The Longest Winter Page 11

  ‘I’m afraid so, dear girl. I saw them. And they won’t give up while they think we’re in this valley. They know we can’t turn back, only go forward. But they won’t expect us to have crossed the river here. Frankly, it looks too damned rough. We’re going to get very wet.’

  ‘James, I have immense faith in you,’ said Sophie, ‘but are you sure we’re only going to get wet?’

  ‘Look, my sweet things,’ said James, ‘if we can cross here they’ll not see us, the river bend is in our favour. Once across we’ll get under cover. They can’t turn over every boulder or poke their noses into every cave. Damned if I know for certain, though. But what do you say, shall we risk it?’

  ‘We can’t swim,’ said Anne, eyeing the rushing river uncertainly.

  ‘Well, there are other activities young ladies are far more graceful at,’ said James, ‘and in any case swimming isn’t going to be the best pastime in that current. We’ve got to go across by making use of the rocks. I’ll see what it’s like.’

  He buttoned his jacket and walked down into the shallows. He went on. The water was soon up to his calves, then his knees. And it was bitingly cold. He moved from one river-sprayed rock to the next, the level gushing and pulling at his legs. It was up to his thighs before he reached the middle and around his waist a moment later. It staggered him with its buffeting surges, but the standing boulders provided solid help. He was able to move although the river roared and foamed around him. Seconds were precious. In the middle of the river the waters tugged violently at him, but the wet, glistening outcrops of fallen stone were bastions of protection. Sophie, watching the tide beating at him on his way back, paled under her perspiration. If he slipped—

  ‘Oh, be careful,’ she whispered, her heart thumping painfully. And Anne, thinking of men who could not be far away now, breathed, ‘Hurry, James, hurry.’

  He splashed through the shallows, ran up the bank and back into the trees. He streamed water on the way, his face and hair wet from spray.

  ‘I think we can do it,’ he said, ‘but I suggest you take your dresses off. They’ll get soaked and heavy. I’m sorry, but I don’t want you sinking.’

  They did not argue. Sophie went a little pink, that was all. He turned his back. Quickly they removed their dresses. He took them, folded them tightly and tucked them inside his jacket. The girls were brightly, lacily delicate in waist petticoats and snowy corsets. And they were both pink now.

  ‘Lead on, James,’ said Sophie, her smile a desperate effort, ‘and you hang on for dear life, Anne. I’ll come with my eyes closed. I shall also pray.’

  James took them down to the edge of the river. They stared at the menacing flow, at the spray and the foam, at the glistening boulders.

  ‘There’s a lot of it, I know,’ said James, ‘but it’s only water.’ And he went in, the girls with him, each using a hand to grip the belt on the back of his tweed jacket. Sophie shuddered at the icy cold of the water and Anne drew a hissing breath. James splashed forward, intent on crossing by the simple but precarious expedient of plunging from each sheltering rock to the next. But not every boulder was as near to the next as he’d have liked, and it was this that made the crossing such a risk. To lose a footing could mean being swept away.

  Anne stifled gasps as the rising level icily embraced her legs and knees. She clung to James’s belt and to Sophie’s hand. The cold, surging waters were taking Sophie’s breath. She felt the tidal pull at her feet. She hung on. James’s tweed belt was strongly sewn to the jacket. Sometimes such belts were secured by buttons. Buttons would have ripped off. She thanked someone for the strong stitches.

  James was the anchor, they were the chains. He brought them into deeper water, steadying them all against each solid sentinel of rock before plunging towards the next. Anne staggered as the river rose, surging, pulling and battering. Her shoulder was squeezed against a shining boulder, the tide sucked her from it and she lost her footing on the uneven bed. And she lost her grip. James turned in the swirling waters, put one arm around Sophie’s waist and dragged Anne mercilessly up by her hair as her face plunged in. They fought for their footing, Sophie panting, spray flying at her, and Anne coughing up water. James thrust them both into the lee of a huge bulwark, which stood up from the river like a misshapen obelisk. It protected them from the direct onslaught of the hungry tide. Foam lashed around them, the girls immersed to their breasts.

  ‘James . . .’ It was a wet, despairing gasp from Anne.

