The Ice Age

by Margaret Drabble

  Jane clearly did not know that Clyde Barstow was dead.

  So, Jane went on, I kept it to myself, and I kept prodding myself and feeling myself, and I didn’t seem to get any fatter, and I didn’t feel sick, or faint, or any of the other things people are supposed to feel. And after Christmas, I decided I couldn’t be pregnant after all, that it must be something else wrong.

  “You didn’t tell anyone then, even?”

  “No. What would have been the use? Nobody would have cared, anyway. There were girls there suffering from the most awful things, and nobody did anything about it.” She paused. “You don’t suppose there is anything seriously wrong with me, do you?”

  “No, I don’t suppose so for a moment. I’m sure it was just shock. Or the change of climate, and diet. All that kind of thing,” said Anthony vaguely. “Though I’m sure you didn’t do yourself much good by going on hunger strike,” he added, after a moment. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

  An incomprehensible, mystical, fatuous, infuriating expression spread itself, at the question, over the features of Jane Murray, transforming her from a reasonably normal, sensible, coherent person back to the idle and irresponsible teenager he had always thought her to be. He seemed to remember that one of Alison’s complaints about her had been that she used to indulge herself in strange self-inflicted consciousness-raising practices: egg and grapefruit diets, milk diets, rice highs. Barstow and Clegg had guessed that she was starving herself for attention, to make herself exceptional; Anthony had hitherto assumed that she had done it because she thought it regardless of its aim both fashionable and heroic; but he could see from her face that her reasons had been yet more perverse. “I did it to see what it would feel like,” she said.

  It seemed an answer from the dead end of the world.

  “And what did it feel like?” said Anthony bitterly.

  Jane smiled, to herself. “I couldn’t describe it,” she said.

  So it was for this that he had come all this way: the radiant future, the next generation.

  It was his own fault, for asking so stupid a question. His own children’s aspirations were probably no better.

  Nor, for that matter, were his own.

  Jane slept in the bed, Anthony on the floor. He slept badly, and woke from time to time: in the distance, he thought he could hear noises, and his fitful patches of sleep were filled with dreams of airplanes and mines and explosions. At one point he got up and went to the window: the horizon was again lit by a strange pink glow, which might or might not have been the dawn. Jane slept. Anthony heard her even breathing, and was sorry that he had felt angry with her the night before: she was a child of her time, as he of his, and if she wanted to starve herself nearly to death, just for fun, just to see what it felt like, when three quarters of the world was starving reluctantly and in earnest, then that was her affair. Just as it was his affair that he had traveled out here to collect her, and would have done so whether or not he had considered her worth collecting.

  He was glad when it became light; he had to admit to himself that he was intensely anxious, and could not wait to get out of Wallacia. The consul had ordered the car for ten. Breakfast arrived, the only meal that room service recognized, and Jane and Anthony shared it. He checked his papers ten times, making sure that everything was in order. He went down to settle the bill, was told that the hotel had been instructed to send the account to the consulate. He went back again, and he and Jane played Twenty-one, to calm their nerves, while waiting for the car. “In eight hours we’ll be in London,” he said, but somehow he did not believe it: images of possible hitches drifted in front of his eyes—canceled exit visas, searches at the customs, delayed flights.

  The car did not turn up at ten. At quarter past, Anthony tried to ring through to the consulate, but was told that the line was dead, again. He asked the hotel to order a taxi. They said that they would. Ten minutes later they rang back and said that all the taxis were engaged, Anthony would have to wait. Anthony looked at his watch. His heart was beating strangely, he was breaking out in sweat. It was as though he were experiencing the concentrated essence of the panic of all missed flights, all delayed taxis, all missed trains. The airport was only twenty minutes’ drive away, but however could one get there, without a car? Jane also was looking sick with anxiety: we could go down and stand on the street and hitch a lift, she suggested, somebody must be driving that way. It seemed a not impossible suggestion: better, anyway, than sitting in their room, impotent. They made their way down to the foyer, with their two small bags, and there, an answer to their prayers, was the man from Reuters. He had a hired car. Anthony threw himself on his mercy: we have to get to the airport, he said, quickly, could you take us? The man from Reuters looked as harassed and uncertain as they were, but he got his car and told them to hop in; on the way, he interrogated Anthony about Jane’s release. “I hope to God your flight’s there,” he said, as they made their way out of town. “Fighting’s broken out in Beravograd. I think I’d better get off there, when I’ve dropped you. It looks as though you’ll just get out in time.”

  “I feel sick,” said Jane.

  “No time to be sick now,” said the man from Reuters. “Wait till you get on the plane. They provide paper bags on the plane.”

  He pulled up outside the terminal building at eleven: officially, they were five minutes late for checking in. “There’s your plane,” said the man from Reuters. It was standing on the airfield. “Don’t worry, they’ll let you on. But you’d better get moving.”

