back, limping and smouldering. She could have put another nail in his skull.
But didn’t.
Lytton was in the hallway, switching between windows, using bullets to keep the attackers back. One lay still, face
-down, on the lawn. Allie hoped it was Maskell.
She scrambled out of her window, clung to the drainpipe, and squeezed into shadows under the eaves. Like a bat, she hung, catapult dangling from her mouth. She monkeyed up onto the roof, and crawled behind the chimney.
If she kept them off the roof, they couldn’t get close enough to fire the house. She didn’t waste nails, but was ready to put a spike into the head of anyone who trespassed. But someone had thought of that first. She saw the ladder-top protruding over the far edge of the roof.
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