by John Winton
‘Do you know where we’re going?’ McAllester asked.
‘Can’t tell you that. You’re supposed to work it out. But sooner me than you, I can tell you.’
They came up behind another lorry. McAllester saw the pale, stricken faces of other Roughexers peering out at him. Soon, the lorry turned off, to another part of the moor. McAllester tried to catch the name on the sign-post but missed it.
‘Last year, we had to force our way through.’
‘Through what?’
‘Demonstrators.’
‘What sort of demonstrators?’
‘Demonstrating against the armed services using Dartmoor for offensive purposes. They want to turn the whole of the moor into a wild-life preserve. Got quite stroppy about it. Very stroppy.’
Baines stood on the foot-brake so sharply that McAllester momentarily left his seat. He could hear from the scuffling and thumping behind that Purple Platoon had been thrown off their feet.
‘Yer ‘ere,’ said Baines. ‘Yer ‘tis. That’s the sign-post.’
McAllester looked out. It said ‘Tamar Tor. Unsuitable for motor vehicles.’
‘Unsuitable for every bloody thing, if you ask me,’ said Baines. ‘Everybody OUT!’ he roared, without looking round.
Purple Platoon scrambled out over the tailboard. Syllabub landed heavily, under the weight of his radio. When he straightened up, McAllester could see that he had grazed some skin off his left palm. He was moaning quietly.
Baines drove off, and the moment the sound of his engine had died away, the silence of the moor seemed to flood back. Then, they heard the sound of the wind, blowing over miles of desolation. Near them, through the mist, they could see a sloping hillside, a stretch of bog and reeds and cotton grass and thick clumps of moss. The rain had slackened to a steady downpour. A file of a dozen sheep ran past, their hooves pattering on the tarmac. The last one in the line was coughing, as though asthmatic.
‘I wonder what they’re running from?’ said Bingley.
‘I wonder who,’ said Caradoc.
McAllester could feel the rain settling the damp on his shoulders already. ‘Come on Bombulada, what’s next?’
Bombulada took the Roughex plan from his pocket and at once dropped it. It landed in a puddle. He picked it up, smeared and wet.
‘It would fall jammy side down,’ said Caradoc.
Bombulada shook his head hopelessly. He spread out his eloquent hands in an appealing gesture of dismay.
‘Let’s see that,’ said McAllester. Whatever the Roughex plan said about who was leader for this serial, it was already clear that the real leader was McAllester. He deciphered the coordinates of their destination, checked them on the map, took a compass bearing, and led the way off the road and on to the moor.
When McAllester felt the dampness and clingingness of the surface underfoot and, after a very few yards, felt the cold water close over his boots and soak his ankles, he knew that this was going to be a rough, rough Roughex. Behind him he could hear Adrianovitch swearing steadily and Syllabub saying into the hand microphone, over and over again, ‘This is Purple Platoon, where are you Base?’
‘Base, this is Purple Platoon,’ said Syllabub, in a high piping voice, like a demented parrot, ‘How do you read me?’ He lapsed into silence, but from time to time piped up again, ‘Base, this is Purple Platoon, where are you?’
After three-quarters of a mile of hard walking, McAllester looked back. Syllabub was about a hundred yards behind the rest, and obviously making heavy weather of it. McAllester went back to him, took off the radio set, and put it on himself.
‘I think we can put on our groundsheets. I’ve just remembered, they’ve got a cunningly fitted collar and buttons on them, so that we can use them as capes.’ McAllester mentally cursed himself for not remembering the capes before. Their only chance in this Roughex lay in keeping as dry as possible.
‘Come on,’ he said, when they had all put on their groundsheets. ‘We’re late.’
‘Slow down a bit, Ham,’ Caradoc said. ‘Do we have to go balls out like this all the time?’
‘Yes we do. I want to win this Roughex. We haven’t even begun to be tired yet.’
Although the visibility had deteriorated, and the rain was falling harder again, McAllester drove on across the moor as confidently as though he had been born on it. The others followed him, heads down, their eyes fixed solely on the legs of the man in front. From time to time, McAllester ordered a rest, and they stood together, still in a line, without speaking.
McAllester made a cast up one hillside, like an experienced sheep-dog, and then stopped.
‘Trouble?’ said Caradoc, coming up to him.
‘I’m not sure about this river. The map’s so bloody wet now I can hardly read it.’
‘I bet it’s down there.’
‘Why?’
‘It reminds me of home, the shape of the place. If there is a river, then I bet it’s down there.’
‘OK, let’s try it.’
They crossed the brow of the hill and reached a proper path. The clean, green, firm turf was a joy to walk on after the clinging moor. They walked fast, almost trotting, descending rapidly downhill until, miraculously, there was the river, opening out of the mist.
‘Well done Dai.’
‘All done by kindness.’
‘I suppose we ought to report now that we’re here.’ McAllester tried the radio, but Syllabub’s fall had evidently damaged it.
‘There ought to be an umpire hereabouts, too. Wonder what’s happened to him?’
‘He’s got more sense than to be in a place like this,’ said Bingley.
