She dialled Bob and Jean’s number then, just to see, knowing the old couple were most probably still with her parents. Her nerves grew as she heard a dial tone; she listened to it for minutes, her mind elsewhere, being drawn into the void of dark thoughts about what was happening to her parents. The lack of answer from Bob and Jean’s confirmed only one thing: the phones were not down.
Her stomach tightened and turned as she registered the situation and realised how out of character it was that she had not received a call from her father this morning, or even last night, for that matter. She felt sure that he would have been keen to know that they had arrived safely.
She put her mug of tea down gently on the corner of the table and looked around the room as though it were in the kitchen in which she might find answers. She saw a pair of wellies at the back door and moved towards them. Pulling the large, mud-encrusted boots on, she opened the door and ran out into the fresh, invigorating morning air which was still heavy with dew. She crossed the thick grass lolloping in the oversized boots. It was a still brisk morning, birds were singing and the livestock were in animated conversation.
The beauty of the morning was missed by Amber as her worry turned to panic - it was her own feet that she concentrated on.
She shouted down the hillside to her startled host, “Stuart, Stuart! I can’t get hold of Mum and Dad, their line is dead…”
Stuart turned to see the teenager stumbling down the hill. He waved her back to the house.
“Get back in the warm, lassie, I’m coming up now.”
“But we need to…”
“Don’t do this to me now, Amber, no one knows what’s best…” As he had been working, similar thoughts had been swimming in his head.
“I know that sitting here won’t do any good.”
Stuart looked at her with resignation in his dark eyes.
“Make me a brew, and we’ll work out a plan.”
Amber stopped, her head dropped, and she turned dejectedly back toward the house. She began trudging back up the hill. Stuart grabbed another bale of hay as if it were a pillow, broke it in his hands and spread the grass quickly in front of him. He wiped his massive hands on his jeans and with commanding paces he moved towards the house, confident his old mate would get through this latest scrape, but also allowing himself to contemplate the worst.
As he entered the kitchen, he kicked his work boots off and stood for a second or too as the warm air washed over his damp clothes. He pushed aside some of the mess on the kitchen table and sat down, looking at Amber who was making him tea.
“Milk? Sugar?”
“Milk, two sugars, please, Amber.”
She knew how he took his tea. It was an instinctive comment, breaking the silence, but skirting the topic that her mind couldn’t escape.
She placed his mug of tea down in front of him. Within seconds, it was swept up in one of his shovel-like hands, while the other coursed through his greasy mop of shoulder-length hair, clearing the strands from his face and exposing the greying areas around his temples and ears. His soggy socks and jeans steamed in the warmth of the kitchen and his sinuous muscles heaved at the material of his plaid shirt. Amber spoke first as she sat back down in the big armchair, folding her legs underneath her as she did so.
“I want to go back home. I can’t just wait!”
“That’s exactly what we are going to do, Amber. I’m hoping your Mum and Dad will turn up here at any minute. But, if they don’t, I made a promise to your father, Amber.”
“That’s ridiculous, Stuart. The rebels need every one who is capable!”
“Forget the rebels, Amber. Your parents are our only concern.”
Amber rolled her head and looked at the floor. She wasn’t going to wait for long.
Stuart looked thoughtfully at the dust particles dancing in the sun’s beam and allowed the tick of the clock to pace his mind. He was himself unsure how long he could remain without news of his friends. A week? Two? Even those stretches of time were too great - he knew it in his heart: he would not be able to stand back and wait.
His mind moved to the girl: he loved her like she was his own daughter. At eighteen, she was a young woman - could he leave her here if he had to go across the border? He thought to himself: she is too headstrong, too wily. She would be behind him in no time but not with him…no, he would take her with him if he went, at least then he could look out for her. He knew it was not a perfect plan, but what else could he do? And, he knew that she could look after herself if it became necessary. Nat had taught Amber to hunt and shoot and live off the land at a very young age. She was far stealthier than either of the men; they used to joke that she could stalk a roe deer and catch it with her bare hands.
He looked across at Amber, her eyes burning a hole in the rug as she chewed on a fingernail nervously. He wouldn’t say anything of his newly hatched plan as he thought it better to sleep on it. If there was no news in the morning he would leave for Nat’s farm then.
He stood up. “I’ve got to get back to the beasts. Help yourself to whatever you need, and I’ll be in the bottom field if you feel like working off the worry.”
With that, he quietly slugged the last of his brew, moved to where his boots lay, tugged them back onto his feet and left the house.
Amber stared at the floor as a tear trickled down her cheek.
SEVEN
Condensation hung on the huge sash windows highlighted by the morning sun. Ben Baines rubbed his eyes; he had slept in the office again last night. Now he pored over the papers and nursed a strong coffee. He was not that fond of strong quality coffee - it gave him a headache - but after sleeping on a Chesterfield he needed something to kick start his head. He wore a well-cut suit and shirt with no tie, his shirt unbuttoned at the collar.
