by Terry Morgan
CHAPTER 66
Jim had felt tired and exhausted all day and now he couldn't sleep.
"The time difference is catching up with you. You'll be OK." he reassured himself aloud to the walls of his hotel room. He was also rapidly losing track of what was going on and he didn't like it. Phone calls were all he had to go on. The mobile had rung constantly all evening.
"Action through my Brighton lawyer friend, Cole Harding, to find out what's going on in Sierra Leone, Jim," Jonathan had earlier reported with an energy that Jim wished he shared. "Let's see if we can prove a link with Guido. And Jan, under duress, is the one responsible for tampering with my bid for Jacob Johnson. Let's see how Eichmann deals with it at the next EAWA meeting tomorrow. And Scott Evora is phoning me tonight."
Then: "I'm on the tail of a black Mercedes, Jim," was the late evening call from Tom somewhere in Belgium. "The car contains a small fat man. Guess who?"
That morning, Jim had called Hugh McAllister for an update on the exhibition. "Anything remotely professional is going to take me at least three weeks to organise, Jim. And I'll need to start promoting it now if you want people to turn up. "
"Proceed, Hugh. I've decided to go off for a couple of days. I'll be in touch by phone."
Jim's plan to go off for a couple of days had been in the making for three years. The plan was for Margaret to go with him to a place he knew she loved as much as he did. That plan was now shelved, but he had decided he'd still go, but alone.
He had taken an early train to Derby and then a bus to Ashbourne. He bought a can of orange juice and a pack of fresh sandwiches and hired a bicycle to pedal in the autumn sunshine along the Tissington Trail that led into the Derbyshire Dales and Peak District of England.
At midday, he sat to eat his sandwiches on a damp, sunny bank of grass, brown leaves and some lingering but fading summer flowers and then crawled to the top of the bank where the wind blew fresher. With his hand shielding his eyes, he looked out towards the bright, sunlit hills that stretched into the far distance - a view he knew and had expected to share with Margaret.
Then he rode slowly on using the straight, flat cycle track that had once been a thriving railway line that linked the area's ancient industry and then onto a narrow road that led towards Dovedale and the tiny hamlet of Thorpe. Then, when his breath became short and his lungs began to hurt, he dismounted, and pushed the bike slowly up another slope until he could once again freewheel down into the spectacular, green valley of the River Dove.
He stopped at the bottom on the corner by the stone bridge, leaned over and looked into the water flowing beneath. It was crystal clear with long, flowing strands of green weed and he watched a water vole swim across and disappear into the shelter of dark, tree roots at the water's edge. He watched and he listened.
Just as at home up on his rock, nature was noisy. The water, tumbling over the black, stony, river-bottom, a robin in the branches of the trees, sheep on the hillside. And civilisation - a tractor, somewhere out in the fields. Then a kingfisher, like the ones at home, but smaller. It flew from under the bridge beneath his feet to disappear in a flash of fluorescent blue upstream. And Jim wanted to go the same way, to leave the bike and walk, to stroll along the stony pathway beside the river, to follow it upstream to where it opened into a wider valley of high, green, rocky hills, to the tiny village of Mill Dale and still further into the higher hills.
But there was someone missing.
And Jim was out of breath and his chest hurt him. He leaned heavily on the parapet of the stony bridge looking down. Then he looked at the bike. "Oh dear. Now what? How the hell are you going to get back?"
He stayed, leaning on the bridge wondering what to do. Here he was in a place he had always wanted to see again, a place he would sometimes dream about with such clarity. He took a deep breath, but his lungs and chest hurt and he felt dizzy. He leaned more heavily, his arms propping him up to make breathing easier and exhaled noisily through his mouth feeling hot and sticky. There was no doubt about it. Jim Smith was in a bit of a predicament again and there was no Tom around and only the sound of a tractor to suggest another human being close by.
"And you made another mistake over the month," he mumbled to himself. "Your plan was to come here in May not October. If you remember, you wanted to hear a cuckoo and perhaps tell Margaret a story."
Jim listened, but only heard the tractor and sheep.
"It was about a Tibetan cuckoo, Margaret - not an English one - but the story is the important part. I know I test your patience, but bear with me. That cuckoo could never settle down until all his jobs were done, you see. He was a perfectionist cuckoo and had been a very successful cuckoo in his odd, strange way. All the other cuckoos said so. He did not care much about himself, he was untidy and his feathers were a bit shabby. But, once he'd started a job, this cuckoo never stopped until it was finished. One day he decided to make a perfect nest for his wife and himself to sleep in. So he left his wife to sit and wait and then spent hours and hours seeking the softest mosses and finest grasses. When he had finished the job to his own exacting standards, he looked around for his wife to show her what he had just built. But she had already flown away."
His breathing seemed easier now and as he looked at the steep hill that he had just, so easily, freewheeled down, he heard a tractor coming from the direction of Ilam. He pushed the bike up and over the cattle grid and sat down on the grass verge amongst the droppings of sheep and rabbits and waited. The tractor was towing a wooden trailer holding some old sacks and a black and white sheep dog. It came on slowly, passed the farm entrance towards the bridge. It was going up the hill. Jim waved and the driver slowed.
"Aye up," the driver said.
"Good afternoon," Jim panted. "I'm so sorry to trouble you but I wonder if you would give me a lift to the top. I've rather run out of steam."
"Aye, put bike on back and 'op oop."
"Thank you so much." Jim hauled himself and the bike up and sat there beside the dog, which wagged its tail and came to stand by him, its mouth open and a pink tongue hanging between white teeth. The dog, Jim was pleased to note, was also panting.
"Nice day," the driver called back above the engine noise.
"Splendid," said Jim breathing deeply.
"Aye, but autumn's on its way."
"Where are you going?" Jim inquired.
"Callow Hall."
"Could you take me there? I would be extremely grateful."