The Death of Grass
Page 11
Roger was still in the car. John said:
‘I’m going through the hedge. You’d better stay here.’
Roger nodded. The hedge was thick, but John crashed his way through it, the blackthorn spikes ripping his skin as he did so. He looked back along the field. There were bodies on the ground. From the far end of the field, Pirrie was sedately advancing, his rifle tucked neatly under his arm. Listening, John heard groans. He began to run, his feet slipping and twisting on the ploughed ground.
Ann held Mary cradled in her lap, on the ground beside the car. They were both alive. The groans he had heard were coming from the three men who lay nearby. As John approached, one of them – small and wiry, with a narrow face covered with a stubble of ginger beard – began to get up. One arm hung loosely, but he had a revolver in the other.
John saw Pirrie lift his rifle, swiftly but without hurry. He heard the faint phutting noise of the silenced report, and the man fell, with a cry of pain. A bird which had settled on the hedge since the first disturbance, rose again and flapped away into the clear sky.
He brought rugs from the car, and covered Ann and Mary where they lay. He said, speaking in a whisper, as though even the sound of speech might hurt them further:
‘Ann darling – Mary – it’s all right now.’
They did not answer. Mary was sobbing quietly. Ann looked at him, and looked away.
Pirrie covered the last few yards. He kicked the man who lay nearest to him, dispassionately but with precision. The man shrieked, and then subsided again into moaning.
At that moment, Roger came through the gap from the road, revolver in hand. He examined the scene, his gaze passing quickly from the huddled woman and the girl to the three wounded men. He looked at Pirrie.
‘Not as tidy a job as last time,’ he observed.
‘It occurred to me,’ said Pirrie – his voice sounded as out of place in the calm summer countryside as did the scene of misery and blood in which he had played his part – ‘that the guilty do not have the right to die as quickly as the innocent. It was a strange thought, was it not?’ He stared at John. ‘I believe you have the right of execution.’
One of the three men had been wounded in the thigh. He lay in a curious twisted posture, with his hands pressed against the wound. His face was crumpled, as a child’s might be, in lines of misery and pain. But he had been attending to what Pirrie said. He looked at John now, with animal supplication.
John turned away. He said: ‘You finish them off.’
With flat unhappy wonder, he thought: in the past, there was always due process of law. Now law itself is a casual word in a ploughed field, backed by guns.
His words had not been directed to anyone in particular. Looking down at Ann and Mary, he heard Roger’s revolver crack once, and again, and heard the gasp of breath forced out by the last agony. Then Ann cried out:
‘Roger!’
Roger said in a soft voice: ‘Yes, Ann.’
Ann released Mary gently, and got to her feet. She clenched her teeth against pain, and John went to help her. He still had the automatic strapped on his shoulder. He tried to stop her when she reached for it, but she pulled it from him.
Two of the men were dead. The third was the one who had been wounded in the thigh. Ann limped over to stand beside him. He looked up at her, and John saw behind the twisted tormented fear of his face the beginning of hope.
He said: ‘I’m sorry, Missus. I’m sorry.’
He spoke in a thick Yorkshire accent. There had been a driver, John remembered, in his old platoon in North Africa who had had that sort of voice, a cheerful fat little fellow who had been blown up just outside Bizerta.
Ann pointed the rifle. The man cried:
‘No, Missus, no! I’ve got kids…’
Ann’s voice was flat. ‘This is not because of me,’ she said. ‘It’s because of my daughter. When you were… I swore to myself that I would kill you if I got the chance.’
‘No! You can’t. It’s murder!’
She found some difficulty in releasing the safety catch. He stared up at her, incredulously, while she did so, and was still staring when the bullets began tearing through his body. He shrieked once or twice, and then was quiet. She went on firing until the magazine was exhausted. There was comparative silence after that, broken only by Mary’s sobbing.
Pirrie said calmly: ‘That was very well done, Mrs Custance. Now you had better rest again, until we can get the car out of here.’
