Fugue for a Darkening Island

by Christopher Priest

  After a minute or two I said: "But it can't stay this way for ever. It's not a stable situation."

  Lateef grinned. "Not now it isn't."

  "Now?"

  "We're armed. That's what the difference is. The refugees can unite, defend themselves. With rifles we can take back what is ours . . . freedom!"

  I said: "That's insane. You've only got to leave this wood and the first detachment of regular troops will slay you."

  "A guerrilla army. Thousands of us, all over the country. We can occupy villages, ambush supplies-convoys. But we'll have to be careful, have to stay hidden."

  "Then what would be the difference?"

  "We'll be organized, armed, _participating_."

  "No," I said. "We mustn't become involved in the war. There's too much already."

  "Come on," he said. "We'll put it to the others. It'll be democratic, it can only work if we're all in favour."

  We walked back through the trees to where the others were waiting for us. I sat on the ground a little distance from Lateef, and looked at the handcarts laden with crates. I was only half listening to Lateef; my mind was preoccupied with the image of a disorganized band of men, thousands of them in every rural area of the country, hungering for revenge against the impersonal military forces and civilian organizations on every side.

  I saw that where once the refugees had represented a desperate but ineffectual neutral presence in the fighting, their organization into a fighting guerrilla force -- if such a task could be accomplished -- would only add to the chaos which tore at the country.

  I stood up and backed away from the others. As I stumbled through the trees, with an ever-growing desperation to be away from them, I heard the men shout their approval in unison. I headed south.

  I noticed the girl on a table a few feet away from mine. As soon as I recognized her I stood up and walked over to her.

  "Laura!" I said.

  The girl stared at me in surprise. Then she recognized me, too.

  "Alan!"

  I am not generally motivated by nostalgia, but for some reason I had come back to the restaurant in the park, automatically associating it with the times I had spent with Laura Mackin. Even though I was dwelling on the memory of her, it took me by surprise to see her; I had not known she still came here.

  She moved to my table.

  "Why are you here?"

  "Isn't that obvious?"

  We stared at each other across the table. "Yes."

  We ordered some wine to celebrate with, but it was oversweet. Neither of us wanted to drink it, but we could not be bothered to complain to the waiter.

  We toasted each other, and the rest didn't matter. While we ate I was trying to work out why I had come here. It could not have been only a seeking for the past. What had I been thinking during the morning? I tried to remember, but memory was inconveniently blank.

  "How is your wife?"

  The question that had been so far unspoken. I had not expected her to ask it.

  "Isobel? The same."

  "And you are still the same."

  "No one changes much in two years."

  "I don't know."

  "What about you? Are you still sharing a flat?"

  "No. I've moved."

  We finished our meal, drank coffee. The silences between our conversations were an embarrassment. I began to regret meeting her.

  "Why don't you leave her?"

  "You know why not. Because of Sally."

  "That's what you said before."

  "It's true."

  Another silence.

  "You haven't changed, have you? I know damn well that Sally's just an excuse. This is what went wrong before. You're too weak to disentangle yourself from her."

  "You don't understand."

  We ordered more coffee. I wanted to end the conversation, leave her here. Instead, it was easier to carry on. I had to acknowledge that what she said about me was true.

  "Anyway, I can't say anything that will change you."

  "No."

  "I've tried too often in the past. You realize that this is why I wouldn't see you any more?"

  "Yes."

  "And nothing's changed."

  I said, as plainly as I could: "I am in love with you still, Laura."

  "I know. That is what is so difficult. And I love you for your weakness."

  "I don't like you saying that."

  "It doesn't matter. I only mean it."

  She was hurting me in the way she had done before. I had forgotten this about Laura: her capacity to give pain. Yet what I said to her was true, in spite of everything I continued to love her even though I had not been able to admit this to myself until I met her here. Of the women I had known outside my marriage, Laura was the only one for whom I had deeper feelings than those of physical desire. And the reason for this was because she saw me and understood me for what I was. Though it pained me, Laura's appraisal of my inability to confront my relationship with Isobel was for me an attractive quality. I don't know why she was in love with me, though she said she was. I had never been able to come to understand her fully. She existed in a kind of personal vacuum

  . . . living in but not belonging to our society. Her mother had been an Irish immigrant, had died giving birth. Her father had been a coloured seaman, and she had never met him. Her skin was pale, but her features were negroid. She was one of the first victims of the Afrim situation, killed in the second London riot. That day in the park restaurant was the last time I saw her.

  I recognized the leader of the group as the man I had met in the ruined village when we were plundering the remains of the helicopter. At that time he had told me his name was Lateef, but it had given me no clue as to his origin.

  Because of the events of the time, I had grown to distrust anyone with coloured skin, however faint it may be.

  The group he was leading consisted of about forty individuals, including several children. They were not well organized.

