Stone of Destiny (23 page)

I was not so sure. I did not want to find myself caught in the nip of two elderly experts, each contradicting the other. Even if the Stone were not in danger, Mr Stuart’s belief that danger existed must be a factor in the equation. Anyway, it had to be brought back sometime. The police had been active right along the Border for five days now, and we had got through safely. They could not go on stopping cars for ever. By Sunday the Border would be open. Again, it was possible that Alan and I might be arrested at any moment, and it would be of considerable advantage if one or other of us were to accompany the expedition to fetch it back. After all, we had hidden it.

I advocated my case with some fluency, for my heart was in it. Anyone who has ever tasted adventure knows that it is the hardest thing in the world to sit still. Bertie’s arguments were good, but Mr Stuart’s were good too. Where there was a division of opinion, I was on the side of immediate action. In the back of my mind
lurked the threat of impending arrest; and tucked away behind that was my own belief in myself. I suppose it was vanity, but I felt that if I was arrested everything might go to pigs and whistles. The Stone must be recovered before that happened. At last, when John MacCormick and Bill Craig had thrown their arguments onto my side of the scale, Bertie gave way. To this day he maintains that we took an unnecessary risk in going south that night, but he immediately started to organise our expedition.

There was one subject, however, on which the four of us were in complete harmony. We were all certain that Alan’s projected trip north to Kay’s home involved the taking of risks out of all proportion to any possible gain. Inverasdale is a small remote village, and very few cars would arrive there in the dead of winter. If Alan and Gavin paid a flying visit to Kay, people would talk. And none of us could afford to be kenspeckle figures at that time. Nor were we worried about the small piece of the Stone. We knew that it was in the boot of the Anglia, in someone’s garage, and that was the best place for it. We had no qualms about that.

As we had been talking about Alan’s trip north, we had also been planning my trip south. Bertie Gray tried to insist that those of us who had been to London at Christmas should not go back again. We had tried our luck enough, and by now it must be wearing thin. Better to send a fresh team.

I laughed at his arguments. I had been in the affair from the beginning, and I was not going to be shouldered out of it now. To let someone else bring the Stone back was unthinkable. Who would he get, eh? Was he going to go out into Sauchiehall Street and shout, ‘Hi, Jimmy. C’mere a minute. Gonna go down and bring us the Stone?’ What was wrong with me anyway? Who else could do it better than me, eh?

We nearly had a face-to-face argument about it, because I don’t think he was used to being laughed at, but his idea was absurd, and I saw John MacCormick turn away to hide a smile. I was,
however, prepared to concede Bertie’s point to the extent of taking a new team apart from myself. I felt it unfair to expose Alan and Gavin to further risks. Alan especially. He was much younger than I was and we had not had all that much rest in these last seven days. Bill was his natural stand-in, and he had assumed all that evening that he would be called upon to go. There was of course no one better qualified than himself. Although he could not drive, he excelled at all human relationships. The occasion was soon to arise when this excellence was to be put to the test.

Simultaneously, Bill and I thought of our third man. John Josselyn was an Englishman by birth, and the son of a rear admiral, but he had been educated in Scotland and had come to regard himself as one of us. We certainly so regarded him. He had arrived for Hogmanay from Bath in Somerset where he was employed in the Admiralty in some frightfully hush-hush work on submarines. Trust the Admiralty to have their submarine section on a trickle of river. Bill immediately set out to recruit him. He found him drinking coffee in the Union and approached him quietly.

John Josselyn was the most spectacular of all the people who concerned themselves with the Stone. Like the rest of us, he was small in stature. He had tiny twinkling seaman’s eyes, and from his chin jutted a rough and glorious beard, which stuck before him as though its ends had been heated red hot and hammered into shape on an anvil. His enemies, and they were many, hated him and would have killed him; his friends, and they were legion, would have died for him; he himself lived in a world of his own, cherishing the bizarre and deriding the commonplace. He never did a moderate thing in his life, and I loved him like a brother.

His recruitment must be the shortest contract on record.

‘Are you doing anything over New Year?’ Bill asked.

‘Aye!’ said Joss. He loved to affect Scots speech. ‘A’m going up to Mull.’

‘Would you not rather come south to bring back the Stone of Destiny?’ asked Bill.

‘Aye!’ said Joss. ‘A would that.’

Back in Bertie Gray’s office we were having great difficulty in getting hold of a car. His own car was of little use, as it had gone sour with age and could not be expected to stand up to a 1,000-mile non-stop trip. It was too late to hire one, as the garages would all be closed for the holiday, and there was no one else in the plot who owned a car. Cars were not all that common. Had we told what we wanted one for, we could have had a whole fleet of them, but telling was a risk we could not idly take. Too many people knew already. Again our minds turned to Alan Stuart.

He was at that moment provisioning a car for the trip north to see Kay, the trip we all looked on with so much misgiving. We had hoped that we should not again have to call on his family’s generosity, but it seemed that there was to be no other way, so we telephoned him at his house. He was just leaving as our call came through, and he assured us that he would be with us in half an hour.

While we were waiting for him, Bill returned to report his successful interview with John Josselyn. There was only one drawback. Joss could not drive. That meant I would be expected to drive all the way non-stop. A thousand miles at an average speed of 25 or 30 miles an hour. The arithmetic lost me, but whatever the result it was too much. I would have to set aside all my cautious thoughts about Alan. Alan would have to come.

