Harry Doing Good

by Canaway, W. H.

  He said, ‘The girls’ll make a last pot of tea, and we’ll cover up that lot in there for now: use their tent and things. We’ll sleep out here in our own tents. Then we’ll have to clear up properly in the morning.’

  Ray looked at him for a moment.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘You got a guy in there with a cross cut on his chest and God knows what-all. Just what are you aiming to do now: fetch the cops?’

  Harry said slowly, ‘No. No, we can’t do that…now.’

  ‘And you got a truck full of sheep down below.’

  ‘Yes,’ Harry said. ‘I’ll think of something.’

  ‘Don’t forget,’ Ray told him. ‘You have a lot more than those guys to cover up.’

  So the men went inside the building again. It was almost dark inside, and Ray determined to see as little as he could, helping to drag two bodies to the wall. Lumpy’s enormous dead weight, Egan’s twisted and stiffened corpse…both joined the naked red mess that had been Genius. Ray allowed himself only a fleeting glimpse of this horror. They covered the bodies with the deflated igloo tent and other gear, then went outside. A few vermilion streaks showed above the mountain rim, and overhead the points of stars were coming out; the moon had not yet risen. A hunting owl mewed somewhere behind them as they set up the tents. Then after more tea but little conversation, they crawled into bed. Harry slept soon, after a brief recall of what had been for him a profound religio-sexual experience, an exploding revelation followed now by catharsis and exhaustion. As for the others, they slept too, eventually, in their own time and not quickly, bloody memory and images of nightmare hovering.

  2

  The next day was a Tuesday. Harry awoke before sunrise. He crawled at once out of his sleeping bag and left the tent, making a hasty toilet; then, without disturbing the others, he set out to follow the track made by the ToteGote during the disposal of Peter’s body. This was not difficult: weighed down by the corpse, the wheels had left a clearly defined trail among the heather and bilberries, and on the soft surface of the grass. Here and there the trail was broken where rock tables outcropped, but Harry was able to pick it up again easily. Twenty minutes after starting out, he stood on the edge of a peat-hag in the early light. Tussocky reeds fringed its edges, and an oily sheen curled over its surface. The track of the wheels ended as a foot-deep impression in brown mud. Harry rubbed gently at the bruise across his face, then backtracked to the camp outside the ruined building. The others were up now, and he could smell the bacon which sizzled under the grill of the cooker.

  After breakfast, in pale sunlight they sat around and drank coffee.

  Harry said, ‘We’ve got to get rid of them today. I know where they took Pete, and that’s what we’ve got to do. We’ll get rid of them in the same place. It won’t be nice, but we’ll have to do it. Put them in their sleeping bags and weigh them down with stones.’

  ‘You mean, just keep quiet?’ Simon asked.

  ‘That’s it. We keep quiet about everything.’

  Linda said, ‘What about Peter’s mother? When we get back she’ll want to know where he is, won’t she? What are we going to tell her?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ Harry said, ‘and I think I know the answer. Don’t you remember he was going on about his judo? Two or three times he said he wondered whether he ought to go to London and try for his black belt. Well, that’s what he must have done, because he just never turned up to meet us last Thursday. Got it? He didn’t turn up, so how do we know where he is?’

  Simon said, ‘We’d never get away with it.’

  ‘Yes, we will,’ Harry said emphatically. ‘We’ll get clean away with it if we say that, and stick to it. Everybody knows about Pete and his judo.’

  Simon was still doubtful.

  ‘I don’t like it.’

  Harry said, ‘You know his mum. She’s so vague she doesn’t know what day it is half the time. Let me do the talking when the time comes. All you have to say is that Pete didn’t show up and we left without him. And if anybody remembers seeing six of us, then we say we picked up a hitch-hiker and gave him a lift.’ He pointed to Ray. ‘Him.’

  ‘I see what you mean,’ Linda said, and turned to Ann. ‘Do you think you could bear it, love?’

  Ann said, ‘If it comes out about Peter, everything comes out, doesn’t it? I’ll say we never saw him, and if I show my feelings they’ll just think I’m worried about him instead of grieving my heart out for him, poor lamb.’