The media were backing the new regime. There were many positive stories of collective industry setting up across the country; of employment for people who had never worked in their life; class sizes halving and wage increases.
There were also reports of the banks being frozen, personal capital of the rich being confiscated by the government to be funnelled into the system. Companies were being taken over by the government. Put into the hands of collectives with only one change: all the profits were pumped straight back into the government and the business itself as investment or fair wages. Shareholders were abolished; the employees owned the company, they set the wage structures, and they had control of the purse strings.
Every employee and board member of every company was free to stay in the role they performed before the advent of the NSO. But those at the top would be paid a fraction of their previous salaries whilst the rest would receive better pay.
The rich had already fled or were in the process of escaping England en masse. Taking with them whatever assets they could move on their person. Everything else had been locked down by the NSO and the threat of retribution by regime enforcers was all too real for those who were not willing to fall into line with the movement.
The revolution was very popular on the whole. Business leaders, landowners and bankers were in such a minority they had no voice against the ordinary people who were desperate for a viable alternative to the previous system.
Although he was well supported, Baines knew there was opposition, even if the papers were not reporting it. There was more and more resistance to his land reforms day by day. It was they who would lose everything if they left their farms and estates who were fighting back. They did not have the capital or a brand to transfer across international borders.
As unrest in the countryside flared, the more Lucas Start’s mercenaries clamped down hard on rural communities in an attempt to take control. Baines was continually forced by events to allow Lucas Start more and more power and control over the population.
Start’s army had quashed major uprisings in East Anglia, the closest unrest to London. But Cornwall was totally uncontrolled; the NSO could not even venture into the county and Devon was the th
eatre for a vicious guerrilla war. Wales was becoming less and less contained. The Welsh were being armed by the Irish, and the Welsh counter-revolutionaries were getting stronger and more organised by the day. All this trouble was manageable compared to Northern England.
The proximity of Scotland- an aggressive opponent of England and the regime with absolutely no diplomatic relations - was the greatest threat to his ideology and his leadership.
Scotland, a wealthy country, heavily militarised after devolution had chosen partnership with its Scandinavian neighbours and the Irish, rather than its historical master England. The Scandinavian Arc, as it had become known, was a group of capitalist countries thriving in an increasingly socialist world. It was history which made Baines most nervous. If ever a dog was having its day, it was Scotland, and he had read the history books.
Now his poor little country sat at the feet of the Scandinavian Arc geographically and economically and he knew that Scotland could roll into England at any time - he was losing sleep over this fact. He had assurances from the Brazilians, the Argentineans and the Chinese that this would not happen. In lighter moments, he joked that England had become South America's Falklands and he hoped they would protect their interest like the British had fought for theirs all those years ago.
However, he needed to be upbeat. This meeting did not solely concern the regime’s issues; there were a lot of successes within the infrastructure of the country - Baines’ domain.
As his government ministers filtered into the room Baines was engrossed in an article buried deep within a more centre-standing paper. It was by a young journalist called Rory Jones and it was reporting on the redistribution of land in Northumberland. Apparently, government forces had burned a farm to the ground killing three locals and three of their own in the ensuing explosion. The story carried on to describe retribution by a relative and the murder of two government paramilitaries.
His mood darkened, but he tried to hide his frustration. Lucas Start was far more capable than he in leading the regime through these areas of friction. He had the ability tactically, militarily and he enjoyed the power. Baines did not necessarily thrive on such things, and he was all too aware that he had to keep Start under control. He had in no way sanctioned the burning of English farms and murder for non-cooperation.
Baines raised his hand to his gathered colleagues. The jocular hum waned, and he began to talk gently and with humility. He congratulated them all on twenty years of work coming together in such a peaceful and popular way. Such a change in society being met by the general population with such positivity was nothing short of incredible. This was his general message. He moved on quickly with aplomb through each governmental department, where the reports suggested they were in terms of his plan and what the next step should be. He was completely up to speed, totally in control. There was, however, only one conversation he really wanted to have, and he moved as quickly to it as was possible. He turned to Lucas Start.
“We are reporting that seventy-seven percent of the population is accounted for at this point; how does this break down Lucas? Who are we missing?”
Lucas had his head down in some papers, but his piggy eyes flicked upwards under a sweaty brow.
“Well, we are moving around the country systematically. We estimate that of that twenty-three percent unaccounted for around fourteen percent will be in the cities and six in the countryside with the remainder over the border in Scotland or abroad. I think we’ll get the rest tagged before two weeks - they can’t hide forever.”
“Good, but these are our countrymen, not livestock, Lucas. Sort your language out and show some respect to the people who brought you to power.”
Start raised his eyes to look at his leader who had gained his full attention now, embarrassed by the dressing down.
Baines added in anger, “In fact, Lucas, I hear you talking like that again and you’ll be out of a job.”
“Ok, Ben, sorry, but accounting for more than seventy million people can become rather impersonal. We are on top of the registrations,” Start responded with some degree of humility and a great deal of arrogance.