Shortly afterwards, Alan himself arrived. He saw the arguments that it might endanger Kay if he went north. He was a little more reluctant to go south. He would have gone to the South Pole to get the Stone. It was the car he was worried about. Already he had ‘mislaid’ one of the family cars. The Anglia was hidden in some garage in Birmingham, and his father had had every right to read the Riot Act and had not done so. Now Alan was being asked to take a much more expensive car, a 14-horsepower Armstrong-Siddeley,
and dash fiercely over icy roads with a snow warning out and all Scotland Yard’s bloodhounds howling behind. It was his choice.

Being Alan he chose the dangerous course, risked the car and his father’s wrath, and brought the Stone home. On this trip, fear of his father was a very real thing with Alan. And while I am certain that both he and his father will look back on that fear and smile, it was no laughing matter at the time. When we returned with the Stone, Alan was torn between the need to tell his father that all was well with the Stone, and the desire not to tell him how all had become well. In the end all was forgiven, but we pushed Mr Stuart’s generosity to the limit.

Little now remained to be done. Bill and I had dined amply off fish and chips, and the car was provisioned with food and flasks of hot drink. Joss was waiting in my lodgings. We had enough money to cover most contingencies; we had road maps; we now had a car. Plans we had none, for we had no time to make them. Our operation was simple. We had to bring the Stone back. The lack of any definite plan was no drawback. We did not know what we would have to meet, but our arrangements were flexible, and we could mould them to meet any situation.

Bertie went off to deliver our petition to the press. There was one of us who was glad to see the back of it, and that one was me. After that he and John could only wait in anxiety, while once again we set off south. We were crossing Douglas Moor before I remembered that I had been reviving my social life and was due to go out to dinner that night. I hadn’t had a chance to make my excuses to my dining companion, and I stood her up, poor girl. When I came back I telephoned her and told her I had been away south bringing back the Stone of Destiny. She was not amused. She was even less amused when she learned some months later that I had told her the truth. She never spoke to me again.

After the old Ford, the Armstrong-Siddeley was the last word in comfort. It was frightfully well bred; not quite out of the top drawer, but getting on that way. It held the doubtful roads well, the steering didn’t have three inches of play in it, the doors and windows fitted so that it was draughtproof, and, above all, it had a heater. After the gusty winds and freezing cold of the Ford, it was bliss. John Josselyn and Bill Craig had the best of it. They did not suffer the cold we first four had endured.

Joss was waiting in my room and was very pleased to see us when we picked him up. He had been waiting so long that he was beginning to think that it was some elaborate practical joke, but when we assured him that it was no joke and that we were going to start immediately, his eyes sparkled, and he was silent for joy, the only time I ever knew him to be without a word. He just could not believe it.

Bill had given him only a few of the details, and while we filled in the blanks for him, I rushed round the room and packed all my available grips and haversacks with a miscellaneous collection of shirts, socks and suits. It occurred to me that now that we were travelling in style, we had better have the impedimenta of style, so in went my dinner jacket too. It might help to convince any police patrol that we were what we claimed to be. What precisely that was going to be would have to fit the circumstances of the time.

We had now only one call to make, and we proceeded to make it as quickly as possible. Gavin was still under the impression that he was accompanying Alan north on the trip to Inverasdale, and it was necessary to call at his lodgings to tell him that this trip was cancelled.

I could see that both Bill and Johnny were worried, and I knew what was on their minds. Only four could go on the trip south, and they both felt that Gavin had a better title to be one of the four than either of them had. Gavin had been one of the first four, and he was a driver. We sent Bill in to speak to Gavin and waited in the car for his return. No doubt Johnny felt that as last comer he was likely to be the one to be jettisoned, and as a particular friend I felt for him. Bill returned with Gavin, who had agreed not to insist on his right to come with us. He wished us luck and told us to ca’ canny. Alan let in the clutch, and we set off on our second adventure within a week.

It was not a happy night for driving. The sky was overcast with cloud, and although the temperature had risen considerably the roads were still ice bound. There was every indication that we would get snow before morning. However, we were in fine spirits. If to travel hopefully is better than to arrive, setting off on a journey is better still. I do not believe that pleasures are stronger in anticipation than in realisation. That is a philosophy of the defeated. The tremendous rush of preparation is to be borne only as a means to the gusty appreciation of the result. We were again tasting result. We were travelling south to bring back the Stone of Destiny.

We all enjoyed each other’s company. Johnny sang what he said was a Gaelic song, although he had not a word of that language, and I recited ‘Edinbane’. Then we sat and talked about the police and what fools they were making of themselves. If they were no cleverer than they appeared to be, we should have no trouble. And so the hours passed. We sang our way southwards, and all the world was young.

Yet as we wore the heel out of the night we sang less and less. A thousand miles is a long way non-stop, and we had no intention of stopping. Finally we paired off; one driver accompanied by a talker, whose job was to keep the driver from falling asleep. Bill was my partner, and we talked about many things as the headlights cut swathes in the icy darkness and the snow crunched under the wheels. Bill had a degree in history, and was due to sit his finals in economics that spring. He had many new ideas about the Scotland we would build when we had taken control of our own destiny into our own hands, and ceased to permit our nearest neighbour to grow weeds in our garden. Remember that we were still intoxicated with success. We were young. We believed that our actions had taken Scotland a long way along the road she must one day travel to the end.

At Carlisle we stopped and filled the car with petrol, for although it was powerful, it also had a great thirst. One of our fellow students lived near here, and we determined to call on him. His father was a doctor with a country practice so he travelled a lot over the Border roads. He would know what police patrols were out, and whether or not it would be possible to slip through them unobserved.