“Look at his watch,” he said.
It was a gold Omega; the pajamas, Matthew now saw, were silk. It had a sweep-second hand which was moving round steadily. Miller eased the bracelet, an expander, over the dead hand and held the watch to Matthews ear.
“Automatic. Still going, so it must have had movement in the last twenty-four hours. And look at his hands, fingers. He dug his way out, and then collapsed. Tough.”
“Yes,” Matthew said. The man had been in his fifties; he could have been a heart case. “Shall we cover him up?”
“Does it make any difference?” Miller slipped the watch onto his wrist and looked at it admiringly. “Time’s too valuable.”
They came back to the place where they had left Ashton with the woman. He was sitting on a chunk of granite, and as they came up, he said, without looking up, “She’s dead.”
“Thank God for that,” Miller said. “I’ll have the bottle, then.”
He put his hand out, and after a momentary hesitation Ashton gave it to him. Miller took the stopper out and wiped the rim on his sleeve. Then he hefted the bottle in his hand, weighing it. He shook it, listening to the slosh of liquid inside.
“It’s bloody near empty!” He stared at Ashton, and said quietly, “There’s getting on for half a bottle gone. What happened to it?”
“She was in pain—moaning and groaning all the time.” He looked up at Miller helplessly. “It was the only thing that quietened her a bit. I couldn’t stand her being in all that pain.”
“When did she die?” Miller asked.
“Not long ago,” Ashton said. “Quarter of an hour, maybe twenty minutes.”
“Stand up,” Miller said. “You can stand, can’t you? Here, I’ll help you.” He transferred the bottle to his left hand, and assisted Ashton with the other. They were about the same height. Standing close to the older man, Miller said, “How long ago did you say she died?”
“Half an hour, perhaps.”
“You lying bastard!” His voice was still calm. “She’s been dead since just after we left you, hasn’t she? You drank that gin yourself. You sat there and guzzled my bloody gin, didn’t you?”
“I only had one drop. It was when I realized she was dead. It just got me—”
“Shut up! You stink of it. You can’t even stand straight.” Without warning, he swung a savage open-handed blow which caught Ashton on the jaw and sent him flying to sprawl on the bricks a foot or two from the dead woman. Miller went over after him. “Stand up.” Ashton groaned, but made no attempt to rise. Then Miller kicked him viciously in the side. He kicked him twice more, and turned away. He said to Matthew, “That’s what I call a good afternoon’s work. One man who won’t leave his corpses, one woman dead, and half a bottle of gin gone. Let’s get home.”
The rest followed him obediently. When they had gone about a hundred yards, Matthew looked back. Ashton had got up and was limping after them.
Clouds came up late in the afternoon, but they were high and did not threaten rain. They had their evening meal at the camp; while it was being prepared, Matthew wandered away and stood on the cliff top. If one looked directly down, one might think, seeing the sand, that this was just low tide, but the eye went out, looking for the familiar peace of the waves. And finding only jagged rocks and desolation, a moon landscape. The tide had gone, far out and forever.
He was not in a mood for company, and sat apart from the others after supper as well. He could hear their voices, and catch occasional phrases. Most of them seemed to be back on the subject of the earthquake—they went on, over and over again, telling their own experiences, how they had felt, how they had managed to get free. It was something they could not leave alone; they probed it like tongues feeling cavities drilled by a dentist. They would tire of it in due course, presumably. Matthew fought down a feeling of contempt. One must face realities, he told himself, make the best of what one had, For some time at least he must remain among these people; perhaps he would have to live out his life with them. He thought, with a frisson of pain, of Jane, of her freshness, her bright honesty. That was a reality he ought to face, too, and turn his mind away from the memory. But it was too good. Even though it hurt, he could not do without it.
