Cloud Walker, All Fools' Day, Far Sunset

by Cooper, Edmund

  ‘You’re far gone,’ said Meg. ‘But aren’t we all … You said something about collecting women, I believe. We need women very badly.’

  ‘Unless something drastic has happened,’ said Greville, ‘and we can’t rule that out of course, there’s a remarkable character called Father Jack who has about thirty women at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Newmarket … I think if we put the proposition to him in the right way, he might join us. But that we wouldn’t know until and unless we sent someone to tell him all about the idea … I think he’d join us if only because one man can’t hope to survive a lot of bloody females for ever. He’s quite a character, is Father Jack. He saved our lives once – on a purely commercial basis, of course.’

  Greville felt exhausted. He was amazed at himself. He was amazed at the unfounded optimism, the glib talk, the unreasonable assumptions. He was amazed even that Meg and Joseph had heard him out. Most of all he was amazed that they did not laugh.

  The scheme was hair-brained, impractical and doomed. It was nothing more than a sick man’s fancy, a wish-fulfilment for a man so traumatised at the prospect of becoming a daddy that he was busy building new Jerusalems out of daydreams and a high temperature.

  There was quite a long silence.

  ‘It’s mad enough to have a chance of working,’ muttered Joseph almost as if to himself.

  ‘He’s stupid enough and dangerous enough to make it work,’ said Meg grimly. She turned to Greville. ‘I suppose we’ll have to make you emperor, as well.’

  Greville smiled. ‘No. I’ve just thought of a nice democratic safeguard. We’ll have a monarchy but no king. I’ll be simply the king’s general … If you ever get a king, he’ll be able to sack me.’

  ‘Where did you say this convent of the whatnot was?’

  ‘Newmarket.’

  ‘You think your Father Jack would agree?’

  ‘If he doesn’t, we could always beg, borrow or steal … But he will.’

  ‘You know,’ said Meg thoughtfully, ‘I’m beginning to think that any direction is better than no direction … How would you propose to open up negotiations with Father Jack?’

  ‘I’d write him a letter.’

  ‘So all we need now,’ said Joseph drily, ‘is faith and a gentleman with a cleft stick … You’re a fool, Greville. An absolute fool. But then history was made by fools … I’m very much afraid we’re going to have to make you the king’s general, after all.’

  Liz joined in the conversation for the first time. She threw joined the bed clothes and gazed at her stomach in amazement. ‘It’s quickened,’ she exclaimed. ‘I feel as if I’ve just swallowed a squirrel with a big bushy tail.’

  THIRTY

  It was spring – a riotous and intoxicating spring that, coming after a fairly mild and wet February, had covered the land with a carpet of green and the trees with a thick powdering of buds almost a month earlier than it should have done.

  Greville was riding with three other heavily armed men in a jeep along a weed-covered road where bumps and pot-holes were giving him considerable anxiety; for Liz, travelling with some of the women in a large truck about a hundred yards behind him, was in the last month of her pregnancy. The baby could arrive any time. But he did not want it to arrive on the road to Newmarket. The entire company – a hundred and twenty-three people – would rest up for a few days at the Convent of the Sacred Heart before they took the road once more to Cornwall. That would be the ideal time for Liz to have her baby. Then she could get a bit of strength back before they started on the last leg of the journey.

  The jeep stopped, and the column of vehicles behind it stopped, as they had stopped once every half-mile or so all the way from Leicestershire. Presently the two motor-cycle outriders who had been forging ahead roared back into view and waved them on, signifying that the next half-mile of road was clear and navigable.

  The jeep jerked forward once more and continued at the leisurely speed of fifteen miles an hour. The odd assortment of cars, vans, trucks and station wagons behind it dutifully kept the regulation convoy distance of fifty yards between each vehicle.

