The Death of Grass

by John Christopher

  ‘I don’t see why. Some sort of committee, I suppose, with elected members, to make decisions… surely that will be enough?’

  ‘I think,’ Pirrie said, ‘that the day of the committee is over.’

  His words echoed the thoughts that John himself had felt a short while before; for that reason, he replied with a forcefulness that had some anger in it:

  ‘And the day of the baron is back again? Only if we lose faith in our own ability to cope with things democratically.’

  ‘Do you think so, Mr Custance?’ Pirrie stressed the ‘Mr’ slightly, making it clear that he had noticed that, following the killing of Joe Ashton, the expression had somehow become a title. Except to Ann, and Roger and Olivia, John had now become Mr Custance; the others were known either by Christian names or surnames. It was a small thing, but not insignificant. Would Davey, John wondered, be Mr in his turn, by right of succession? The straying thought annoyed him.

  He said curtly: ‘Even if there has to be one person in charge of things at the valley, that one will be my brother. It’s his land, and he’s the most competent person to look after it.’

  Pirrie raised his hands in a small gesture of mock resignation. ‘Exit the committee,’ he said, ‘unlamented. That is another reason why you must be in charge of the party that reaches Blind Gill. Someone else might be less inclined to see that point.’

  They moved down into the valley, passing the signs of destruction, which had been evident from higher up but which here were underlined in brutal scoring. What refugees there were avoided them; they had no temptation to look to an armed band for help. Near the ruins of Sedbergh they saw a group, of about the same number as their own, emerging from the town. The women were wearing what looked like expensive jewellery, and one of the men was carrying pieces of gold plate. Even while John watched, he threw some of it away as being too heavy. Another man picked it up, weighed it in his hand, and dropped it again with a laugh. They went on, keeping to the east of John’s band, and the gold remained, gleaming dully against the brown grassless earth.

  From an isolated farm-house, as they struck up towards the valley of the Lune, they heard a screaming, high-pitched and continuous, that unsettled the children and some of the women. There were two or three men lounging outside the farm-house with guns. John led his band past, and the screams faded into the distance.

  The Blennitts’ perambulator had been abandoned when they left the road on the outskirts of Sedbergh, and their belongings distributed among the six adults in awkward bundles. The going was clearly harder for them than for any of the others, and they made no secret of their relief when John called a halt for the day, high up in the Lune valley, on the edge of the moors. The rain had not returned; the clouds had thinned into cirrus, threading the sky at a considerable height. Above the high curves of the moors to westward, the threads were lit from behind by the evening sun.

  ‘We’ll tackle the moors in the morning,’ John said. ‘By my reckoning, we aren’t much more than twenty-five miles from the valley now, but the going won’t be very easy. Still, I hope we can make it by tomorrow night. For to-night’ – he gestured towards a house with shattered windows that stood on a minor elevation above them – ‘… that looks like a promising billet. Pirrie, take a couple of men and reconnoitre it, will you?’

  Pirrie, without hesitation, singled out Alf Parsons and Bill Riggs, and they accepted his selection with only a glance for confirmation at John. The three men moved up towards the house. When they were some twenty yards away, Pirrie waved them down into the cover of a shallow dip. Taking leisurely aim, he himself put a shot through an upstairs window. They heard the noise of the rifle, and the tiny splintering of glass. Silence followed.

  A minute later, the small figure of Pirrie rose and walked towards the house. Apart from the rifle hunched under his arm, he had the air of a Civil Service official making a perfunctory business call. He reached the door, which apparently he found to be ajar, and kicked it open with his right foot. Then he disappeared inside.

  Once again John was brought up sharp with the realization of how formidable an opponent Pirrie would have been had his ambition been towards the conscious exercise of power, instead of its promotion in another. He was walking now, alone, into a house which he could only guess to be empty. If he had any nerves at all, it was difficult to envisage a situation in which they would be drawn taut.

  From an upper window, a face appeared – Pirrie’s face – and was withdrawn again. They waited, and at last he came out of the front door. He walked back down the path, sedately, and the two men rose and joined him. He came back to where John was.