The reverie was broken for him by a new scene of violence. Miller had gone off somewhere along the cliffs, and in his absence their most recent recruit, De Porthos, had gone to sit with the girl, Shirley. After a time, De Porthos apparently persuaded her to go with him for a walk. They were heading away from the cluster of ramshackle tents which formed the camp when Miller met them on his way back. He wasted no time in talking, but swung at the shorter man. De Porthos dodged the main force of the blow and hit back. The two men grappled and punched at each other while the girl looked on, her silly podgy face showing mingled pleasure and alarm.
Miller was much the stronger and slightly the more skillful, and the fight ended with De Porthos on the ground, displaying no inclination to get up. Miller went over to the girl and slapped her face hard enough to make her cry out. She ran back to the tent she shared with him, weeping, and disappeared inside. Miller looked after her, and came over to sit by Matthew.
“Stupid little sow,” he said. “Mind you, I’d have had to do it eventually to one of them. Probably have been Andy, except for his broken leg—I’ve seen him looking at her. But I reckon I ought to give her a proper lacing as well, to drive it home.”
“How long do you think you can keep it up?”
“Keep what up, Matty?”
“I wouldn’t have thought she was the kind you could keep indefinitely in purdah.”
Miller was silent for a few moments. Matthew wondered whether the remark had offended him, whether, despite the way in which he spoke to her and of her, he was genuinely fond of the girl. But he said, “Not indefinitely, maybe, but long enough.”
“Long enough for what?”
He looked sideways, grinning. “To make sure she’s up the spout, and to make sure it’s mine.”
“And after that, you don’t mind?”
“After that, I’ll see. I’m a realist, Matty. After all, six men and only one girl that’s ripe—four even if you count out yourself and Ashton. But there’s got to be the kid first.”
“I suppose you want a boy?”
“By God, yes!”
“A son for King Miller the First.”
There was another pause. Miller’s gaze went far out to the empty horizon, the darkening sky. It had been a cloudy sunset, and there were bars of black and vivid red in the southwest. Miller said, “What do you reckons happened everywhere else?” “I don’t know. Things must be pretty bad.”
“That’s the way I see it. Or there would have been planes, wouldn’t there? We can reckon Europe’s been pretty well knocked out, and America, too, I suppose.”
Matthew remembered the evening at the Carwardines, the quiet friendly talk with civilized people in front of a fire. He said, “Not so long ago … someone was talking about the earthquakes. About the British Isles being outside the area where the big ones were likely to happen.”
“The laugh was on him.”
“He said the regions where they did happen were the ones where the last lot of mountain-building had taken place, places like the Alps and the Himalaya, and all the way round the Pacific. Perhaps this is a new lot of mountain-building. How much have we been lifted? There’s no way of knowing, is there? There may be another Everest in Norway, or New England. What I mean is, it’s possible that we’ve got away comparatively lightly.”
“Do you think there’s more to come?” There had been the by now customary earth tremors at intervals throughout the day, but nothing big. “I mean, anything like that last lot?”
“Who knows? I wouldn’t care to sleep inside a building for the next few months.”
“Not much hope of our having the chance, is there?” He took a cigarette and gave one to Matthew. “Have one while they last. Things aren’t going to be the same again, are they? N
ot in our lifetimes, anyway.”
“No.”
He took a light from Miller’s cigarette. The man of roughly his own age who was called Harry was watching them hungrily. He would rather have given him the cigarette than be the subject of that melancholy stare, but there was no point in trying to do that—Miller would not have permitted it.
Puffing smoke into the still air, Miller said, “Better it happened now than winter.”
“Yes.”
“We can do things. We can get the place organized. We’ve bloody well got to, haven’t we? A certain amount of hard sweat, but it’s worth it. Then in twenty years’ time or so the kids can take over.” He looked toward the tent from which the sound of heavy, artificial weeping still came. “By God, she’d better have boys! And the first one had better be mine.” He called out toward the tent, “Shut up! Shut up, you silly bitch/’ Getting to his feet, he said, “I think I’d better go and sort her out. Be seeing you, Matty.”