  Anthony and Jane jumped out, with their bags. They made their way to the airport building, which seemed to be bustling with more activity than one flight would warrant. A lot of large trucks and armored cars stood about. Anthony did not know which door to approach, at which desk to present himself: the notices were in German and Wallacian and Bulgarian only. There were too many men in uniform about. Anthony had never felt so anxious in his life. Something was wrong: what should he do? He looked about: there, after all, was the right desk for checking in, with the flight time and number announced. He ran over to it, and quickly uncrumpled the air tickets from his pocket, and flung them down in front of the steward, who was on the telephone. “Please,” said Anthony. “ Pelquej.” It was one of the only twelve words of Wallacian he knew: Humphrey Clegg had taught it to him over breakfast. It attracted the steward’s attention, but did not detach him from the phone. Still talking fast in Wallacian, he looked at Anthony, looked at his watch, shook his head at Anthony, pointed to the clock. “Pelquej,” said Anthony again, with desperate urgency, and pointed to the forlorn Jane three yards behind him, hoping to God that she looked more like an ill child than a criminal driver prematurely released from jail. Anthony could see the airport bus, full of lucky checked-in passengers, ready to taxi across the runway to the silver plane: it was only twenty yards away. The steward continued his urgent conversation; even the distraught Anthony managed to take in that it did sound urgent, rather than desultory. Finally, he slammed down the receiver, and turned to Anthony. Anthony pushed the tickets once more under his nose. He gesticulated, wildly, at the plane, at Jane. In despair, he heard the airport bus driver switch on the ignition: to his relief, the steward, glancing at Jane, at Anthony, at the tickets, at the passports, made a signal to the driver. He switched off the ignition. He would wait. Jane burst into tears of relief. The steward stamped their tickets, waved them on: they still had to go through the customs, through passport control. Delays here, Anthony could see, would be the end. The customs man seemed satisfied that they could have nothing to declare, in view of the small quantity of their hand baggage, and even made some joke about hidden vodka. Anthony, fretting, impatient, managed to praise the local brand yet again; as he had praised it to the hotel barman, to the taxi driver, to the friendly woman in the hotel kitchen, to the deputy Minister of Social and Public Order. His ears were straining for the sound of the passenger bus’s ignition: he could no longer see it or the airfield, for they
had entered one of those long, low, insubstantial sheds that litter airports. The customs man waved them on, around the corner, to the passport office. From here, they could see the airfield: the bus was still waiting, but its driver was looking at his watch. So were some of the passengers. They were as eager to get out of Wallacia as Anthony himself.

  Anthony could not have explained why he was so afraid of the passport inspector. It was irrational: they had let him in on his Foreign Office visa, why should they not let him out? But he could tell, from the expression on the inspector’s face, that there was trouble. He stamped Jane’s, but when he opened Anthony’s he stared at it in perplexity, and scratched his ear. Then he beckoned to another official, and they stared at Anthony’s passport together, and together shook their heads. Jane glanced at Anthony with an expression of such terror on her face that his stomach turned; she had been through enough, worse than she had told him. She was a brave girl: she had survived well. He was trying to think of some way of asking, through gesture, if Jane could go through and catch the plane without him, when he heard, from the long hall out of sight around the corner behind him, a lot of shouting and commotion, which promised yet more delay, for it distracted the passport official entirely from the task of vetting Anthony Keating: he made off toward the inner hall, leaving Anthony and Jane alone together in the small, final office, the last step.

  He took Anthony Keating’s passport with him. Jane’s lay, stamped, on the desk.

  The driver of the bus had his eye on them. He beckoned. Anthony waved, begging him to wait. The driver shrugged. Across the airfield, the plane shimmered in the morning sun. The driver switched on the engine again. Anthony picked up Jane’s passport from the desk, thrust her passport and ticket into her hands (and with extraordinary presence of mind, the papers for Clegg). The bus set off. “Run,” said Anthony. “Run.”

  Jane ran. On thin sticklike legs she ran after the bus, in a spurt of energy he would not have thought left in her, waving, shouting: the bus slowed down for her, and he saw her clamber on to it, and look back toward him. “I’ll catch the next plane out,” he shouted after her, waving, smiling, though he doubted if she could hear. The bus speeded up, toward the runway. Anthony turned back to the flimsy, featureless, empty little office, still hoping that perhaps the official would return in time for him to follow Jane, telling himself that there was no reason why Jane should not travel safely by herself, telling himself that at the worst, he would indeed catch the next flight out.

  But there was no next flight. As Anthony walked toward the door that separated the passport control from the main hallway, there was an explosion. Bursts of gunfire followed it. Anthony flung himself on the floor, behind the passport official’s desk. Jane, as the plane moved off, saw smoke rising from the terminal and heard shooting. She was too frightened even to scream. The other passengers also were glued to the windows: the plane gathered speed. The pilot, a Turk from Istanbul, had no intention of hanging around to see what was the matter; the air hostess made soothing announcements about seat belts and cigarettes, in several languages, including English. The plane lurched horribly upward. There, below, was a scattered scene of confusion: trucks and cars were converging on the airport, tiny figures were running in all directions, smoke continued to pour upward. The plane rose relentlessly, leaving Anthony Keating to his fate. Everyone on board it, except for Jane, heaved a sigh of relief. It had been a near thing. Air travel was so risky these days: hijacks, civil wars, guerrilla attacks. They relapsed into chatter, those who were innocently passing through from Istanbul to Zurich: solid businessmen relaxed, bankers stretched their legs and thought of ordering drinks. A CIA man pretending to be a travel agent decided, too late, that he should have stayed behind, and several Wallacians, some with all their worldly wealth concealed on their persons, congratulated themselves on having utilized their privileged exit visas just in time. Where they would go, what they would do there, they hardly knew. But anywhere would be better than Wallacia, their home, their native land. Life in Wallacia, they guessed, would not be particularly pleasant for anybody, in the near future, least of all for those who had backed the wrong horses. Though, as one or two considered, remembering the history of Czechoslovakia, of Hungary, of Cyprus, of Lebanon, maybe this was a race that no horse would win.

