Authors: Emma Smith
Ivor paused apologetically.
“I knew we were bound to be coming to that bit soon,” said Amy. “I was expecting it.”
“He wouldn’t have lived for much longer anyway, the Ambassador said—he’d been ill for years and it was only willpower had kept him alive till then. So you see,” said Ivor, trying to make the best of that dark episode out of consideration for Amy’s feelings and for her frail health, “it wasn’t as bad as it might have been.”
“It must have been very bad for him for a few minutes,” said Amy, refusing to dodge the reality. “I shall always mind for him, for those few bad minutes, all my life.”
“Well, all right then,” said Ivor. “If you do mind, that’s all right—it’s good if you mind. People ought to mind. That’s how people pay tribute to heroes. Heroes deserve it.”
Amy thought these words over and finding, surprisingly, that they were comforting, she accepted them with a sorrowful nod and a little sigh.
“Go on,” she said. “So what did Bartolomeo do then?”
“They tried to finish him off as well, but he got away from them. Of course, if anyone didn’t know what was going on it looked like Bartolomeo had killed old Luis and then made a bolt for it, and that’s what the Cardiff police would have thought except the Ambassador told them differently, and told them to hush it up for the time being, and told them why. But that wasn’t till next day. Bartolomeo says he doesn’t remember much of the first night. His arm was bad and he’d been knocked about a good deal as well—but he had it stuck in his head that he’d got to keep clear of Vigers’ lot somehow—that they were after him—and he’d got to get hold of Luis’s cousin in London and tell him what he knew. He hid on the back of a lorry, underneath a tarpaulin—that’s how he got clear of Cardiff and a fair distance up north. Only then the lorry was stopped. He didn’t wait to find out why, or who stopped it—he just slipped down off the back of the lorry as quick as he could, and he hid in a building all that night, and the next morning he set off across country. Of course he didn’t have a map or anything, just a rough idea of what was the right direction for London. I think he looked at the stars and the sun and worked it out. I don’t think he’d got a compass. Anyway, there was lots of Vigers’ people trailing after him, and some of them spotted Bartolomeo up on the hills, heading east. Bartolomeo knew he’d been spotted—or at least he thought so, he wasn’t sure—but he just kept going. It’s all he can remember, he says, telling himself he had to
keep going, keep going.
Well, what the Ambassador thinks is that those men who saw Bartolomeo must have rung up Vigers in London, and Vigers said to them—‘you go on after him, and get him’—and that’s what they started to do, only then the snow came. So when the snow came Vigers said—‘Ah ha!—I know the way to catch him now, and I’ll do it myself.’ But that’s where he was wrong,” said Ivor, with tremendous satisfaction, “because he got caught instead—by me! I caught the Catcher!”
“So you did,” said Amy.
They looked at each other and laughed.
“And if you hadn’t caught him, Ivor, me and Granny wouldn’t be flying off in an aeroplane in six weeks’ time. Six weeks and three days exactly, it is. I can hardly believe it yet—but it’s true. It’s really going to happen.”
“You’ll never come back,” said Ivor, gloomily.
“Shan’t I? Why not?”
“It’s too far.”
“That’s got nothing to do with it. We’re paid for, both ways.”
“Yes, but all the same—once you get out there—Australia—why, it’s the other side of the world. You won’t ever come back here again.”
Amy continued to look at the ceiling. She ran her eye up and down the beam immediately over her head as she had done so many times in the last two weeks. She knew every inch of it; every crack and curve was familiar.
“I shall,” she said, after a full minute of contemplation. “This’ll always be home, Ivor. People don’t stay away from home for ever. They always come back in the end.”