Chapter Seven

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WHEN MACDONALD left Yelverton to drive up to the moor (everybody spoke of Dartmoor thus---the moor) it was a clear, cold, grey morning. There was no sunshine and the uniformly grey sky was pale, as though the clouds or overcast were very high up. It was a colourless morning: even the meadows and pastures of the valley looked wan, very different from the vibrant emerald of springtime, and as he mounted towards the moor the world became more and more a study in monochrome. The withered bents of the upland grassland were ashen, the occasional thorns etched black against the sky, the stone outcrops dark, the withered heather sepia. And yet, to a Londoner’s eye, it was all incredibly clean: low-toned, admittedly, but utterly different from the drab murk left by London’s famous fog.

As he drove, Macdonald’s mind dwelt on the anomaly of a boy who had been bred in this wild, silent moorland being attacked and nearly done to death in the grime and clamour and rush around a London terminus. The further he drove into the uplands, the more anomalous the whole case seemed to become: here was he, Macdonald, pursuing one line among the tors and crags of Dartmoor, remote from any sign or token of human habitation, while Reeves pursued another line in the same case among closely packed humanity in the squalor of back streets, in yards that ran cheek by jowl with the permanent way, in a pub of ill-repute which backed on to slums of very evil repute. Macdonald did not believe in chance, so far as this case was concerned: there was a connecting link, somewhere, between the moor and the back streets of Paddington.

The road leading out of Yelverton had been a good main road, but after a few miles Macdonald had turned off on to a secondary road, mounting steadily towards the moor, then on to a track which could hardly be called a road at all. Before setting out, he had obtained a large-scale Ordnance Survey map and consulted with the Yelverton police about the best route to take, for it was plain enough from the map that there was a diversity of tracks over the moor, some better, some worse, which approached Moorcock Farm. He pulled up at one point and studied his map again, wondering if he were heading for trouble: the track he was following was steep and narrow, and seemed to be deteriorating rather than improving. There was no room to reverse and no room to pass another vehicle and the thought of having to back down the steep bends was exceedingly unattractive. He decided to go on as long as his car would co-operate: there were no road signs and the rise facing him was certainly as steep as anything he had seen in Great Britain. Very slowly and protestingly the car took the improbable gradient and Macdonald was able to see “over the bump” to a level and a dip. In the dip were the stone buildings and lichened roofs of an ancient upland farmstead: there were wind-bent thorn trees almost crouching over the stone walls and some stunted pine trees, swaying and soughing in the wind.

The rough track led through a couple of pastures, walled and gated, into the cobbled fold yard, and Macdonald realised he must have taken a wrong turn which had brought him to the back entrance of the farm. As he got out again to close the last of the gates, he saw a woman’s figure standing in the doorway of the farm. She was staring at him---as well she might. Visitors must be rare in this place, but visitors who came by car up the track Macdonald had negotiated must be rarer still.

He walked across the fold yard and called good morning, adding: “This is Moorcock Farm, isn’t it? I think I must have taken the wrong turn.”

The woman was young---about thirty, Macdonald guessed, dark-haired and dark-eyed, with a high colour and beetling black brows: she was vivid and sturdy, but more disposed to scowl than smile.

“Yes, ’tis Moorcock. There’s many try that road in summer, but few gets up it. My dad was always getting the horses out to tow some motorist over the top, for turn you can’t. What is it you’d be wanting?”

“I came to see Mrs. Greville. I’m told she’s not been well, but I should like to see her if she feels able to talk.”

“She’s not fit to see no one,” said the other. “If you’d tell me what it’s about----” She broke off as someone came up to the door just behind her, a much older woman, this, grey-haired and pallid, with a shawl over her bent shoulders.

“What is it, Margie? Did the gentleman ask for me?”

“Oh, Mother, go back, do, and sit by the fire. I’ll see to it, whatever ’tis. You’ll catch your death coming out in this wind.”

“If he asked for me, why, let him come in and say what’s brought him. I’ve still got my wits left, and ’tis no sort of manners to keep a visitor standing out in the yard. You step inside, sir, into the warm.”

She turned back into the house, her voice serene and resolute, in contrast with the higher pitch of her daughter’s scolding voice. Margie glowered at Macdonald.

“She’s not fit to be up and about, but she’s that obstinate I dare not cross her: ’tis her heart. Now don’t you go bothering her. If ’tis business, I can settle it.”

“I’ll be very careful,” said Macdonald quietly.

He went into the low-beamed kitchen, where the smell of wood smoke and peat mingled with a fragrance of herbs and apples and heather honey. It was a dark room, for the windows were tiny: there was a great open chimney, where logs smouldered on a huge hearthstone and a kettle hung above them on a crane.

