Free Mosaic by Jo Bannister

prompted by the wind, nothing stirred in the overhung lane at the front.
    He found himself listening to the house. Its age disconcerted him. He supposed it was a few hundred years old, and unless someone took a bulldozer to it to make room for a motorway it would probably last another few hundred. His country was not as old as this little ordinary stone house; and unless he made a serious on-the-job blunder one day he rather expected to live long enough to witness its demise. The thought caused him sorrow but not despair: he was a practical man, he knew nothing was forever. Not Rome, not Camelot, not South Africa.
    But in the meantime he had his work to do, from which not even the gentle remonstrance of the silent house could deflect him. When the time came for Vanderbilt to quit he would do it properly, honourably, face to face over a superior’s desk. He would not cut and run in the middle of a job, however distasteful, however convenient … With a snort of internal laughter Danny Vanderbilt pushed his prisoner towards the stairs, aware that he was paying too much heed to the sententious ramblings of a silent old house.
    Joel Grant was also contemplating the age of the house. It had been built at a time when the needs and wishes of the owner rather than the contents of the Town and Country Planning Act dictated the design, and from the way the roof timbers swept down low over the top of the stairs, the first owner was clearly a short man. Vanderbilt, on the other hand, was a tall man. He would of course stoop under the low beam; unless something distracted his attention at the critical moment. Grant, amazed to feel the old dynamic stirring in his veins at the prospect of action, tugged petulantly at his bonds until the Boer tightened his grip on them. Then he launched himself into space.
    Afterwards Vanderbilt could hardly believe how completely he was taken aback by the manoeuvre. He was watching for trouble outside, had largely written Grant off as a source of anything more than irritation; even so he could have dealt with the unexpected or explosion of effort if he had not misinterpreted its meaning at the very start. Because of what had gone before, his initial thought—the only one he had time for—was that Grant was still intent on suicide. Rather than let him plummet to his death of a broken neck at the foot of the stairs he hung grimly onto the chain linking Grant’s wrists and let the inertia of his big body act as an anchor.
    Before the anchor could bite and hold, however, Vanderbilt had been jerked forward the half metre that was enough to bring his head into sharp contact with the beam. Sick pain burgeoned behind his eyes and he felt his knees go weak; in a jumble that was mostly legs the two men piled down the narrow staircase with Vanderbilt on top. Grant collected more bruises, and for a wrenching moment as he brought the Boer’s weight down on him he thought his shoulders had dislocated, but foreknowledge enabled him to protect his head and when they hit the floor he recovered faster. He kicked and squirmed his way out from under and rolled over one raging shoulder to his feet. Vanderbilt was groping for his senses: Grant kicked him twice in the face to make the search harder—barefoot he made less impression than he might have hoped but the second kick rocketed Vanderbilt’s skull against the thick panel of a sturdy hall cupboard with a satisfying dull report.
    Grant waited no longer but took to his heels. The bolt on the back door delayed him only a moment and then he was out into the freedom of an English afternoon. Adrenalin surged in his blood like champagne, but in the bubbles was a renaissance of the fear which had by and large abandoned him when his cause seemed beyond saving. Now he had regained some measure of control over his fate he was terrified of losing it again. He bolted, like a hare, for high ground, past the car and up the green lane that led to the road.