Hearing Secret Harmonies - Anthony Powell [66]
‘He thought they were supernatural beings?’
‘I don’t know what Ernie thought – that the Devil had come to take him away.’
‘They must have been some jokers.’
‘You tell Ernie Dunch they were jokers, Mr Jenkins.’
‘If they’d been the genuine ghosts of The Fingers there’d only have been two of them.’
‘Ernie may have seen double. He wasn’t at all positive about the numbers. All he was positive about was that he wouldn’t go up there again that night for a thousand pounds.’
‘This happened last night as ever is?’
‘St John’s Eve.’
Mr Gauntlett, always an artist in effects, mentioned the date quite quietly.
‘So it was.’
‘Mrs Dunch reminded Ernie o’ that herself.’
‘What did Mrs Dunch think?’
‘Told Ernie it was the last time she’d let him out after dark with the Land Rover. She said she’d never spent such a night. Every time the young owls hooted, Ernie would give a great jump in the bed.’
‘What do you think yourself, Mr Gauntlett?’
Mr Gauntlett shook his head. He was not going to commit himself, however much prepared to laugh at Ernie Dunch about such a matter.
‘Ernie looked done up. That’s true enough. Not at all hisself.’
‘Would you be prepared to visit The Devil’s Fingers, Mr Gauntlett, say at midnight on Hallowe’en?’
Mr Gauntlett looked sly.
‘Don’t know about Hallowe’en, when it might be chilly, but I wouldn’t say I’d not been on that same down on a summer night as a lad – nor all that far from The Fingers – and never took no harm from it.’
Mr Gauntlett smiled in reminiscence.
‘You must have struck a quiet night, Mr Gauntlett.’
‘Well, it were pretty quiet some o’ the time. Some o’ the time it were very quiet.’
Mr Gauntlett did not enlarge on the memory. It sounded a pleasant enough one. At that moment Mr Tudor appeared beside us. I don’t think Mr Gauntlett had more to say, either about Ernie Dunch’s experiences at The Devil’s Fingers, or his own in the same neighbourhood. He now transferred his attention to Mr Tudor. Mr Tudor either wanted to ask Mr Gauntlett’s advice, as a local sage of some standing, or the two of them had been hatching a plot, before the meeting, which now required to be carried a stage further. They moved off together towards the easterly fork of the ridge. I pushed on alone.
This final field, plough when Isobel and I had visited the place several years before, was now rough pasture. In their individual efforts to obtain an overall picture of what would be the effect on the landscape of the various proposals, the assembled company had become increasingly spread out. Several were studying maps, making notes as they tried to estimate the position of proposed new constructions and plantations represented by the markers with their different coloured flags. Mrs Salter, pruning-hook under one arm, writing in a little book, was furthest in advance. Now, she fell back with the rest to gain perspective. I found myself alone in that part of the field. Over to the east, the direction where Mr Gauntlett and Mr Tudor had disappeared together, lay the workings of the quarry scheduled by its owners for expansion. High chutes, sloping steeply down from small cabins that looked like the turrets of watch towers, rose out of an untidy jumble of corrugated iron sheds and lofty mounds of crushed limestone. The sun, still shining between dark clouds that had blown up, caught the reflection on the windscreens of rows of parked cars and trucks. To the west, over by Ernie Dunch