by Hilary Green
By late afternoon we had crossed the M5 and were in the flat, wind-swept pasture land of the estuary. There was a continuous coming and going of helicopters overhead and it was clear that they were patrolling the river. Once again one dropped low over us and appeared to be inspecting us and again I was oppressed by the sheer lunacy of what we were doing, fleeing like stateless refugees in our own country. Tim was whimpering and complaining that his feet hurt and Simon was dragging an infuriating ten yards behind. I stopped under the shelter of a single oak tree and gave them the last of the food. It was little enough. We had eaten most of it at lunch time.
I took off Tim’s shoes and looked at his feet. His heel was badly blistered, the flesh showing raw through the broken skin. I could only hug him and apologise for not attending to his complaints before, and then bandage the foot awkwardly with my handkerchief and ease it back into his shoes.
I looked at my watch. It was almost five. Another hour and a half until curfew, and the ferry was perhaps four miles away. If we kept going, what were the chances of finding a boat? And even if we did, dare I attempt the river crossing at night? Vague notions about tides and currents filled my mind. Admittedly, there would be less chance of being spotted by the helicopter patrols, but equally we might be picked up for breaking the curfew before we even reached the river. Anyway, could the children walk another four miles?
Simon said, ‘Where are we going to sleep tonight?”
Squatting on the damp ground with my arm still round Tim I looked up at him.
“I don’t know, Simon. I don’t think we dare go to anyone’s house tonight. It would be awful to get sent back after we’ve walked all this way, wouldn’t it? I think when it’s nearly dark we’ll have to look for a barn or something where we can spend the night. If we can find some nice, dry hay we’ll soon be warm and comfortable.”
He continued to stare down at me.
“That means that there won’t be any supper. Or any breakfast tomorrow.”
Tim began to cry again. “I’m hungry! I want some supper. I wish we’d never come here. I wish we’d stayed at home!”
I glared at Simon. “Why can’t you keep your stupid mouth shut?”
For a moment longer he held my gaze. Then he bent down and took Tim by the arm.
“Come on, Tim. Don’t cry. It’ll be all right —I expect.”
He drew him to his feet and pulled his arm over his own shoulder. They stood together looking down at me, Tim’s face streaked with tears. Then they turned and began to trudge on along the road. I gathered up the bags and followed them, my throat aching with my own unshed tears.
As we went on my mind obsessively explored the problem of food. I could go without, I knew, although my stomach was hollow. So could the children, I supposed, if necessary, though my instincts rebelled at the idea. Whatever happened we must drink. The idea of hot soup returned again and again, impairing my ability to work at the question logically, getting between me and reality. Ahead the road crossed a little bridge. Screwing my eyes up against the rain and the gathering dusk I saw that it spanned a small river. Well, we could drink there. Years of conditioning rose in revolt and murmured ‘pollution’ in my brain. I called the children to me and we scrambled through a fence and down to the bank. The river ran sluggishly in a muddy bed edged with reeds. I stooped and managed to scoop up a handful of water. It tasted of wet earth. I scooped some up for Tim, who drank it and made a face. Simon got some water to his mouth and then spat it out again. After a few mouthfuls we had all had enough. As we scrambled back to the road I reflected bitterly on our incapacity to exist, even at the most basic level, without the aids of civilization.
Ahead, I knew from my map, was another small village. We must find some form of shelter there. I looked again at my watch. Just after six. Tim was sniffing rhythmically as he walked, his weeping now reduced to a kind of automatic reflex. I could hear Simon’s teeth chattering.
“Just a bit further,” I encouraged them.
Headlights appeared in front of us. I drew the boys hastily into the side of the road. The oncoming vehicle drew closer, slowed and came to a standstill just before reaching us so that we were fixed, like rabbits, in the glare of its lights. I could just make out the outlines of a Landrover. A man swung down from the passenger seat and as he came forward into the light I saw the Civil Militia arm-band and the rifle slung on his shoulder.