  She thought a moment, while the others registered approval of her courage and forbearance, and then she said, ‘It means everything has to be kept quiet, you understand? You girls daren’t tell anyone about what happened to you either.’

  ‘’Course they can’t,’ Harry said. ‘This has got to be a blanket hush-up. We won’t say we had a marvellous holiday. What we’ll say is we had a rotten time, and that metal detector was a complete disappointment, with only one little statue thing to show for a lot of hard work.’

  ‘It wasn’t the detector,’ Simon pointed out. ‘It did a good job: it’s the metal that wasn’t there, except for bottle tops and things.’

  Harry said, ‘All right, never mind that. We’re agreed. Poor old Pete never turned up. Nothing happened to the girls. We never saw another soul while we were up here, and we didn’t have much of a holiday either.’ He turned to Ray. ‘You’ll be in the clear. As far as you’re concerned, none of this ever happened at all. You can’t be expected to account for your time. You were just wandering around in the hills, having a look at the countryside, if anyone asks you, and there isn’t any reason why anyone should, as far as I can see.’

  ‘If you say so,’ Ray said. ‘All I want to do is forget this and get the hell out. I could sure use the ToteGote.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘The little bike,’ Ray explained.

  Harry said, ‘Not a chance. That’s evidence, and it’s going down in the mud along with the rest. We’ve got some hard work in front of us today, and the bike’ll come in handy till we’ve finished. Then we dump it.’

  Ray nodded. ‘Okay,’ he said, and then, bitterly: ‘God damn. When I think of it, we certainly said yes to life, man. In spades.’

  *

  Ray would not re-enter the building, so Harry and Simon were forced to carry out the first stage of work by themselves. Heaving and struggling, they crammed the bodies into sleeping bags which had been with the igloo tent. The cadavers were limp now, but the task was ghastly and also wearying. They tied up the ends of the sleeping bags, and then hauled them one by one to the threshold. Covered by the quilted stuff of the sleeping bags, the bodies looked anonymously reassuring now.

  Harry said to the girls, ‘Fetch a good lot of water and give that place a clean up inside; it’ll all soak into the floor and dry out nicely.’

  It took the three men to lift the sleeping bag containing Lumpy’s body on to the ToteGote, and they had to call Ann back to hold the bike steady. Then Harry and Simon pushed it along, while Ray brought along a heavy stone, since Harry had already found out that there was no loose detritus near the peat-hag. They had to make frequent halts to rest, each taking a turn at holding the ToteGote up while the two others stretched their arms and got their breath back; what had been a twenty-minute walk for Harry now took much longer. But eventually they saw the iridescent gleam in front of them, and they slid the body to the ground. Harry took the stone from Ray, put it in the sleeping bag and fastened it again. Then he took the feet, while Simon and Ray grasped the other end. They lifted and swung; at Harry’s call they let go, and their burden landed with a splash, sending gouts of brown water over them, then sinking slowly from view.

  He and Simon walked back, while Ray rode the bike, and wished again that he might keep it, though he could see the sense in what Harry had said: it really would be too dangerous. They went back for Egan’s body, working in a state of dogged activity and muted consciousness, using banality of conversation to play down the enormity of what they had do
ne and were doing. So they fetched the remains of Egan, and then of Genius, disposing of them grimly and wearily. Finally they wrapped up miscellaneous items of gear which had belonged to Egan and his men, making a parcel with the igloo tent. They brought it to the swamp, their final journey, added the ToteGote to the bundle, and sank it. Then they rejoined the girls.

  Harry said, ‘Well, that’s that. What day is it?’

  Linda said, ‘Tuesday.’

  ‘We’re not due back until Friday. It’ll take us the rest of today getting cleaned up. We’ll have to do some laundry as well. Now the sooner we get away from this place, the better it’ll be.’

  Cheryl said, ‘Let’s go back down to the Kombi. We can do everything down there.’

  ‘I agree,’ Ann said. ‘I hate it up here.’

  ‘All right,’ said Harry. ‘We’ll go down and clean up all round, then get an early night. Let’s pack the stuff.’

