Time Rocks
Page 38
Chapter Twelve
Rain was beating against the windows of my Granddad’s house when I came down for breakfast the next morning. The kitchen felt cold and clammy. I put the kettle on and settled at the table to write him a note. I wanted to tell him that I would be out all day and did not want him worrying about me. I need not have bothered, he was already up. I heard him rummaging around in the backyard.
‘Oy’ll have one an’all,’ he yelled unseen. 'Three sugars.'
‘He must have ears like a bat,’ I mumbled. ‘Tea or coffee?’
‘Bat’s prefer tea oy believe.’ He bustled in from the yard carrying a sad looking tomato plant in a rusty bucket. pot. ‘Oy forgot this en. Oy’ve killed ‘er I reckon. Where’re you going then?’
‘I’m getting a bus over to Box for a look around. Have you got any binoculars I can borrow, granddad?’
‘Oy have, and you’m welcome. An’ if you’re quick, ‘im next door works at Box. No need for no bus. He’ll take ee on his pillion if oy tells him to.’
The only pillion I’d ridden until that morning was on a carousel at Weymouth beach. Sitting on the back of Mark Tyson’s Triumph Daytona 675 turned out to be a rather different experience. I'm sure we broke the sound barrier a couple of times. Feeling wobbly and light headed, I dismounted in the village of Box and thanked Mark for the breathtaking ride. It seemed only seconds since granddad had bullied him into giving me the lift. Mark was about twenty and as shy as a toddler. He'd blushed hotly as granddad had volunteered him into carrying me. I think he had given in so quickly and plunged his head into his crash helmet mainly to hide his shyness.
As I watched him roar away to his job at a timber yard, I mentally added, own a Triumph motorcycle and black leathers, to my growing list of lifetime ambitions.
Box is a quiet village of quaint old, Cotswold stone houses. It lies across an ancient highway stretching from London to the West-country. Although bypassed by high speed motorways and now relatively quiet, over the centuries the ancient road has carried Celtic warriors, Rome's legions, and countless generations of farmers and merchants. In Jane Austen's day coach and horses bore wealthy travellers to Bath to take the waters, meet new lovers, or gamble away their fortunes at the card tables. As I stood beside the empty highway watching Mark's Triumph vanish into the distance, I felt like a gambler myself, but one against whom, the odds are heavily stacked. I had no idea what to expect. The only thing I was certain of was that MCF would do anything to preserve their secrecy. I knew they would not deal with me lightly if they found me snooping around their property. I tried to shrug off these concerns and set off walking towards Monkton Rudloe. Soon the sounds of the village were fading behind me.
The hills around Box are the southernmost Cotswolds. Lush green fields lie over the limestone like green baize over piles of old bicycles. Thick woodlands are jammed into nooks and crannies where secret waters flow. Hollow lanes edged with parsley, poppies, and buttercups, twist between time weathered, dry-stone walls. As I climbed towards the broad hill tops, I travelled lanes so little used that grass grew through their tarmac.
On one side of the lane where the steep climb reached an upland plateau, the dry-stone wall gave way to chain-link fencing. Rusting barbed wire topped the fence. A faded Ministry of Defence notice warned me not to trespass.
Peering around, I searched for signs of activity. The soft air carried no sounds save for the songs of invisible skylarks and the faint trumpeting of a distant locomotive. I had arrived at what I supposed must be the furthest corner of the old Monkton Rudloe airfield. Blistered concrete fence posts, stood like a row of old gallows. Cobwebs of sagging chain-link, hung between them, interwoven with creeping vines of Old Man’s Beard and ivy. I waded through long dry grass and scrubby weeds at the base of the perimeter fence, occasionally getting a view of the barren airfield through thick, thorny scrub.
Inside the fence, the grey perimeter road and main aircraft runway lay across a desiccated wilderness. Weeds forced up through broken concrete, building little rockeries of Feverfew, Saxifrage and Toadflax. In the distance a low range of brick and concrete buildings, and a couple of arch roofed Nissen huts harked back to the dark days of World War Two. An old water tower, a flag pole, and a three storey control tower dominated the skyline. Few windows had glass remaining in them, but oddly, a bright orange air sock flew from the flag pole. Behind it rose the screen of ornamental shrubs and conifers that I had seen from the steps of Monkton Rudloe House.
There was one vehicle on the site, parked near the largest of the derelict buildings. It was a small, dark green van, about the size of a garden shed. I shuddered, recalling my brush with a similar vehicle on the quiet lane near Chloe’s house. There was no driver to be seen, but with the help of granddad’s binoculars I could see that the vehicle was ticking over, ready for the road.
An armed guard with a Rottweiler dog on a leash appeared from the building nearest the van. The guard's uniform looked like those I’d seen worn by the gate guards at Monkton Rudloe House. On the far side of the airfield, I spotted another guard and dog coming into view, and further off another.
I was disappointed. With so many dogs and guards, this old airfield would not be the easy access into MCF's grounds that I had hoped for. I would need to find some other way in. And as if to reinforce my point a Landrover suddenly appeared from around the back of one of the Nissen huts. Two armed guards climbed out of it and joined the others. One of the dogs turned its head in my direction and sniffed the air. It stepped towards me, straining on its leash, eager to investigate my presence. Its controller yanked it back and carried on talking to his comrades. I decided it was time to leave. I needed a better plan. Getting inside MCF was not going to be easy.