“Identity cards, please.”
The harsh curtness of the voice did not succeed in masking either the local burr or the youth of its owner. Outlined against the headlights I guessed him to be a local farm worker. Still, whatever his age or his regular occupation, the band on his arm and the rifle on his shoulder made him the voice of authority. As if someone had pulled out some psychological plug I felt the last reserves draining out of me. For an instant I contemplated seizing the boys and running. Instead I heard myself saying, “Identity cards? What do you want them for?”
“Because I don’t know you, missus,” he replied tersely. “And because I’d like to know what you’re doing around these parts at this time of night.”
Somewhere up the road a dog began barking and then was suddenly silent. I groped in my bag, pretending to hunt for the cards, desperately trying to think of some way out of showing them.
“Come on!” The man had unslung his rifle from his shoulder.
I said, suddenly furious,“Put that thing away! You don’t really think you’re going to shoot us, do you? A woman and two children, walking harmlessly along a country road? This is England — remember?”
He lowered the barrel of the rifle and I could see that he was momentarily disconcerted. I went on, reckless with angry desperation, “Suppose I were to just walk on past you? Would you really shoot us? You know you wouldn’t! In cold blood? Look. I’m going to visit my sick mother who lives up the road. I’m not doing anything wrong and you’re not going to stop me. Now, get out of my way.”
I gripped the boys each by a wrist and stepped forward. For a crazy moment I thought I had won. Then a voice from the other side of the vehicle said quietly,
“Not so fast! Now, just you stand still and hand over your identity cards.”
The second man was older, thicker set than the first. Another local man by his voice, but one accustomed to giving orders. A farmer, perhaps. He came round the bonnet of the Landrover so that we were between the two of them and held out his hand. Slowly I drew the identity cards out of my bag and handed them over.
He inspected them in the headlight beam and grunted. “Thought as much! Knew you weren’t local people. Where’s your travel permit?”
There was a long second of silence apart from Tim's whimpering.
“I haven’t got one.”
The thought crossed my mind ‘at least if they arrest us we shall have a roof over our heads —and I suppose they’ll feed us’.
“What the ’ell are you doing here then?” he asked sharply. Then went on, “Never mind that now. You’re a job for headquarters, you are. Go on, get in.” He gestured towards the Landrover.
As I moved I said wearily, “Where’s Headquarters?”
“Gloucester,” he answered curtly.
I thought of all the miles we had walked that day. In less than an hour we should be more or less back where we had started. I turned to him.
“Look, I’m telling the truthl I’m going to see my sick mother. She needs me. Can’t you let me go?”
He regarded me with a bleak, inexorable patience, as he might have surveyed a late spring frost or a summer drought.
“And where might she be, then?”
“In the village.” Once again I was lying at random, with no hope of substantiating my story.
He shook his head and made a movement shepherding us into the vehicle.
“It won’t wash, missus. I know everyone hereabouts and I know there’s no sick woman with a daughter in Surrey. We’ve had your likes round here before, trying to sneak over the river. We know what y
ou’re up to.”
“But why shouldn’t I?” I cried passionately. “It’s not a frontier. Why do you want to stop me?”
“Why do you want to get over there?”
“I’ve told you —to visit my mother,”
“Oh —I thought she lived just here, in the village.”
I took a long breath, struggling with hysterical tears which had my throat in a grip of steel. It must, somehow, be possible to reason with this man.
“But why shouldn’t I travel wherever I like? This is supposed to be a free country and you’re trying to turn it into a —a police state.”