‘Ok, let’s have lunch now.’ It was only mid-morning but they were ravenous. They took the sandwiches, apple, cheese and chocolate from their packs, and ate standing in a huddled circle, while the rain continued to fall. The bread was damp and the chocolate slimy.
‘But still,’ as Cardoc said, ‘not bad for a College packed lunch.’
McAllester went down and studied the river. It was an ominously formidable obstacle, black and fast running, much too wide to jump, and looking too deep to wade. They could swim it, but that would mean they really would be thoroughly wet, to the skin. They might think themselves already wet but, as McAllester knew, they were still comparatively dry considering the conditions. It would have to be a bridge.
‘It says build a bridge,’ said Bingley who was now, after lunch, leader for the next serials. ‘But there’s nothing to build a bridge with.’
‘Bloody stupid,’ said Adrianovitch, ‘bloody bloody bloody bloody stupid.’
‘It looks as if we’ll have to wade across,’ said Bingley. ‘Or swim. So let’s get on with it.’
‘Hold on a minute,’ said McAllester. ‘They may be stupid, but they’re not that stupid. They’ve put it in the plan that this river has to be bridged, and they’ve done these Roughexes in these parts before. Therefore there must be bridging materials somewhere around.’
Chung Toi found them, planks, tree trunks, and ropes, hidden behind a line of straggling mountain ash trees about a hundred yards downstream from where they had stopped to eat.
‘That was brilliantly thought of, Ham,’ said Caradoc, with reluctant admiration. It was becoming clear to him, as it was to the others, that McAllester could be relied upon to see them through this Roughex.
Bingley and Chung Toi built the bridge. They were both in their elements, having both been boy scouts. ‘I were the terror of the troop,’ said Bingley. Chung Toi said nothing, but picked up young trees like match-sticks, carrying them one-handedly into position.
It was a beautiful bridge, a most skilful piece of building, with proper lashings and a smooth enough surface for them to be able to walk across upright, carrying their packs.
‘That’s bloody brilliant,’ said McAllester approvingly. ‘It’s a pity we have to take it all down again. There’s supposed to be an umpire here, but we can’t wait any longer for him in this rain.’
‘What’s the trouble, Jas? With the amount of doubling about you do, you should be as fit as a fighting flea.’
‘I’m afraid I turned my ankle over, just after we set off after lunch.’ Persimmons’ face was white with pain. He gripped his lower lip in his teeth, and he was wincing at every step. ‘It really is very painful indeed. And it’s getting worse.’
‘Shall we take your boot off?’
‘Oh God, don’t do that! I’d never get it on again. It just feels as if it’s seized in a vice. It must have swollen up. It’ll be all right.’
’It doesn’t look like it. OK, we’ll slow down a bit. We’ve got time in hand. Give your haversack to Chung Toi, he’s strong enough to carry a whole mountain.’
‘Wasn’t there something about a nuclear explosion about now?’ said Bingley. ‘Shouldn’t we be doing something about that?’
‘We’ll note in the log that we observed it,’ said McAllester. ‘What about the long-term effects on the flora and fauna, and all that?’
‘Write down, everything destroyed, for miles around.’
‘For how long?’
‘For ever.’
‘What about decontamination routines, and all that?’
‘Write down, decontamination routines carried out.’
‘Well, I must say, that seems to cover it all.’
McAllester set off again, as fast as he dared test Persimmons’s foot. But this time he could hear Chung Toi close behind him. Although Chung Toi was now carrying two packs, the rasping of his expelled breath, the sound of his footsteps thudding through the reeds and splashing through the surface water, approached ever more closely to McAllester’s heels. Soon, he drew level. With his breathing like a grampus, his head shaking from side to side, his hands and arms dangling and flopping, Chung Toi was not an elegant sight, but he was by far the physically strongest of Purple Platoon and, after a time, he forged ahead of McAllester, leaving McAllester feeling that he had been overtaken by the original india-rubber man.
Chung Toi was challenging more than McAllester’s physical leadership. A Roughex demanded mental as well as physical endurance and every member of Purple Platoon had, after all, been selected by his own navy for his potential leadership. They might admire and follow but they could also resent and challenge McAllester’s dominance. McAllester sensed their new belligerence and he half-welcomed it. Taking the weight for all had been a great strain and he began to succumb to the treacherous pleasure of letting others take their share. So it was Chung Toi, some distance ahead, who reached the foot of Sheep Crag first. The crag was a great geological fault in the surface of the moor, forming a steep escarpment about a hundred feet high at its most difficult point. By expert mountaineering standards it was a very small climb, but for the ordinary party on foot with no special equipment it was a formidable slope of nearly vertical rock, with a few bushes and one or two wind-bent trees rooted near its top. It was well known to all the midshipmen, trainee marines, boy soldiers, police cadets, youth hostellers, boy scouts and walkers in the area and they all knew that the best way was straight up. Otherwise one had to make a detour of about three-quarters of a mile over rough country.
‘There’s supposed to be an umpire here, too,’ said McAllester. ‘Still no sign of him. Anyway, come on Chung Toi, let’s get on with it.’