Matthew stayed where he was, smoking. There was Miller’s raised voice inside the tent, the sound of a blow, louder wailing, and eventually quiet.
Billy came over just as he finished the cigarette. lie said, “Mr. Cotter?”
“Hello, Billy. Hows the arm feeling?”
“Not so bad. Mr. Cotter?”
“Yes?”
“I wish we could have stayed in our own camp.”
“It isn’t possible. And you’ve got Mandy to play with here.”
The boy shrugged, but said nothing. He was still, of course, in the male-oriented world of the prepubertal boy. That would change. The two of them would grow up together and in due course … No, nothing so simple as that. The storybook days were over. The girl would be nubile when the boy was still too young to stake an effective sexual claim. One of the other men would take her if Miller did not. She would be a woman at twelve or thirteen, a mother within the following year. Billy might, if the dim-witted Shirley had the succession of boys Miller demanded of her, have to wait for Mandy’s daughters to grow up. It was probably as good a pattern as any, he thought It was just that he felt nothing for it, for the future, but indifference and distaste.
Billy said, “We can’t go back, then?”
“No. And even if we could, they wouldn’t let us take Cobweb.”
It was a child’s face, trying to comprehend adult perplexities. Would he eventually take Matthew’s place as Miller’s lieutenant, the guardian of his sons, or would there be conflict within the tribe, the old tyranny of greed and hate? No, Matthew thought, however it turns out, I don’t think I want to see it.
“Better get to bed, Billy,” he said. “We need to be up early in the morning.”
5
THE NEXT DAY was a good one.
It started with a confused alarm in the gray predawn light, which Matthew became aware of as the sound of raised voices mixed with another noise which at first he thought was a foghorn. He stumbled out of the tent, half asleep, knowing that something was wrong with this, but uncertain what. He walked into a scene that might have been part of some bucolic slapstick film. Two of the tents had been knocked over, and figures beneath one were trying to disentangle themselves from the blankets. Mother Lutron, in a nightgown plus guernsey, her feet enormous in men’s gray woolen socks, was yelling powerfully for help. And the cause of the trouble stood gazing at her, counterpointing her distress though in a much lower key—a cow.
Things settled into perspective as people became more positively awake. Mother Lutron stopped having hysterics, and the others were helped out of the collapsed tents. Miller, in pants and shirt, came out to take charge, first sending a nude Shirley scuttling back into the tent. He stared at the cow with a greedy joy.
“That’s lovely!” he said. “Isn’t she lovely, Matty? I didn’t believe the old bag when she said she’d seen one, alive and uncrippled, but by God, she was right. And it came here, looking for her. Maybe she’s a witch. Hey I Are you a witch, Mother? Better watch your step, or we’ll build a little bonfire for you.”
It was a joke now, too feeble for anyone to laugh at, even though Miller made it. Matthew wondered whether it would go on being a joke in the hard years ahead. The island had a tradition of witches, and the fear of witches.
He said, “It’s fairly clear what she is looking for. See those udders.”
“Poor bloody beast,” Miller said. “It must be like wanting a slash and having to bottle it up. Well, who’s the prize milker round here? What about you, Matty?”
Matthew shook his head. “I never acquired that skill.”
De Porthos, in the end, admitted to having done a bit of milking in his young days, and on Miller’s orders he got to work on the cow. He had to kneel to do it; he jetted the milk into one of the heavy plastic buckets which had been rescued and were kept for water. He made heavy weather of it at first, but gradually got into a rhythm. The others stood watching and cheering him on.
“That’s your job from now on, Hilary,” Miller said. “Daisy’s your responsibility. God help you if anything happens to her. Who knows, we may find a bull yet.”
After breakfast the men set out on another search for survivors, this time concentrating on that part of St. Martin’s between Sausmarez Road and the cliffs. They found no one, but where a small garden had been converted into a dell by collapsed buildings which surrounded it, four hens scrabbled, throwing up sun-warmed dust. In one corner of the garden there was a clutch of three eggs, and in another, two. Miller ordered Ashton to look after the eggs, and threatened him with dreadful penalties if any was lost or broken. The hens were captured and their legs tied with string.