  Looking back over the last few months, Greville was still surprised at the speed with which his ideas had been accepted by Meg and Joseph and the group of people they represented. He was even more surprised at the speed and ease with which he had assumed the role of ‘king’s general’. At first he had taken his office lightly, seeing it as no more than a temporary expedient for getting things done. At first the title itself had been no more than a joke, invented on the spur of the moment. But the joke had a hidden subtlety; and the title had stuck. It had amused everyone. It had provided a necessary focus for their sense of the absurd.

  Only a monarch could depose the king’s general. But there was no monarch. And if ever the group got tired of Greville’s autocracy they would have to create a greater autocrat to bring it to an end. For the present, however, they were content. Greville had offered them something more than mere personal survival: he had offered purpose and direction. The odd thing was, he reflected, that even transies needed something in which to believe, some concept of a future that it was possible to build.

  The joke, Greville realised, was on himself. He had never imagined that he really possessed qualities of leadership. He had never imagined that he could accept responsibility for the fate of an entire community. Yet here he was, a white-haired if rather juvenile Moses, leading a small tribe of crazy and credulous human beings to a promised Land’s End.

  Land’s End … The finality of the title itself was symbolic. For if one was going to make a new beginning where better to start than at Land’s End.

  Greville moved his arm and felt a dull stab in his shoulder. The wound had healed beautifully; but there was always a stiffness when it was going to rain. He looked at the sky – clear blue with a few puffy white clouds. But he knew it was going to rain. The shoulder never lied.

  The jeep stopped once more. One of the motor-cycle outriders, a boy of perhaps eighteen, roared back to it, pulled up with a flourish and a screech of brakes, and saluted Greville. ‘The convent is just over a mile ahead, sir.’ He grinned. ‘We made contact with their day-guard … Dead smashing!’

  ‘Go back and tell Father Jack we’ll be with him in ten minutes,’ said Greville. ‘Tell him not to worry about food or sleeping arrangements. All we’ll need will be a bit of space.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The boy saluted again and slapped the butt of the rifle that was slung over his shoulder. Then he roared off again.

  It was funny, thought Greville, how so many of the young ones had developed a sudden enthusiasm for military etiquette. They stood to attention at the drop of a hat. They saluted like mad. And they seemed to compete with each other in every possible way to obtain the favour of the king’s general. He hoped it wasn’t an omen. He had no intention of founding a military state.

  Poor Joseph! Poor Meg! Nobody seemed to pay much attention to them these days. And how they hated the efficiency and discipline that Greville had imposed. Perhaps they saw him as an anachronism – a sort of fascist dinosaur that wouldn’t lie down.

  And yet whenever Greville talked with them in public, he made a great point of being deferential. He wanted everyone to know that the king’s general existed only on sufferance. Oddly enough nobody seemed convinced. The prevailing attitude seemed to be that Meg and Joseph – the remains of an ineffectual triumvirate – existed on sufferance, and it amused Greville to make them feel they were necessary as advisers.

  The jeep was moving again. The road had given way to a narrow and overgrown track. The Convent of the Sacred Heart was only two or three hundred yards ahead.

  Greville began to relax. The first part of the journey was over without a single casualty. It was, he felt, a major triumph. What was more important, Liz had not given birth en route. And that was an even greater triumph.

  The jeep pulled up at the convent gates. Greville glanced round quickly. The jeep was covered, he was pleased
to note, by two groups of Father Jack’s young ladies, complete with rifles, sten-guns and machine pistols. Somewhere in the background he caught a glimpse of a bazooka team.

  Father Jack himself, unchanged, still wearing the long black habit of a priest, came out through the convent gates and greeted him. ‘Forgive the welcome committee, but one doesn’t take unnecessary chances … I trust you had a reasonable journey, my son.’

  ‘Much better than I thought,’ said Greville. ‘Incidentally, how many girls have you got? My messengers said you had thirty-five?’

  Father Jack sighed. ‘We were rather inconvenienced in January. A very bad month. The number is now twenty-seven … How many men have you got?’

  ‘Eighty-three.’

