Greybeard

2. Cowley

They had been lucky ever to get to Sparcot. During the last few days in Cowley, the factory suburb of Oxford, she had not thought they would escape at all. For that was the autumn of the dusty year 2018, when cholera lent its hand to the other troubles that plagued mankind.

Martha was almost a prisoner in the Cowley flat in which she and Greybeard — but in those days he was simply the forty-three-years-old Algernon Timberlane — had been forcibly installed.

They had driven to Oxford from London, after the death of Algy’s mother. Their truck had been stopped on the borders of Oxfordshire; they found martial law prevailing, and a Commander Croucher in charge, with his headquarters in Cowley. Military police had escorted them to this flat; although they were given no choice in the matter, the premises proved to be satisfactory.

For all the trouble sweeping the country and the world, Martha’s chief enemy at present was boredom. She sat doing endless jigsaws of farms at blossom time, trappers in Canada, beaches at Acapulco, and listening to the drizzle of light music from her handbag radio; throughout the sweltering days she waited for Algy to return.

Few vehicles moved along the Iffley Road outside. Occasionally one would growl by with an engine note that she thought was familiar. She would jump up, often to stand staring out of the window for a long time after she realized her mistake.

Martha looked out on an unfamiliar city. She smiled to think how they had been buoyed with the spirit of adventure on the drive down from London, laughing, and boasting of how young they felt, how they were ready for anything — yet already she was surfeited of jigsaws and worried by Algy’s increasingly heavy drinking.

When they were in America, he drank a lot, but the drinking there with Jack Pilbeam, an eager companion, had a gaiety about it lacking now. Gaiety! The last few months in London had held no gaiety. The government enforced a strict curfew; Martha’s father had disappeared into the night, presumably arrested without trial; and as the cholera spread, Patricia, Algy’s feckless old mother, deserted by her third husband, had died in agony.

She ran her fingers over the window-sill. They came away dirty and she looked at them.

She laughed her curt laugh at an inner thought, and returned to the table. With an effort, she forced herself to go on building the sunlit beach of Acapulco.

The Cowley shops opened only in the afternoon. She was grateful for the diversion they offered. To go into the street, she deliberately made herself unattractive, wore an old bonnet and pulled coarse stockings over her fine legs, despite the heat, for the soldiers had a rough way with women.

This afternoon, she noticed fewer uniforms about. Rumour had it that several platoons were being driven east, to guard against possible attack from London. Other rumour said the soldiers were confined to their barracks and dying like flies.

Standing in line by the white-tiled fishmonger’s shop in the Cowley Road, Martha found that her secret fears accepted this latter rumour the more readily. The overheated air held a taste of death. She wore a handkerchief over her nose and mouth, as did most of the other women. Rumour of plague becomes most convincing when strained through dirty squares of fabric.

“I told my husband I’d rather he didn’t join up,” the woman next to Martha told her. “But you can’t get Bill to listen if he don’t want to. See, he used to work at the garage, but he reckons they’ll lay him off sooner or later, so he reckons he’d be better in the army. I told him straight, I said, I’ve had enough of war if you haven’t, but he said, ‘This is different from war, it’s a case of every man for himself.’ You don’t know what to do for the best, really, do you?”

As she trudged back to the flat with her ration of dried and nameless fish, Martha echoed the woman’s words.

She went and sat at the table, folded her arms on it, and rested her head on her arms. In that position, she let her thoughts ramble, waiting all the while for sound of that precious truck which would herald Timberlane’s return.

When finally she heard the truck outside, she went down to meet Timberlane. As he opened the door, she clung to him, but he pushed her off.

“I’m dirty, I’m foul, Martha,” he said. “Don’t touch me till I’ve washed and got this jacket off.”

“What’s the matter? What’s been happening?”

He caught the overwrought note in her voice.

“They’re dying, you know. People, everywhere.”

“I know they’re dying.”

