The Death of Grass

by John Christopher

  ‘You take it, Johnny,’ Roger said. ‘You’ve brought us up here – we haven’t lost anything by it, and there’s no sense in everyone missing the chance because we can’t all have it.’

  The murmur from the others was uncertain enough to be tempting. It’s been offered, he thought, and they won’t stop me if I take it straight away while they’re still shocked by their own generosity. Take Ann and Mary and Davey up to the gates, and see them open, and the valley beyond… He looked at Pirrie. Pirrie returned the look calmly; his small right hand, the fingers still carefully manicured, rested on the butt of his rifle.

  Seeing the bubble of temptation pricked, he wondered how he would have reacted if he had had the real rather than the apparent freedom of action. The feudal baron, he thought, and ready to sell out his followers as cheerfully as that. Probably they had been like that – most of them, anyway.

  He said, looking at Pirrie: ‘I’ve been thinking it over. Quite frankly, I don’t think there’s any hope at all of my brother persuading the others to let us all in. As he said, some of them have seen their own relations turned back. That leaves us two alternatives: turning back ourselves and looking for a home somewhere else, or fighting our way into the valley and taking it over.

  Ann said: ‘No!’ in a shocked voice. Davey said: ‘Do you mean – fighting Uncle Dave, Daddy?’ The others stayed silent.

  ‘We don’t have to decide straight away,’ John said. ‘Until I’ve seen my brother again, I suppose we can say there’s an outside chance of managing it peaceably. But you can be thinking it over.’

  Roger said: ‘I still think you ought to take what’s offered to you, Johnny.’

  This time there was no kind of response; the moment of indecision past, John reflected wrily. The followers had realized the baron’s duty towards them again.

  Alf Parsons asked: ‘What do you think, Mr Custance?’

  ‘I’ll keep my opinion until I come back next time,’ John said. ‘You be thinking it over.’

  Pirrie still did not speak, but he smiled slowly. With the bandage round his head, he looked a frail and innocent old man. Jane sat close by him, her pose protective.

  It was not until John was on the point of going back to the gate that Pirrie said anything. Then he said:

  ‘You’ll look things over, of course? From inside?’

  ‘Of course,’ John said.

  If there had been any hope in his mind of David persuading the others in the valley to relent, it would have vanished the moment he saw his brother’s face again. Four or five other men had accompanied him back to the fence, presumably to help the three already on guard in the event of John’s troops being reluctant to accept their dismissal. There was, John noticed, a telephone point just inside the fence, so that the men there could summon help quickly in the event of a situation looking dangerous. He glanced about him, looking for further details of the valley’s defences.

  David said: ‘They won’t agree, Johnny. We couldn’t really expect them to.’

  The men who had come with him stayed close by, making no pretence of offering privacy to the brothers. As much as anything, this showed John the powerlessness of his brother’s position.

  He nodded. ‘So we have to take the road again. I gave Davey your love. I’m sorry you couldn’t have seen him.’

  ‘Look,’ David said, ‘I’ve been thinking – there is a way.’ He spoke with a feverish earnestness. ‘You can do it.’

  John looked at him in inquiry. He had been noting the angle the fence made with the river.

  ‘Tell them it’s no good,’ David said, ‘– that you will have to find somewhere else. But don’t travel too far tonight. Arrange things so that you and Ann and the children can slip away – and then come back here. You’ll be let in. I’ll stay here tonight to make sure.’

  John recognized the soundness of the scheme, for other people under other conditions. But he was not tempted by it. In any case, David was underestimating the intervention Pirrie might make in the plan; a reasonable error for anyone who did not know Pirrie.

  He said slowly: ‘Yes, I think that might work. It’s worth trying, anyway. But I don’t want to have the kids mown down by that gun of yours in the night.’

  David said eagerly: ‘There’s no fear of that. Give me our old curlew whistle as you come along the road. And it’s full moon.’

  ‘Yes, John said, ‘so it is.’

  12

  John dropped down into the ditch where they all were.

