Edmund Cooper

by Transit

  He put an arm round her shoulder. In a moment, he seemed miraculously sober. ‘You said: Tom, darling.... That was nice—but unnecessary. It doesn’t have to mean anything, Mary. You must understand that. It doesn’t have to mean anything at all.... But that you can say: Tom, darling, after what you know.... Nobody ever said: Tom, darling, before.... My mother, I suppose. Nobody else.... Don’t cry, Mary. I need to be needed. I’ve needed it a long time.’

  Avery wanted to annihilate himself. So did Barbara. This was something too sharp, too searing and too private to be shared. But there was nothing to do, nowhere to go. They could only sit and watch.

  Suddenly, Tom grabbed all the photographs and pinups and flung them on the fire. ‘A burnt offering to the goddess of diminishing hormones,’ he cried. ‘The Englishman’s farewell to obscenity.’ He laughed and— further miracles—the laughter had a healthy ring about it. ‘God, what a price those would have brought in the Lower Fourth! ’

  Mary dried her eyes. ‘It’s an example,’ she said seriously. ‘I’m going to swear off chocolates and my rag doll.’ Barbara began to giggle. ‘Prigs,’ she said. ‘You’re both so much stronger than I am. Can I lean on my whisky just a little longer?’

  ‘This is the headquarters of the League of Purity, Madam,’ said Tom. He hiccuped. ‘You shall be rationed to three slugs a day—by order of Herr Kapitan Richard, who, being without vice, is the noblest of us all.’

  Barbara smiled and glanced at Avery. ‘He’s not without vice, Tom. He has the worst one of all.’

  Avery raised an eyebrow. ‘And what is my particular vice?’

  Barbara placed a hand on his knee. ‘Remembering,’ she said gently. ‘Remembering far too much.’

  He thought of Christine. And then he thought of the deadly coldness of all the years without her. Maybe Barbara was right. Maybe there was a kind of remembering that was itself a vice. Maybe it had to do with pedestals and perfection—and the bitter, lonely happiness of creating an image that was too good to be true. He had tried to be honest—but what price honesty when you were looking for a convincing excuse for failure. Maybe Barbara was more right than she thought.

  ‘So all God’s chillun got vices,’ he said lightly. ‘Well, it looks as if we are going to have to translate a few of them into virtues—and the only worthwhile virtues in this particular dream world are the qualities that make for survival.’

  THIRTEEN

  The night passed uneventfully. They took the watches in pairs—first Avery and Barbara, then Tom and Mary. There was a further innovation, unanticipated and by mutual consent. They went to sleep in pairs also. Not lovers, hardly as even as men and women. Almost as tired children, seeking the inexplicable comfort of huddling close together.

  It was Tom and Mary who created the precedent. Avery had told them they could have about three hours before it became their turn for duty.

  ‘Pity,’ Tom had said, looking at Mary. ‘We were just getting to know each other Well, I suppose it will keep till tomorrow.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to,’ said Mary, surprisingly. ‘One good thing about all this is that none of us has to conform to silly standards any more.’

  Tom smiled and held out his hand. ‘Only let there be honour among thieves Ready, Mary?’

  ‘Yes, Tom.’

  They went into what had formerly been ‘the men’s dorm’; and for a little while their subdued voices could be heard. Then there was silence.

  Avery saw that Barbara was crying quietly. Or not crying, perhaps, but just letting tears flow down her cheek. ‘Now what’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing is wrong, Richard.’ Her voice was quite calm. ‘It’s just that I think we are suddenly starting to be people. We weren’t people until today. We were all trying to give puffed up performances—and all the time we were hamming our lines Now I think we are trying to find ourselves—and each other. In one way, it’s a bit frightening. But it’s good. It really is good.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ said Avery. ‘A few hours ago, Tom wanted to crawl into a deep hole, and we were all being superior.... It’s odd how things change.... I’m beginning to think that whoever wrecked the camp today did us one hell of a service.’

  Barbara shivered. ‘One is enough. I just hope they don’t try to do us any more good turns.’