  John asked him: ‘Well? O.K.?’

  ‘Everything satisfactory. Not even bodies to dispose of. The people must have cleared out before the looters arrived.’

  ‘It has been looted?’

  ‘After a fashion. Not very professionally.’

  ‘It will give us a roof for the night,’ John said. ‘What beds there are will do for the children. The rest of us can manage on the floor.’

  Pirrie looked round him in speculation. ‘Thirty-four. It isn’t a very big house. I think Jane and I will risk the inclemency of the weather.’ He nodded, and she came towards him, her rather stupid country face still showing no signs of anything but submission in the inevitable. Pirrie took her arm. He smiled. ‘Yes, I think we will.’

  ‘Just as you like,’ John said. ‘You can have a night off guard duty.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Pirrie said. ‘Thank you, Mr Custance.’

  John found a room in the upper storey which had two small beds in it, and he called up Davey and Mary to try them. There was a bathroom along the landing, still with water running, and he sent them there with instructions to wash. When they had gone, he sat on a bed, gazing out of the window, which looked down the valley towards Sedbergh. A magnificent view. Whoever lived here had probably been very attached to it – an indication, if such were needed, that immaterial possessions were as insecure as material ones.

  His brief musing was interrupted by Ann’s entry into the room. She looked tired. John indicated the other bed.

  ‘Rest yourself,’ he said. ‘I’ve sent the kids along to smarten themselves up.’

  She stood, instead, by the window, looking out.

  ‘All the women asking me questions,’ she said. ‘Which meat shall we have tonight?… Can we use the potatoes up and rely on getting more tomorrow?… shall we cook them in their jackets or peel them first?… why me?’

  He looked at her. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because even if you like being the lord and master, it doesn’t mean that I want to be the mistress.’

  ‘You walked out on them, then?’

  ‘I told them to put all their questions to Olivia.’

  John smiled. ‘Delegating responsibility, as a good mistress should.’

  She paused; then said: ‘Was it all necessary – joining up with these people, making ourselves into an army?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, not all. The Blennitts certainly not – but you wanted them, didn’t you?’

  ‘I didn’t want them. It was just horrible, leaving the children. And I didn’t mean them – I meant the others.’

  ‘With the Blennitts – just the Blennitts – the odds would have tipped further against our getting through to the valley. With these others, we’re going to make it easily.’

  ‘Led by General Custance. And with the able assistance of his chief killer, Pirrie.’

  ‘You underestimate Pirrie if you think he’s just a killer.’

  ‘No. I don’t care how wonderful he is. He is a killer, and I don’t like him.’

  ‘I’m a killer, too.’ He glanced at her. ‘A lot of people are, who never thought they would be.’

  ‘I don’t need reminding. Pirrie’s different.’

  John shrugged. ‘We need him – until we get to Blind Gill.’ ‘Don’t keep saying that!’

  ‘It’s true.’

  ‘Jo
hn.’ Their eyes met. ‘It’s the way he’s changing you that’s so dreadful. Making you into a kind of gangster boss – the children are beginning to be scared of you.’

  He said grimly: ‘If anything has changed me, it’s been something more impersonal than Pirrie – the kind of life we have to lead. I’m going to get us to safety, all of us, and nothing is going to stop me. I wonder if you realize how well we’ve done to get as far as this? This afternoon, with the valley like a battlefield – that’s only a skirmish compared to what’s happening in the south. We’ve come so far, and we can see the rest of the way clear. But we can’t relax until we’re there.’

  ‘And when we get there?’

  He said patiently: ‘I’ve told you – we can learn to live normally again. You don’t imagine I like all this, do you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She looked away, staring out of the window. ‘Where’s Roger?’

  ‘Roger? I don’t know.’

  ‘He and Olivia have had to carry Steve between them since you’ve been so busy leading. They dropped behind. The only place left for them to sleep, by the time they got to the house, was the scullery.’

  ‘Why didn’t he come and see me?’

