by Dave Wallis
“Doant try it on here,” said the boy who had been milking. “Just doant try your cockney tricks here.” They had to give up all the trading stores they had with them. Then the shepherds and cowherds pushed them off so that they stumbled in the rough ground and the dark. “Show your faces here again and it’s your lot,” they shouted.
Nobody had expected the hayseeds to be so well organised and disciplined and so quick. Ernie was quiet and hunched. Kathy went to take his arm but he shook her off. When they all began to speak it was to launch a tirade against the herdboy and against all the northern traders and graziers. Their insults became more and more childish and mixed with impossible threats of revenge.
In temporary truce Kathy and Julia walked side by side. They were worried and had to talk to someone, and Estelle was hopeless of course.
“They’ll want some cheering up, after that,” said Kathy cautiously breaking the ice.
Julia was prepared to meet her half-way. “Your Ern’ll be the worst,” she said, “being the leader. Watch he don’t do something awful now, something he can feel really ashamed of.”
“Such as? What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. He’s your boy. You know him best. It’s just that a man who has been humiliated often does something he thinks really awful. He wants to show he can degrade himself more than life and his enemies can. It’s his pride that’s hurt, see? So that’s how he tries to build it up again. By knocking it down still further, only doing it himself this time. My mum explained it to me. She used to get a lot like that come to her after their wives had left them, and things like that.”
In accordance with the terms of an unwritten truce Kathy resisted saying, “None ever came to you, I suppose?” Besides, she was really interested in the theory and concerned for what her man might do.
The purpose of their expedition forgotten they went back to the vans. On the steps lay a bundle of some kind. Ernie touched it with his toe and then called, “Kathy,” in an odd voice. Someone lit a torch. It was the body of the girl, Joan. “She must’ve come back when we were out,” said Kathy. She lifted the lolling head, very white-faced in the torch-light. The girl had taken an Easyway pill or some poison. They carried her into the van and laid her down.
“She was worse than we thought, then,” said Julia.
“Worse with what?” asked Ernie. “What’s going on? Who is she? Why’ve we got lumbered with her?” They explained and reminded him of her short time in the Seely St. gang. “Oh,” said Ernie and paused and then added. “Did it over a boy, eh? We’re starting to go the same way as the oldies.”
The defeat, the first for a very long time, at the hands of the herdsmen and the bruises they had received made them want to stay secure in the caravan. They were all hungry but nobody wished to go out on further adventures around the darkened market area, the kingdom of the northern boys. They carried the body out, laid it under some old coats. They chatted uneasily, about unimportant things and trivial memories of the past, and then slept, side by side, but without lovemaking. An autumnal gale howled around the thin walls of the van and, later, rain drummed on the roof so that they kept waking up.
In the misty morning they scraped a shallow grave and rolled Joan’s body into it, still wrapped in the old coats. There was now just enough tinned milk for a cup of tea each. Everyone settled in silence, to routine jobs, cleaning the bikes, sweeping out the vans, checking tyre pressures as if an expedition were planned.
When it got to dinner time and there was no dinner and nothing decided Kathy went and found Ernie. He was still wrapped away inside himself, nursing his humiliation and defeat.
“Ern,” she said, “I’m hungry.” She thought to arouse his protective pride by this childish, little-girl’s appeal. Ernie said, “So are we all.” He paused, “and we’re going to be a lot hungrier soon.”
“I don’t know what to do about dinner, Ernie. You’ve got to help. There’s only a few tins of beans in the vans, nothing else, not enough for all of us.”
Instead of answering he shrugged and said, “Let the boys go and beg off these hayseeds. Let the girls go and take up with boys that stink of cowshit and can get them roast sheep whenever they want it.”
“Thanks, I’ll go and sort myself one out now.”
“I, I didn’t mean you.”
“You said, ‘the girls’. I’m a girl.”
“We know.”
“I’m your girl.”
He had been sitting on an empty crate abandoned on the very outskirts of the market, staring moodily down at his feet. He stood up and mumbled something about a “walk round and a think”.
