‘That’s right, I’m the driver. I just follow directions. You know so much, why don’t you tell me where to go, Reverend?’
‘If I wasn’t a man of the cloth, I might just do that, brother,’ thundered Rev. Pot.
Out of the corner of his eye, Joe thought he glimpsed a light moving way to his left. He blinked. Yes, there it was. Looked like a single headlight. On a tractor maybe. Some farmer out working late. Maybe some crops were best gathered at night. Joe was a little vague on matters agricultural.
Joe turned to the disputants and said, ‘Why don’t we ask that guy?’
‘What guy?’
‘That guy … where’s he gone?’
The light had vanished.
‘You seeing things now, Joe?’ said Merv sceptically.
‘No, I’m not. I’ll go talk to him.’
He grabbed the flashlight Merv carried under the dash and got out of the coach. It was so dark and alien out there, he felt like he’d just been beamed down from the Enterprise. Hastily he switched on his light. That was better. Still alien but not so dark. There was a gate into the field where he’d seen the light. He unlatched it and stepped into what felt like a bog. Did the Welsh grow rice? He shone the torch down and saw it was a pungent mixture of mud and cow dung.
‘Oh shoot,’ he said. But he wasn’t going to retreat. He reasoned all the farmer had done was switch off his light and engine till the coach went on its way. Reason? Maybe he was shy.
He aimed the beam forward and squinted along it. Nothing but its light reflected from the drifting mist wraiths. Then his straining eyes glimpsed something more solid. A shape. A sort of vehicle shape. He’d been right.
He began to move forward. As he got nearer he saw that it wasn’t a tractor after all, but one of those farm buggies with the big tyres. But before he could take in any detail, the headlight blossomed again, full in his face, dazzling.
‘Hi there,’ he called, shielding his eyes. ‘Sorry to trouble you but we’re a bit lost. Wondered if you could give us some directions.’
Silence. Then a muffled voice said, ‘Where to?’
‘Place called Llanffugiol,’ said Joe. ‘Where the Choir Festival is.’
More silence.
‘Never heard of it,’ said the voice.
The buggy’s engine burst into life and it started moving forward. For a second, Joe thought it was going to go straight over him, then it swung away in a semicircle and bounced off into the mist.
He raised his flashlight and for a second caught the driver’s back full in its beam. Long narrow body in a black fleecy jacket. Matching narrow head, bald or close-shaven, could have passed for that guy who played the King of Siam in the old musical. Maybe I should’ve tried singing ‘Getting to Know You’, thought Joe.
Then the mist closed behind him.
Joe returned to the coach. He tried to clean his shoes on the grass verge, but the smell of the countryside came in with him and he didn’t have any good news to compensate.
Merv rolled his eyes heavenwards as if the farmer’s response was Joe’s fault, engaged gear noisily and set the coach rolling forward along the narrow road once more.
Even Rev. Pot seemed to have forgotten his duty of Christian charity.
‘Now that’s real helpful, Joe,’ he said sarcastically. ‘So what’s your guess? I mean, just how many miles away do you think we are if folk round here haven’t even heard of the place?’
‘Half a mile’s a long way in the country,’ said Joe, his anti-rural prejudices now in full cry. ‘These natives probably never been out of their own village.’
Rev. Pot gave him a glance which had he been in the exorcism business would have cast Joe back into the outer darkness, no problem.
Then Merv said, ‘Hang about. Look, that has to be civilization.’
He was looking ahead. The mist was of the ground-clinging variety which occasionally permitted glimpses of treetops while their bases were hidden at ten paces. Joe saw what had caught Merv’s eye. There was a distinct glow in the sky, the kind of light which could only come from a substantial settlement.
The road ahead rose steeply and as the coach laboured up it, the mist began to fall away behind and the glow increased. Then they reached the crest and saw its source was much closer than they’d imagined.
Far from being a substantial settlement, it was a solitary house. And the reason it was casting such light was it was on fire.
Merv ran the coach through an open gate and came to a halt some thirty yards from the building. Joe got out. Even from this distance he could feel the heat.
The others crowded round him.
It wasn’t his charisma that attracted them, it was his phone.
‘Better ring for help,’ said Beryl.
He pulled out the mobile. Someone said, ‘You see that?’ and pointed.
On the side of a small outbuilding someone had sprayed the words, ENGLISH GO HOME!
‘This the welcome they keep in the hillside?’ said Merv.
Joe stabbed 999.
‘Shoot,’ he said. ‘Not getting anything.’
‘Wouldn’t say that,’ said Merv. ‘Best service I’ve ever seen.’
A car had come up behind the bus at speed and a uniformed police sergeant got out and came running to join them. Had a look of that Welsh movie actor who kept on getting married to Liz Taylor, thought Joe. The voice too.
‘What the hell’s going on here?’ he demanded.
Merv, never one to miss the chance of sending up a copper, said, ‘Could be a millennium bonfire, got the dates wrong.’
The cop ignored him. His face expressed a strange mixture of anger and bafflement. Might look like Richard Burton but he was far from word perfect in his role, which was to take charge of the situation, thought Joe. He punched 999 once more.
Beryl said, ‘Joe, have you forgotten to switch on again?’
Now the cop found his lines.
‘Leave this to me,’ he snapped. ‘And move back, will you? Now!’
He ran back to his car, presumably to call up help.
Joe examined his phone. Beryl was right. Again. He smiled sheepishly at her. He didn’t mind being wrong. You got used to it. And it was nice that now he could relax and enjoy the fire without feeling he had to do anything about it.
Then Beryl screamed, ‘Joe, there’s someone in there!’
And looking up along the line indicated by her pointing finger, Joe saw the black outline of a human figure against the dark-red glow in one of the upstairs windows.
If Beryl hadn’t prefaced her cry with Joe! he might not have done it.
And if he’d taken thought, he certainly wouldn’t have done it, not because thought would have brought self-interest into play and there was a presumably fully paid-up public servant in calling distance, but simply because for Joe problem-solving by the cerebral route usually involved a paper and pencil and two pints of Guinness.
But pausing only to thrust the phone into Beryl’s hand, he’d set off running around the back of the house before he’d had time to work out by reason alone