  ‘My, my,’ said Father Jack. ‘What lucky girls they are … You realise, of course, that the whole expedition is ludicrous.’

  ‘Certainly. Life itself has become ludicrous. What have we got to lose?’

  Father Jack smiled. ‘I don’t know about you. But I personally have a great deal to lose – I’m happy to say … I trust, my dear fellow, for the sake of your sanity, that you never have to be responsible for a body of women.’

  At that point, a small boy ran forward to the jeep. ‘Please, general,’ he said breathlessly, ‘it’s Liz. I was told to say she had been taken short. They reckon the baby is going to come pretty soon. They said I was to tell you because you said you wanted to be there.’

  Father Jack beamed. ‘Well, well. An auspicious omen. Needless to say, we have our own maternity ward. Some of the girls are a trifle adventurous at times. Perhaps you had better bring your dear lady inside.’

  Greville’s shoulder began to ache once more.

  He looked at the sky.

  It started to rain.

  EPILOGUE

  7 July 2011. Shortly after dawn.

  A servant carrying a tray entered the tent of the Kaygee of the Army of the Western Republic. The servant coughed deferentially and set the tray down by the white-haired old man in the sleeping bag.

  Greville was awake, but he pretended to be asleep. He thought the servant might decide to go away. He would have liked a few more minutes to savour his private thoughts.

  But the man just stood there uncertainly, coughing and making discreet little noises, hoping to rouse his master without appearing to have actually done so.

  Greville sighed. It wasn’t the man’s fault, of course. He had standing orders for the expedition: to deliver early morning tea every day fifteen minutes after dawn.

  The man coughed again, louder. Greville sat up.

  ‘Good morning, Kaygee. I hope you slept well.’

  ‘Well enough. What’s the weather like?’

  ‘It’s going to be another fine day. A little early mist, but it will be gone by the time you have finished breakfast. Shall I pour, sir?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Greville watched the level of hot, steaming tea rise in his cup. It was going to taste wonderful. It always did. He still had not accustomed himself to the luxury. It was only a year ago that some adventurous young captain had taken his windjammer as far as Ceylon and brought back the first cargo of tea for over thirty years.

  As yet, thought Greville, sipping the delicious liquid gratefully, tea was only for the rich and the powerful. But soon other windjammers would follow the first; and then everyone in the Republic would be able to have his morning cup. Which would prove that God was in his heaven once more and all was right with the world.

  ‘Another cup, Kaygee?’ The servant held the pot expectantly.

  ‘No thank you. That’s quite enough.’

  The servant smiled, put the cup and saucer (fine bone china) back on the tray and went out of the tent. Greville amended his list of tea-drinkers to the rich and the powerful – and their servants. He knew that the pot would be drained and a pinch of carbonate of soda added to the tea-leaves to make them yield a second brew before they were thrown away.

  He got out of the sleeping bag and stretched. Then he began to put on his clothes slowly, cautiously, methodically. At sixty-seven one did everything slowly, cautiously and methodically, he reflected. It was not an age at which one could easily afford sudden movements. Nor was it an age at which one could easily make lightning decisions … Or, having made them, understand why …

  He stepped out of the tent, and sniffed the morning air. The sentry brought his rifle to the present and slapped its butt so hard that Greville winced. The man’s hand must be tingling with pain, yet he stared ahead blankly.

  ‘Way for the Kaygee!’ he shouted ceremoniously, though there was no one in the immediate vicinity to obstruct the passage of the Kaygee.

  ‘Good morning,’ said Greville.

  ‘Morning – sir !’ shouted the sentry, as if he were addressing a multitude.

  ‘Dismiss.’

  The sentry slapped his rifle again and went ostentatiously through the ritual of dismissal.

  Greville was alone. Except for the fact that if he so much as sneezed half a dozen men would appear from nowhere to protect the Kaygee against disaster.

  He had marched a column of two hundred men all the way from Truro to London. And he still didn’t know why.

