The Governor’s account of the battle of the railway gauges in Britain during the latter part of the nineteenth century had little bearing on his later description of how the narrow gauge came to KCI. The standard-gauge track that had long since prevailed in the UK was in turn a good deal broader than the two-foot-three-inch line installed on the island in the 1890’s, primarily for the haulage of guano from Gull Rock to Rupertstown.
The survival and extension of the King Charles Railway had obviously been due to a disinclination on the part of those in authority later to go to the expense of building roads. Peregrine was appalled to learn that the stretch of road from the airport to the town was the best on the island. In the Governor’s view, preserving the railway had been a stroke of genius. The rudimentary roadway that more or less skirted the island, he claimed, was very little used. Peregrine could imagine why. The railway, on the other hand, served the western flatlands for the haulage of tobacco, sugar cane, fruit and other crops down to Rupertstown.
It was clear that the transport of passengers had never been a priority with the Railway Company. Like the first Duke of Wellington, the O’Hara family had almost certainly taken the view that inland travel for common people would prove a source of social unrest. The railway was intended for goods in transit. If people had to be transported they were accommodated in open freight wagons temporarily converted for the purpose.
The Governor admitted to the existence of a State Coach, albeit also topless and reserved for the Queen’s representative and his party – not exceeding eight – for special forays such as the one occurring on the morrow.
Like most railway enthusiasts, Archie Rees had been loath to admit that steam had long since been replaced by other sources of motive energy. He conceded in passing that the King Charles Railway normally relied on three Brush diesel locomotives of quite recent vintage to haul its trains. He even touched on their superior braking power over steam-engines when working in mountainous areas. Peregrine was later to recall this point in detail.
This diversion was, however, quickly concluded by the Governor reverting to the mainstream and climax of his discourse – a tribute to Sir Dafydd, the oldest narrow- gauge steam-engine in active use in the Caribbean. Despite the assault on his knee and the speculation this produced, Peregrine had continued to pay attention while shifting his legs to the left away from Mrs Dogwall. Debby, who was sitting on his other side, returned the pressure thus inadvertently exerted on her own knee with healthy gusto, without interrupting the earnest conversation she was having with Father Babington opposite. Peregrine had hoped there was no one under the table taking notes.
Dinner concluded, O’Hara had made his excuses and left almost immediately. The others had lingered over coffee and liqueurs, and were still doing so at eleven when Debby and Peregrine had set off on a tour of Rupertstown. The suggestion had come from Debby, but Peregrine had readily agreed since he had been cornered by Lady Rees and was being closely questioned on the disposition of eminent persons and families with whom it turned out neither of them owned even a nodding acquaintance.
It was as though the carnival had already begun. Strings of coloured lights were laced around the harbour area and down the streets. Bunting of every description was hung or being hung from countless windows. In the main square, just a block inland from the long stone jetty that fronted the town, the finishing touches were being applied to a massive square platform festooned with flags, banners and yet more lights. There were people everywhere – not making merry, but sight-seeing like Debby and Peregrine, or else gainfully employed in the preparations for an’ event that would clearly involve the whole community a few hours hence.
Debby had insisted on a visit to the railway yard at the far end of the quay and just before the road and rail bridge that crossed the river mouth.
‘She’s all fixed to go, Miss Debby.’ The slim, beaming African in the neat boiler suit and peaked cap emerged from the cramped cab of the little engine.
‘Peregrine, this is Luke Murphy, our chauffeur and the only man on the island except Daddy who knows how to make Sir Dafydd puff.’ .
Peregrine was getting used to associating Irish surnames with black faces. He smiled at the engineer. ‘But how do you manage when you have to drive the car?’
‘Oh, Sir Dafydd only comes out once a year.’ It was Debby who answered the question. ‘It’s really on its last legs but you wouldn’t get my father up to Mount Manitou behind a diesel – would you, Luke?’