Roger said: ‘I’ll move her.’
He got in the Vauxhall, and reversed sharply. A back wheel went over the body of one of the men. He drove the car through the gap, and out on to the road. He called:
‘Bring them, will you?’
John lifted his daughter and carried her out of the car. Pirrie helped to support Ann. When they were both in the car, Roger sounded the horn several times. Then he slipped out. He said to John:
‘Take over. We’ll get clear of here before we do anything else – just in case the shots have attracted anyone. Then Olivia can look after them.’
John pointed to the field. ‘And those?’
Through the gap the three bodies were still visible, sprawled against the brown earth. Flies were beginning to settle on them.
Roger showed genuine surprise. ‘What about them?’
‘We aren’t going to bury them?’
Pirrie chuckled drily. ‘We have no time, I fear, for that corporal work of mercy.’
The Ford drove up, and Olivia got out and hurried to join Ann and Mary. Pirrie walked back to take her place at the wheel.
Roger said: ‘No point in burying them. We’ve lost time, Johnny. Pull up just beyond Tadcaster – O.K.?’
John nodded. Pirrie called:
‘I’ll take over as tail-end Charlie.’
‘Fair enough,’ Roger said. ‘Let’s get moving.’
7
Tadcaster was on edge, like a border town half-frightened, half-excited, at the prospect of invasion. They filled up their tanks, and the garage proprietor looked at the money they gave him as though wondering what value it had. They got a newspaper there, too. It was a copy of the Yorkshire Evening Press – it was stamped 3d and they were charged 6d, without even an undertone of apology. The news it gave was identical with that which they had heard on the radio; the dull solemnity of the official hand-out barely concealed a note of fear.
They left Tadcaster and pulled into a lane, just off the main road. They had filled their Thermos flasks in the town but had to rely on their original stores of food. Mary seemed to have recovered by now; she drank tea and had a little from the tin of meat they opened. But Ann would not eat or drink anything. She sat in a silence that was unfathomable – whether of pain, shame, or brooding bitter triumph, John could not tell. He tried to get her to talk at first, but Olivia, who had stayed with them, warned him off silently.
The Citroen and the Vauxhall had been drawn up side by side, occupying the entire width of the narrow lane, and they had their meal communally in the two cars. The radio jabbered softly – a recording of a talk on Moorish architecture. It was the sort of thing that almost parodied the vaunted British phlegm. Perhaps it had been put on with that in mind; but the situation, John thought, was not so easily to be played down.
When the voice stopped, abruptly, the immediate thought was that the set had broken down. Roger nodded to John, and he switched on the radio in his own car; but nothing happened.
‘Their breakdown,’ Roger said. ‘I feel still hungry. Think we dare risk another tin, Skipper?’
‘We probably could,’ John said, ‘but until we get clear of the West Riding, I’d rather we didn’t.’
‘Fair enough,’ Roger said. ‘I’ll move the buckle one notch to the right.’
The voice began suddenly and, with both radios now on, seemed very loud. The accent was quite unlike what might be expected on the B.B.C. – a lightly veneered Cockney. The voice was angry, and scared at the same time:
‘Aha!’ Roger said. ‘Citizens’ Emergency Committee, is it? Who the bloody hell is wasting effort on revolutions at a time like this?’
From the other car, Olivia looked at him reproachfully. He said rather loudly:
‘Don’t worry about the kids. It’s no longer a question of Eton or Borstal. They are going to be potato-grubbers however good their table manners.’
The promised interval signal was played; the chimes, altogether incongruous, of Bow Bells. Ann looked up, and John caught her eye; those jingling changes were something that went back through their lives to childhood – for a moment, they were childhood and innocence in a world of plenty.
He said, only loud enough for her to hear: ‘It won’t always be like this.’
She looked at him indifferently. ‘Won’t it?’
The new voice was more typical of a broadcasting announcer. But it still held an unprofessional urgency.