  ‘He didn’t want to bother you. When you called Davey up, Spooks stayed behind. He didn’t think of coming with him, and Davey didn’t think of asking. That’s what I meant about the children becoming scared of you.’

  John did not answer her. He went out of the room and called down from the landing:

  ‘Rodge! Come on up, old man. And Olivia and the kids, of course.’

  Behind him, Ann said, ‘You’re condescending now. I don’t say you can help it.’

  He went to her and caught her arms fiercely.

  ‘Tomorrow evening, all this will be over. I’ll hand things over to Dave, and settle down to learning from him how to be a potato and beet farmer. You will see me turn into a dull, yawning, clay-fingered old man – will that do?’

  ‘If I could believe it will be like that…’

  He kissed her. ‘It will be.’

  Roger came in, with Steve and Spooks close behind him.

  He said: ‘Olivia’s coming up, Johnny.’

  ‘What the hell were you doing settling in the scullery?’ John asked. ‘There’s plenty of room in here. We can put those beds together and get all the kids on them. For the rest of us, it’s a nice soft floor. Fairly new carpets in the bedrooms – our hosts must have been on the luxurious side. There are blankets in that cupboard over there.’

  Even while he spoke, he recognized his tone as being too hearty, with the bluffness of a man putting inferiors at their ease. But there was no way of changing it. The relationship between himself and Roger had changed on both sides, and it was beyond the power of them to return to the old common ground.

  Roger said: ‘That’s very friendly of you, Johnny. The scullery was all very nice, but it had a smell of cockroaches. You two, you can cut along and line up for the bathroom.’

  From the window, Ann said: ‘There they go.’

  ‘They?’ John asked. ‘Who?’

  ‘Pirrie and Jane – taking a stroll before dinner, I imagine.’

  Olivia had come into the room while Ann was talking. She started to say something and then, glancing at John, stopped. Roger said:

  ‘Pirrie the Wooer. Very sprightly for his age.’

  Ann said to Olivia: ‘You’re looking after the knives. See that Jane gets a sharp one when she comes in to supper, and tell her there’s no hurry to return it.’

  ‘No!’ The incisiveness had been involuntary; John moderated his voice: ‘We need Pirrie. The girl’s lucky to get him. She’s lucky to be alive at all.’

  ‘I thought we could see our way now,’ Ann said. ‘I thought to-morrow evening would see things back to normal. Do you really want Pirrie because he is essential to our safety, or have you grown to like him for yourself ?’

  ‘I told you,’ John said wearily. ‘I don’t believe in taking any chances. Perhaps we won’t need Pirrie tomorrow, but that doesn’t mean that I take cheerfully to the idea of your egging the girl on to cut his throat during the night.’

  ‘She may try,’ Roger observed, ‘of her own accord.’

  ‘If she does,’ Ann asked, ‘what will you do, John – have her executed for high treason?’

  ‘No. Leave her behind.’

  Ann stared at him. ‘I think you would!’

  Speaking for the first time, Olivia said: ‘He killed Millicent.’

  ‘And we didn’t leave him behind?’ With exasperation, John went on: ‘Can’t you see that fair shares and justice don’t work until you’ve got walls to keep the barbarians out? Pirrie is more use than any one of us. Jane is like the Blennitts – a passenger, a drag. She can stay as long as she’s careful how she walks, but no longer.’

  Ann said: ‘He really is a leader. Note the sense of dedication, most striking in the conviction that what he thinks is right because he thinks it.’

  John said hotly: ‘It’s right in itself. Can you find an argument to refute it?’

  ‘No.’ She looked at him. ‘Not one that you would appreciate.’

  ‘Rodge!’ He appealed to him. ‘You see the sense in it, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I see the sense.’ Almost apologetically, he added: ‘I see the sense in what Ann says, too. I’m not blaming you for it, Johnny. You’ve taken on the job of getting us through, and you have to put that first. And it’s Pirrie who’s turned out to be the one you could rely on.’