  They worked with renewed energy, buoyed up by the thought of escaping from the plateau. In ten minutes they were ready to move, rucksacks packed and stove folded. Harry took the metal detector, Simon the stove and Ray the gas cylinder, while Linda carried the little spade as they set off for the streamside path. They had just begun the descent when Harry stopped short.

  He exclaimed, ‘The gun!’ and looked back at the others. ‘I don’t remember seeing the gun. We never wrapped it up in that tent, did we? Do you remember, Simon? Ray?’

  They shook their heads.

  Ray said, ‘It wasn’t there.’

  In a small voice Cheryl said, ‘I put it behind the rocks in that hut.’

  Harry groaned.

  ‘What were you thinking of?’ he asked. ‘You can’t just leave it in a place like that.’

  Cheryl said, ‘I wasn’t thinking. All the time we were in there — cleaning up, like you told us to — I didn’t think at all, really. It was all too horrible.’

  Harry said, ‘Leave it to me. Go on slowly down, and when you get to the bottom somebody make some tea.’

  He left them to carry his equipment down and went back to the hut, going inside and searching under the rocks for the rifle. He found it almost at once, and then came out — into a wall of impenetrable mist, which had rolled across in a matter of seconds, a mist of the kind for which the plateau was notorious, but which Harry had never experienced. He took a few steps forward, found himself by the flat rock, but when he turned round he could no longer see the building. The mist was dank and clammy, and Harry shivered. He thought, If I go back, and take a straight line from the front wall, that’ll bring me to the stream. I remember you could see the top of the ropeway from the front door, right in line with the wall.

  Gingerly he backtracked until he was touching the wall, then started out along it, clutching the rifle in his right hand and taking short steps. It had been in his mind to throw the rifle into the peat-hag, but now he feared increasing the distance between himself and his companions. His best chance was to veer slightly to the left and find the edge of the patch of bog from which the stream emptied, then work his way along the margin to the stream itself. He moved cautiously, but still tripped on roots of heather. Then he stopped, rigid, his face full of terror.

  A whistle was blowing: three blasts, followed a moment later by another three blasts, fainter and evidently in answer, then others.

  Harry was sick with fear, thinking at first that he was being pursued. He soon dismissed that possibility, but hurried forward, afraid of being found with the rifle. He dared not throw it away on the open plateau. So he blundered along. Where was the edge of the swamp? There were tussocks and heather and bilberry bushes underfoot, a slight depression in the ground…and then he was yelling involuntarily as his foot touched nothing at all. He twisted sideways frantically, dropping the rifle and trying to save himself from falling into the mineshaft after it. His left buttock crashed on rock, and he scrabbled round, gasping and inhaling a stench from the shaft as he levered himself to safety. He rubbed his buttock and sighed with relief. At least he had got rid of the rifle, and now he knew where he was.

  He found the head of the ropeway easily, and decided to follow it down to the truck, then work his way back to the Kombi from there. He started down, reached the second stanchion, and almost cannoned into a soldier who was leaning against it. He was a thin and gangling man with red hair sticking out under a green beret, and wore a camouflage jacket with a short-sleeved jerkin in shocking orange on top of it. He was holding a whistle.

  ‘How do,’ he said to Harry, and blew the whistle.

  Harry said, ‘Hello.’

  Together they listened for answering blasts.

  The soldier said, ‘Bloody silly this is. I could be having a good old nosh-up. Training!’

  He detached himself from the stanchion and moved away, but before he disappeared Harry asked what he was doing.

  He said, ‘Going for a walk with me mates. We’ve got to keep spread out, and while this mist is on we’ve got to keep blowing these bloody whistles. The bloody officer’s somewhere in the middle, and he’s got a map and a compass.’

  Harry said, ‘When you get to the next stanchion, keep well to your right. There’s an old mine or something straight ahead. I nearly fell right down.’

  ‘Thanks, cock,’ the soldier said. ‘Thanks a lot. I’ll remember that. Cheerio.’

