She had discarded the pistol. She had also discarded her clothes. She was shivering a little. She lifted the map off the still unmade bed and scrambled between the sheets.
‘I haven’t got anything else,’ she said with a grin. ‘Besides, what else can you expect from a screwing machine?’
Greville began to take his shirt off. ‘We’ll start tomorrow morning,’ he said, ‘early. I don’t much care whether Jane is real or not. I don’t much care whether we get to Manchester or not. But I’ll do my best … One way or another, it had to come.’
‘Yes,’ murmured Liz. ‘It had to come.’
Oddly enough, and despite the promptings of sheer physical desire, they did not make love. There were too many ghosts. There was Jane and there was Francis. And above all, there was the sadly overwhelming ghost of a tiny refuge that was about to cease to exist.
Until this moment, thought Greville, he had never properly appreciated his cottage on the island at Ambergreave. It was the only place where he had learned what it was to be alive. It was the only place he had ever loved because it was the only place where he had dared to place his entire self in bondage.
He lay there with Liz in his arms, touching her for the sheer delight of touching. It didn’t matter that Francis and Jane were standing at the foot of the bed. It didn’t matter that mankind had gone down the drain and that personal death was lurking round the corner.
It mattered only that two people could come close enough to look at each other and, though they could never really touch each other or understand each other, not be afraid. Man, he reflected, was doomed to perpetual loneliness though he had never been programmed for it. Man – every man – was a skilled impersonator. But just occasionally there was no need to impersonate anyone or anything. It was enough to exist.
He looked at Liz, lying quietly by his side, and felt as if he were seeing her for the first and last time. He looked at the subtle curves of her breasts, the enigmatic roundness of her belly, the small brown forest that grew between her legs.
Here, he thought, is life. Here is the ancient song. Here is the non-verbal answer to all the verbal sophistications that men have used to demolish themselves and each other since time began.
Then he looked through the window at the grey November light, at the motionless leaves rimmed with a myriad crystals, at the sleeping branches of the apple trees, and back again to the sad long light of impunity.
He didn’t want to make love. He just wanted to hold close and pray.
The only trouble was he was too proud, too empty and too lonely for prayer.
TWENTY-THREE
It had taken them the best part of three days to get within ten miles of Leicester. Greville had optimistically calculated that they could get to Leicester, which was slightly past the half-way mark, with about a hundred and twenty miles of driving. Instead, it had taken nearly two hundred miles of driving; and at that rate, unless he could indulge in a bit of successful scrounging, he would only have enough petrol for a one-way journey. But probably, he reflected with bitter consolation, it was only going to be a one-way journey, anyway. What Liz hoped to accomplish when and if they got as far as Manchester, he had no idea. It was a crazy expedition undertaken for the craziest of reasons in a crazy world by two crazy people. Its chances of success – even if success were only to be defined as mere survival – were just about zero.
They had made a late start from Ambergreave, for there was more work to be done than he had thought. They might have made an earlier start if Liz had not spent half the night screaming. The nightmares had begun a little after midnight. When the screaming started, he had slapped her; but she didn’t even open her eyes. It was as if she were in a trance, lost without recall in the terrors of a private world. The first fit didn’t last much more than an hour. When Liz came out of it, she refused to talk. She just looked at him, wild-eyed, as if he were a total stranger. Greville got up and made a warm drink for them both. Then they got a little sleep – until the next session. That didn’t last quite so long; but there were two more bursts of the same trancelike hysteria before dawn; and when they finally got up they were both bleary-eyed and already worn out.
After a hurried and rather sumptuous breakfast – they had far more food than they could take with them on the journey – Greville had rowed ashore and checked the car, while Liz busied herself collecting guns, ammunition and provisions.
There had been a hard frost and the windows of the station wagon were iced up. It took Greville the best part of an hour to clear them, check the tyres, oil, petrol and battery, and get the engine warmed up. At first he thought it wasn’t going to start – the battery didn’t seem to have enough juice in it to turn the engine over. Eventually, after about twenty minutes of cranking, he managed to get it to fire. He raced it for a while until the whole engine was warm, then switched off and rowed back to the island.
Liz had got most of their treasures out of the cellar and had dumped them in a pile on the floor. There was far too much to carry, and more time was lost over the selection process.
By the time they were ready to move, both of them were feeling hungry again; so they sat down amid the wreckage of their little citadel to eat a final meal.
Greville surveyed what had been his private, secure and very comfortable retreat gloomily. Once it had felt and looked like home. He didn’t think he would ever see it again. Whatever else happened on the fantastic expedition which they were about to undertake, he did not think there would ever be any absolute turning back. The shade of Augustus Rowley could now rest in peace – until the next plague of locusts.
By the time they eventually got started, a red, wintry sun was peeping through the cloud-laden sky. To Greville, it seemed to be the colour of blood – a discouraging omen. Nevertheless, he gave Liz a cheery grin and started the car. They were on their way.