They strolled off side by side in silence. The market was now in full swing and droves of sheep bleated and scurried their way in from the north and bizarre groups in bright clothes picked their way in pointed shoes towards the trading centre carrying sacks and cases of southern city trade goods.
Nobody paid any attention to them. They were uneasily aware of each other, waiting for the tiger of tension to jump and claw.
After a time they just bought two of the crude roast meat sandwiches which had become a speciality of the market and walked along eating them in silence.
Kathy risked, “What about the others?”
“They’ll have to do the same,” said Ernie indifferently. “There’s some odds and ends left they can swop.”
“What about tomorrow?” He shrugged.
“Oh for goodness sake, Ernie, snap out of it. It’s not the first fight you’ve ever lost. What’s going to happen to the gang, to all of us, if you just go on like this?”
“Like what?”
“You know, giving up, not caring.”
“They can get on without me, better maybe.”
“Don’t be silly!”
“Let Charlie lead them if he wants to.”
“You know he couldn’t, and besides he doesn’t want to.”
“It’ll all have to go, then. What’s it matter?”
“You’re jealous of Charlie.”
“That’s not it. You can go with him again if you like. I went with those Windsor girls after the castle business.”
“You only did that to get even with me, I know all about that. This is something different. You’re a bit like that time on the battlements, only this is worse in a way.”
“In what way?”
“Well, that was all nonsense, to do with thinking about things, this is real. If you give up, the gang breaks up and then we might easily all be finished.”
The food or her words seemed to act on him slightly and he took her arm and walked back towards the trucks.
There was a huge bonfire, orange and red against the dreary skies, and the smoke was full of the smell of roasting meat. Estelle ran up to meet them. Before she could speak the sound of a record player broke out, scratchy, faint and wobbly but running from some remaining live battery and playing the old thumping beat of the official pop song, “Hope”. The gang were dancing round the fire and joining in chorus. “Hope, hope, stronger than rope, better than dope, baby don’t mope, we gotta have hope. . . .” They waved to him and to Kathy and beckoned them in to join the dance.
Estelle reached them and panted out, “We didn’t know when you’d be back. We had a sort of conference and decided to sell the other truck for what we could get. We got four live sheep and lots of other things. Come and look. It was taken by some rich hayseed boy who made a lot here and was going back up north. His girl wanted a van to store all their stuff in and sleep properly on the road. Guess who found him – and after Charlie and the others couldn’t get a decent price anywhere? Me, little me!” Chattering on she drew them down towards the gang. The remaining truck stood with its doors open. Everything had been taken out and cleaned. The bikes were drawn up in the old line-up as if ready to move off on a foray and showed signs of having been cleaned. The whole camp area had been tidied up and the bonfire burned beside a neatly stacked pile of wood and sticks and broken boar
ds. “Charlie got this record player from someone for a leg of mutton,” said Estelle. “You don’t think it was extravagant, Ernie?” He shook his head. “Good, we were afraid you might. We knew you must be off planning something when you didn’t come back so we just got on with things how we thought you’d want it done.”
She ran off to join Charlie. Kathy took Ernie’s hands and they joined the dance. When the disc stopped they sang their Seely St. gang song to the tune of “Show Business”, “There’s no street that’s like our street, that’s like Seelee-ee. . . .” He caught Kathy’s eye and they both started to laugh and everyone joined in. He and Kathy had then to eat a second meal of roast mutton and make a business of enjoying it.
With coats under them and ground-sheets spread about and their toes towards the fire they felt warm and relaxed. The three remaining sheep cropped at the grass outside the circle where they were tethered.
In the morning there were ten cases of plague. By midday a huge dispersal began. Every group took what they could and made off. To the South a line of burdened traders and their girls straggled along trying to thumb rides from the battered vans lurching past them. To the East and West lone couples or single travellers plodded away from time to time glancing back as if the plague might take a physical, tangible form and be seen to be following them.
The last to leave and the best organised were the northern graziers and hunters. Having the habit of nomadry the break-up of the market meant little to them. They gathered their flocks with the help of trained dogs, loaded their stuff and gains on to creaking vans or old cars and set off. The vehicles ground along at walking pace, sending out clouds of blue smoke, the flocks bleated and the cattle lowed. Each little group was separated from the others by some hundreds of yards. They dressed differently, especially the girls, and had different vehicles, flags and types of stock, but they had some secret thing in common and called and shouted and waved to one another across the distances and, of all the people, these alone seemed to know where they were going.
