Free A Drake at the Door by Derek Tangye Page A

in their chariots.
    I sensed that both were apprehensive. This was no ordinary demonstration in which the trial tractor patrolled an inoffensive field, careering up and down like a new car on a highway. It was like the course for an obstacle race. Steep slopes, hidden rocks just below the surface of the ground, tablecloth spaces to turn upon . . . all these lay ahead. It amused me to observe Geoffrey, who had planned the course, wryly smiling in the background as the first tractor set out for the start.
    It was a crawler. A small track-propelled tractor, based on a tank. It was also, as far as Geoffrey and I had secretly decided, the favourite. There was something secure about a tractor without wheels, crawling along with its whole body on the ground. A sudden bump could not upset it as a rock might upset a wheel. It moved relentlessly clasping the soil so that, if the chance were there, it would climb up a mountain. We had read these things in the catalogue. We watched it set off.
    The demonstrator, perched in the seat, was accompanied by two city-dressed colleagues. The presence of these two served, perhaps, as a moral support; but they looked cold, and unsure of their duties, and I could not help feeling that within minutes of arriving at Minack they fervently wished they had never come.
    It so happened that Jeannie, without my having to say anything, felt exactly the same; and she arrived just as the demonstration was about to begin with a jug of tea. I wonder how many jugs of tea Jeannie has brewed for no other reason than that she hoped to give somebody confidence. Anyhow, after the tea, the crawler set off on the first test set by Geoffrey, and the two city-dressed gentlemen walked along by its side offering directions.
    Unfortunately these directions were necessary. I was aware within a few minutes of the operation beginning that the crawler had never been designed for such deceit of the earth as awaited it at Minack. The first test was a level piece of ground called from time immemorial the stable field; and Geoffrey had chosen it as a limber-up. It appeared so simple that he had considered it a kindness that the first trip of both machines should plough such a level surface.
    After five yards the crawler came suddenly to a stop, as if it had been a yacht in full sail which had been jerked immovable by an anchor. The two gentlemen gathered round the demonstration; and I observed that the other, the rival demonstrator, showed his good manners by turning his back on them and walking away. There was a flurry of instructions and counter instructions, then the two gentlemen, their faces pink with cold, backed away as if they were the seconds of a boxer in the ring; and the crawler started off again. Another jerk. Another full stop.
    As I watched, Geoffrey beside me, I had a strange premonition that it was I, not the tractor, who was running into trouble. I found myself thinking, affected no doubt by the bleakness of the afternoon, that it was unreal that the people present were dependent in some form on my patronage; the demonstrators who would have their reports to make, success or failure to explain; Geoffrey who would be passing on his observations over high tea at home; and even Jane, though not directly concerned, would go back across the fields at five and discuss the events of the afternoon with her mother. None of these people would have been at Minack were it not for Jeannie and me, and the dreams we had. And now they were leading me, almost dragging me along a route which frightened me.
    For I could not pretend I had any lilt in deciding which tractor to buy. The acquisition would be a burden. There would be no prospect of some light-hearted compensation. It was not a foolish venture of frivolous intent. It was utilitarian. A lump of metal which would remind me day after day of the penalties of expansion. I was standing there, the wind sharp against my face, being courted by an object I did not want; which would