  ‘Marvellous,’ said James, and Sophie, chilled to the bone and rocked by the water, thought the fixed grin on his wet, dark face was almost villainously determined. ‘But let’s save the conversation for later. Go on now, we must.’

  He kept behind them now, driving them forward, thrusting them, and they gasped and shuddered, fighting for handholds that were out of reach. He took hold of their sopping hair and they clenched their teeth at the pain as he bullied them through the rushing water and flying spray. He was not going to lose either of them and by their hair he kept his hold on them. Together they floundered and plunged from rock to rock. Each time the tide took Anne’s footing he hauled her up and he thrust Sophie on, on. Splashing, desperate, the girls fought the river and James fought for them.

  The level began to fall. It eased reluctantly away from soaked breasts and corsets, leaving round curves wetly outlined. It dropped to their waists as James, releasing their hair, bundled them forward. He grabbed their arms and rushed them on through thigh-high tide until they reached the shallows. Every second was now more precious than ever. From the shallows he rushed them upwards over ridged stone towards the boulder-strewn foothills.

  He brought them up from the bank to the foothills and they began to clamber over masses of stone, James making for the nearest fissure. He looked back. The bend of the river hid that part of the valley they had traversed. He looked at the point from which they had made their crossing, at the trees from which they had emerged. There were neither sounds nor movements, except those of the river. But he stayed for a moment while the girls scrambled on. And suddenly, over the bright warm air, carrying above the noise of the river, came the muffled sound of a crack. That was the crack of snapping timber, by God it was. Someone was not far from the vital point.

  ‘Oh, hell,’ he muttered and leapt upwards after the girls. They reached a spot where the steep hillside began. James pointed the way to the fissure. They moved behind piles of rock which gave them cover. The fissure yawned. There was clear space in front of it and James brought the girls pell-mell over the ground and into the cave. Rushing from bright light into darkness made them stop. In front of them the blackness seemed impenetrable. Their breathing was strained and noisy. They blinked.

  Sight came. The cave was high and deep. Distance darkened to invisibility. Exhausted, Anne dropped to her knees on the cool stone floor. Sophie leaned wearily against the wall, her undergarments plastered wetly to her body. She looked at James, his jacket distorted by the bundled dresses. He drew them out. They were wet.

  ‘Oh, James,’ gasped Anne.

  ‘I know other young ladies,’ said James, ‘but I don’t know any as brave and lovely as you two.’

  ‘Brave?’ sighed Sophie, her hair soaked into a lushly wet cap. ‘James, I was terrified.’ She slipped slowly down the wall until she came to rest. He went to her, took her hands and rubbed them. They were still chill from the icy river, despite her exertions. She smiled at him. ‘I am glad it is you we are with.’

  ‘I was rough with you in the river,’ he said.

  ‘Brutal,’ said Sophie.

  ‘Dear Sophie,’ said James, and left her looking emotionally at him as he went to Anne. ‘You, my sweet,’ he said, ‘seem very wet.’

  ‘Oh, I am only half-drowned,’ said Anne, ‘which is not so bad as being fully drowned, is it?’

  Her sopping underclothes, so revealing as they wetly outlined her, could not, he thought, have been more uncomfortable. His own were coldly, soakingly unpleasant.
He rubbed Anne’s hands.

  ‘Walk about,’ he said.

  ‘But, James, I am worn down to the bones,’ she said.

  ‘Walk about,’ he said, ‘and you too, Sophie.’

  Sophie, sitting gratefully against the wall but aware of creeping chill and wet discomfort, laughed weakly.

  ‘When I was a small girl,’ she said, ‘I fell into a pond and when people had fished me out and someone had gone to fetch Mama, someone else told me to jump up and down. I was a very nice small girl and obedient, so I jumped up and down. It was to save me getting pneumonia, they said. But I squelched so much that I stopped and said I thought I would rather have pneumonia. I am not going to say I would rather have pneumonia now—’

  ‘Sophie, walk about,’ said James, ‘or you’ll freeze. Squelching is a minor consideration at your age.’

  ‘My age? Do I look forty when I am soaked to the skin, then?’