  He said immediately: ‘We shan’t get in there peaceably. They won’t budge. My brother’s tried them, but it’s no good. So we have the alternatives I spoke of – going somewhere else or fighting our way into Blind Gill. Have you thought about it?’

  There was a silence; Alf Parsons broke it. He said:

  ‘It’s up to you, Mr Custance – you know that. We shall do whatever you think best.’

  ‘Right,’ John said. ‘One thing, first. My brother looks like me, and he’s wearing blue overalls and a grey and white check shirt. I’m telling you this so you can watch out for him. I don’t want him hurt, if it can be helped.’

  Joe Harris said: ‘We’re having a go, then, Mr Custance?’

  ‘Yes. Not now – tonight. Now we are going to beat an orderly retreat out of the range of vision of the people on the fence. It’s got to look as though we’ve given up the idea of getting in. Our only hope is having the advantage of surprise.’

  They obeyed at once, scrambling out of the ditch and heading back down the road, away from the valley. John walked at the rear, and Roger and Pirrie walked with him.

  Roger said: ‘I still think you’re doing the wrong thing, Johnny. You could leave us and take the family back. They would have you.’

  Pirrie remarked, in a speculative tone: ‘I don’t think it’s going to be easy, even as a surprise attack.’ He looked at John. ‘Unless you know a way of getting in over the hills.’

  ‘No. Even if there were a reasonable way, it wouldn’t do. The hillsides are steep in there. It would be impossible to avoid starting small slides of stones and once they knew where we were we should offer a target they couldn’t miss.’

  ‘I take it,’ Pirrie said, ‘that you do not contemplate rushing that fence – with a Vickers machine-gun behind it?’

  ‘No.’ John looked at Pirrie closely. ‘How do you feel now?’

  ‘Normal.’

  ‘Fit enough to wade half a mile through a river that’s cold even at this time of year?’

  ‘Yes.’

  They were both watching him in inquiry. John said:

  ‘My brother put a fence across the gap between hill and river, but he took it for granted the river was fence enough in itself. By the banks it’s deep as well as swift – there have been enough cattle drowned in it, and quite a few men. But I fell in from the other side when I was a kid, and I didn’t drown. There’s a shelf just about the middle of the river – even as a boy of eleven I could stand there, with my head well above water.’

  Roger asked: ‘Are you suggesting we all wade up the river? They would see us, surely. And what about getting out of it, if it’s as deep by the banks as you say?’

  Pirrie, as John had anticipated, had grasped the idea without the need for elaboration.

  ‘I am to knock out the machine-gun?’ he suggested. ‘And the rest of you?’

  ‘I’m coming with you,’ John said. ‘I’ll take one of the other rifles. I’m not likely to succeed if you fail, but it provides us with an extra chance. Roger, you’ve got to take that fence once we’ve got the gun quiet. You can get the men up within a hundred yards of it, along the ditch. The fence is climbable.

  ‘They will bring the gun round to bear on us as soon as they are under fire from the rear. That’s when you take our lot in.’

  Roger said doubtfully: ‘Will it work?’

  It was Pirrie who answered him. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I believe it will.’

  He stood with Ann, looking at the child
ren as they lay asleep on the ground – Davey and Spooks and Steve tangled up together, and Mary a little apart, her head pillowed on an out-thrust arm. He told her then, in an undertone, of David’s plan. When he had finished, she said:

  ‘Why didn’t you? We could have done it. We could have got away from Pirrie somehow’ – she shivered – ‘killed him if necessary! There’s been enough killing of innocent people – and now there’s going to be more. Oh, why didn’t you take it? Can’t we still?’

  The sun had gone down and the moon was yet to rise. It was quite dark. He could not see much of her face, nor she of his.

  He said: ‘I’m glad of Pirrie.’

  ‘Glad!’

  ‘Yes. I needed the thought of that trigger finger of his to stiffen me, but it only stiffened me into taking the right course. Ann, some of the things I’ve had to do to get us here have been nasty. I couldn’t have justified them even to myself, except in the hope that it would all be different once we got to the valley.’