“Look ’ere, missus,” he grounded his rifle butt and leaned on it, grasping the muzzle with both hands, “there’s been a sight too much ‘freedom’ in this country, if you ask me. Freedom to strike every time you get a bit fed up, freedom to live off the State if you don’t fancy working at all, free sex —freedom to go to the dogs, that’s what I call it. Now we’ve got a Government that wants to pull things together, and I’m behind ’em. I don’t know what you’ve done, or your husband or whatever; but if you hadn’t gone against the law somehow you wouldn’t be sneaking round the countryside without a travel permit and trying to get across to join people who want to start rebellion and civil war and God knows what. We had another lot like you a week or so back —whole family. Turned out he was some kind of lecturer at University who’d been telling his students to disobey the laws and start riots and demonstrations and so on. Well, he’s back where he belongs now; and that’s where you’re going. So get in and let’s have no more argument.”
Tim was sobbing loudly now and Simon was clutching him and staring at the man. I turned and propelled them both towards the car door.
From behind us a man’s voice said. “Hold on a bit, Olly.”
Both our captors swung round. Three men stood across the narrow lane in the beam of the headlights. All were dressed like men who work on the land, in gum boots and oilskins. I heard a movement to the rear of the Landrover. Two more men had moved quietly into the road there.
The older of the Civil Militia men said harshly, “What do you want then, Jim Furniss?”
The central figure of the three came a pace or two forward. “We don’t like what you’re doing, Olly,” he said, quietly, almost smiling. “We know what happened last week and we don’t want to see it happen again.”
“You think you’re going to stop us then?” The man addressed as Olly spoke with a sneer in his voice.
“I know we are,” Furniss replied quietly.
“Oh yes?”
‘Olly’ raised his rifle slowly to his shoulder and aimed it at him. I heard the men behind me move forward a quick pace and then the younger Militiaman swung round and levelled his gun at them over the bonnet of the Landrover. Furniss had not moved.
“Now you get out of my way and back to your farm, Jim Furniss,” Olly said. “Otherwise I shall have to take this further.”
Furniss put his hands in the pockets of his coat and straddled his legs. “You’re not going anywhere, Olly,” he said, still with the same faint, half contemptuous smile in his voice. “And you’re not going to shoot me, either.”
“What makes you so sure?” Oily asked. There was derision in his voice but I detected a note of unease also. Something told me that these two were old enemies and that Olly had not usually been the victor.
“You’ve wanted to be top dog around here all your life, haven’t you,” Furniss said. “Ever since we were kids. But people round here know you too well and they weren’t having any. And now some fools who don’t know you like we do have put a gun into your hands, you think you’re going to have it all your own way. Well, I’m here to tell you you’re wrong.”
“And I’m telling you to get out of my way,” growled the other man. “I’m going to count five and then . . .”
Still Furniss did not move.
“You won’t shoot, Olly,” he said, “because for one thing there are five of us and if you did the chances are one of us would have you before you could aim again — and I wouldn’t rely too much on that side-kick of yours, either, because he wouldn’t have the gumption to pull the trigger, not if you was to order him to. And for another thing—this is where you live, Olly. This is where your land is, so you’re stuck with us and we’re stuck with you. If you shoot any of us there won’t be a soul for miles around here who’ll give you the time of day. There won’t be a pub as’ll serve you, or a man as’ll work for you. And its no good you thinking your KBG pals will look after you, because one night there’ll be a fire, or one day someone will have an unfortunate accident with a shotgun —and that’ll be the end of Oliver Martin. So take your choice, Olly.”
There was a moment of tense silence. On the other side of the Landrover Oliver Martin’s ‘side-kick’ stirred his feet uneasily and the barrel of the rifle wandered.
Olly said, “Look ’ere. I’m only doing my job and supporting law and order —like what you ought to be doing. You wait till I report back to my headquarters,”
“What’ll they do then?” Furniss laughed jeeringly. “Take reprisals, will they? Decimate the population of the village, will they?”
“They’ll put you in jail for assisting criminals to escape, that’s what,” snapped Olly.
“Jail, is it?” Furniss’s voice had become hard. “And are you going to ‘report back’ and get me jailed, and then come back and live here? Don’t be a fool, man. There’s only one thing for you to do. Put down that gun and get on your way, and forget all about what’s happened tonight. We’ll take care of the woman and the kids. No-one will ever know they’ve been here. And when this is all over people might—just might —forget how Olly Milton rode round the countryside in his Landrover trying to terrorize innocent people. Now, are you going to see sense?”