The grey-haired woman stood by the kitchen table, one hand resting on it, and Macdonald said:

“I’m sorry to bother you when you’re poorly, Mrs. Greville.”

“Nay, I’m not that far gone I can’t face what I’ve got to face,” she said, and her voice was still serene. “There’s a fire in my little parlour, if you’ll kindly step in. Margie’s been spoiling me, bidding me sit by the parlour fire with my feet up, but bless you, I can’t abide sitting doing nothing. You follow me, sir, and mind the beams, the doors are low.”

She led the way across a dark, narrow passage into a cheerful little room with a chintzy paper on the walls and a bright fire glowing in a modern grate. There were pictures on the walls and many photographs on the mantelpiece. One was a photo of a boy in battle dress, and Macdonald knew at once who it was. He had only seen part of “Waterloo’s” bandaged face, but he recognised it. Mrs. Greville went and sat in her armchair by the fire and looked up at the tall stranger, her face almost ashen. She saw that his eyes were on the boy’s photograph, and she said at once:

“ ’Tis about my boy you’ve come, about Dick.”

“Yes, it is,” responded Macdonald. “He’s in hospital, in London. He had an accident in the fog. You’ll have heard about the thick fog all over London?”

She shook her head. “No. We don’t get a paper up here, and the wireless went wrong, but ’twas thick over the moor for days. Is he badly hurt, sir---dangerous bad?”

“He was pretty badly hurt, but the surgeon and nurses were very pleased with the way he’s getting on,” replied Macdonald. “His head was injured and he was unconscious when I saw him, so he couldn’t give any account of himself.”

“And you came all this way to tell me?” she asked wonderingly, and the gratitude in her voice gave Macdonald a pang. Then suddenly she added, “But, sit you down, sir. I’m forgetting my manners, leaving you standing like that. You see, I’d worried about him. He’s not like other boys, is Dick, and I knew he was troubled. . . .”

Macdonald sat down opposite to her and she spoke again, in a voice hardly above a whisper. “He’s not dead? You’re not----”

“No. He’s alive, all right,” said Macdonald “I telephoned to the hospital before I came out this morning. He’s still unconscious, but they said he was doing well.”

She gave a great sigh, but before he could speak again she said: “You haven’t got to worry about me, sir. I’ve been poorly with my heart, but I’m better now, and I can face anything now you’ve told me he’s getting on as he should.” She paused, and then said slowly: “You’ll know about him---about Dick?”

“No . . . I don’t know anything about him,” replied Macdonald. “I want you to tell me about him if you can, because he couldn’t tell me himself, and the hospital wants to know about him.”

She accepted this without question and gazed across at Macdonald, and then right beyond him, looking out of the little casement window to the grey moor.

“We adopted him, me and my husband,” she said slowly. “When nobody claimed him and they couldn’t find anything about him, they let us adopt him. It was all legal and right, and he’s our boy, with our name. You mind what happened in Plymouth, sir, in the war, the spring of 1941, ’twas---the bombing.

“I remember,” said Macdonald. “I was posted there from London with the Civil Defence: that was after the second night.”

She nodded and still looked out of the little window. “We was farming up on Roborough Down then---you’ll mind Roborough? ’Twas safe enough there, up in the hills, but we could see the sky over Plymouth and hear it all. Dear life, ’twas a thing you could never forget . . . the fires and the bombing, the whole place ablaze, the petrol stores burning, exploding . . . no one could tell what ’twas like who didn’t see and hear it. It made my heart ache, the horror of it. And ’twas the day after, Jack---that was my husband---he was out to see to the lambing ewes up near Rob Tor. He had a shelter there, like the shepherds always have, and a rough bed with sacks and some bundles of hay for when he was out at night. And ’twas there he found Dick, curled up asleep on the sacks, his clothes all scorched and burnt off him. Dear life, he must have run out of that hell that Plymouth was, run like a frightened beast. . . . Can you think of it, a small boy running like a mad thing till he dropped, and fell asleep among the ewes up there on Roborough?”