  When the time came for the second watch, Barbara and Avery went to sleep together with complete lack of self-consciousness. There was no disturbing surge of passion, only thankfulness and an odd sensation of relief. They might have been sharing the same bed for years.

  Tom did not waken them until breakfast was ready. Breakfast consisted of fruit, water and what Tom enthusiastically described as venison-bacon, grilled on sticks, delicious and satisfying. Breakfast was taken shortly after dawn. It was going to be a long and busy day.

  ‘Leader of the expedition,’ said Tom, ‘permission to speak.’

  ‘Granted,’ said Avery with a grin. ‘But just remember that my term of office expires today. In view of my record, I doubt that I shall seek re-election.’

  ‘Going off further at this unoriginal tangent,’ remarked Tom, ‘somebody has to be the whipping boy when things go wrong. Myself, I don’t much care for the privilege. It’s far more satisfying to be able to blame everything on dear old Richard. I hereby propose your re-election for a further and indefinite term of office.’ ‘Seconded,’ said Barbara.

  ‘Carried,’ laughed Mary.

  ‘My one satisfaction,’ said Avery, ‘is that you will all live to regret it.... Now, Tom, what’s on your mind?’ ‘Life insurance. I want to sell you a policy. When I was out hunting yesterday, I spotted the absolutely perfect natural fort. It’s on the beach about half a mile away. A damn big lump of rock about ten feet high, almost circular, and it’s even got grass on top. I know. I climbed it to have a look.’

  Avery was interested. ‘About how wide?’

  Tom shrugged. ‘Hard to say, really. Maybe twenty-five feet. There’s only one snag as far as I can see.’ ‘What’s that?’

  ‘No water.’

  ‘That’s a big snag. You didn’t prospect for any?’ ‘Didn’t have time. I was too busy doing an imitation of a pointer.’

  ‘Well, we shall have to take a look, that’s all. One thing is sure, we’d be idiots to try to stay here.... Oh, and while I’m thinking about it—edicts. Nobody, but nobody goes anywhere alone from now on. We either operate in pairs or as a group.’ He turned to Mary and Barbara. ‘And while Tom and I inspect Castle Perilous, you two stay put. Keep the gun loaded and ready. If you get worried about anything, fire two shots in rapid succession. If any Greek Gods try to fraternize, let them have it dead centre—unless there are more than four. In which case, surrender with all possible grace and think nice thoughts.... That’s about all, I think.’

  ‘It’s enough,’ said Barbara grimly.

  The two men departed. They each took a knife and a hatchet. As they walked along the shore, Avery had the disturbing and irrational feeling that he was crossing into enemy territory.

  Tom’s solid piece of life insurance was in the almost mathematical centre of a small bay. They reached it without seeing any living things at all—except for a couple of noisy sea-birds.

  The piece of rock was just as he had described it. It lay a yard or two above the high-water line and about thirty yards from the trees. There was one point where it was fairly easy to climb, and even there the footholds were not very large.

  ‘If we decided on this place,’ said Tom, when they had scrambled to the top, ‘we shall have to make a ladder.’ Avery felt the layer of sandy turf. It wasn’t bad. It wasn’t bad at all. The whole rock was rather like a very shallow saucer with a ragged lip all the way round. But it was well drained, because there was a slight slope to seawards; and countless rainfalls had worn a small channel through the rocky lip.

  ‘This is perfect,’ announced Avery. ‘All we need now is a water supply.’

  They climbed down and set about finding one. It
took them the best part of an hour, and the nearest part of the stream was almost quarter of a mile away and about a hundred yards inland. Getting water was going to be a wearisome business; but the relative impregnability of the rock outweighed the disadvantages of such a remote water supply.

  ‘We’ll move,’ said Avery finally. ‘Unless we find anywhere better—and I very much doubt it—this can be the permanent base. We’ll just have to organize an armed water-carrying patrol.’

  ‘Jesus H.!’ said Tom. ‘I don’t much fancy lugging those blasted trunks all this way. They’ll have to be hauled to the top by ropes.’