  James could have said she looked very wet and very endearing, but he only smiled, shook his head and went to the opening. He dropped on his stomach and peered out. He watched the river, the far bank, the straggling pines. He was soaked from head to foot but did not feel too cold, not yet. Excitement, fear and a touch of exhilaration all combined to keep his body nervously heated for the moment. He wondered if Ferenac and his men would be moving inconspicuously through the trees or boldly along the water’s edge. He did not think they would all be together. One would be moving quickly ahead, others would be searching. He stiffened. The sound was not loud or angry, it was just perceptible enough to reach ears listening for it. It was the sound of someone moving through the pines. Someone moving slowly, searchingly. The crack of a snapping twig he had heard before had probably been made by the man in advance. This was a second man, a probing man. The hunt was being conducted quietly, thoroughly, by men sure of their quarry, sure that some time two young women would fall exhausted into their arms. And one man, James was sure, would have been sent by Ferenac along the road. He thought, as he strained his eyes, that he glimpsed movement among the trees but could not be sure. He stayed where he was without stirring a muscle. The faint sounds gradually receded.

  By God, thought James, he and the girls had crossed the river just in time. Then he wondered about that. The moment would come, perhaps, when the hunters would sense the quarry had slipped them. If one man was on the road he would confirm he had seen nothing of the fugitives there. Ferenac would begin to look across the river and wonder.

  James sighed. He looked around. The ground directly in front of the cave was clear, but there were rockfalls to the right, large enough to conceal someone crawling out on that side. The sun was beating down. He edged back into the cave. Sophie and Anne were walking briskly about. They had put their dresses on. They had combed their wet hair.

  ‘Well done,’ he said, ‘that’s the stuff of brave conquest.’

  Sophie, pacing up and down arm in arm with Anne, said, ‘Oh, apart from feeling uncomfortably wet, James, we are in excessively high spirits. But I beg you not to look at us because we are also hideously bedraggled.’

  ‘I haven’t noticed,’ said James. The girls marched deeper into the cave. ‘Um – may I suggest you take everything off except your dresses? It’s too cold in here for you to dry out. You’ll perish. There’s a place outside where all your things will dry quickly in the sun without being seen.’

  ‘We are to undress?’ said Anne from the depths. She and Sophie had stopped walking about.

  ‘It’s not what I’d ask you to do in the Prater,’ said James.

  ‘Oh, I’m not disposed to endure uncomfortable modesty if there’s a better alternative,’ said Anne.

  ‘Indeed, your suggestion is thoughtful and meritorious, James,’ said Sophie, ‘but will you please retreat a little and turn your back?’

  He retreated to the cave entrance, standing close to the wall in shadow and looking out. The river was in disaffected flow, the trees lining the far bank in peaceful quiet. He took off his jacket, shirt and vest. He remembered the revolver. It was as wet as his jacket. He massaged his chest, keeping his eye on the view across the river. There were no sounds, no hunters, no menace. He heard whispers in the cave behind him, then Sophie’s voice close by.

  ‘James? No, please don’t look, I am a terrible sight in just a damp dress. Here are our things.’ He felt a heap of wet garments pushed at him and he gathered them without turning round. ‘James, you will spread them very modestly in the sunshine, won’t you?’ Her voice was light, her only anxiety, seemingly, that which concerned the impropriety of a single and unattached young lady handing into his care delicate garments which no man should see unless he was married to her. ‘You will consider them in a gentlemanly detached way, we trust, for we are both extremely sensitive and Anne is blushing—’

  ‘I am not,’ said Anne from farther back.

  ‘Well, I am,’ said Sophie.

  ‘I promise every due respect and consideration, with my mind elsewhere,’ said James.

  ‘Thank you, James.’

  She was delicious, thought James. They both were. They were making light of discomfort, embarrassment and the inescapable worry of the situation. He himself was beginning to feel frozen from the waist down. He crawled out, and the hot afternoon sunshine was a sudden touch of rapture. He slid along into the shelter of fallen rock. He laid the wet garments of the girls over the sunbaked lower rocks, spreading them out in the most practical way while trying to keep his mind on the promised level of detachment. All the same he smiled at frills, at lace. The four white silk stockings were a problem, their lightness and delicacy susceptible to breezes. He secured them by placing small stones on them. He laid out his shirt, jacket and vest. Keeping himself shielded he slipped off his shoes, long knitted socks and knickerbockers. He left them in the sun too. In his long woollen pants he crawled back into the cave. He lay close to the entrance, looking, observing, watching. He saw nothing. His wet pants were acutely chill. He heard the girls moving about, walking, pacing, keeping their circulations active.

