Peter May - The Firemaker

Li turned, disheartened, in the direction they had come. Margaret caught his arm. He stopped, and for a moment they stood looking into each other’s eyes, sharing their despair. Then he drew her to him and held her, feeling the contours of her body moulded into his. And they kissed. A long, hungry kiss filled with both passion and pain that left each of them aching with a desire they knew they could not fulfil. Not here. Not now.

By the time they got back to the pick-up, Yongli was there in a state of anger and frustration. ‘Where the hell have you been?’ he shouted at Li. ‘I found a whole fucking pile of railroad ties about a mile down the track. I came running back screaming my lungs out trying to stop you.’

Li shook his head. ‘We didn’t hear you.’

‘That’s nearly two fucking hours we’ve wasted!’

‘Well, let’s not waste any more,’ Li said, annoyed. It was bad luck, but it was no one’s fault, and he resented Yongli’s attitude.

This time they ran all the way down the line to where the railroad ties were stacked, Li explaining to Margaret in between gasps for air what had happened. When they got there, Li surveyed the pile. ‘We need two,’ he said. ‘One to run lengthwise between the wheels to provide a lever point for the other.’

Yongli said, ‘They’re too heavy for one person. I’ve already tried. We’ll have to make two trips.’

It took another thirty minutes to get both railroad ties back to the pick-up. Margaret felt hopelessly redundant, a passenger, unable to do anything to help. She stayed behind to loosen the wheel nuts when Li and Yongli went for the second tie. It proved a lot harder than she had imagined. They had been over-tightened either by brute strength or by machine. She only began to make progress when she locked the brace on to the nut at a forty-five-degree angle and stood on the end of it, flexing her knees to bring repeated pressure to bear. The first grinding creak and half-turn felt like a major achievement. By the time the two men returned with the other tie, she had loosened all the nuts, taken all the skin off one of her shins, and was soaked in a fine film of sweat. But she wasn’t about to complain. She saw the strain on their faces, and the rivulets of sweat that ran into their eyes and dripped from their chins.

Performing the remainder of the task turned out to be remarkably simple. The second tie was manoeuvred into position at right angles to the first, with the near end immediately below the vehicle’s jacking point. Li and Margaret brought their combined weight down on the other end and lifted the rear of the pick-up by several inches while Yongli slipped the punctured wheel off and replaced it with the spare. When the nuts were in place, they lowered it again, and Yongli finished tightening them.

They had lost more than three hours, and the first light of dawn had appeared in the sky to the east. Yongli seemed close to panic. ‘Come on,’ he shouted, and he leapt up into the cab to start the engine. But Li stood where he was, panting, his face blackened and sweat-stained. ‘It’ll be broad daylight by the time we get to the border now,’ he said. ‘We’re going to have to find somewhere to lie low until tonight.’

‘Shit!’ Yongli thumped the wheel in frustration.

Sunday

The world tilted to the east and the sun slid up over the far horizon. There was a strange, desolate beauty in this desert dawn, sunlight painting the edge of every swaying blade of grass yellow as the wind ebbed and flowed through the long stems like an invisible hand ruffling the still surface of a vast ocean. The grey pick-up rattled and bumped steadily northwards, a plume of fine dust rising from its tail then dipping to the west in the prevailing breeze. The road cut like an arrow through the high grasslands, straight and unbending, heading inexorably to the north and the mountains and deserts of Mongolia. They had not seen another vehicle all night.

They passed through two small villages, neat brick buildings and tidy flower-beds, streets lined with saplings. But there was no sign of life in either. It was still early, not yet six. Another hour, and the larger buildings of a town began to form themselves on the distant shimmering horizon. The sun was well up in the sky now, and the heat in the cab was building. Li was asleep, slumped against the door column. Margaret sat between the two men, staring off into the distance, lost in a fog of random thoughts and memories and regrets. Yongli lifted the map from the dash and glanced at it, keeping the pick-up one-handed on its undeviating course. This had to be Erhlien, which was no more than a kilometre or two from the border. Here, trains passing in either direction were shunted into huge sheds to have undercarriages replaced for the change of gauge between China and the old USSR. Yongli breathed an inner sigh of relief. They had made good time, were now perhaps only two hours behind their original schedule.

As they approached the town Margaret said, ‘Could we stop here?’

Yongli looked at her, surprised. ‘Why?’

‘I need to go to the bathroom.’

For the first time in nearly three days she saw him smile with genuine amusement. ‘This is not a good time to think of having a bath,’ he said.

She laughed. ‘I mean toilet.’ She clutched her lower abdomen ruefully. ‘I’m getting cramps. Probably all that fruit we ate yesterday. I’d say just stop at the roadside, but I don’t see any bushes.’ She grinned, embarrassed.

He smiled. ‘Sure. We’ll find you somewhere.’

Li still slept as they drove into Erhlien. It was a neat and tidy little town, with a post office, a large hotel, a shirt factory, a great railway shed, and rows of squat brick houses with tiled roofs. The population was already up and about — square, high-cheeked Mongolian faces, skin tanned and leathery. A group of workers painting a fence stopped to stare as the pick-up pulled up in front of the hotel.

‘You should get a “bathroom” in there,’ Yongli said, and he stepped down to let Margaret out at his side so as not to disturb Li.

A line of schoolchildren, with fresh faces and clean white blouses, gawped in amazement as the blonde-haired, blue-eyed yangguizi skipped across the road and into the hotel. A babble of excited chatter arose in the street. Yongli looked into the cab at the sleeping Li, hesitating for a moment before climbing carefully back in.

When, a few minutes later, Margaret emerged from the hotel, slinging her purse over her shoulder, a crowd of around forty or fifty townspeople had gathered in the street, word spreading quickly about her arrival. The twice-daily train from Mongolia was all that usually broke the monotony of their lives. This was unusual, something not to be missed. Others were hurrying along the street to join them and catch a glimpse. Margaret stopped on the steps, taken aback, uncertain how to react. She smiled nervously, but the faces that gazed back at her were blank. ‘ Ni hau ,’ she said, and to her amazement received a spontaneous round of applause.

Li woke with a start, sitting up, blinking furiously, assimilating where they were. ‘What the hell’s happening?’ he asked.

Yongli said, ‘She needed the “bathroom”.’ Li frowned. Yongli explained, ‘The toilet.’

Li looked at the crowds in the street. ‘For God’s sake,’ he said. ‘This is the last thing we need.’ Margaret hurried across the street and Yongli jumped down to let her in. ‘What the hell did you think you were doing?’ Li snapped at her.

His words hit her like a slap in the face. ‘I had to go to the toilet,’ she said, defensive, hurt by his tone.