A wave of knowledge came over me, an awareness of all that life. Before now it had only been memory—that house where the Sacketts lived, with its square, three-storeyed front and the stucco over the door, it was as real as the Wall; and the people in the streets—men with bowler hats … John Sackett’s phrases that my father made such fun of: ‘‘I must confess—and, ‘‘How he could get himself to—and, “I may be wrong, but—”
He was so certain of everything, John Sackett, and so clear. I could see his pale blue eyes in front of me, and his blue suit—bright blue, with a tie of the same colour, only a little brighter—and his voice saying: “I must confess—”
That was my father’s voice, now, mimicking him: “I must confess—” And my mother’s voice protesting. She had always protested before the war… not after he came back. She had loved him deeply. Her scoldings were her way of showing it, but now she was patient, waiting above….
“Don’t mind me,” she had said to me that night—the night he had gone. “Don’t mind me. I’m not suffering. He had to do it. I might have been with him more then, as I’m with him now.”
It was a strange new knowledge of my mother, that night. She had been the strong one, like a deep sea—not an intelligence nor any of these things.
In one way it had been death to her—real death—but she had passed into another world, out of the surges of the little waves that had troubled her.
The way was getting difficult—very difficult—now that the dim light above was going and the fires below had died down. It was difficult, and it hurt a good deal—some of the falls …
If the path hadn’t been there—the queer unexpected path from the waterfall—it would be very hard to find a way up this hill, so steep and slippery now, and with the hard edges.
If I could light one of the big candle-matches, I should be able to see.
I was panting, and my heart was bursting, the way was so steep. If I could go on steadily, thinking of other things instead of the black dome of rock overhead that would not let me through when I reached it… . It was when I began to think of it that I knew that I was afraid.
I pulled myself together. There was a buzzing in my ears. I could hear something calling out to me. I drew myself up. It could not be possible that anything was calling to me. Perhaps it was only the buzzing in my own head, like the buzzing of a bee. Perhaps it was the stone ledges that were so hard in the dark, and so steep and echoing. My steps were loud on them. I could hear them now, and the echoes of them, though I hadn’t heard them before. They seemed to be exaggerated —yes, that was the word, “exaggerated”—the word my father was so fond of using when my mother came in with some story, any story about anything, even the day when I myself had nearly been drowned in the mill-race below the bridge, and for the first time I had seen my mother face my father as an equal.
I felt my mother’s hand still as she pressed mine to her breast that day. She had a rose pinned to her dress—a yellow rose—and she had pressed my hand against its thorns, not knowing.
That was the first day that I had seen her strength—that she was the strong one; that she could work miracles. Now if she were thinking of me, willing me to come back to her…
I felt that the power lay with her now, if she were alive … and, even if she were dead, she would have strength, not like my father.
She had endured agonies for both of us, while we had gone our way. There was nothing now between her and me that she couldn’t break through … only a skin of earth.
We had left the trouble to her, but now I was coming back to her. It was she who was calling to me. It must be she.
I was so confused! If she was near me—if I could reach her—I would go down into the depths with her. She wouldn’t be alone there, as she had always been….
The wind was very cold, and I was shivering. I was so hot, too, burning … and the wind was cold.
I had been down there where it was warm, but I couldn’t stay there because their politics were so strange … but it was warm there, and they had a peace that was not to be found up above— a suffocating peace. They made their lives to fit them there, like a suit of clothes to measure, not a heap of stuff and patches… .
I must stop this wandering thought, pull my thoughts together….
The calling had ceased, but, up above, there were fantastic shapes, as if there were men—men waving lights down at me. … I must be raving … but I was awake.
If I could hurry on and shake off the raving….
That noise was coming again—the noise of men calling. That was the noise of my own voice answering, calling back to them.
If I could run, I might be able to stop calling out to these phantoms that were calling back to me, coming down at me from above. If there were only light, I shouldn’t be afraid. … If I could light one of the match-candles that they had given me, but it was on my back, over the knapsack.
Above me, lights were shining … lights in the hands of the phantom men in my path.