  He was about to reply argumentatively when he caught sight of their three faces, and memory was evoked by the way they were grouped. Some time in the past they had been in much the same positions – at the seaside, perhaps, or at a bridge evening. The recollection touched in him the realization of who he was and who they were – Ann, his wife, and Roger and Olivia, his closest friends.

  He hesitated, then he said:

  ‘Yes. I think I see it, too. Look – Pirrie doesn’t matter a damn to me.’

  ‘I think he does,’ Roger said. ‘Getting through matters to you, and so Pirrie does. It’s not just his usefulness. Once again, Johnny, I’m not criticizing. I couldn’t have handled the situation, because I wouldn’t have had the stamina for it. But if I had been capable of handling it, I would have felt the same way about Pirrie.’

  There was a pause before John replied.

  ‘The sooner we get there the better,’ he said. ‘It will be nice to become normal again.’

  Olivia looked at him, her shy eyes inquiring in her large placid face. ‘Are you sure you will want to, Johnny?’

  ‘Yes. Quite sure. But if we had another month of this, instead of another day to face, I wouldn’t be so sure.’

  Ann said: ‘We’ve done beastly things. Some of us more so than others, perhaps, but all of us to some extent – if only by accepting what Pirrie’s given us. I wonder if we ever can turn our backs on them.’

  ‘We’re over the worst,’ John said. ‘The going’s plain and easy now.’

  Mary and Davey came running in from the bathroom. They were laughing and shouting; too noisily.

  John said: ‘Quiet, you two.’

  He had not, he thought, spoken any differently from his custom. In the past, the admonition would have had little if any effect. Now both fell quiet, and stood watching him. Ann, and Roger and Olivia, were watching him, too.

  He bent towards Davey. ‘Tomorrow night we should be at Uncle David’s. Won’t that be good, eh?’

  Davey said: ‘Yes, Daddy.’

  The tone was enthusiastic enough, but the enthusiasm was tempered by an undue dutifulness.

  In the early hours of the morning, John was awakened by a rifle shot and, as he sat up, heard it replied to from somewhere outside. He sat up, reaching for his revolver, and called to Roger, hearing him grunt something in reply.

  Ann said: ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Nothing much, probably. A stroller, hoping for easy pickings, maybe. You and
Olivia stay here and see to the children. We’ll go and have a look.’

  The sentry’s duty was to patrol outside the house, but he found Joe Harris, whose turn it was, staring out of a front room window on the ground floor. He was a thin dark man, with a heavy stubble of beard. His eyes gleamed in the moonlight, which shone into the house here.

  ‘What’s happening?’ John asked him.

  ‘I seen ’em when I was outside,’ Harris said. ‘Comin’ up the valley from Sedbergh way. I figured it might be best not to disturb ’em in case they was goin’ right on up the valley, so I came on back into the house, and kept a watch from here.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘They turned up towards the house. When I was certain they was coming this way, I had a crack at the bloke in front.’

  ‘Did you hit him?’

  ‘No. I don’t think so. Another one had a shot back, and then they went down among the shrubs. They’re still out there, Mr Custance.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘It’s hard to say, in this light. Might have been a dozen – maybe more.’

  ‘As many as that?’

  ‘That’s why I was hoping they would go right through.’

  John called: ‘Rodge!’

  ‘Yes.’ Roger was standing at the door of the room. There were others in the room as well, but they were keeping quiet.

  ‘Are the others up?’

  ‘Three or four out here in the hall.’

  Noah Blennitt’s voice came from close beside John.

  ‘Me and Arthur’s here, Mr Custance.’

  John said to Roger: ‘Send one of them up to the back bedroom window to keep an eye open in case they try to work round that way. Then two each in the front bedrooms. Noah, you can take up your place at the other ground-floor window. I’ll give you time to get into position. Then when I shout we’ll let them have a volley. It may impress them enough to make them clear off. If it doesn’t, pick your own targets after that. We have the territorial advantage. Women and kids well away from the windows, of course.’

  He heard them moving away, as Roger relayed the instructions to them. In the room beside him a child’s voice began to cry – Bessie Blennitt. He looked and saw her sitting up in an improvised bed; her mother was beside her, hushing her.