‘This is London. We bring you the first bulletin of the Citizens’ Emergency Committee.
‘The Citizens’ Emergency Committee has taken over the government of London and the Home Counties owing to the unparalleled treachery of the late Prime Minister, Raymond Welling. We have incontrovertible evidence that this man, whose duty it was to protect his fellow-citizens, has made far-reaching plans for their destruction.
‘The facts are these:
‘The country’s food position is desperate. No more grain, meat, foodstuffs of any kind, are being sent from overseas. We have nothing to eat but what we can grow out of our own soil, or fish from our own coasts. The reason for this is that the counter-virus which was bred to attack the Chung-Li grass virus has proved inadequate.
‘On learning of this situation, Welling put forward a plan which was eventually approved by the Cabinet, all of whom must share responsibility for it. Welling himself became Prime Minister for the purpose of carrying it out. The plan was that British aeroplanes should drop atomic and hydrogen bombs on the country’s principal cities. It was calculated that if half the country’s population were murdered in this way, it might be possible to maintain a subsistence level for the rest.’
‘By God!’ Roger said. ‘That’s not the gaff they’re blowing – they’re blowing the top off Vesuvius.’
‘The people of London,’ the voice went on, ‘refuse to believe that Englishmen will carry out Welling’s scheme for mass-murder. We appeal to the Air Force, who in the past have defended this city against her enemies, not to dip their hands now into innocent blood. Such a crime would besmirch not only those who performed it, but their children’s children for a thousand years.
‘It is known that Welling and the other members of this bestial Cabinet have gone to an Air Force base. We ask the Air Force to surrender them to face the justice of the people.
‘All citizens are asked to keep calm and to remain at their posts. The restrictions imposed by Welling on travel outside city boundaries have now no legal or other validity, but citizens are urged not to attempt any panic flight out of London. The Emergency Committee is making arrangements for collecting potatoes, fish and whatever other food is available and transporting it to London, where it will be fairly rationed out. If the country only shows the Dunkirk spirit, we can pull through. Hardship must be expected, but we can pull through.’
There was a pause. The voice continued:
‘Stand by for further emergency bulletins. Meanwhile we shall play you some gramophone records.’
Roger turned off his set. ‘Meanwhile,’ he said, ‘we shall play you some gramophone records. I never believed that story of Nero and his fiddle until now.’
Millicent Pirrie said: ‘It was true, then – what you said.’
‘At least,’ Pirrie said, ‘the story has now received wide circulation. That’s much the same thing, isn’t it?’
‘They’re mad!’ Roger said. ‘Stark, raving, incurably mad. How Welling must be writhing.’
‘I should think so,’ Millicent said indignantly.
‘At their inefficiency,’ Roger explained. ‘What a way to carry on! At my guess, the Emergency Committee’s a triumvirate, and composed of a professional anarchist, a parson, and a left-wing female schoolteacher. It would take that kind of combination to show such an ignorance of elementary human behaviour.’
John said: ‘They’re trying to be honest about things.’
‘That’s what I mean,’ Roger said. ‘I know I speak from the exalted wisdom of an ex-Public Relations Officer, but you don’t have to have had much to do with humanity in the mass to know that honesty is never advisable and frequently disastrous.’
‘It will be disastrous in this case,’ Pirrie said.
‘Too bloody true, it will. The country faces starvation – things are in such a state that the Prime Minister decided to wipe the cities out – the Air Force would never do such a thing, but all the same we appeal to them not to – and you can leave London but we’d rather you didn’t! There’s only one result news like that can have: nine million people on the move – anywhere, anyhow, but out.’
‘But the Air Force wouldn’t do it,’ Olivia said. ‘You know they wouldn’t.’
‘No,’ Roger said, ‘I don’t know. And I wasn’t prepared to risk it. On the whole. I’m inclined to think not. But it doesn’t matter now. I wasn’t willing to take a chance on human decency when it was a matter of hydrogen bombs and famine – do you seriously imagine anyone else is going to?’