He said to De Porthos, “You can take them back, Hilary.
We’ll make a run for them later on.” He looked more thoughtful as De Porthos began tying the strung legs of the chickens together. “No, second thoughts. You take them, Harry. Ashton can go back with you and give the eggs to the women to look after. We’ll meet you again up towards Fort George.”
Even after the beating he had given both of them, Miller clearly did not trust De Porthos near Shirley when he himself was away. The price of chastity, Matthew reflected, was going to have to be eternal vigilance. Rolling on her back was an instinctive reaction as far as Shirley was concerned, and De Porthos, he suspected, was one of those natural lechers you sometimes found among short tubby men.
They saw the madman as they approached the Fort headland; he probably confined his roaming to the same small area in which Matthew and Billy had first met him. He kept his distance, contenting himself with bellowing vaguely apocalyptic phrases at them. Miller, in return, cursed him, colorfully and with vigor, but was content to leave it at that.
Miller said, “I suppose we might as well cut over towards the Vardes. It looks as big a mess as this lot, but there’s no harm in checking.”
They each of them carried sacks, into which they put anything worthwhile which they happened to turn up. Matthew, while keeping his eyes open for objects of general usefulness, was concentrating on clothes, and particularly footwear, for Billy and himself. It might be a very long time before the community produced its first shoemaker. He was glad to be able to put away a couple of stout pairs of shoes, one pair Billy’s size and another which he would soon grow into, and a pair of boots for himself. He also found a single Wellington, a couple of sizes large for himself, and, after a little thought, took that as well. It was bulky, and pretty useless by itself, but there was the chance of finding a mate to it later on. Its being too big was not important; he could always wear extra pairs of socks.
But his most important find was in one of the big houses off the Vardes. He was twenty or thirty yards from the others, poking about in a tangle of leather-bound books, shattered crystal, smashed wood and brick, when he saw the corner of a box and cleared away the surrounding rubbish. He knew what it was even before he saw the printing: This particular dark heavy oily cardboard was unmistakable. Number-eight shot. Two dozen cartridges.
Matthew
looked back toward the others. They were facing the opposite way; Miller had apparently caught sight of De Porthos and Ashton and was yelling to them to hurry up and come along. It was something he would have to decide quickly. Miller had not actually commandeered the shotgun; with only one cartridge available he probably did not think it worth while antagonizing a man whose support he regarded as important. But if more ammunition turned up … Matthew had very little doubt as to what his reaction would be.
On the other hand, did it matter? The one thing certain was that he was not going to challenge Miller, for leadership or anything else. In which case, it would do no harm to let him have the cartridges and the gun. He listened to Miller shouting, “Get a move on, you pair of idle buggers! I didn’t tell you to take all day about it.” There were clouds in the sky, but the sun was shining at the moment. It was warm, and the air was heavy with the sweet rotten smell of death.
Matthew reached into his sack and pulled out the rubberized mackintosh which he had picked up earlier in the morning. He wrapped the box carefully in it, tucking it round so that there was a double layer of protection. Then, with a quick look to make sure he was still unwatched, he dug a hole in the rubble and wedged the box down into it, covering it with trash. He memorized the general position as well as he could, and then stuck in a broken thistle decanter as a marker.
They went back for their midday meal, and in the afternoon Miller said they would carry on the search, this time in the upper and inland parts of St. Peter Port, which had escaped the tidal wave. Ashton protested; he said his feet were not up to it, that he had not yet found a pair of shoes which did not cripple him.
“You’re not likely to find them, either, sitting on your arse, are you?” Miller asked him. “All right, you can stay behind. But you re going to be useful. You can make a run for the hens. There’s that chicken wire we found in the ironmonger’s. See you do a good job. I’ll inspect it when we get back.”
A Wrinkle in the Skin Page 6