“Well, it’s getting worse. It’s spread from London. They’re dying in the streets now, and not getting shifted. The army’s doing what it can, but the troops are no more immune to the infection than anyone else.”

“The army! You mean Croucher’s men!”

“You could have worse men ruling the Midlands than Croucher. He’s keeping order. He understands the necessity for running some sort of public service, he’s got hygiene men out. Nobody could do more.”

“You know he’s a murderer. Algy, how can you speak well of him?”

They went upstairs. Timberlane flung his jacket into a corner.

He sat down with a glass and a bottle of gin. He added a little water, and began to sip at it steadily. His face was heavy, the set of his mouth and eyes gave him a brooding look. Beads of sweat stood on his bald head.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said. His voice was tired and stony: Martha felt her own slip into the same cast. The shabby room was set solid with their discomfort. A fly buzzed fitfully against the window pane.

“What do you want to talk about?”

“For God’s sake, Martha, I don’t want to talk about anything. I’m sick of the stink of death and fear, I’ve been going round with my recorder all day, doing my bloody stuff for DOUCH(E). I just want to drink myself into a stupor.”

Although she had compassion for him, she would not let him see it.

“Algy — your day has been no worse than mine. I’ve spent all day sitting here doing these jigsaw puzzles till I could scream. I’ve spoken to no one but a woman at the fish shop. For the rest of the time, the door has been locked and bolted as you instructed. Am I just expected to sit here in silence while you get drunk?”

“Not by me you’re not. You haven’t got that amount of control over your tongue.”

She went over to the window, her back to him. She thought: I am not sick; I am vital in my senses; I can still give a man all he wants; I am Martha Timberlane, born Martha Broughton, forty-three years of age. She heard his glass shatter in a far corner.

“Martha, I’m sorry. Murdering, getting drunk, dying, living, they’re all reduced to the same dead level…”

Martha made no answer. With an old magazine, she crushed the fly buzzing against the window. She closed her eyes to feel how hot her eyelids were. At the table, Timberlane went on talking.

“I’ll get over it, but to see my poor dear silly mother panting for years, recalling how I loved her as a kid… Ah… Get me another glass, love — get two. Let’s finish this gin. Sod the whole rotten system! How much longer are people going to be able to take this?”

“This what?” she asked, without turning round.

“This lack of children. This sterility. This creeping paralysis. What else do you think I mean?”

“I’m sorry, I’ve got a headache.” She wanted his sympathy, not his speeches, but she could see that something had upset him, that he was going to have a talk, and that the gin was there to help him talk. She got him another glass.

“What I’m saying is, Martha, that it’s finally sinking in on people that the human race is not going to produce any more young. Those little bawling bundles we used to see outside shops in prams are gone for good. Those little girls that used to play with dolls and empty cereal packets are things of the past. The knot of teenagers standing on corners or bellowing by on motor bikes have had it for ever. They aren’t coming back. Nor are we ever going to see a nice fresh young twenty-year-old girl pass us like a blessing in the street, with her little bum and tits like a banner. Where are all your young sportsmen? Remember the cricket teams, Martha? Football, eh? What about the romantic leads of television and the cinema? They’ve all gone! Where are the pop singers of yesteryear? Sure, there are still games of football going on. The fifty-year-olds creak round as best they can…”

“Stop it, Algy. I know we’re all sterile as well as you do. We knew that when we got married, seventeen years ago. I don’t want to hear it once more.”

When he spoke again, his voice was so changed that she turned and looked at him.

“Don’t think I want to hear it again, either. But you see how every day reveals the wretched truth all over again. The misery always comes hot and new. We’re over forty now, and there’s scarcely anyone younger than we. You only have to walk through Oxford to see how old and dusty the world is getting. And it’s now that youth is passing that the lack of replenishments is really being felt — in the marrow.”

She gave him another measure of gin, and set a glass down on the table for herself. He looked up at her with a wry smile, and poured her a measure.