The Seely gang hesitated. Ernie was silent. Kathy glanced towards Charlie and he nodded. He started joking with something about “they might have left some of the girls and some food behind” and then said, still half-jokingly to Ernie, “Say something, Ernie, if it’s only ‘goodbye’.” Ernie did not provoke at all. He said, slowly, “All that lot going back to the Smoke’ll just die. They might as well stay here. The others maybe have some cabbage patches or some stuff buried that they think they can live on for a time. They’ll be scared stiff of someone coming to pinch it – which someone will do sooner or later. No, the only ones who know how to go about it are them,” he jerked a thumb at dwindling bands of northern gipsies. “Trouble is we don’t know enough to live like they do.” He paused. Everybody was looking at him. “Well, we got to learn that’s all.”
Robert who had been out news-gathering came back and said that twenty or more plague victims lay sweating and groaning near the centre of the market area and there was a certain amount of junk lying around but nothing much worth pinching.
“Are they on their own,” said Kathy. “The plague ones, I mean? Can’t anything be done?”
Robert said, “You know it can’t. One or two have their boys or girls still sitting by them on the ground giving them water and so on, but that’s all.”
“Let’s get going then,” said Ernie. They had a last look round for petrol, loaded up and even got the three sheep scrambled aboard in a fluster of bleats and panic. A passing gang of graziers stopped and jeered and laughed but one of them shouted, “Grab their ears, talk to them.”
“ ‘Talk to them’,” said Ernie, who was slipping about in a pool of sheep’s urine on the tail-board. “What do they mean ‘talk to them’? Say ‘Hello, sheep, how are you’, something like that?”
“Try it,” said Kathy.
“Hello sheep, how are you?” said Ernie.
The animal gave a feeble bleat and shook its head and then walked calmly to the back of the van. Everybody laughed. The truck was loaded and they started off with a few smoking motor-bikes following. The early autumn afternoon sun glowed damply on their left and the roads and fields stretched ahead to the darkening empty North.
11
After twenty miles all the petrol gave out and there was no sign of any place where they might bargain for more. Even the bikes had stopped running and their riders crowded into the van with the sheep and stores.
For three days they scraped about the area, exploring old farmhouses and waiting all the time for some group of merchants or hayseeds to come along and trade with them. On the fourth day all the food had gone. They found a couple of thin cows rambling about a high pasture and some more sheep and drove them before them up the old Peterborough Road. The rain beat down. Their pointed shoes leaked and their heels blistered. When it got dark they went to bed hungry in the shelter of an empty farmhouse whose windows rattled all night.
At ten o’clock the next morning, on the road, one of the cows lay down and refused to get up. They stood around it hungry and shivering.
“It never gave any milk anyway,” said Charlie.
“Perhaps you never milked it right,” said Estelle.
“I did, though, I learnt years ago on that dippy Borstal farm,” said Ernie. “I think they only give milk when they’re in the family way.”
“You think, don’t you know? It don’t sound very likely to me.”
“No, I don’t know. It’s the sort of thing we all don’t know and we’ve got to learn quick or peg out.”
“We ought to cut it up and eat it,” said Estelle. “I can’t go on much longer without something to eat.”
“Who can?” They all began to speak.
“The poor thing’s not dead yet. You can’t cut it up.”
“Kill it then.”
“You.”
“All right, how?”
“How did they used to in slaughter houses?”
“With a sledge-hammer and then a knife.”
“Charming,” said Estelle.
“It all was charming then.”
“Better than now, anyway, starving and freezing to death on these moors.” They were quiet and the cow gave a feeble moan.
“It’s suffering.”
Charlie and Ernie had been drawing back from the crowd talking. Now they stepped back.
“Get some wood or something to get a fire going,” said Charlie. He laid his scarf over the cow’s eyes. Ernie picked up a boulder from the verge and crashed it down on the cow’s skull. One horn splintered and the animal gave a feeble bellow. He swore and repeated the blow. This time there was silence.