  He was gone. Harry could hardly believe his luck. Drained of emotion, he made his way down from stanchion to stanchion, and the mist thinned as he descended. He reached the truck, then turned uphill along the little road until he reached the Kombi.

  Simon said to the others, ‘Here he is.’ To Harry he said, ‘You took your time getting down.’

  ‘You could say I’m lucky to be down at all,’ Harry said.

  He explained about the thickness of the mist up on the plateau, about his narrow escape from the mineshaft, and about his meeting with the soldier.

  ‘Lucky altogether,’ Simon said.

  And Ray said, ‘Lucky that soldier didn’t see you with a gun.’

  Harry drank tea and ate some sandwiches while water heated for washing.

  He said, ‘I’ve got some news for you. We’ve got to go back up there.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ said Ann.

  ‘Not the girls. Just us fellers. There’s a stink coming out of that shaft already, and in a couple of days they’ll be able to smell it in Liverpool. That’s where they emptied all the sheep guts and stuff. We’ll have to cover it up somehow. I don’t know how deep it is, but that won’t matter. If we can spread a layer or two of rocks over all that stinking stuff, then top it off with heather and mud, it might do the trick.’

  ‘Another day’s hard labour,’ Simon grunted.

  ‘Better than ten years or more,’ Harry told him, and patted his arm consolingly. ‘We’re not doing so bad.’

  Simon said, ‘I don’t think we’ve done much good, do you? I mean I don’t feel very proud of myself.’

  ‘Don’t think like that,’ Harry said. ‘Remember. We were going to get killed up there. It was them or us, and we won. And we did justice: don’t forget that. I can understand you feeling upset; I nearly broke down myself yesterday. But they were just like wild animals, that lot. If you had a mad dog, you’d put it down, wouldn’t you?’

  Simon nodded.

  ‘There you are, then.’

  ‘All right,’ Simon said. ‘I won’t argue any more, but I don’t have to feel happy about it all.’

  ‘Damn right,’ said Ray.

  They washed in polythene buckets of hot water, the girls at one side of the Kombi, away from the road, and the men at the other. Afterwards they changed their clothes and washed out the dirty ones, improvising a clothesline tied from a wing mirror to a tree branch. For good measure, Harry had a second shave with his battery shaver. It was all, in a very real sense, a ritual cleansing. Ann and Linda helped Cheryl with more than usual solicitude, and when they had finished the girls looked fresh and spruce and very innocent.

>   Linda said, ‘Harry’s right. I mean, you find times when the proper thing to do is turn the other cheek, but other times need an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and that was one of them. You can’t gainsay that.’

  ‘No,’ Ann said. ‘Not when I think of my poor Pete.’

  And a little later, as twilight fell, Harry took Cheryl over to one side and said, ‘Cheryl love, I don’t want to keep harking back, but when we were up there you said some words to me. I can excuse them because I know you were so distressed you weren’t yourself, but for your own sake I never want to hear you talk like that again, all right?’

  ‘Yes, Harry,’ she said submissively. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Never mind then,’ he said, and kissed her cheek. ‘That’s my girl.’

  He thought, How could I ever have wanted to marry her? When I think of that chap it really does turn me off. But she’s a good comrade, and that’s what matters. The LYF’s together again. Except for Peter, and we’ll keep his memory bright and secret in our hearts.

  They went back to the others, and Harry touched Ann’s hand.

  He said, ‘You know, about Pete? Jesus said, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Well, that’s what Peter did. We’ll forget everything else, but we’ll never forget that.’

  Ann burst into tears, crying on his shoulder, while he comforted her patiently until she pulled herself together and dried her eyes.

  ‘Thank you, Harry,’ she said a little shakily. ‘Thank you for those words.’

  Ray watched all this with some detachment. The guy had them eating out of his hand again! He sat down on his rucksack and leaned against the body of the Kombi, then caught sight of the dead grouse, a glimmer of feathers in the bushes concealed except from this angle. In the same moment Harry came across to him.

  He said, ‘You’ll stay with us a bit longer, Ray? I mean, you could go off in the morning if you wanted, but we’d be glad of some more help. If you think on, you’ll see you’re as deep in this as the rest of us.’