  I watched them from the upper floor of the old house, hoping they would not make enough noise to awaken Sally. We had had a long and distressing day and were both hungry. The house was a temporary refuge only; as the winter approached we knew we ought to find more permanent quarters.

  The problem I faced was whether or not we should make our presence known.

  I considered that Sally and I had not been wholly unsuccessful on our own. We had only moved from the couple's house when we heard that unregistered civilians, and those sheltering them, would be sent to internment camps if captured. Though this ruling was withdrawn soon after, we judged it best that we should move on. That is how we came to this house.

  I watched the group indecisively.

  If we continued to operate on our own there would be less danger of being captured, but to join an established group would mean that food supplies would be more regular. Neither prospect appealed, but in the time we had been with the young couple we had listened to the bulletins from continental radio-stations, and learned of the true nature and extent of the civil war.

  Sally and I were among the main casualties so far: the two million displaced civilians who were forced to live as vagrants.

  Most of the refugees were in the Midlands and the North, and up there conditions were supposed to be worse. There were fewer in the south, and it was supposed to be easier, but nevertheless there were estimated to be around one hundred and fifty thousand civilians living off the countryside.

  In a while the group of refugees below me started to organize themselves better, and I saw two or three tents being pitched. A man came into the ground floor of the house and filled two buckets with water. A fire was lit in the garden and food was laid out.

  Then I noticed one of the women who was looking after two young boys.

  She was trying to get them to wash themselves, though without much success.

  She looked dirty and tired, her hair tied untidily into a rough bun behind her head. It was Isobel.

  If anything th
is should have made my indecisiveness greater, but instead I went downstairs and asked Lateef if Sally and I could join his group.

  I was heading south. Alone, I felt more secure than I had done with Lateef and the others. I had no rifle, nor any other form of weapon. I carried only my bag containing a few personal possessions, a sleeping-bag and a little food. I was able to avoid unwanted encounters with military forces, and found that my treatment at barricaded villages or defended houses was easier than if I had been with a group. The first night I slept under a hedge, the second in a barn, the third I was given a room in a house.

  On the fourth day I came into contact with another group of refugees.

  Once initial reservations about each other had been overcome, I spoke for some time with their leader.

  He asked me why I had left Lateef and the others. I told him about the rifles and what Lateef intended to do with them. I gave him my reasons for fearing the outcome of participation by refugees. I also told him about my search for my wife and daughter.

  We were speaking to each other in what had once been a carpark for a pub. The rest of his group were preparing a meal and taking it in turns to wash in the kitchen of the abandoned building.

  "Was your group as large as ours?"

  "It was larger originally," I said. "Before the raid there were twenty-nine men and seventeen women."

  "Who were the women? Were they your wives?"

  "Mostly. I had my daughter with me, and there were three single girls."

  "There are thirty-five of us. And we've got more women than men."

  He told me about an incident when they had been rounded up by some Nationalist forces. Those men of suitable age had been given two alternatives: internment in concentration-camps, or mobilization into the army. Though the remainder of the group had been freed when a United Nations inspection team had arrived at the camp, many of the men had stayed behind to fight with the Nationalists.

  I made a wry remark to the effect that one side wanted the men, and the other wanted the women.

  The man said: "Are you sure it was the Afrims who took your women?"

  "Yes."

  "Then I think I know where they might be." He glanced at me, as if to judge what my reaction might be. "I've heard -- though it is only a rumour --

  that the Afrim command has authorized several brothels of white women for its troops."

  I said: "Rumours are reliable."

  He nodded.

  I stared at him, shocked and silenced. After a moment I said: "She's only a child."

  "My wife is here," he said. "It's something we all have to be guarded against. All we can do is hide until the war is finished."

  I was given some food and we exchanged as much information about troop movements as we knew. They wanted to know details about Lateef's group, and I gave them directions to where I had last seen them. I was told that the reason for this interest was that a consolidation of the two groups would strengthen their defence of the women, but in my own mind I felt that it was because I had told the leader about the rifles.

  I regretted this, and saw that perhaps I had inadvertently helped sponsor a move to which I did not subscribe.

  I found out as much as I could about the rumoured brothels. I knew instinctively that this was the fate that had befallen Sally and Isobel. It disgusted and frightened me, but in one sense it was reassuring since there was a chance that if the brothels were at the direction of the command there would be at least a chance of appeal, either to the command itself or to one of the welfare organizations.

  I said: "Where are these brothels?"

  "The nearest, I've heard, is to the east of Bognor." He named a seaside town, the one in which I had discovered the bungalow with the petrol-bombs.

  We consulted our maps. The town was ten miles to the southwest of us, and Lateef's last position was a similar distance to the north. I thanked the group for their food and information, and left them. They were breaking camp and preparing to move.