The girls got a fire going in the lee of an overhanging cutting and the boys started chopping up the beast. Their own crude and untrained butchery sickened them and the knives were not big enough for the job. The hide hung slackly on the flesh and they kept coming across impenetrable bone in places they did not know it existed. The bloody meat gave off a strange cooling smell. The crowd gathered around again, nobody looked at the head with its single splintered horn.
They started to toast slices on the end of long sticks. The wind blew the bonfire smoke into their eyes. The sticks caught fire and the meat slid down into the flames and sent up a mouth-watering aroma. They had just started to tear at the first few roasted mouthfuls when Estelle, who was standing out in the roadway said “Look, what’s that?”
A greyish brown band of some kind appeared to be sweeping across the road in the distance but in a moment it could be seen to be a pack of dogs.
Their leader scented the kill and the pack ran yelping and baying down the road. At first nobody worried although the boys picked up sticks. But the pack kept coming. There were more than a hundred dogs of every previously domesticated breed, now reverting to a common wolfish type and colour. Mud-bespattered and ragged with their coats full of burrs they were led by a huge black alsatian whose bitch leaped proudly at his side. They ignored the humans and gathered snarl
ing around the carcase. The noise and the dog stench was crushing. Only the leader and his mate gnawed unmolested, all the others snapped and fought greedily.
It was plain that there was no hope of saving the carcase. The terrified sheep tugged at their tethers and already the weakest of the dogs, denied a share of the cow carcase, were turning away from the edges of the pack and sniffing around the gang and their stock.
“Get out of it,” shouted Ernie and kicked out at one brown mongrel. The dog yelped and several of the pack turned their heads and looked, jaws still champing.
The carcase was now strips of gristle and bones and still over half the pack had had nothing. The black leader raised his long snout and glanced towards the human enemy and their sheep and remaining cow. He trotted forward and then the pack was upon them.
They beat and kicked at the dogs and retreated. The sheep vanished under a yelping mass of fangs. They glimpsed the remaining cow limping off bellowing with three dogs hanging at the drooping flesh of her throat and then she sank to her knees while a hundred jaws tore at her flanks and a hundred tails wagged gaily. Still there was not enough meat for all and they started towards the humans. Charlie and Ernie unstrapped the precious automatic rifles from one of the packs and they loaded up and fired at the advancing dogs. They stopped when their black leader fell and the gang ran farther up the sloping field away from the road. It was a moment before they noticed Julia had stumbled and was sitting rubbing her ankle some hundred yards behind them. The dogs surrounded her and they could hear her screams above the yelping. She managed to stand and hobbled along with dogs jumping and clinging to her arms. Ernie and Charlie tried to fire but the pack closed round her, making it too dangerous. They all paused and Ernie was just starting to lead the way back on a rescue attempt when Robert ran past him snatching his rifle out of his hands as he went. In a moment he was among them, clubbing at them with the butt of the rifle. He cleared a little space, shot some of the dogs and the pack retreated and gathered around the corpse of their leader. The gang came up. Julia was sobbing and Kathy cleaned and bandaged her bites and scratches. Ernie nodded to Robert and strolled down towards the pack. “Ernie, come back,” shrieked Kathy, “Charlie, stop him.” For some reason the dogs turned and walked off before him, all but the alsatian bitch who lay and growled and whined beside her dead mate. Two smaller dogs looked over their shoulders. One had a large patch of white on his back and was otherwise brown, and the other, smaller still, was a black mongrel with some Airedale blood. Ernie could be seen speaking to them and then he laid down his gun a moment, crouched and held out his left hand. The patch dog ran up and then paused a few feet away with his head on one side. Everybody was watching. The rest of the pack were sniffing around the dead bodies of their shot pack-mates and then trotting off in all directions, full of meat, and now leaderless. Ernie reached into his jacket pocket and threw two scraps of roast meat he had snatched up when the pack had first appeared. The dogs wolfed them and then looked up at him brightly and expectantly. He turned and walked slowly away. When he passed the black leader’s widow she growled at him and stopped her whining and the licking of her mate’s stiffening body.