  ‘It will be different.’

  ‘I hope so. That’s why I won’t pay for admission in treachery.’ ‘Treachery?’

  ‘To the rest of them.’ He nodded his head towards the others. ‘It would be treachery to abandon them now.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ Ann shook her head. ‘I don’t begin to understand. Isn’t it treachery to David – to force a way in?’

  ‘David isn’t a free agent. If he were, he would have let us all in. You know that. Think, Ann! Leaving Roger and Olivia outside – and Steve and Spooks. What would you tell Davey? And all these other poor devils… Jane… yes, and Pirrie? However much you dislike him, we should never have got near the valley without him.’

  Ann looked down at the sleeping children. ‘All I can think is that we could have been safe in the valley tonight – without any fighting.’

  ‘But with nasty memories.’

  ‘We have those anyway.’

  ‘Not in the same way.’

  She paused for a while. ‘You’re the leader, aren’t you? The medieval chieftain – you said so yourself ?’

  John shrugged. ‘Does that matter?’

  ‘It does to you. I see that now. More than our safety and the children’s.’

  He said gently: ‘Ann, darling, what are you talking about?’

  ‘Duty. That’s it, isn’t it? It wasn’t really Roger and Olivia, Steve and Spooks, you were thinking about – not them as persons. It was your own honour – the honour of the chieftain. You aren’t just a person yourself any longer. You’re a figurehead as well.’

  ‘Tomorrow it will be all over. We can forget about it all then.’

  ‘No. You half convinced me before, but I know better now. You’ve changed and you can’t change back.’

  ‘I’ve not changed.’

  ‘When you’re King of Blind Gill,’ she said, ‘how long will it be, I wonder, before they make a crown for you?’

  The risky part, John thought, was the stretch between the bend of the river and the point, some thirty yards from the fence, where the shadow of the hill cancelled out the moonlight. If they had left it until the moon was fully risen, the project would have been almost impossible, for the moonlight was brilliant and they had to pass within yards of the defenders.

  As it was, they were exposed, for some twenty-five yards, to any close scrutiny that the people behind the fence turned on the river. The reasonable hope was that their attention would be focused on the obvious approach by road rather than the apparently impractical approach up so swift and deep a river as the Lepe. Pirrie, in front of him, crouched down so that only his head and shoulders, and one hand holding the rifle on his shoulder, were out of the water, and John followed suit.

  The water was even colder than John remembered it as being, and the effort of struggling forward against the current was an exhausting one. Once or twice, Pirrie slipped, and he had to hold him. It was a consolation that the noise of the river would cloak any noise they might make.

  They pushed ahead and at last, to their relief, found themselves clear of the moonlight. The hill’s shadow was long but of no great width; they could see the moonlit road and the fence quite plainly. John had not been sure of this beforehand, and it raised his hopes still further. If the fence had been in shadow, even Pirrie’s marks-manship might not have availed them.

  When they were not more than ten yards from the fence, Pirrie stopped.

  John whispered urgently: ‘What is it?’

  He heard Pirrie draw gasping breaths. ‘I… exhausted…’

  It was a shock to remember that Pirrie was an old man, and of frail physique, who had made a harassing journey and only a few hours before had been knocked over by a bullet. John braced himself and put his free arm round Pirrie’s waist.

  He said softly: ‘Rest a minute. If it’s too much for you, go back. I’ll carry on by myself.’

  They stayed like that for several seconds. Pirrie was shuddering against John’s body. Then he pulled himself upright.

  He gasped: ‘All right now.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Making no answer, Pirrie waded on. They were abreast of the fence, and then beyond it.

  John looked back. The valley’s defences were outlined in the moon’s soft radiance. There were three men on the platform, and another three or four huddled on the ground behind it, presumably asleep. He whispered to Pirrie:

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Give ourselves a chance,’ said Pirrie. ‘Lengthen the range… I can hit them at another twenty yards…’

  His voice seemed stronger again. Pirrie was probably indestructible, John reflected. He trudged after him through the swirling water, aware of fatigue now in his own limbs, doubling the water’s drag.