Baines looked at him sternly, nodding slightly; then his eyes moved around the room where he saw his colleagues shift uncomfortably in their chairs. No one wanted a rift at the top, but Baines had an inkling that Start would be followed before him, out of fear mainly. He was all too aware that his leadership was more delicate than ever. Now that his ministers were in power, the temptation of abusing that power for personal gain was in their hands.
His eyes moved to Steve Jones, a career politician who had defected from the Labour Party six years earlier. His remit was industry, coordinating the massive task of reorganising and starting up businesses to support their local areas first and foremost and then the excess being traded further afield.
“Any issues, Steve? Are you receiving the manpower from Lucas? And, do we have the skilled labour locally?”
“Early days, but the jigsaw is piecing together well. We have over fifteen thousand businesses to start up over the coming months, but we certainly have the manpower. People are hungry for the work, and there seems to be no shortage of people prepared to relocate for work. So, we are fast-tracking planning for new villages across the country, kick-starting construction as well as filling empty properties. On the negative side, we will certainly have shortages of skilled labour in the short term; we have no need for salesmen, but we don’t have many welders or machinists out there.”
“That brings us nicely on to Jocelyn,” Baines raised a hand to a large lady with cropped hair at the far end of the table.
“Totally on track at the moment, Ben. We have already doubled staffing levels in sixty-eight percent of schools reducing class sizes by half in most. I am liaising with Steve on the construction of twenty-three industrial colleges which will re-introduce blue collar skills into the workforce. Seventeen of those projects are simple refurbishment projects in current schools and colleges, so we will see them opening within the year.”
“Any issues?”
“A small number of school closures due to local resistance.”
“What? Where are these closures?” Now Baines addressed the whole room once again. There was a pause, then Lucas Start stepped in with a response.
“Cornwall - just about the whole county - those nut jobs have called for autonomy again. West Wales and Northumberland are the areas where we have issues. It tends to be landowners, farmers and rural communities resisting our land reforms; they are just swimming against the tide, but we’ll have control in a matter of days.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, we are persuading the population in these small trouble spots to step into line.”
“How?” Baines questioned Start directly, his stare piercing; as the temperature in the room seemed to rise, shuffling in seats was suddenly the loudest noise.
“How what, Ben?” Start retorted with some degree of impatience and annoyance. He was a man that people rarely questioned and never in front of an audience.
Baines threw the paper onto the table open at the article he had been reading and asked, “How exactly are you persuading the population?”
“We are educating them in our ideology…”
“By burning down their bloody homes and killing them - who do you think you are, Lucas - Stalin?”
“Look, Ben,” Start now the bully with steel in his eye and bluster in his voice. He was aggressive and overpowering, “I think you need to leave the boots on the ground to those of us who know how to use a stick as well as a carrot.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Ben, you are an honourable and even a brilliant man, but if you think that you can take this country without stamping out opposing factions then, you are more naive than I thought you were! Those pockets of opposition will grow and spread like a cancer in our healthy body and one day we’ll have barbarians descending from the hills to put us all out of business.�
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Baines was on his feet now. His knuckles white, pressed hard on the table, eyes bulging and red in the face. “I think you need to stop talking right now, Lucas. This is not a playground and we are certainly not competing for anything so don’t for a second get ahead of yourself…you have finished? Yes?”
“Of course, Ben, sorry, I stepped over the line.” Start raised his hands nonchalantly in surrender.
“As we all agreed, we leave pockets of resistance alone. We have so much support and so many of our infra-structure changes have been set in place by the general population before we even took power, we do not need to worry about a small amount of opposition. Anyway, in this system they will soon see that trade and workers stem from the collectives…they need to be part of it. A cancer can’t grow, Lucas, if it doesn’t have a body feeding it. You really worry me, Lucas- we are not trying to ‘take’ this country we are trying to lead it…I am nervous to ask, but what exactly is happening on the ground in these areas, Lucas. I wasn't aware that we have casualties...less still, mortalities?”
Start now became uncomfortable: the Boss had delved too deep, and this was a conversation he didn’t want to have. He shifted in his seat and his broad face reappeared to the room with a large smile.
“Nothing, Ben, it is all in hand. As I said, just a few troublesome characters, but we are proceeding as we all agreed…”
“Just answer my bloody question, Lucas!”
Start paused for a moment, then resigned to the question and replied,
“We have armed conflict in Devon from Cornish rebels; however, they are isolated, disorganised and badly equipped, so they are not our most pressing problem at this stage. We are at war in Wales - men and weapons are coming across the Irish Sea. Northumberland, however, is our primary worry, relations with the Scots have never been more strained, arms and men are moving freely across the border, but the wall will be finished within the month. The Scottish are courting English landowners in the border counties, because if those lands were annexed by the Scots then obviously there would be no land reforms...it’s an easy sell. This article is about a rogue farmer who has murdered three civilians and five of our security detail, but this is just one man...we'll find him today.”
The Border Reiver Page 8