  It took them—all four of them—the rest of the day to move to Camp Two. Mary and Barbara made several journeys with the smaller items of equipment. They even managed to carry the tents between them—one at a time. But they were not much help with the trunks.

  Meanwhile, Tom and Avery, manhandling the trunks foot by foot, developed magnificent blisters and exceedingly short tempers. The sun was setting by the time they hauled the last one to the top of the rock. There was no fire—nobody had had time to collect any wood—and there was nothing to eat, for the same reason. However, with considerable foresight, Avery had insisted on getting in a supply of water before the move had started. And at midday they had gorged themselves on portions of the ‘deer type’ before leaving its carcass to rot at Camp One.

  So, though they were all hungry, they were not exactly starving. They had managed to erect one of the tents before darkness fell; and, as a chill evening breeze began to blow in from the sea, they all stumbled into it wearily and huddled together.

  As Tom said: ‘If any of Mary’s strength-through-joy merchants want to play fun and games tonight, they’re welcome—provided the bastards don’t wake me up before they murder me.’

  It expressed the general sentiments perfectly. Nobody had enough energy left to keep watch. But in spite of their fatigue, with the exception of Mary, who seemed to settle down quite well with Tom’s arms round her, they passed a troubled night.

  When morning came, they were all stiff and sore. It had begun to rain heavily a little before dawn; and within the tent the sound of the rain was magnified.

  But at last it stopped. Avery went outside and saw that the sky was clearing rapidly and that the sun, a hazy and watery yellow, was already well above the horizon and had broken through the fleecy banks of cloud.

  He breathed in deeply, and savoured the clean rich sweetness of the morning air. Suddenly, in spite of his hunger, in spite of his lack of sleep, he felt good.

  For a moment, he had a sharp mental vision of London in the morning rush hour. The Underground and buses packed with victims for the City’s concentration camps; the dull suburban eyes; the newspapers with crisis headlines of the latest antics of some overrated sex symbol of the silver screen; the idiotic pronouncement of politicians and sports columnists; the classrooms full of rebellious children; the anonymity of drowning alone in the great group frenzy that was life in a large city.

  And, for a moment, with a feeling of shock he realized that he was glad not that he was away from London—at least, not that particularly—but that he had at last made contact with people. People like Barbara and Mary and Tom.

  Then the feeling was swamped in nostalgia. And in his mind the zombies faded and the Underground was repopulated with interesting people; the newspapers were filled with international goodwill messages; and even the schoolroom was attractive.

  He recognized the idealization for what it was and brushed it away. Neither that nor the first vision had been real. The truth—if there was such a thing as the truth—must lie somewhere half-way between.

  Meanwhile, the inescapable fact was that, so far as he was concerned, London itself was no longer a fact.

  The facts were companions, isolation and danger.

  The immediate project was survival.

  He called Tom out of the tent and together they went to search for fruit for breakfast. As they climbed down the side of their rocky citadel, Avery took the skin off some of his blisters.

  The flesh underneath was raw and moist and pink. It began to sting a little, but he was glad of the pain. He felt it was the kind of stimulus he needed.

  FOURTEEN

  By the end of the morning, Camp Two was an organized and going concern. Three tents had been erected: the trunks, covered with the remaining tent, had been stacked two deep on the seaward side as a windbreak; and all the camping equipment, clothing and personal possessions that might have any immediate use had been stowed away in the spare tent.

  Tom and Avery had gathered wood for a fire and had even found time to make a crude and shaky ladder, which proved to be only a very slight improvement on the one part of the rock face that could be climbed without much difficulty. However, they were rather proud of the ladder. It was the principle that mattered.

  Tom also spent some time wandering up and down the beach, collecting smooth, roundish rocks between five and ten pounds in weight. These he dumped at the foot of the ladder; and when he had got about a couple of dozen he threw them up to Avery, who stacked them at regular intervals round the small citadel: ammunition in case of siege. There was going to be a warm reception if anyone tried to wreck their camp a second time.

  That afternoon, leaving the gun with Mary and Barbara, the two men went hunting. They struck inland, but took care not to wander more than a couple of miles from camp. It was an irrational limitation because, at that distance, they had no means of knowing if all was well back at the rock; and at the same time it placed a futile restriction on the scope of the hunt.