  Life in the immediate future was extremely unpleasant for Anthony Keating. He lay on the floor under the desk, and waited. He could smell fire. His one consolation was the sound of the departing airplane: run, he had said to Jane Murray, and she had run, perhaps for her life. She was on board, on her way back to the West, to Alison, to doctors, to Palmolive soap and Tampax. And here was he, stuck under a desk, without his passport.

  He waited there for quite a while. The noises increased, then diminished. He had plenty of time to speculate about the nature of the activity, but could arrive at no conclusions. Humphrey Clegg had not briefed him for this possibility. He wished he knew more of the history of the Balkans. The history of the Balkans was so confusing that he had always chosen other options, at school, at university. But now there was no other option. He tried to recall a few facts. Was it in the fourteenth century that the Ottomans had invaded? He thought hard: in 1453, Constantinople fell. To whom? He had forgotten: 1829, Greek independence acknowledged; 1830, Serbian independence acknowledged. In 1913 the Balkan League—ah yes, this was rather nearer home—the Balkan League defeated Turkey, in a series of battles so complex, and fought on so many fronts, that no one had ever been able to memorize them. He was sure it had been 1913. Then there had been the First World War, and the Second World War. Electoral victories for the Communists in most of the states. Peace treaties between Hungary, Bulgaria, Rumania and the Allies in 1947. Tito in Yugoslavia, Hoxha in Albania, Tetov in Wallacia, three independents. Warsaw Pact, 1955. Both Albania and Wallacia had subsequently withdrawn from the Warsaw Pact, though for different ideological reasons. When? He could not remember. Why? He had never known.

  As a boy, thought Anthony, this is how I spent the time at the dentist’s. Trying to remember dates, to stop thinking about the pain. He was out of practice, as most Western civilians are. Anthony Keating had never thought of himself as physically courageous. On the contrary, he had always assumed that if put to any kind of test, he would prove a coward. But after a quarter of an hour lying on a dusty floor under a desk, he began to think that his old enemy, boredom, was rather worse than fear. He would certainly not like to be stuck there forever. The shooting had died down. He decided to go out and investigate.

  He stood up, and dusted himself down. He decided that the best thing to do would be to look as calm and normal as possible, as though he had every right to be there. As long as nobody spoke to him in Wallacian, who knows, he might be able to walk away unharmed, unobserved. He was alarmed, as he stood up, to find that he was shaking and trembling: that would be a giveaway. He did not wish to be shot down as a shaker and trembler. He practiced controlling his muscles. I must put a good face on it, he thought. Emulate Michael Caine, Sean Connery. He made himself think of Jane, by now well over the mountains. He could see why the poor child had gone on a hunger strike. It was a free act, not to eat. Anthony walked to the door leading out of the little hardboard office and quietly opened it.

  The scene before his eyes was unpleasant. Various officials lay dead on the ground, watched by various other officials. Most of the dead people had been not very adequately covered with sheets of newspaper, a small mercy. There was clearly no possibility of crossing this particular arena unquestioned and unmolested, however little one trembled, so Anthony quietly shut the door again, unobserved. He would leave the other way.

  He went out onto the airfield. There was nobody in sight. Well, there was nothing else for it. He would have to try to get away. This was a dangerous place to loiter, even though the building itself was no longer on fire.

  The airport bus was standing, abandoned, a few yards away. He wondered whether it would be worth making a dash for it
, hoping that the ignition key was still in place. He decided not. He would look conspicuous in an airport bus: he did not at all resemble the blond Wallacian driver. In fact, he did not resemble in coloring or physique any Wallacian he had yet seen. He looked what he was, an English gentleman of the middle classes. He had no hope of disguising himself in this flat terrain. Krusograd itself was not particularly flat; he thought with longing of all the little nooks and crannies and kitchen gardens he had passed on the way to the prison yesterday morning. But the airport, like all airports, was as bare and level and exposed a place as the engineers had been able to find. Naturally.

  He began to think it might be wiser to wait until nightfall, before doing anything at all. But the prospect filled him with despair. It was still only midday. Should he go and present himself—haughtily demand protection, asylum, repatriation—to the British consul? He thought of Clyde Barstow. Better not. He leaned against the whitewashed wall, and blew his nose firmly in his handkerchief. Then he went back into the passport control office, sat down at the passport control desk, and started to finish the John le Carré, which was waiting for him in his bag.