Then everything began to go wrong. Greville had not realised how rapidly the world in which he lived was deteriorating. Two of the roads he had chosen for the first day’s run were blocked – one by a large tree that had fallen across it, and the other by a large hole so camouflaged by grass and weeds that he nearly drove into it.
Greville was impressed by the hole. He got out of the car and inspected it. The grass that covered it had the air of grass that had been established for quite a long time: the dead and dying weeds – convolvulus, nettles, groundsel and bistort – looked as if they had been there since the beginning of the world. He came to the conclusion that the hole had been caused by high explosive. Quite a lot of it. He wondered why such a quiet country lane should have received such attention. He was wondering about it for a long time. But after a couple of days of hard driving, during which he had encountered several such holes, he thought he had the answer.
The roads he had chosen led only through small villages; and if anyone still lived in those villages they might reasonably be expected to protect themselves as best they could against scroungers – particularly well-armed and motorised scroungers, and most particularly against scroungers in convoy who might be able to overwhelm any local resistance and take whatever they wanted.
Greville had a sudden mental vision of all the roads of England – why stop at England? All the roads of the world – being steadily choked by weeds and grass and trees or being deliberately destroyed by man. In the end, with radio and telephone gone, with travel reduced to what a man could accomplish by walking, the world would contain nothing but groups of desert islanders. Strangers would be feared not because they might be dangerous but simply because they were strangers. Then tabu would raise its indestructible head once more; and anyone who did not belong to the family, sect, clan or tribe would be destroyed for the very clear and logical reason that he did not belong.
Greville had to make two major and several minor detours before darkness on the first day. When darkness came, he tried driving on his headlamps; but the effort was too tiring. There was always the risk that every clump of grass concealed a hazar
d, and even if it was only a pot-hole large enough to break a half-shaft, it was still large enough not only to wreck the expedition but to completely ruin the chances of its survival. For Greville and Liz were already a long way from any known sanctuary; and while it was still possible to attempt to get back to Ambergreave on foot, the possibility was not such as to inspire optimism.
They drove off the road and spent the first night in a little clearing that had once been part of a large field. Liz had brought a paraffin stove; and so they were able to heat some of their tinned food and have a reasonably satisfying meal.
They slept uneasily and uncomfortably in the car with the windows up. It was just as well that Greville, despite protestations from Liz, had refused to allow any ventilation.
Huddled together in contortions which they would regret bitterly next day, they had not been dozing long when there was a pattering all over the car that sounded like heavy rainfall. However, it was not heavy rainfall, as Greville discovered when he switched on the interior lighting. It was rats – hundreds or more probably thousands of them – trying to get in.
They could smell meat; and the meat they could smell was filled with terror. Liz gazed at the phalanx of vicious little faces on the bonnet and began to shake uncontrollably. With a curse, Greville leaned forward and pressed the horn. The rats disappeared almost instantly; but within a second or two they were back.
Greville switched on the headlights and illuminated an entire mobile carpet of rats. The clearing was alive with them. They seemed to ebb and flow, an evil hungry tide that looked as if it was about to engulf the entire car.
He started the engine. The noise drove them back briefly. But they became accustomed to it and came on once more.
In a fit equally compounded of anger and fear and plain irritability, Greville slipped the car into first gear and began to drive round the clearing in a tight circle. The rats fell away from the bonnet. Those already on the roof were thrown clear by the motion. Dozens of them, hypnotised by the headlights, passed beneath the wheels. They were immediately torn to pieces by those who perished next time round.
Eventually, it dawned upon the rats that they were on a no-win basis. The survivors – and that included the vast majority – took their leave. But they left behind them a stench; and the stench was so bad that Greville had to move the car back to the relatively exposed road.
Again they tried to settle down to sleep; but sleep would not come. And it was with relief that they took up the journey once more at first light.
It was another jewelled morning. The flat East Anglian landscape, unfettered now, free from the tidy patterns of agriculture, the greedy attentions of man, was reverting to its own primal mystery. Fen and woodland marched towards each other; and the rolling brown acres of ploughed land were no more.
The frost was a heavy one; but the car started easily. While it was warming up Greville and Liz stretched themselves and stamped about to get warm. Liz wanted to make a hot drink, but Greville decided to drive for a while first. As far as human beings – and animals – were concerned, early morning was probably a good time for travelling. Very few of either were at their aggressive best until the day had properly started. Frost translated the petrified landscape into the kind of pictures that were used to illustrate old-fashioned children’s books. Any moment, thought Greville as he chugged along cautiously at twenty-five miles an hour, one might be confronted by the inevitable knight on a white charger. Or possibly dragons.
But neither knights nor dragons presumed to materialise in the desolate, white-edged world. He and Liz were alone with a car-load of junk and desperation.
They were driving from nowhere to nowhere, from oblivion to oblivion, through frozen avenues of time on a winter morning that any sensitive person would have recognised as the naked manifestation of eternity.
In a couple of hours, they had covered nearly thirty miles, which, allowing for the usual stops, map consultations (virtually useless because sign-posts were more or less non-existent) and three small detours, was pretty good going.