‘That’s damned right, Miss Debby. He’ll be on the footplate tomorrow, and that’s for sure – goin’ up and down like this.’ Luke Murphy gave a loud laugh as he hung on to the sides of the little engine, bending and stretching his legs.
‘At high speeds the thing behaves like a rocking-horse. Anyway, we’ll be hiking, so you won’t get train-sick, Peregrine.’
Peregrine was next shown the controls of the engine and pressed to demonstrate instant prowess and acuity by driving it solo for all of a hundred yards. Much to his own surprise, this exercise was completed entirely without incident.
It was later when the couple were leaving the yard that the accident happened. Debby caught her foot in a rut. She sat on the ground while they both examined a very hurt ankle. ‘Damn thing’s twisted, curse it,’ the girl exclaimed – and so it was. The flesh around what had been – in Peregrine’s view – a very shapely limb began to swell perceptibly. In a few seconds a lump the size of a golf-ball had made a dramatic and painful appearance.
‘Can you stand on it?’ He helped her to her feet.
‘Just about – but I don’t know about walking.’ Debby staggered one pace. ‘Ouch! – Oh, Peregrine, I shan’t be able to do the mountain in the morning.’
The ascent to Mount Manitou seemed to Peregrine a less immediate consideration than the return to Government House. He looked about him. ‘Shall we be able to get a car?’
‘There’s no proper road. I’ll have to take the blasted train.’ Clearly, they were talking at cross purposes. ‘I mean to get home.’
‘Oh, now? Not a chance. Can you ride a bike?’
It was some time since he had tried. ‘Of course.’
‘Then go back and ask Luke if we can borrow his – he’s almost bound to have come down on it.’
A few minutes later Grenwood, Phipps’s advance emissary to King Charles Island was wobbling along Rupertstown quayside on an ancient but sturdy bicycle bearing the Governor’s daughter on the cross-bar – cheered on from time to time by loyal citizens who assumed the two were on a practice run and that the performance would be repeated in fancy dress the next day.
‘I’d planned a swim down at your place,’ whispered Debby with a pout. They were back at the house, standing at her bedroom door. Peregrine had carried her up the stairs.
‘I still think we should send for a doctor.’
‘Nonsense, I’m sure it’s not bust. If I put cold compresses on it’ll be bearable in the morning.’ She paused. ‘You any good with a compress? – There’s a bathroom through here.’
‘You bet.’ Peregrine was also disappointed that the evening had promised to end so tamely.
‘Then be a darling and go and soak a towel.’ Her hands were already on his shoulders. She leant forward and kissed him gently on the lips.
‘Good morning, Mr Gore.’ Lady Rees was standing in the corridor resolute as the Rock of Gibraltar and dressed like the Widow Twanky. Her hair was covered in a turban and her face plastered in white cream. ‘Forgive my appearance, we do not normally receive at this hour.’
‘Oh absolutely. Er . . . slight accident I’m afraid. I was just going to help Debby with her . . . er . . . her foot.’
‘Indeed, Mr Gore?’ The tone implied more than plain disbelief at the suggestion that young men hung about bedroom doors after midnight to further the cause of pedicure.
Debby’s giggled but explicit account of her adventure and the reason for Peregrine’s presence served to mollify her mother. This
nevertheless put an end to the aspirations Peregrine had been harbouring about ministering to needs existing and developing, anatomical or emotional, in what had lately been his patient. Quietly cursing the rutted roads of KCI, he made his way through the garden impervious to the noise of crickets, the stillness of the night, the exotic nature and scents of the vegetation, and the soft sound of the sea wash. It. was all as romantic as Aldershot Barracks to one just deprived of a guard duty he would heartily have enjoyed.
He opened the door to his room. The place had been shuttered in his absence and the shaft of light from the door provided only the dimmest illumination.
‘Gee, Pewegwine, I thought you’d never get here.’ The languorous voice came from the bed, and the identity of the owner was unmistakable. ‘Old Glen is living it up with the Chief Minister so I thought I’d dwop by for a swim.’ Mrs Dogwall might have been off course for the pool but the direction of her thoughts seemed sure enough. ‘You wanna get –’ she sighed audibly – ‘chwanged?’