  ‘James?’ That was Anne. ‘Do you think –’

  ‘We must stay here, you know,’ he said, ‘we can’t risk showing ourselves even when our clothes are dry.’

  ‘Yes, I see.’ She did not argue but he knew she was disturbed. She was eighteen and young, she loved life and found people fascinating. But she did not know how to deal with men of violence. She did not understand them, she was removed from the causes which made thieves of some people and assassins of others. She was happy, why couldn’t everybody else be? Sophie was more sophisticated, more inclined to coolly accept that there were indisputable reasons for some men becoming brigands, for some to be cynical about the wonders of life. Anne was life’s uncomplicated love, Sophie was its poetic interpreter. Anne would give a husband laughter and sweetness, Sophie amusement and stimulation. And they would both give themselves, which alone would be a gift from life’s warm treasury.

  ‘James, are you all right?’ That was Sophie.

  ‘Fine except for wet woollens. Are your dresses drying?’

  ‘Oh, we are almost whirling about,’ said Sophie, ‘and they are better all the time. They were not so wet as our other clothes. Have you seen anyone?’

  ‘Nobody,’ he said, but his ears pricked precisely at that moment. ‘Oh, hell,’ he said. Sophie and Anne froze into silence. He edged back a little as a man broke from the trees on the far side of the river. Not Ferenac. One of the others. The sun was dipping now and taking on the glow of late afternoon. The man came down to the river. He peered, scanning the waters, the banks, the boulders and the hills. He moved along the edge of the river. He took his hat off, wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his jacket and said something ferocious. Even at this distance the sound of his imprecation reached James’s ears. The lightest of breezes carried it. James flattened himself. The man put his hat back on and walked slowly, squinting in every direction. He was retracing the line of hunt, moving in the direction of the vi
llage.

  That meant Ferenac suspected the quarry had gone to ground. He had sent the man scouting back. Ferenac must know they were somewhere about. He would search until the light gave out. And sooner or later he would decide the quarry had crossed the river.

  James stayed very still. The coolness of the cave became a coldness. Anne’s teeth began to chatter. The moving man disappeared. James told the girls to skip. Sophie said they would do their best but could not guarantee she would not fall flat on her face. They did their best while James stayed close to the entrance, watching, listening. He was cold now, very cold. But he did not move. The sun began its descent and the clear blue sky took on its first faint tint of gold. The drying garments spread on the rocks stirred. That, at least, was a comforting sign! James crawled out, slowly, cautiously. The undergarments were warm, all dampness gone. His jacket was only very slightly damp in places. He brought everything in. Anne came to take things from him, pattering up behind him. He looked very lean and masculine, she thought, in nothing but his pants.

  ‘Thank you, James, you’re a dear,’ she whispered.

  She retreated with the garments. Sophie received her things with sighs of bliss. She embraced them.

  ‘Oh, sweet doors to paradise,’ she said, ‘what more can life offer than this?’

  ‘A nice quiet journey back to Ilidze,’ said James, pulling his dry socks on.

  ‘What is that you say, James?’ said Sophie from the depths. ‘Oh, you are the most beneficent of men, all my clothes are beautifully warm and dry.’

  James, a little smile on his face, said, ‘Well, they all looked very enchanting in the sunshine.’

  Anne laughed. Even in the dimness of the cave one could not miss the fact that Sophie was blushing, actually blushing.

  James dressed. He heard soft rustles and swishes as the girls slipped their clothes on. The cave became darker as the sun dipped behind the mountains. He massaged his cold body. Long shadows crept over the river, over the trees. He wondered about Ferenac, whether he would give up. If he gave up he would probably change his plans. But he was not a man, in his fanaticism, to give up or to change his plans. Darkness, when it came, would restrict him and frustrate him.