“Perhaps it’s the death of my mother makes me talk like this. I’m sorry, Martha, particularly when we don’t know what’s become of your father. All the while I’ve been so busy living my life, Mother’s been living hers. You know what her life’s been like! She fell in love with three useless men, my father, Keith Barratt, and this Irishman, poor woman! Somehow I feel we should have done more to help her.”

“You know she enjoyed herself in her own way. We’ve said all this before.”

He wiped his brow and head on a handkerchief and grinned more relaxedly.

“Maybe that’s what happens when the mainspring of the world snaps: everyone is doomed for ever to think and say what they thought and said yesterday.”

“We don’t have to despair, Algy. We’ve survived years of war, we’ve come through waves of puritanism and promiscuity. We’ve got away from London, where they are in for real trouble, now that the last authoritarian government has broken down. True, Cowley’s far from being a bed of roses, but Croucher is only a local phenomenon; if we can survive him, things may get better, become more settled. Then we can get somewhere permanent to live.”

“I know, my love. We seem to be going through an interim period. The trouble is, there have been a number of interim periods already, and there will be more. I can’t see how stability can ever be achieved again. There’s just a road leading downhill.”

“We don’t have to be involved in politics. DOUCH(E) doesn’t require you to mix in politics to make your reports. We can just find somewhere quiet and reasonably safe for ourselves, surely?”

He laughed. He stood up and looked genuinely amused. Then he stroked her hair with its grey and brown streaks and drew his chair closer.

“Martha, I’m mad about you still! It’s a national failing to think of politics as something that goes on in Parliament. It isn’t; it’s something that goes on inside us. Look, love, the United National Government has broken apart, and thank God for it. But at least its martial law kept things going and wheels turning. Now it has collapsed, millions of people are saying, “I have nothing to save for, no sons, no daughters. Why should I work?”, and they’ve stopped work. Others may have wanted to work, but you can’t carry on industry like that. Disorganize one part effectively, and it all grinds to a halt. The factories of Britain stand empty. We’re making nothing to export. You think America and the Commonwealth and the other countries are going to go on sending us food free? Of course not, especially when a lot of them are harder hit than we are! I know food is short at present, but next year, believe me, there’s going to be real famine. Your safe place won’t exist then, Martha. In fact there may only be one safe place.”

“Abroad?”

“I mean working for Croucher.”

She turned away frowning, not wishing to voice again her distrust of the local dictator.

“I’ve got a headache, Algy. I shouldn’t be drinking this gin. I think I must go and lie down.”

He took her wrist.

“Listen to me, Martha. I know I’m a devil to live with just now and I know you don’t want to sleep with me just now, but don’t stop listening to me or the last line of communication will be cut. We may be the final generation, but life’s still precious. I don’t want us to starve. I have made an appointment to see Commander Croucher tomorrow. I’m offering to cooperate.”

“What?”

“Why not?”

“Why not? How many people did he massacre in the centre of Oxford last week? Over sixty, wasn’t it? and the bodies left lying there for twenty-four hours so that people could count and make sure. And you-”

“Croucher represents law and order, Martha.”

“Madness and disorder!”

“No — the Commander represents as much law and order as we have any right to expect, considering the horrible outrage we have committed on ourselves. There’s a military government in the Home Counties centred on London, and one of the local gentry has set up a paternalistic sort of community covering most of Devon. Apart from them and Croucher, who now controls the South Midlands and down to the South Coast, the country is slipping rapidly into anarchy. Have you thought what it must be like farther up in the Midlands, and in the North, in the industrial areas? What do you think is going to happen up there?”

“They’ll find their own little Crouchers soon enough.”

“Right! And what will their little Crouchers do? March ’em down south as fast as they can.”

“And risk the cholera?”