Angus McLush was a careful man. In the event of discovery, the evidence he was now preserving and compiling would only serve as mitigation for his crime. As others had discovered in the past, the miscreant’s plea that he was only obeying orders sounded hollow enough to all objective judges. Even so, the foreign power that employed McLush, whichever it might be, must have some status in the world – and if he had guessed its identity correctly, it had a great deal. This, in turn, meant that help could – even should – be provided if anything went wrong. One read of agents being disowned in such circumstances but he had always considered this an unlikely event – a misconception perpetuated by fiction-writers. The embarrassment of exposure was something that must surely weigh heavier with sovereign states than upon individuals. Without doubt ‘blown agents’ were extricated. He dismissed the purported notion that they were also sometimes eliminated: romantic fiction again.
He would have felt a good deal more secure in these conclusions if he had been certain that it was the CIA that retained him. Indeed, he was sober and sensible enough to appreciate that the ‘embarrassing exposure’ of a foreign power he could not identify hardly warranted the description. But tomorrow he intended to settle the matter once and for all. He was then to be contacted in person and he had already worked out a plan to ensure that the contact was obliged to name their joint employers before getting off the island again. KCI was home ground for McLush, and if ‘they’ were daft enough to let another of their operators into his territory, then they must be prepared for the consequences.
He had had the presence of mind to tape the midnight telephone conversation. Whatever the consequences of his mission, at least he could prove he had been acting under orders from ‘them’. He placed the cassette in an envelope and sealed it. Next he took the package to the bathroom and taped it to the underside of the cover to the water-closet tank. This was an awkward operation since it involved standing on the seat to remove the cast-iron plate of the old-fashioned contrivance above. McLush had learned this ploy from watching a spy movie – so fiction had its uses.
After collecting the equipment he was taking with him, the journalist left through the rear door of the little house. This conscious act of circumspection was largely nullified in its effect because the door in question had to be slammed hard to make it close properly. Apart from signalling McLush’s departure, the vibration thus set up severed the last vestige of contact between the adhesive tape and the tank cover in the bathroom. The envelope and its contents fell into the water, floated momentarily, and then quietly sank to the bottom.
CHAPTER VIII
It would not only be uncharitable but also inaccurate to conclude that the lessons of experience had been entirely lost upon Peregrine Gore. Taking the Field Marshal’s mistress to his room – at her request – in order to carry out repairs to her skirt had been a mistake. In retrospect so much had been obvious: in fairness, Peregrine had not been aware of the lady’s special status – he had taken her for an unattached guest at a regimental party – nor had he known of her appetite for young officers. All had been revealed when the Field Marshal himself had arrived and at the moment when his paramour was giving maximum meaning to the phrase.
The events and consequences of that episode had so imprinted themselves on Peregrine’s mind that his retreating through the guest-house door faster than he had entered should be counted as nothing more than a reflex action on his part. The siren call of Mrs Dogwall, while compulsive in its own way, would be insignificant compared to the blast of her husband’s six-shooter.
Though Peregrine felt no immediate sense of ignominy in so unceremonious a withdrawal, he soon became conscious of the inconvenience involved. It was now twelve-thirty and here he was cut oft’ from possession of his rightful living quarters – and his frequently admired bed – by a predatory female who showed no signs of yielding except in all the wrong contexts. He lurked behind a tree in the garden for some minutes with an increasing feeling of deprivation. Mrs Dogwall did not emerge on the patio. The possibility that she might have returned to her own part of the guest-house through the door on the beach side of the building was one Peregrine was unprepared to test.
He toyed with and dismissed the notion of returning to Government House. Sleeping where he was in the garden would pose no hardship except that he was not in the least sleepy. The awareness of this fact came as something of a surprise until he concluded that the half-hour nap he had taken before dinner had temporarily replaced a night’s rest inside his jet-lagged metabolic cycle; in the England he had left only twenty hours earlier it was nearly getting-up time.