Macdonald sat very still and quiet. She didn’t want an answer---and there was nothing to say. She met his eyes and seemed satisfied that he had understood, and went on more slowly: “Jack, he picked him up and set him across his shoulder as he would have a sick lamb, and he brought him to me. ‘He musta run out of that blazing hell,’ he said, ‘run and run, poor little chap, all scorched and black.’ Well, I put him to bed and cared for him. You can guess what it was, with all the doctors driven to death down there—and he wasn’t hurt, except for his hands and face being scorched, and his poor legs all torn and bleeding. He just slept and slept. I fed him as you’d feed a baby and he slept again, and when Doctor came---old Dr. Carson, that was---he said: ‘You look after him, just as you’re doing now. You can do more for him than anyone. It’s shock, poor little lad.’ And when he woke up, he couldn’t speak. He was just dumb.” She stopped again, not waiting for an answer, but immersed in memory, as though she were standing again by the bedside of a small boy who couldn’t---or wouldn’t---speak.

“It came back, gradual like, his speech,” she went on at last. “At first it was just yes and no. He soon got his strength back, and he ran round after my husband and helped with the lambs, but it was weeks before he really talked. And he couldn’t remember anything: he couldn’t even tell us his name. It was as though a curtain had come down and shut everything out.”

“And nobody ever claimed him, or reported he was missing?” asked Macdonald.

“Nobody,” she replied. “It wasn’t for lack of asking. They came again and again, and had folks up to see him, but nobody knew him. Of course some of the people from the government offices wanted to put him in a home, but Dr. Carson stood out against that. ‘You’ve got enough of these poor souls on your hands,’ he said, ‘every institution crammed with homeless folk. This boy’s got a home here, and someone to care for him. Let him be, do.’ So they let me keep him, poor lamb that he was. And I loved him from the first, loved him like my own, from the time I took his scorched rags off him and washed him and fed him like a baby, him fast asleep, poor mite.”

“And he never told you what had happened?” asked Macdonald.

“Never. He didn’t know. As weeks went by he talked more and more: he could read. That came back bit by bit, and counting and adding up---though I never was sure if he picked it up again from me. He was a clever little boy, Dick was. He was always clever.”

“How old did you think he was?”

“Eight or nine. We decided he was nine, and we gave him a birthday---Lady Day---and we called him Richard, after the baby boy I lost. And he went to school that September, like the other children, and was entered as Dick Greville, and he never looked back. He was good at books, and Teacher thought the world of him. But he’s never remembered what happened, though we told him just how he’d come to us. ’Twas only fair to tell him.” Again she was silent for a moment, gazing out of the window to the distant tors.

“The good Lord knows how many was killed in Plymouth that night,” she said. “They counted and reckoned as best they could, and entered all the missing, but in a seaport like Plymouth, how could they tell how many was killed, or who they all were? You know the way folks poured out of London, away from the bombing, thinking to be safe in the west country. My man and me, we thought our Dick and his folks must have come from away, spending a night in Plymouth, mayhap, before they went on down into Cornwall, trains being that late---you know how ’twas. And his folk got killed and he escaped, and ran out of the town, up Crown Hill as likely as not, with the bombs and guns going all round him and everything afire. Could you wonder it near drove the child crazy?”

>>2
It was an extraordinary story, pondered Macdonald---but the night of the Plymouth blitz had been an extraordinary night. People had survived in the streets; some, indeed, had fled, mad with terror, from blazing houses. They had run, as terrified animals run, from that inferno of fire, and Macdonald was quite willing to believe that a sturdy small boy, bereft of his senses by the horror of it all, might have run until he dropped, right up in the hills under the blessed benison of a sky which boded no ill. But it was unusual to hear of a case in which loss of memory had been permanent---if it had been permanent.

This was the lad of whom Sally Dillon had spoken. “I said the fog was like smoke wreaths, evil and choking, and I wished I hadn’t said it, because he looked so distressed.”

Mrs. Greville sat back in her chair, immersed in memory: apparently she was not tired by talking; it even seemed to have been a relief to her to repeat that story; which must have had so much effect on her life, for it was obvious the boy was the joy of her old age.

As they sat silent for a moment, the door opened and Margie came in with a small tray, her cheeks flushed, her eyes smouldering, and Macdonald could see that she resented this stranger to whom her mother had been talking so eagerly.

“I’ve brought your hot drink, Mother, and ’tis time you rested.”

“Don’t you fret about me, dearie. I’m stronger than you think,” rejoined Mrs. Greville. “This gentleman’s came all the way from London to tell me our Dick’s had an accident, Margie. He was knocked down in the fog and he’s in hospital.” She turned back to Macdonald. “I don’t even know your name, sir. I’d like to know it---and I’m grateful to you for thinking to come so far.”

“My name’s Robert Macdonald, Mrs. Greville. I’m a police officer. It’s our job to get in touch with the parents of lads who meet with accidents in London, you know.”