“I only hope the cholera stops them! Quite honestly, Martha, I hope this plague wipes out most of the population. If it doesn’t stop the North, then Croucher had better be strong, because he’ll have to be the one to stop them. Have another gin. Here’s to Bonnie Prince Croucher! We’ll have to defend a line across the Cotswolds from Cheltenham to Buckingham. We should be building our defences tomorrow. It would keep Croucher’s troops busy and out of the centre of population where they can spread infection. He’s got too many soldiers; the men join his army rather than work in the car factories. They should be put on defence at once. I shall tell Croucher when I see him…”

She lurched away from the table and went to swill her face under the cold tap. Without drying her face, she rested by the open window, looking at the evening sun trapped in the shoddy suburban street.

“Croucher will be too busy defending himself from the hooligans in London to guard the north,” she said. She didn’t know what either of them was saying. The world was no longer the one into which she had been born; nor was it even the one in which — ah, but they had been young and innocent then! — they had married; for that ceremony was distant in space as well as time, in a Washington they idealized because they had then been idealists, where they had talked a lot of being faithful and being strong… No, they were all mad. Algy was right when he said they had committed a horrible outrage on themselves. She thought about the expression as she stared into the street, no longer listening as Timberlane embarked on one of the long speeches he now liked to make.

Not for the first time, she reflected on how people had grown fond of making rambling monologues; her father had fallen into the habit in recent years. In a vague way, she could analyse the reasons for it: universal doubt, universal guilt. In her own mind, the same monologue rarely stopped, though she guarded her speech. Everyone spoke endlessly to imaginary listeners. Perhaps they were all the same imaginary listener.

It was really the generation before hers that was most to blame, the people who were grown up when she was born, the millions who were adults during the 1960’s and 70’s. They had known all about war and destruction and nuclear power and radiation and death — it was all second nature to them. But they never renounced it. They were like savages who had to go through some fearful initiation rite. Yes, that was it, an initiation rite, and if they had come through it, then perhaps they might have grown up into brave and wise adults. But the ceremony had gone wrong. Too frenzied by far! Instead of a mere circumcision, the whole organ had been lopped off. Though they wept and repented, the outrage had been committed; all they could do was hop about with their deformity, alternately boasting about and bemoaning it.

Through her misery, peering between the seams of her headache, she saw a Windrush with Croucher’s yellow X on its sides swing round the corner and prowl down the street. Windrushes were the locally manufactured variety of hovercraft, a family-sized model now largely appropriated by the military. A man in uniform craned his neck out of the blister, staring at house numbers as he glided down the street. When it drew level with the Timberlane flat, the machine stopped and lowered itself to the ground in a dying roar of engines.

Frightened, Martha summoned Timberlane over to the window. There were two men in the vehicle, both wearing the yellow X on their tunics. One climbed out and walked across the street.

“We’ve nothing to fear,” Timberlane said. He felt in his pocket for the little 7.7 mm. automatic with which DOUCH(E) had armed him. “Lock yourself in the kitchen, love, just in case there’s trouble. Keep quiet.”

“What do they want, do you think?”

There was a heavy knocking on the door.

“Here, take the gin bottle,” he said, giving her a taut grin. The bottle passed between them, all there was time to exchange. He patted her behind as he pushed her into the kitchen. The knocking was repeated before he could get down to the door.

A coporal was standing there; his mate leaned from the blister of the Windrush, half-whistling and rubbing his lower lip on the protruding snout of his rifle.

“Timberlane? Algernon Timberlane? You’re wanted up at the barracks.”

The corporal was an undersized man with a sharp jaw and patches of dark skin under his eyes. He would be only in his early fifties — youngish for these days. His uniform was clean and pressed, and he kept one hand near the revolver at his belt.

“Who wants me? I was just going to have my supper.”

“Commander Croucher wants you, if you’re Timberlane. Better hop in the Windrush with us.” The corporal had a big nose, which he rubbed now in a furtive fashion as he summed up Timberlane.

“I have an appointment with the Commander tomorrow.”

“You’ve got an appointment with him this evening, mate. I don’t want any argument.”

There seemed no point in arguing. As he turned to shut the door behind him, Martha appeared. She spoke direct to the guard.

“I’m Mrs. Timberlane. Will you take me along too?”

