Chapter Sixteen

He walked cat-footed round the hangar in his quiet shoes, looking for things. Eventually he came back towards me carrying an old supple broken bicycle chain and a full flat five gallon tin of petrol. I looked at these objects with what I hoped was fair impassiveness and refrained from asking what he intended to do with them. I supposed I would find out soon enough.

He squatted on his haunches and grinned at me, his face level with mine, the bicycle chain in one hand and the petrol can on the floor in the other. His gun was far away, on the bench.

‘Ask me nicely,’ he said. ‘And I’ll make it easy.’

I didn’t believe him anyway. He waited through my silence and sniggered. ‘You will,’ he said. ‘You’ll ask all right, your sodding lordship.’

He brought forward the bicycle chain, but instead of hitting me with it as I’d expected he slid it round my ankle and tied it there into two half hitches. He had difficulty doing this but once the knots were tied the links looked like holding for ever. The free end he led through the handle of the petrol can and again bent it back on itself into knots. When he had finished there was a stalk of about six inches between the knots on my ankle and those on the can. Billy picked up the can and jerked it. My leg duly followed, firmly attached. Billy smiled, well satisfied. He unscrewed the cap of the can and let some of the petrol run out over my feet and make a small pool on the floor. He screwed the cap back on, but looser.

Then he went round behind the girder and unlocked both the padlocks on my wrists. The chain fell off, but owing to a mixture of surprise and stiffened shoulders I could do nothing towards getting my hands down to undo the bicycle chain before Billy was across the bay for his gun and turning with it at the ready.

‘Stand up,’ he said. ‘Nice and easy. If you don’t, I’ll throw this in the petrol.’ This, in his left hand, was a cigarette lighter: a gas lighter with a top which stayed open until one snapped it shut. The flame burned bright as he flicked his thumb.

I stood up stifly, using the girder for support, the sick and certain knowledge of what Billy intended growing like a lump of ice in my abdomen. So much for not being afraid of death. I had changed my mind about it. Some forms were worse than others.

Billy’s mouth curled. ‘Ask, then,’ he said.

I didn’t. He waved his pistol slowly towards the floor. ‘Outside, matey. I’ve a little job for you to do. Careful now, we don’t want a bleeding explosion in here if we can help it.’ His face was alight with greedy enjoyment. He’d never had such fun in his life. I found it definitely irritating.

The can was heavy as I dragged it along with slow steps to the door and through on to the grass outside. Petrol slopped continuously in small amounts through the loosened cap, leaving a highly inflammable trail in my wake. The night air was sweet and the stars were very bright. There was no moon. A gentle wind. A beautiful night for flying.

‘Turn right,’ Billy said behind me. ‘That’s Alf along there where the light is. Go there, and don’t take too bloody long about it, we haven’t got all night’. He sniggered at his feeble joke.

Alf wasn’t more than a tennis court away, but I was fed up with the petrol can before I got there. He had been digging, I found. A six or seven foot square of grass had been cut out, the turf lying along one edge in a tidy heap, and about a foot of earth had been excavated into a crumbling mound. A large torch standing on the pile of turf shone on Alf’s old face as he stood in the shallow hole. He held the spade loosely and looked at Billy enquiringly.

‘Go for a walk,’ Billy said loudly. Alf interpreted the meaning if not the words, nodded briefly, leaned the spade against the turf, stepped up on to the grass and shufled away into the engulfing dark.

‘O.K., then,’ said Billy. ‘Get in there and start digging. Any time you want to stop, you’ve only got to ask. Just ask.’

‘And if I do?’

The light shone aslant on Billy’s wide bright eyes and his jeering delighted mouth. He lifted the pistol a fraction. ‘In the head,’ he said. ‘And I’ll have bloody well beaten you, your effing bloody lordship. And it’s a pity I haven’t got the whole lot like you here as well.’

‘We don’t do any harm,’ I said, and wryly knew that history gave me the lie. There’d been trampling enough done in the past, and resentment could persist for centuries.

‘Keep both hands on the spade,’ he said. ‘You try and untie the bicycle chain, and you’ve had it.’

He watched me dig, standing safely out of reach of any slash I might make with the spade and snapping his lighter on and off. The smell of petrol rose sharply into my nostrils as it oozed drop by drop through the leaking cap and soaked into the ground I stood on. The earth was soft and loamy, not too heavy to move, but Billy hadn’t chosen this task without careful malice aforethought. Try as I might, I found I could scarcely shift a single spadeful without in some way knocking or rubbing my arm against my side. Jersey and shirt were inadequate buffers, and every scoop took its toll. The soreness increased like a geometrical progression.

Billy watched and waited. The hole grew slowly deeper. I told myself severely that a lot of other people had had to face far worse than this, that others before me had dug what they knew to be their own graves, that others had gone up in flames for a principle… that it was possible, even if not jolly.

