Michael Innes - Lament for a Maker

The route was all right, I think; it was the snow undid me. I was running along nicely on chains at about forty m.p.h. when the snout of the car went down and the tail went up, just like a launch dropping into the trough of a wave – only the feel wasn’t that of water but of cotton wool. In about three yards I had come from that forty m.p.h. to a dead stop, and without a jolt or a tremble. That is how snow behaves in Scotland: its ballistic properties quite different, it seems to me, from the Swiss variety. But that’s by the way. What had happened was I’d breasted one of those enormously humpy bridges (left about, I believe, by Julius Caesar) and there was a great drift on the farther side and down I’d sunk.

Luckily there was a group of North Britons in the centre foreground, bringing hay, they said, to the beasts; very kindly, they brought the beasts to me and yanked the car out backwards, and away I drove the way I’d come, the incident having put me back – as Miss G. says – two hours and ten shillings.

We approach Miss G. now – again at about forty m.p.h. and in the progressive municipality of Dunwinnie. I stopped there for petrol, Miss G. had stopped for gas – and we got it from the same pump, ladies first. You know, I always feel embarrassed when I’m out with the car in the society of smaller cars, and Miss G. has a fleeting appraising glance that said puppy ! in a quite devastating sort of way. So I followed her modestly out of this Dunwinnie and – having heard her make competent inquiries about the south road – I followed her again all humbly second to the right. Unfortunately, Miss G. had tripped on it.

But she could drive. It was a narrow road – suspiciously narrow – and I didn’t overtake her. We did about ten miles and then, turning into some nameless hamlet, I lost her: by this time it was nearly dark. I didn’t like it a bit; for miles the road had been virgin snow and I was next to certain I was lost in the heart of Scotland. So I stopped to inquire: the village seemed deserted – like sweet Auburn – and I thought I’d have to go thumping on people’s doors, when suddenly the figure of an old wife started up magically at my elbow. Of course I ought to have grabbed my map, said ‘My good woman, what little place is this?’ and then worked it out for myself. Instead, I asked her for the south road; I may even have asked her for London – habit, you know, creeping in with fatigue. Anyway, she seemed a most reliable old party, pointed at once and with immense decision to a turn among the cottages ahead – and away your devoted mutt went.

About a mile on I picked up Miss G.’s tail light, and I was still humble enough to feel momentarily encouraged: my cousin Tim, who was Third Secretary or something at Washington, says they really are a most fearfully efficient race. Of course Tim himself is so nitwitted – But I wander.

Point is, I was wandering; a few miles on there could be no doubt of it. Miss G. had tripped and I was tripping after her – plunging and slithering rather through anything up to two feet of snow. I think I’d have turned back if there had been any turning, which there wasn’t, the road being no road clearly, but the most miserable of tracks. Besides, the admired Miss G. was still ahead – I can’t imagine how she kept going – and likely to be much worse landed than I was: if need be one could survive the night in my car. Gallant gentleman, you see, chugging chivalrously along behind. And presently I came upon her.

Came upon her is the word. I had done, I suppose, six miles; I could just pick out her tracks with my headlights and I was following them rather than the occasional posts that marked the track, when very much the same thing happened as at the humpy bridge. Or began to happen. Down went my nose and up went my tail – and then there was the most appalling crash. In the stillness that followed, and as my wits were coming back to me, a female voice said gratefully: ‘Well, that’s just sweet of you, stranger.’ Miss G.’s voice.

Sybil Guthrie – we may as well get a little more familiar – Sybil Guthrie had missed the track, gone over a bank, turned on her side, and crawled out. I had followed her over – a little higher up for the Rolls had come down with a splintering concussion dead on top of her car. But I hadn’t overturned and there I sat like a fool; I might have killed her. Anxious to do the right thing, I said solicitously: ‘Are you hurt?’ She said: ‘Yes, really offended,’ and then she added more cheerfully: ‘Of course, if we’re on fire there’s plenty of snow. Does snow put out fires, though?’

But we weren’t on fire. We sat each on a front wing of my car – the whole wreck seemed quite securely wedged – and warmed our hands on the radiator as we considered. Sybil – a nice girl – Sybil said she thought the village we’d gone finally wrong at was called Kinkeig; she’d been through it before and there was a pub if we could get back to it. Would that be best?

Quite proper instincts, you see, despite that appraising eye; out in the snow I was promoted from puppy to guardian St Bernard at once. So I edged myself into the spot-light and looked uncommonly responsible and grave.

It had been snowing off and on all afternoon but at the moment – and apart from the fact that darkness had fallen – visibility was good. And as I edged myself I saw, far away but unmistakable, a single light. ‘I think,’ I said, ‘we’ll make for the house straight ahead. Have you a small suitcase?’

It is unlikely – don’t you think? – that Sybil was unimpressed; with just such brevity do the heroes speak. And, anyway, I thought I was saying the right thing; the village couldn’t well be less than six miles, whereas the light – though lights can be enormously deceptive at night – could scarcely be more than two. Would you have dubitated or debated, Diana? Sybil just made a dive and yanked a suitcase – a small suitcase – out of the remains of her car. ‘Hieronimo,’ she said,

‘’tis time for thee to trudge.’ A pleasant literary lady – as a Sybil should be.

The light must represent a dwelling and some sort of shelter; the danger was that we should lose it as we advanced. I left my spotlight on and directed it at a pretty prominent tree – which gave us a base we could probably get back to in an emergency – and then we set off. But not before the admirable Sybil had produced a healthy electric torch. Really, she might have come prepared for the whole affair.

What ensued was a sort of vest-pocket version of The Worst Journey in the World . It was dark, it was cold and there was, of course, snow. Indeed, ‘I’ll say this is snow’ was the only remark Sybil made en route . Sometimes we fell into it in all sorts of diverting ways, like people in the Christmas number of Punch . One would think it was a passive sort of stuff, snow. I assure you that time and again it positively surged up and buffeted us.

There were anxious periods while a hill or a line of trees was screening the light; there was a more anxious moment still when the light began to rise oddly in the air and I felt it might be twenty miles away after all and on top of a mountain range. Fifty yards further, however, and a blackness gathered round it more lustreless than the blackness of the sky. A vague bulk was defining itself; a few seconds more and we had succeeded in interpreting it. What was before us was a solitary light burning near the top of a high tower.

‘Childe Roland,’ I said, ‘to the dark tower came.’

It was a trifle obvious – not at all up to Hieronimo – and I was quite glad that the words were drowned, somewhat alarmingly, by a sudden tremendous baying of hounds. But at that the obvious came to Sybil also. ‘Sir Leoline,’ she said, ‘the baron rich–’