She was an attractive woman, with a rich line to her, and a certain frankness about her eye that made her appear younger than she was. The corporal looked her over with approval.

“They don’t make ’em like you any more, lady. Hop up with your husband.”

She silenced Timberlane’s attempt at protest by hurrying ahead to climb into the Windrush. Impatiently, she shook off the corporal’s hand and swung herself up without aid, ignoring the man’s swift instinctive glance at the thigh she showed.

They toured by an unnecessarily long way to the Victorian pseudo-castle that was Croucher’s military headquarters. On the first part of the way, she thought in anguish to herself, “Isn’t this one of the archetypal situations of the last century — and the Twentieth really was the Last Century: the unexpected peremptory knocking at the door, and the going to find someone there in uniform waiting to take you off somewhere, for reasons unknown? Who invented the situation, that it should be repeated so often? Perhaps this is what happens after an outrage — unable to regenerate, you just have to go on repeating yourself.” She longed to say some of this aloud; she was generalizing in the rather pretentious way her father had done, and generalizing is a form of relief that gains its maximum effect from being uttered aloud; but a look at Timberlane’s face silenced her. She could see he was excited.

She saw the boy in his face as well as the old man.

Men! She thought. There was the seat of the whole sickness. They invented these situations. They needed them — torturer or tortured, they needed them. Friend or enemy, they were united in an algolagnia beyond woman’s cure or understanding.

The instant that imperious knocking had sounded at the door, their hated little flat had turned into a place of refuge; the dripping kitchen tap, whistling into its chipped basin, had turned into a symbol of home, the littered pieces of jigsaw a sign of a vast intellectual freedom. She had whispered a prayer for a safe return to the fragmented beach of Acapulco as she hastened down to join her husband.

Now they moved three feet above ground level, and she tasted the chemistries of tension in her bloodstream.

In the September heat, the city slept. But the patient was uneasy in its slumber. Old cartons and newspaper heaved in the gutters. A battery-powered convertible lay with its nose nestling in a shattered shop front. At open windows, people lolled, heavy sunlight filling their gasping mouths. The smell of the patient showed that blood-poisoning had set in.

Before they had gone far, their expectation of seeing a corpse was satisfied, doubly. A man and woman lay together in unlikely attitudes on the parched grass of St. Clement’s roundabout. A group of starlings fluttered round their shoulders.

Timberlane put an arm about Martha and whispered to her as he had when she was a younger woman.

“Things will be a lot worse before they’re better,” the beak-nosed corporal said to nobody in particular. “I don’t know what’ll happen to the world, I’m sure.” Their passage sent a wave of dust washing over the houses.

At the barracks, they sailed through the entrance gate and disembarked. The corporal marched them towards a distant archway. The heat in the central square lay thick; they pressed through it, in at a door, along a corridor, and up into cooler quarters. The corporal conferred with another man who summoned them into a further room, where a collection of hot and weary people waited on benches, several of them wearing cholera masks.

They sat there for half an hour before being summoned. Finally they were led into a spacious room furnished in a heavy way that suggested it had once been used as an officers’ mess. Occupying one half of it were a mahogany table and three trestle tables. Men sat at these tables, several of them with maps and papers before them; only the man at the mahogany table had nothing but a notebook before him; he was the only man who did not seem idle. The man at the mahogany table was Commander Peter Croucher.

He looked solid, fleshy, and hard. His face was big and unbeautiful, but it was the face of neither a fool nor a brute. His sparse grey hair was brushed straight back in furrows; his suit was neat, his whole aspect businesslike. He was little more than ten years older than Timberlane; fifty-three or four, say. He looked at the Timberlanes with a tired but appraising look.

Martha knew his reputation. They had heard of the man even before the waves of violence had forced them to leave London. Oxford’s major industry was the production of cars and GEM’S (Ground Effect Machines), particularly the Windrush. Croucher had been Personnel Manager at the largest factory. The United National Government had made him Deputy District Officer for Oxfordshire. On the collapse of the government, the District Officer had been found dead in mysterious circumstances, and Croucher had taken over the old controls, drawing them in tighter.