Billy began to get impatient. A‘sk’, he said. I threw a spadeful of earth at him in reply and very nearly ended things there and then. The gun barrel jerked up fiercely at my head, and then slowly subsided. ‘You’ll be lucky,’ he said angrily. ‘You’ll have to go down on your bloody knees.’

When I was sure my feet must be below his line of sight I tugged my foot as far away from the petrol can as the chain would allow, and jammed the spade down hard on the six inches of links between the knots. It made less noise than I’d feared on the soft earth. I did it again and again with every spadeful, which apart from being slightly rough on my ankle produced no noticeable results.

‘Hurry up,’ Billy said crossly. He flicked the lighter. ‘Hurry it up.’

Excellent advice. Time was fast running out and Yardman would be back. I jammed the spade fiercely down and with a surge of long dead hope felt the battered links begin to split. It wasn’t enough. Even if I got free of the petrol can I was still waist deep in a hole, and Billy still had his revolver: but even a little hope was better than none at all. The next slice of the spade split the chain further. The one after that severed it: but I had hit it with such force that when it broke I fell over, sprawling on hands and knees.

‘Stand up,’ Billy said sharply. ‘Or I’ll…’

I wasn’t listening to him. I was acknowledging with speechless horror that the grave which was big enough for Patrick and Mike and Bob as well as myself was already occupied. My right hand had closed on a piece of cloth which flapped up through the soil. I ran my fingers along it, burrowing, and stabbed them into something sharp. I felt, and knew. A row of pins.

I stood up slowly and stared at Billy. He advanced nearly to the edge of the hole, looked briefly down, and back at me.

‘Simon,’ I said lifelessly. ‘It’s… Simon.’

Billy smiled. A cold, terrible, satisfied smile.

There was no more time. Time was only the distance from his gun to my head, from his gas lighter to my petrol-soaked shoes and the leaking can at my feet. He’d only been waiting for me to find Simon. His hunger was almost assuaged.

‘Well,’ he said, his eyes wide. ‘Ask. It’s your last chance.’

I said nothing.

‘Ask,’ he repeated furiously. ‘You must.’

I shook my head. A fool, I thought. I’m a bloody fool. I must be mad.

‘All right,’ he said, raging. ‘If I had more time you’d ask. But if you won’t…’ His voice died, and he seemed suddenly almost as afraid as I was at what he was going to do. He hesitated, half lifting the gun instead: but the moment passed and his nerve came back, renewed and pitiless.

He flicked the lighter. The flame shot up, sharp and blazing against the night sky. He poised it just for a second so as to be sure to toss it where I couldn’t catch it on the way: and in that second I bent down, picked up the petrol can, and flung it at him. The loose cap unexpectedly came right off on the way up, and the petrol splayed out in a great glittering volatile stream, curving round to meet the flame.

A split second for evasion before the world caught fire.

The flying petrol burnt in the air with a great rushing noise and fell like a fountain over both the spots where Billy and I had just been standing. The can exploded with a gust of heat. The grave was a square blazing pit and flames flickered over the mound of dug out soil like brandy on an outsize plum pudding. Five gallons made dandy pyrotechnics.

I rolled out on my back over the lip of the grave with nothing to spare before it became a crematorium, and by some blessed miracle my feet escaped becoming part of the general holocaust. More than I had hoped.

Billy was running away screaming with his coat on fire along the left shoulder and down his arm. He was making frantic efforts to get it off but he was still clinging to his gun and this made it impossible. I had to have the gun and would have fought for it, but as I went after him I saw him drop it and stagger on, tearing at his jacket buttons in panic and agony: and my spine and scalp shuddered at the terror I had escaped.

With weak knees I half stumbled, half ran for the place where the revolver had fallen. The light of the flames glinted on it in the grass, and I bent and took it into my hand, the bulbous silencer heavy on the barrel and the butt a good fit in my palm.

Billy had finally wrenched his jacket off and it lay on the ground ahead in a deserted smouldering heap. Billy himself was still on his feet and making for the hangar, running and staggering and yelling for Alf.

I went after him.

Alf wasn’t in the hangar. When I reached it Billy was standing with his back to me in the place where the car had been, rocking on his feet and still yelling. I stepped through the door and shut it behind me.

Billy swung round. The left sleeve of his shirt had burned into ribbons and his skin was red and glistening underneath. He stared unbelievingly at me and then at his gun in my hand. His mouth shut with a snap; and even then he could still raise a sneer.

‘You won’t do it,’ he said, panting. ‘Earl’s sons,’ I said, ‘learn to shoot.’

‘Only birds.’ He was contemptuous. ‘You haven’t the guts.’

‘You’re wrong, Billy. You’ve been wrong about me from the start.’

I watched the doubt creep in and grow. I watched his eyes and then his head move from side to side as he looked for escape. I watched his muscles bunch to run for it. And when I saw that he finally realised in a moment of stark astonishment that I was going to, I shot him.