  However, neither of them wanted to venture farther. The memory of recent events was still too much with them. Probably, thought Avery, after a day or two they would regain confidence. But, despite the fact that they had left Mary and Barbara with a supply of rocks and the gun, and despite the fact that it would be difficult to storm the camp except by a determined group prepared to suffer casualties, they both became increasingly worried—but pointedly avoided mentioning Camp Two on the brief occasions when they found it necessary to talk.

  It was partly this preoccupation that was responsible for the failure of the hunt. They saw several animals— chiefly at some distance and on patches of grassland— but their clumsy efforts at stalking drove the creatures away. Both Tom and Avery had become familiar enough with the reference cards to know the kind of animals for which they were looking and the kind which they hoped to avoid.

  They found more of the latter. Tom trod on a snake which, fortunately, was more surprised than he was and slithered away with remarkable speed; and Avery almost walked into a basking rhinotype. According to the cards it was edible; but, recalling the experience of Barbara and Mary, Avery formed the opinion that it was going to take an awful lot of killing—hardly a job for light hatchets and knives.

  They had back-tracked away from the rhinotype and circled round it at a respectful distance.

  Time wore on, and it began to look as if all the useful animals had made previous arrangements to be elsewhere. Presently, they struck a stream—probably the one that supplied them with water—and decided to follow it for a while in the hope that they might catch some unsuspecting creature drinking. But apparently none were thirsty—or, more possibly, thought Avery, they had fairly regular drinking habits, and the hunt was just badly timed.

  The stream, however, led them to an attractive glade, in which it broadened out into a long deep pool, served by a ragged cascade of water falling perhaps twenty feet from a rocky shelf at the far end. The pool itself was about fifty yards long, but at no point was it wider than about fifteen yards.

  Tom sat on a boulder and wiped the sweat from his forehead. The afternoon had turned close and heavy; and if terrestrial weather was anything to go by, it was quite likely that there would be a thunderstorm before very long.

  ‘Let’s take a five-minute breather, and then push off home,’ suggested Tom. ‘We can pick up some fruit on the way back.
The bloody animals are on strike today.’ Avery joined him on the boulder. ‘As soon as we can, we must do some systematic exploring inland,’ he said reflectively. ‘It would be one hell of a joke if we were only a few miles from some kind of civilization.’ ‘Hilarious,’ agreed Tom without humour. ‘But somehow I don’t think it was the policy of the nuts that brought us here to dump us near anything useful at all. ... Christ! Get down quick! ’

  As he slid behind the boulder, Avery briefly followed Tom’s startled gaze. At the far end of the glade, near the waterfall, a man and a woman had appeared. They were tall, golden-haired, naked—except for a very brief kind of metallic apron hanging from the man’s waist, and a blue piece of fabric drawn between the women’s legs and apparently attached fore and aft to a cord round her hips.

  ‘Mary’s Greek types,’ whispered Tom, ‘literally in the flesh. Maybe they’re the very jokers who had fun with our camp. If so, I’ve a good mind to ’

  ‘Later,’ said Avery impatiently. ‘Let’s see what kind of people they are first.’ He raised his head cautiously and gazed over the top of the boulder.

  The strangers were magnificent specimens. Avery judged that they there both well over six foot tall. The woman’s body was soft and feminine, but each of her movements suggested power. The man had the shoulders, narrow hips and careless grace of an athlete. Even at that distance both of them seemed to exude confidence —physical and spiritual. Or perhaps it amounted to something more than confidence, thought Avery, as he watched the way they carried themselves. Perhaps it was more akin to arrogance.

  Tom was studying them also; and he, too, was impressed. Crouching behind their boulder, the two men felt disconcertingly like a couple of schoolboys spying on the private world of adults.

  The strangers appeared to be chatting and laughing to each other, though any sound they made was drowned by the sound of the waterfall. The man was carrying what seemed to be three short javelins: the woman had what looked like a miniature cross-bow.