  There had been reasons, of course. There had to be reasons – otherwise Father Jack, the first President of the Republic, would not have given his official blessing. Greville would have come just the same; but for political purposes it was necessary for the Kaygee and the President to be in complete harmony.

  The reasons he had given Father Jack were quite convincing: it was necessary – now that the Republic was thriving – to find out the state of the country, to explore the possibility of further recruitment, to look for various scientific and technical instruments that could not at present be manufactured by the Republic’s resources, and to seek out any other organised communities with which the Republic might develop mutually profitable relations.

  But Father Jack was not easily deluded.

  ‘Greville, my son, he had said, ‘we have nearly seven thousand citizens, the economy is sound and I don’t give a damn if the clever lads at Truro University need an electron microscope or whatever. As far as I can see, what they need first of all is a change of nappies … But if you have set your heart on this expedition, then I’ll have to give the official say-so, in which case it’s just as well that you’ve got some nice official reasons. They don’t mean anything to me but I suppose they’ll keep the Council of Electors happy. Just don’t get yourself killed, that’s all.’

  And so, after a leisurely march across southern England, Greville’s column was encamped in what had once been Battersea Park on the South Bank of the Thames. Today, they would enter what was left of the City of London. But that was not important to Greville. All that mattered at the moment was that he was about to keep a sentimental rendezvous.

  It was almost eleven years since Liz had died. She had given him two sons and a daughter. Then all had been set for them to share a decade or two of contentment and relative peace. Except that she had developed cancer of the womb. When it got too bad, Greville himself had delivered the coup de grace. That was the way Liz had wanted it.

  Two sons and a daughter. Conrad, twenty-nine, and – so they said – a brilliant biologist. But Greville was never really sure that Conrad was his own son; and, oddly, because of that he loved him more than the others. Then there was Jason, twenty-three, a born trouble-maker who thought that everybody who had ever lived had been crazy except, perhaps, Joe Stalin and Mao-tse-tung. And after Jason there was Jane, nineteen, and probably the most beautiful woman in the Republic. Jane was a born actress, as was evinced by the packed houses of Truro Theatre. She didn’t look at all like Liz. She didn’t look at all like Greville. Only Jason looked like Liz – which was, perhaps, why Greville couldn’t carry out his duty and execute him when he had led the rebellion. About three hundred citizens had been killed before it was over. The death penalty was obvious and inevitable.

  But
, in the end, Father Jack had saved the day with his decree of lifelong exile. Jason had been packed off to Ireland to see if he could convert the savages to neo-Marxism.

  Greville looked at the remains of Battersea Park in the early light. It was nothing more than a piece of wilderness – primeval, as if man had just set foot in it for the first time …

  ‘Kaygee, will you breakfast now?’

  Greville was snapped out of his reverie by the appearance of a bright young man with one star on his shoulder.

  ‘I rather think I will not breakfast at all, thank you.’

  ‘But, Kaygee, the President himself instructed us to—’

  ‘The President is over-anxious,’ said Greville. ‘Dismiss.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Wait a moment.’ Greville had a sudden thought. ‘The scouts have been across to the other side?’

  ‘Yes, Kaygee.’

  ‘Did they establish any contact?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Then we may take it that the bridge is clear and open?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Good, I think I’ll take a little walk. Give me two men and tell the Second that I’ll be back in half an hour.’

  ‘But, Kaygee,’ protested the young man helplessly, ‘we have explicit instructions from the President not to let you—’

  ‘Bugger the President,’ interrupted Greville calmly. ‘In the nicest possible way, of course. Now do what I said.’

  ‘Yes, Kaygee,’ said the young man miserably. ‘Will you confirm it in writing?’

  ‘I’ll confirm your arse if you don’t move.’

  The lieutenant almost literally evaporated. He was replaced by two of Greville’s bodyguard, armed with automatic rifles and grenades.

  ‘Follow me at twenty paces, and don’t let me know you’re there unless it’s a matter of life and death.’