It was this realization that spurred him to the idea of climbing to Mount Manitou ahead of the morning crush. He was properly dressed for a church service since he was still wearing the lightweight suit he had put on for dinner; he had shaved just before his bathroom encounter with Mrs Dogwall and thus, to all outward appearances, would be reasonably presentable up to lunch-time. Debby had given him firm instructions about a route past Devil’s Falls and on to the Mount. She had explained the walk would take an hour and he concluded it might be a lot more agreeable making such an expedition in the cool night than even in the earliest morning sunlight.
The notion of a nocturnal expedition in a strange land was wholly attractive to an ex-Guards officer quite used to such a test of initiative. It was thus with resolution that Peregrine set off firmly – in the wrong direction.
On an island only five miles wide it is, of course, virtually impossible truly to be lost for very long. If one happens to be traversing its seven-mile length the experience could, theoretically at least, be more prolonged, but not by much. Happily, Peregrine had no sooner passed the imposing rear gates of Buckingham House than he was spared the inconvenience of suffering either maxima.
‘Mr Gore, isn’t it?’ The unexpected salutation took Peregrine completely by surprise. He recognized the voice and then the figure of O’Hara – though both had seemed to materialize out of thin air. ‘Sorry if I startled you, but you did the same to me.’ O’Hara emerged from the shadow of the gatepost into the moonlight. He was dressed like a scout-master complete with wide, flat brimmed hat and a stout walking stick. The khaki shorts were baggier and longer than those currently in vogue; indeed, the whole ensemble gave the wearer a distinctly pre-war appearance. Closer inspection proved the first impression; KCFs top citizen really was in the uniform of the Boy Scout movement, albeit in a version long outdated by the fashion prevailing elsewhere in the world. Only the machete clasped awkwardly in his left hand introduced an incongruous note. ‘Bit elderly even for a Chief Scout,’ he volunteered in answer to Peregrine’s unspoken question. ‘Took me years to settle on the right rig for the Treaty Ceremony. My grandfather used to dress up like a seventeenth-century sea captain; my father liked to wear his Great War uniform.’ O’Hara spread his arms wide and surveyed what he could see of himself. ‘Since I am the Chief Scout hereabouts I think this does very well – not as silly
as fancy dress and anything more official gets up the nose of the Governor. Where you off to?’
‘Mount Manitou, sir. Thought I’d get there early,’ Peregrine explained lamely.
‘Well, you’re more likely to be late starting up that path. They should have given you a guide. Anyway, I’ll be delighted to perform that function – and very glad of your company. I intend spending what remains of the night at our cabin near the Falls – you’re welcome to do the same. There’s a path from there that’ll get you to the Mass in twenty minutes. Wouldn’t care to carry this thing for me, I suppose?’ O’Hara indicated the machete. ‘It’s my prop for the ceremony. I exchange it with the Chief Minister for a spear. Very symbolic.’
Peregrine accepted the implement. ‘Is that what your ancestor did on the first occasion, sir?’ He fell in beside his new patron.
O’Hara seemed mildly surprised at the question. ‘I’ve really no idea. But it adds colour, wouldn’t you think?’ He smiled. ‘Couldn’t you sleep?’
‘Afraid not,’ Peregrine answered with accuracy. Apart from his feeling of wakefulness, he doubted the presence of Mrs Dogwall would have proved soporific.
‘Nor me. I’ve just had the most glorious up-and-downer with my brother – happens every time we meet, which fortunately isn’t very often. Paul likes the bright lights.’
‘He doesn’t live on the island?’
‘Good Lord no. He lives off it though – at Miami Beach; perfectly horrible place. Watch your step here.’ The dirt path they were following had been flanked by tall sugar canes along its six-foot width. The warning related to a small and rickety bridge that crossed a narrow irrigation canal. The route took them behind the town, and some minutes later a broad river appeared on the left. ‘That’s Prince James River; we’ll be keeping to it a good deal of the way. D’you row?’
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