  The part of the coast to which I was going was not one I knew well. The towns run into one another and sprawl back into the countryside. In my childhood I had spent a holiday in the neighbourhood, but I could recall little about it.

  In a few miles I encountered the edges of urban development. I crossed several major roads and saw more and more houses. Most of them appeared to be deserted, but I did not investigate further.

  When I estimated I was about five miles from the coast I came across a well-made barricade built in the road. There appeared to be no defenders, and I walked up to it as openly as possible, prepared always to take evasive action should there be any trouble.

  The shot, when it came, caught me by surprise. Either the cartridge was blank, or the shot was intended to miss, but the bullet came nowhere near me.

  I crouched and moved quickly to the side. A second shot came, this time missing me narrowly. I dived gracelessly to the ground, falling awkwardly on to my ankle. I felt it twist under me and an agonizing pain ran through my leg. I lay still.

  Later, my friend told me some amusing stories. He is a large man, and although he is only in his early thirties he looks a lot older. When he tells jokes, he laughs at them himself with his eyes closed and his mouth wide open.

  I had known him only a few months, since falling into the habit of drinking in the evenings. He was a regular at the pub I went to, and although I did not particularly like him, he had often sought me out for company.

  He told me about a white man who was walking along a road one day when he encounters this big buck nigger carrying a duck. The man goes up to the nigger and says: "That's an ugly-looking monkey you've got there." Whereupon the nigger says: "That's not a monkey, man, that's a duck." The white man stares up at the nigger and says: "Who the hell's talking to you?"

  My friend started laughing and I joined in, amused in spite of myself at the absurdity of it. Before I had finished he began to tell me another one.

  This was about a white man who wanted to shoot gorillas in Africa. As gorillas were very rare in that part of the jungle, everyone considered it very doubtful that he would find any. After only ten minutes he comes back saying he's already shot thirty, and can he have some more ammunition? Of course, no one believes him, so to prove it he shows them the bicycles the gorillas had been riding.

  I had seen the end of that one coming, and anyway did not consider it to be very funny, so I didn't join with my friend in his laughter. Instead, I smiled politely and bought some more drinks.

  On my way home that evening, I saw with the clarity that alcohol can sometimes bring how our modes of behaviour had already adapted subtly to allow for the presence of the Afrims and their sympathizers. To tell me the stories, my friend had taken me to a quiet corner of the bar, as if about to divulge something of the order of a state secret.

  Had he told the stories in the main part of the bar it was probable that trouble would have been started. There was an Afrim settlement less than a mile from the pub, and its presence had already caused apprehension amongst local residents.

  My walk home took me within a few hundred yards of the settlement and I disliked what I was forced to see. Groups of men and youths stood about on street corners, waiting for an excuse to provoke an incident. In the last few weeks there had been several cases of attacks on Afrim sympathizers.

  A police-car was parked just inside the entrance to one of the houses in my road. Its lights were off. There were six men inside.

  I felt distinctly that events were picking up a self-destructive momentum, and that no longer was a humane resolution possible.

  Sally was happy to be reunited with her mother, though Isobel and I greeted each other coolly. For a moment I was reminded of a period in the early years of our marriage, when it had seemed that the presence of the child would adequately compensate for the disquieting lack of rapport between us. I talked now with Isobel about practical things, telling her of our attempt to return to London, and the events subsequently. She
told me how she had joined Lateef and his group, and we remarked again and again on the good fortune that had brought us together again.

  We slept together that night, the three of us, and though I felt we should make some effort to re-establish a sexual relationship, I was incapable of making the first move. I do not know whether it was Sally's presence that caused this.

  Fortunately for us, and for all the refugees like us, the winter of that year was a mild one. There was a lot of rain and wind, but only a short period of severe frosting. We had established a semi-permanent camp in an old church.

  We were visited several times by Red Cross workers, and both military sides knew of our presence. The winter passed uneventfully, the only severe handicap being the continuing absence of news of the progress of the civil disorder.

  This period, too, was the one in which I first saw Lateef as some kind of social visionary. He would talk of enlarging our group, and establishing a recognizable unit which would be selfsufficient until the resolution of the troubles. By this time, all of us had abandoned any hope of ever returning to our homes, and we realized that we would be ultimately in the hands of whichever side succeeded in creating a working government. Until that time, Lateef convinced us we should sit tight and await developments.

  I think I grew complacent in this period. I was directly under Lateef's influence and spent many hours in conversation with him. Though I grew to respect him, I think he despised me, perhaps because I was so evidently incapable of committing myself to a firm political viewpoint.

  Several other groups of refugees came to the church during the winter, staying for varying periods of time before moving on. We came to see our establishment there as being a kind of nucleus of the situation. In our own way we were prospering. We were rarely short of food, and our semi-permanent status enabled us to take time to organize proper foraging parties. We had a good supply of spare clothing, and many items which would be useful as barter.