Chung Toi took the rope and grapnel from his haversack. He swung the grapnel experimentally, whilst staring up the crag to gauge the distance. Then, with a quick whirl, he threw the grapnel upwards, with the rope snaking after it. The grapnel soared up, to catch on a lip of rock only a short scramble from the top. It was a marvellous throw. Chung Toi pulled the rope sharply downwards. They all heard the grapnel crunch securely into place.
‘Well, I’m damned, that was a tremendous throw, Chung!’ said McAllester. ‘And do you know, I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen that done before in my life?’
With Chung Toi’s rope in place, Sheep Crag became no more than a saunter. Even though they had to lower the rope again, with a bowline loop in it for Persimmons to put under his armpits so they could all drag him up, Purple Platoon were soon easily, miraculously easily, at the summit.
‘You can’t go much further can you, Jas?’ McAllester said to Persimmons when he stood at the top.
Persimmons shook his head. McAllester knew he was very close to tears.
‘That’s very bad luck. We’ll have to see what we can do. If you go on much more on that ankle you might do it permanent damage.’
Persimmons had managed to compose himself to say something. ‘I’m afraid I really have just about had it. It feels as though my whole foot right up to my knee is being boiled in scalding water.’
‘OK, we’ll do something about it.’ While Chung Toi coiled away his rope, McAllester looked out over the wide moorland plateau where they now stood. ‘By my reckoning, that bit of grass over there is where we’re supposed to lay out a helo landing pad.’
Baines’s lorry had obviously dropped Purple Platoon on one of the remotest parts of the moor, and they had been steadily working their way towards civilisation. There was a road with one or two cars on it running across the side of the hill a mile and a half away and, much nearer, there were even some people, a small band, crossing the moor towards Purple Platoon.
Caradoc looked at the party approaching with a weird feeling that he recognised this place. The whole scene had a dreamlike authenticity. He was quite sure he had never been here before in his life but, like Childe Roland, he knew that this was where he was destined to come eventually. Even those people down there, evidently another Roughex team, looked more like seventeenth-century pilgrims wending their way across a lonely plain.
Judging by their agitated gestures and the banners they were holding up, the newcomers certainly did look a very strange Roughex team. They were either in some distress or, at any rate, trying to attract attention to themselves.
‘Those don’t look like one of our teams,’ Caradoc said. They were near enough now for him to read some of the banners. ‘Fly Away Navy’, one said. ‘Hands Off Dartmoor’ said another. ‘Ponies Not Polaris’ said a third.
‘It’s those demonstrators,’ said McAllester. ‘They want the forces to clear out of Dartmoor. What’s more, that’s Lucy in the lead! No wonder she was so cagey last night.’
They could hear the helicopter somewhere overhead and in a moment they saw it, banking over the road and turning to come back. The demonstrators saw it, too, and moved forward to occupy the flat, firmest part of the central plateau where the helicopter intended to land.
‘Hell … ‘ muttered McAllester. ‘They’d better get out of the way...’
The big dark blue helicopter soared over the protesters and began to descend. They could see Buster peering forwards from his window, holding his helicopter at the correct attitude for landing. As the big helicopter sank, its rotor blades whirling, Lucy ran forward and stood underneath it, waving her hands to and fro dismissively. At once McAllester sprang forward and ran and closed Lucy from behind. He took her off her feet in a driving rugby tackle, bundled her under his arm and despite her weight carried them both forwards for several yards before pitching them both face downwards in a shallow wet ditch. The air right above them thundered with the sounds of the helicopter’s arrival and the grass for many yards around was flattened by its rushing wind.
Despite Lucy’s heavy anorak McAllester felt the shape of her body and a surge of sexuality. She was aware of it, too, and with a tremendous swingeing crack, slapped his face.
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nbsp; The roaring sound lessened as the rotor blades slowed. Looking up, McAllester saw Buster’s concerned face.
Lucy’s face was mud-stained and furious. ‘You always were a crude person ...’
‘Don’t be dafter than you can help!’ McAllester had hardly expected Lucy to be fulsomely grateful, but this was too much. ‘Do you think if I’d wanted three three-minute rounds cuddling with you I’d try to do it in the middle of bloody Dartmoor, in public, in a rainstorm, right under a bloody helicopter that’s just about to land on top of us? Have a bit of sense! You don’t seem to realise you might have been killed then. Do you realise with that kind of chopper there comes a point when the pilot’s committed himself to coming down and he can’t stop even if the First Lord of the Admiralty was underneath? He can’t lift up and he can’t change direction once he’s gone past that stage. He would have landed right on top of your silly little pointed head, don’t you understand? And where would you have been then?’
Lucy bunched her fists. ‘People like you ought to be ... ought to be ...’ She pursed her lips and McAllester noticed she was wearing no lipstick. She could think of no fate, no torments, no excommunication, no political purgatories, nearly excruciating enough for McAllester and the rest of them. She got up, treading on his hand, and hurried back to the rest of the demonstrators.
‘Female chauvinist sow!’ McAllester called after her, and felt slightly better for it.
On her way Lucy passed Isaiah Nine Smith, in flying helmet and overalls, who had just alighted from the helicopter. ‘You really ought to be a lot more careful,’ he said to her, as she scurried past him. ‘You might well have been injured just then.’