Pirrie remarked thoughtfully: ‘That nine million you spoke of refers to London, of course. There are a few million urban dwellers in the West Riding as well, not to mention the north-eastern industrial areas.’
‘By God, yes!’ Roger said. ‘This will set them on the move, too. Not quite as fast as London, but fast enough.’ He looked at John. ‘Well, Skipper, do we drive all night?’
John said slowly: ‘It’s the safest thing to do. Once we get beyond Harrogate we should be all right.’
‘There is the question of route,’ Pirrie suggested. He spread out his own road-map and examined it, peering through the gold-rimmed spectacles which he used for close work. ‘Do we skirt Harrogate to the west and travel up the Nidd valley, or do we take the main road through Ripon? We are going through Wensleydale still?’
John said: ‘What do you think, Roger?’
‘Theoretically, the byways are safer. All the same, I don’t like the look of that road over Masham Moor.’ He looked out into the swiftly dusking sky. ‘Especially by night. If we can get through on the main road, it would be a good deal easier.’
‘Pirrie?’ John asked.
Pirrie shrugged. ‘As you prefer.’
‘We’ll try the main road then. We’ll go round Harrogate. There’s a road through Starbeck and Bilton. We’d better miss Ripon, too, to be on the safe side. I’ll take the lead now, and you can bring up the rear, Roger. Blast on your horn if you find yourself dropping behind for any reason.’
Roger grinned. ‘I’ll put a bullet through the back of Pirrie’s tin Lizzy as well.’
Pirrie smiled gently. ‘I shall endeavour not to set too hot a pace for you, Mr Buckley.’
The sky had remained cloudless, and as they drove to the north the stars appeared overhead. But the moon would not be up until after midnight; they drove through a landscape only briefly illuminated by the headlights of the cars. The roads were emptier than any they had met so far. The rumbling military convoys did not reappear; the earth, or tumultuous Leeds, had swallowed them up. Occasionally, in the distance, there were noises that might have been those of guns firing, but they were far away and indeterminate. John’s eye strayed to the left, half expecting to see the sky burst into atomic flame, but nothing happened. Leeds lay there – Bradford, Halifax, Huddersfield, Dewsbury, Wakefield, and all the oth
er manufacturing towns and cities of the north Midlands. It was unlikely that they lay in peace, but their agony, whatever it was, could not touch the little convoy speeding towards its refuge.
He was terribly tired, and had to rouse himself by an act of will. The women had been given the duty of keeping their husbands awake at the wheel, but Ann sat in a stiff immobility with her eyes staring into the night, saying nothing, and paying attention to nothing. He fished, one-handed, for the benzedrine pills Roger had given him, and managed to get a drink of water from a bottle to swill them down.
Occasionally, driving uphill, he looked back, to ensure that the lights of the other two cars were still following. Mary lay stretched out on the back seat, covered up with blankets and asleep. Even though brutality used towards the young, by reason of their defencelessness, provoked greater anger and greater pity, it was still true that they were resilient. Was the wind tempered to the shorn lamb? He grimaced. All the lambs were shorn now, and the wind was from the north-east, full of ice and black frost.
They skirted Harrogate and Ripon easily enough; their lights showed that they still had electricity supplies and gave them a comforting civilized look from a distance. Things might not be too bad there yet, either. He wondered: could it all be a bad dream, from which they would awaken to find the old world reborn, that everyday world which already had begun to wear the magic of the irretrievably lost? There will be legends, he thought, of broad avenues celestially lit, of the hurrying millions who lived together without plotting each other’s deaths, of railway trains and aeroplanes and motor-cars, of food in all its diversity. Most of all, perhaps, of policemen – custodians, without anger or malice, of a law that stretched to the ends of the earth.
He knew Masham as a small market town on the banks of the Ure. The road curved sharply just beyond the river, and he slowed down for the bend.