He spoke very simply, realising that this woman who lived so far away from crowds and streets and policemen would accept his words unquestioningly, but even as he spoke he glanced up at Margie and caught the look in her dark eyes. Was it surprise, curiosity---or hope?

In a second there flashed across Macdonald’s mind a realisation of the position implied in the story he had just heard: a widowed mother, an adopted son whom she loved devotedly, and a daughter who seemed to brood and tended to scold.

“Dick---is he bad, then?” asked Margie, and Macdonald could have sworn it was hopefulness that gleamed in her eyes.

“He was very badly hurt,” rejoined Macdonald, “but the hospital people are satisfied with the way he’s getting on.”

“How did it happen?” she asked. “Was it one of these motor accidents?”

“We don’t know,” replied Macdonald. “If it was a traffic accident, no witness has come forward to give evidence about it, and the boy hasn’t been able to tell us anything. It was partly on that account that I wanted to talk to Mrs. Greville: I thought perhaps she would tell me what he was doing in London, where he was going, and so forth.”

“Of course I’ll tell you all I can,” said the old lady, but Margie put in:

“Mother, you’ve talked enough. You’ll be wearing yourself out. If there’s questions must be answered, let me do the talking.”

“No,” said Mrs. Greville quietly. “Not about Dick. You know naught about him, Margie. You go and get on with the cooking like the good child you be. If Dick’s in trouble, it’s me has to think for him.”

“If you can’t trust your own daughter it’s a fine thing,” she flashed back. “Here I’ve come and left my own home to look after you, and all I get is: ‘You go and do the cooking.’ Oh, I’m sorry to speak so sharp, but I get that mad----”

She turned on her heel and flung out of the door, and Mrs. Greville sighed.

“You can see how ’tis,” she said sadly. “Mayhap it wasn’t fair to Margie. I tried to do right, but Dick seemed to need me so much more when he was small. He wasn’t like other boys.”

“I think I understand, Mrs. Greville,” said Macdonald. “Now I don’t want you to get overtired and I know this must have been a shock to you----”

“Nay. I was thankful to talk to you,” she said. “You see, I’d been worrying. I felt there was something wrong. . . .”

“Can you tell me what it was that worried you?” asked Macdonald.

“Indeed, I’ll try . . . but it’d be easier if I told you my own way, like I did about finding Dick out on Roborough Down. As you get old you talk to yourself---or it seems like that. It’s all plain when I think it to myself, but if so be I’m asked questions---when and why and who---then I get muddled and forget.”

“I’d much rather you told me in your own way, Mrs. Greville. You gave me a wonderfully clear description of finding your Dick, and looking after him when he slept and slept, and I do understand just what you mean when you say he’s not like other boys and that he needed you even more than the strong, healthy daughter needed you. So tell me things as they come into your mind. There’s no hurry. I’m here to help you, not to worry you.”

Suddenly she smiled at him. “You say you’re a policeman, so I suppose it’s true; but there’s something kind about you. I knew that when you first told me about Dick being hurt . . . so maybe we’ll see it through together.”

“We’ll try,” replied Macdonald.

>>3
“I told you Dick went to the village school,” she said. “He was a good learner---books came easy to him. He got his scholarship and went on to the grammar school. But I knew he had his bad times, too. Sometimes he’d go off by himself, wandering . . . and maybe his mind wandered too. I used to think he tried to get it all back---all he’d forgotten---and then he’d come back and sleep for hours, as though he was tired to death, and when he woke up, ’twas all right again.”

“Did he ever tell you anything about his wanderings?” asked Macdonald.

“No---I don’t think he’d anything he could tell. It was as though he were in a maze like, being lost in the mists we get up here on the moor. But after a while, he grew out of it. He was the happiest boy, and everything came easy to him, books and prizes and games. They thought a lot of him at school: the headmaster wanted him to be a doctor or a scientist. But no, Dick’s always said he’d farm. He loved the farm. So then the headmaster said: ‘Well if he’s set on farming let him learn the right way of it’---meaning the science of it. I don’t understand all this modern learning, but they said he could go to college and study agriculture. Maybe you know the sort of thing they mean. It’s all strange to me. Why, my folks has farmed for generations, and good farmers, too, with none of this book learning. But there, ’tis modern ideas, and all I wanted was for Dick to have the best he could have.” She paused again, in the way which Macdonald had noticed before, and then went on: “ ’Twas all settled. He was to go to some college which’d teach him all about breeding and modern ways of tending the stock and resowing grasslands and the like. I want to tell you this so you know everything seemed right and happy for him and no bothers. They’d even got the college fixed---Reading he was to go to. They said it was the best place for him.”