Greville felt pleased with himself. He felt entitled to enjoy his breakfast. It consisted of eggs and homemade bread and some precious coffee. Taken by the roadside, with the eggs cooked in bacon fat and the bread used to polish the pan clean and the black coffee stinging his throat like some deliciously painful nectar, he could almost feel happy. He looked at Liz, and his spirits rose. Whatever happened, he told himself firmly, they would stay together.
During the rest of the day they made good progress. Huntingdon had been by-passed without incident. There remained Kettering and Market Harborough as the only towns of appreciable size before Leicester. If he exercised a little bit of ingenuity, it should be possible to get round both of them without too much difficulty.
But whatever route was taken, they could not avoid villages. The two that they passed through during the morning were as silent as the grave. No smoke rose from the chimney-stacks. Cottage windows, glassless, stared blank-eyed and mute. In the third village, passed shortly after midday, a pack of dogs seemed to have used the houses as a temporary refuge. At the sound of the car they came hurling out of doorways and even first-storey windows, eager for something to kill and eat. Watching them lunge futilely at the wheels and the bodywork, Greville was almost sorry for the half-starved brutes. After all, they had been deserted by those to whom traditionally they were supposed to be the best of friends; and like man, they just didn’t know what had hit them.
A more pleasing sight occurred later in the afternoon when Liz and Greville caught sight of a huge herd of deer. They were passing through relatively open country at the time; and the herd of deer were bounding across the plain – almost parallel with the road – in joyous exultation, glorying in life, freedom, the sharp air of late autumn, and the marvellous absence of the restraining and frequently lethal hand of man.
Being of a practical turn of mind, Liz suggested that they stop the car and drop one of the deer for meat. Greville vetoed the idea. He said he didn’t want to waste time skinning and cutting; but secretly he was too moved by the obvious joie de vivre of the herd to want to do anything to spoil it. Besides, they had plenty of food for the time being. The time to shoot deer was when one really needed to.
They had covered nearly seventy miles by nightfall. It wasn’t a bad start. It wasn’t bad at all. This time Greville chose a small hill on which to spend the night – a hill that, according to the map, was miles from anywhere. He kept the car on the roadside, partly on the theory that any predatory animals would be more likely to haunt the nearby woodland and partly on the theory that it would be easier to move away if he had to.
There were no incidents, however – at least, none apart from Liz. The nightmares seemed to be taking an even tighter hold on her. She did not scream this time, she just moaned and shivered and cried softly. Nothing Greville could do would rouse her; and she remained curled up in her seat, sleeping at times, but for most of the time emitting sad and inhuman little noises until well after daybreak.
When, at last, she came to her senses, she did not seem to recognise Greville for a time; and she was strangely uncommunicative throughout most of the morning. She had cooked breakfast like an automaton, programmed for the task. And, in the same way, she had eaten it.
Greville humoured her and tried not to intrude too much upon her private thoughts. It seemed to him that as the morning wore on her spirits were raised slightly. He assumed it was because they were near to Leicester and because she felt that the worst part of the journey was behind them.
But it had nothing to do with how far they were from Leicester or Manchester.
While they were driving along a monotonously straight and relatively clear piece of roadway, Liz said abruptly: ‘Jane’s dead. She died last night … I’m going to have a baby.’
Greville stopped the car and gazed at her in wonderment. ‘Say it all again – slowly. Maybe I’m further round than I thought.’
‘Jane
’s dead,’ repeated Liz. ‘She died last night. It was some kind of fever … Hell, I don’t really know what it was. Maybe it was just starvation and misery, or maybe she just couldn’t stand the screwing any more … Anyway, she said to thank you. She said you were all right … So now we don’t need to go to Manchester any more, do we? She really is dead, you know … I’ve been … I’ve been cut off. It’s an odd sensation … A long time ago I read in a book somewhere about people that had to have limbs amputated. Afterwards, some of them could still feel the fingers and arms that weren’t there … Phantom limbs, I think they were called … Now I’ve got a phantom limb … It’s funny, really.’
Greville looked at her. She was dry-eyed and almost abnormally calm. There was not even a tremor in her voice.
‘So Jane’s dead,’ he managed to say finally. ‘I’m sorry … I really am sorry … You’re sure she’s dead?’
‘I’m sure.’
Greville was silent for a minute or two. ‘You said something else,’ he prompted at length. ‘It didn’t seem to be connected with Jane.’
‘That’s right. I’m going to have a baby.’
He was silent again a for a while. Then: ‘How long have you known?’
‘Three months,’ said Liz unconcernedly. ‘Maybe four … You begin to lose track of time.’
‘And why the bloody hell didn’t you tell me before?’ he exploded violently.
Liz smiled. ‘It will be a little girl … I expect I shall call her Jane.’
‘I said why the hell didn’t you tell me before?’
‘You might have chucked me out. You might have told me to go and have my bloody baby in a field … Besides, you should have known. You saw I was getting fatter, didn’t you?’
‘You were skin and bone when I found you. I thought you were just putting on weight because you were eating reasonably well for a change.’
Cloud Walker, All Fools' Day, Far Sunset Page 35