If I could get past them, up into the earth….
I made a great effort, breaking the things that held me. My heart was bursting … flashes piercing the darkness round me … everything crashing, bursting….
I was over a gulf… falling into the darkness.
. . . . . . . .
A voice was saying, from a great distance:
“I didn’t think you could do it, Mrs. Julian. He had gone so far. But you have. The fever is gone. Listen to his breathing, smooth, steady. You’ve done what we couldn’t do.’’
I listened to the voice. It had the labour and the music of life, the coarse deep music of life. I was back in the dark lands again, where voices like that came to me.
How had I got back into the lowlands near the Central Sea? It was only there I had heard voices like that, since I left the earth.
And I was at peace, not taut or tense, but at peace—a soft ebb and flow, ebb and flow, full of sweetness—and there was my mother’s voice now.
“I knew, when he came back to me, Doctor, that he wouldn’t go away, so soon, again. He must have wanted terribly to come back. He was always like that—”
I knew that if I opened my eyes the voices would be gone. I lay very still, listening. It was strange that there was light above my eyelids. I could feel the light coming through them.
My mother’s voice was speaking again:
“If they hadn’t heard his cries, Doctor… the chances of the huntsman having to follow the dogs down into that old disused mine-pit were so small… if God hadn’t willed that he should come back to me …”
Then the man’s voice came again:
“It’s not the first time that same fox has escaped through that cave. It’s strange that you should call it a mine-pit, Mrs. Julian. You know the country people round here always maintain that it’s not really a cave, but a mine—an old Roman mine. They say it goes on miles and miles down into the darkness, and certainly we’ve lost good hounds down there after that cursed fox. But this time it was a mighty fortunate thing he went to earth there, or else—”
“God answered my prayers, Doctor,” came my mother’s voice.
“How he got into the mine, or the cave, or whatever it is,” came the man’s voice, “it’s that that beats me. Do you know, Mrs. Julian, that he was so far down that, when they heard the cries first, they didn’t know they were the shouts of a man. They thought it was some wild beast crying away down there in the darkness. And you’ve seen what his kit is like—as if he had been wandering for months or years in a tropical jungle.”
“I knew that he would come back, Doctor,” came my mother’s voice again.
“Those extraordinary candles he had in his knapsack, too,” said the man’s voice. “And the curious phosphorus balls, and the bag of serpent-skin. Where were these made? Not in England, I’d swear, nor anywhere else that I know of. The whole thing beats me. And how did he get down here to Yorkshire?”
A woman was laughing softly. It w
as my mother’s laugh. I was dead, but my soul was with my mother.
“Anthony?” came her voice softly over my eyes. “Anthony, can you hear me?”
I opened my eyes slowly. She held them with her own, flooding me with the healing sweetness of her look. I thought of those other eyes, and suddenly I was shivering. Then her arms went round me, holding me in their warm security. She was speaking:
“God has brought you back to me, my son.”
Her arms tightened round me.
“Yes, mother,” I said.
THE END
Also by Joseph O’Neill
Wind from the North
Land Under England
Day of Wrath
About the Author
Joseph O’Neill (1878-1952)
Joseph O’Neill was an Irish educationist and author. He worked as the Permanent Secretary to the Department of Education, Irish Free State, between 1923 and 1944. Although not strictly an SF writer, O’Neill used SF instruments to make cultural and political points with great eloquence. Land Under England (1935), about an underground world where citizens are controlled by telepathy, is a satire on Hitlerian totalitarianism.
Copyright
This edition first published in Great Britain in 2018 by Gollancz
an imprint of the Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Carmelite House, 50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
An Hachette UK Company
Text copyright © Joseph O’Neill 1935
Introduction copyright © Adam Roberts 2018
The moral right of Joseph O’Neill to be identified as the author of this work, and the right of Adam Roberts to be identified as the author of the introduction, has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
eISBN 978 1 473 22407 0
www.gollancz.co.uk
www.sfgateway.com
:-)
Dec. 2020
Land Under England Page 28