“Yes. That’s quite true. There’s a good department of agriculture at Reading University,” said Macdonald.

His voice was quite even: it didn’t reflect the way his mind had jumped . . . Reading . . . Was it going to work out this way?

“But then there was his National Service,” went on Mrs. Greville. “Dick wanted to do that. He wouldn’t shirk it, even though he could have got out of it, they said, with him meaning to farm. I’m not sure about that, but he joined up, same as all the lads do, and he went to camp. And how I missed him!” she sighed. “My husband, he died three years ago, and I kept this place on with two good men. . . . I wanted to keep it till Dick was settled, but, dear life, it was sad without him. He went abroad after a time, to Egypt, and then to Germany. And at last he came back. He was different. I can’t tell you just what it was, but there was a cloud over him. He didn’t talk to me like he used. He’d sit quiet, brooding, and then he’d start a sentence and not finish it. I was sure what his trouble was---things was coming back to him. Things he’d forgotten. But it was the same as it was when he had his bad days when he was a young boy; he couldn’t make sense of it, couldn’t fit it together.”

She was twisting her hands together unhappily, the gnarled fingers working distressfully. “I couldn’t bear to see him like that. I tried to get him to tell me what ailed him. When he first came here, they sent him to these psychologist doctors as they call them---but it wasn’t any good. He just went dumb with strangers. But I remember one of the doctors said to me: ‘Wait till he’s older, when he’s got stronger and the shock’s worn off, and then send him to me again.’ ” She looked across at Macdonald and said slowly: “I didn’t send him. Maybe I didn’t want to send him. He was well and happy . . . and he’d grown to be ours. I didn’t want him upset.”

Macdonald nodded: he understood what she meant. She went on: “But when he came back from soldiering and he was so different, I asked him if he’d like to see one of these doctors, and he said he’d talked it over with Brian, when they were in Germany together---Brian knows all about Dick---and he was going to see some doctor whose name he’d got from a friend. And it was that same evening he told me, I went and got ill with my heart, and I couldn’t talk to him again for a while. They wouldn’t let me talk.” She gave a long sigh, and Macdonald looked with concern at her pallid face.

“Nay, don’t you be like the rest and tell me to stay quiet,” she said. “I’ve nearly done. Dick, he stayed at home here until he saw I was safely on the way to being myself again, and then he said he was going to see the people at this college he’s going to, but first he was going up to London to see this psychologist doctor, and that’s how it was.” She hesitated, and then asked sadly: “Could it ha’ been he got worried and muddled and unhappy with it all, and just got knocked down not looking where he was going?”

“It might have been,” said Macdonald gently. He couldn’t tell this ashen-faced woman what had really happened to her boy. That would have to wait.

He got up, saying: “You’ve been very brave to tell me all about the boy. I’m glad you’ve told me, because the doctors who are looking after him ought to be told. Now there’s only one other thing I want you to tell me: this lad Brian, who is Dick’s friend---what is his other name, and where is he living now?”

“Brian Salcombe---why, he lives down to Long Barrow Farm: Horrabridge that’s near. Not far away. Brian and Dick’s going to set up farming together one day.”

“Good luck to them,” said Macdonald. “Now I’ll write down the name of the hospital where Dick is now, and I’ll see that somebody writes to you and gives you news of him. And I’ll come and see you again if I may before I go back to London.”

“You’ll be very welcome,” she said. “Somehow it’s helped telling you everything. I’ve been that worried. . . .”

“I’m glad it’s helped: talking does help when you’re worried,” said Macdonald, “but you’ve talked quite enough for now. You see I’m just like the others, telling you to stay quiet.”

She smiled, a gleam of mischief shining in her eyes. “And if Margie gives you a piece of her mind when you go out through the kitchen, don’t you be put out. It’s hard for Margie. . . .”

“I won’t be put out---even though Margie puts me out,” responded Macdonald. “There’s just one other thing: do you mind if I go up to Dick’s room and look through his things? I think the hospital would be glad if I took an extra pair of pyjamas, and a few things like that. I know just about what he wants, so you needn’t bother to help me.”

She smiled back at him. “That’s right kind of you to think of it, sir. You go straight up. The stairs are just outside this door, and his room’s at the top. All his things are washed and tidy, I do know that. You just take what you think.”

Macdonald went up to the little room close under the overhanging eaves: it took him a very short time to look through the boy’s belongings. He found nothing to help his case, though he took a book from beside the bed to satisfy the policeman’s inevitable demand for fingerprints “to check by.” Then, with two suits of new pyjamas neatly rolled up under his arm, he made his way downstairs again.