  Pirrie stopped at last, and turned, bracing himself against the current. They were about twenty-five yards inside the valley. John stood at his left elbow.

  ‘Try for the one on the right,’ Pirrie said. ‘I’ll manage the other two.’

  ‘The machine-gun first,’ John said.

  Pirrie did not bother to reply to that. He threw his rifle up to his shoulder, and John, more slowly, did the same.

  Pirrie’s rifle cracked viciously, and in the moonlight the figure of the man behind the machine-gun straightened up, cried in pain, and went down again, clutching at the edge of the platform and missing it. John fired for his own target, but did not hit. More surprisingly, Pirrie’s second shot failed of its mark. Both men remaining on the platform raced for the machine-gun, and tried to swing it round. Pirrie fired again as they did so, and one of them slumped across it. The other pushed him free, and managed to turn it. John and Pirrie fired again unsuccessfully. The figures beneath the platform had risen and were reaching for guns. Then the machine-gun began to sputter in a staccato rhythm of sound and flame.

  It did not manage much more than a dozen rounds before Pirrie got his third victim, and the deadly chatter stopped. The men on the ground had begun to fire at them now, but the whine of individual bullets seemed irrelevant.

  Pirrie said: ‘The ladder… keep them off the platform…’

  His voice was weaker again, but John saw him re-load, and, with his usual snatched but unwavering aim, hit yet another figure, which had begun to climb the ladder to the platform. John tried to listen for sounds of Roger and the others beyond the fence, but could hear nothing. They must have reached the fence by now. He looked at the black line of the fence’s top, searching for the figures that should be climbing over it.

  Suddenly, in an entirely natural and unforced tone, Pirrie said:

  ‘Take this.’

  He was holding out his rifle.

  John said: ‘Why…?’

  ‘You fool,’ Pirrie said. ‘I’m hit.’

  A bullet whined towards them across the surface of the water. John could see, examining him closely, that his shirt was holed and bloody at the shoulder. He took the gun, dropping the one he had into the water.

  ‘Hang on to me,’ he told
Pirrie.

  ‘Never mind that. The ladder!’

  There was another figure on the ladder. John fired, re-loaded, fired again. The third shot succeeded. He turned to Pirrie.

  ‘Now…’ he began.

  But Pirrie was gone. John thought he saw his body, several yards downstream, but it was difficult to be sure. He looked back to the more important concern – the fence. Figures were swarming across the top, and one already had hold of the machine-gun, tilting it downwards.

  He saw the remaining defenders throw their guns away and then, chilled and utterly tired, began looking for the best place to get in to the bank.

  13

  Into this room he had come with David, side by side, their fingers locked together to calm each other’s fear and uncertainty before the mystery of death, to see the corpse of Grandfather Beverley. The room had changed very little in a score of years. David had never had any desire to modernize his surroundings.

  Ann said: ‘Darling, I’m sorry – for what I said last night.’ He did not answer. ‘It is going to be different now. You were right.’

  And in the afternoon of that far-away day, the solicitor had come up from Lepeton, and there had been the reading of the will, and David’s embarrassment and guilt when they learned that all had been left to him – money as well as land, because a good farmer will never, if he can help it, separate the two. Well, he thought, I got it in the end.

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ Ann said. ‘You mustn’t think it is.’

  His mother had said: ‘You don’t feel badly about it, do you darling? It doesn’t mean that Grandfather didn’t like you, you know. He was very fond of you. He told me all about this. He knew David wanted to be a farmer, and that you didn’t. It means that all my money goes to you – all that your father left. You will be able to have the very best training an engineer could have. You do see that, don’t you?’

  He had said yes, more bewildered by his mother’s seriousness than anything else. He had always expected that Blind Gill would go to David; neither property nor money counted for anything against his one overwhelming feeling of distaste, repugnance, for the fact and presence of his grandfather’s death. Now that the funeral was over and the blinds had gone up again, he wanted only to forget that grimness and shadow.