I realized that all through the conversation Furniss had been imperceptibly edging nearer. Olly Milton suddenly realized it too. He had half lowered the rifle as they talked. Now he jerked it up, saying,
“Keep back —I’m warning you ...”
But as he spoke Furniss leaped forward and seized the barrel of the gun. It went off with a crack that made my head ring and somewhere close by a man’s voice cried out. I seized the boys and flung myself onto the muddy road, trying to push them underneath the Landrover. Heavy footsteps thudded past our heads. There were shouts and grunts. Then Fumiss’s voice again, clear and triumphant.
“Right! Now we’ll see whose boss. Stand still, both of you. Cliff, is Bob all right?”
Another voice replied, “Yeah, he’s O.K. It’s only a scratch.”
Someone bent down and peered under the Landrover at us.
“It’s all right, you can come out now. There’s no danger.”
The boys crawled out but I found myself quite unable to summon up the strength to move. This had been the last straw. I lay still in the mud and sobbed.
Ten minutes later I was in the kitchen of Jim Fumiss’s farm-house a short way up the road, wrapped in blankets and sipping scalding tea. He had carried me there as if I had been a child while one of his sons carried Tim and led Simon by the hand. Vaguely I recollected Olly Martin and his companion scrambling into their Landrover, while someone contemptuously tossed their now-unloaded rifles in after them.
That evening is one of the golden memories of my life. Hot baths and clean, dry night-clothes for all of us; sitting up to a huge farmhouse supper, wrapped in Mrs Fumiss’s voluminous pink nylon dressing gown; and the kindly, reassuring voices of Jim Furniss and his two sons, Cliff and Terry. And Mrs Furniss apologizing for the fact that she could not offer us coffee or sugar in our tea, while we tucked into bacon and eggs and home-made bread and jam!
Eventually, when I had told my story and Tim had fallen asleep snuggled against me in the angle of the big old settee, I said, “Is it true that the people on the other side of the river have declared themselves —well, independent?”
He nodded. “True enough. They’ve
refused to recognize the present Government or to obey the emergency regulations and they won’t let anyone across the river without their permission. Bless me if I can see how it’s going to end. We’ve had the army and the air-force patrolling this side for weeks now. I keep expecting them to mount some sort of attack, but they don’t seem to be in any hurry. You want to get over there, do you?”
“I was told it might be the best way to get into Wales,” I explained. “Anyway, right now I just want to get out of the reach of the authorities.”
He leaned towards me. “What I don’t see is what you’re supposed to have done wrong. What are you running away for?”
I sighed deeply. “The ridiculous thing is that I’ve begun to wonder that myself. Maybe it was all in my imagination— but I really thought that if we stayed at home there was a very good chance of the children being taken away from me and put into care.” I outlined for him my involvement with Jane and my spying activities at the local KBG meetings. “Now, of course,” I finished, “I’ve broken all sorts of regulations and turned us into real outlaws. So I suppose the only thing to do is to go and live with the other outlaws.” I gave him a rueful smile.
He said, “Oh, they’re ordinary enough folk—and law-abiding too. It’s just all these new regulations that they don’t hold with, and men like Olly Martin being given guns and the right to poke their noses into other people’s affairs. And I don’t blame them. You’ll be all right over there.”
“If I can get across,” I said wearily.
“Oh, don’t you worry about that,” he replied, smiling. “You stay here tonight and tomorrow and lie low. Meanwhile one of my lads will get a message over to the other side, so as they’ll be ready for you. We’ll get you across tomorrow night—no bother.”
I looked at him. “You’ve done this before.”
He grinned. “Once or twice.” Then he added thoughtfully, “Pity they know you’re in the area, though. I wonder how they found out.”