He spoke without moving. He said, “No invitation was issued for you being here, Mrs. Timberlane.”

“I go everywhere with my husband, Commander.”

“Not if I say not. Guard!”

“Sir.” The corporal marched forward with a parody of army drill.

“It was an infringement, you bringing this woman in here, Corporal Pitt. Supervise her immediate removal at once. She can wait outside.”

Martha started to protest. Timberlane silenced her, pressing her hand, and she allowed herself to be led away. Croucher got up and came round his table.

“Timberlane, you’re the only DOUCH(E) man in the territory under my control. Dissuade your mind that my motives towards you are ulterior. That’s the reverse of the truth. I want you on my side.”

“I shall be on your side if you treat my wife properly.”

Croucher gestured to show how poorly he regarded the remark. “What can you offer me in any way advantageous to me?” he asked. The involved semi-literacy of his speech added to his menace in Greybeard’s estimation.

“I’m well informed, Commander. I have an idea that you must defend Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire from the Midlands and the North, if your forces are strong enough. If you could lend me a map—”

Croucher held up a hand.

“Look, I’d better cut you down to size a bit, my friend. Just for the record, I don’t need any half-baked intellectual ideas from self-styled pundits like yourself. See these men here, sitting at these tables? They have the mutual benefit of performing my thinking for me, thus utilizing advantageously one of the advantages of having a terra firma in a university city like Oxford. The old Town versus Gown battle has been fought and decided, Mr. Timberlane, as you’d know if you hadn’t been knocking about in London for so long. I decided and implemented it. I rule all Oxford for the benefit of one and all. These blokes are the cream of the colleges that you are seeing here, all very high-flown intellects. See that gink at the end, with the shaky hands and cracked specs? He’s the University Chichele Professor for War, Harold Biggs. Down there, that’s Sir Maurice Rigg, one of the all-time greats at history, I’m told. So kindly infer that I’m asking you about DOUCH(E), not how you’d run operations if you were in my shoes.”

“No doubt one of your intellectual ginks can tell you about DOUCH(E).”

“No they can’t. That’s why it was compulsory you attending here. You see, all the data I’ve got about DOUCH(E) is that it’s some sort of an intelligence unit with its headquarters in London. London organizations are suspect with me just now, for obvious reasons. Unless you wish to be mistaken for a spy, etcetera, perhaps you ought to set my mind in abeyance about what you intend doing here.”

“I think you misunderstand my attitude, sir. I wish to inform you about DOUCH(E); I am no spy. Although I was brought to you like a captive, I had made an appointment through the patrols to see you tomorrow and offer you what help I could.”

“I am not your dentist. You do not make an appointment with me — you crave an audience.” He rapped his knuckles on the table. “I cavil at your phoney attitude! Get wise to the reality of the situation — I can have you shot anywhere in the curriculum if I find you unconstructive.”

Timberlane said nothing to that. In a more reasonable voice, Croucher said, “Now then, let’s have the lowdown what exactly DOUCH(E) is and how it functions.”

“It is simply an academic unit, sir, although with more power behind it than academic units usually have. Can I explain in private? The nature of the unit’s work is confidential.”

Croucher looked at him with raised eyebrows, turned and surveyed the jaded men at the trestle tables, flicked an eye at two guards.

“I should not cavil at a change of scenery. I work long hours.”

They moved into the next room. The guards came too. Although the room was small and hot, it was a relief to get away from the idle faces sitting by the tables. When Croucher gestured to one of the guards, the man opened a window.

“What exactly is this ‘confidential work’ precisely?”, Croucher asked.

“It’s a job of documentation,” Timberlane said. “As you know, it was in 1981 that the Accident occurred which sterilized man and most of the higher mammals. The Americans were first to realize the full implications of what was happening. In the nineties, various foundations collaborated in setting up DOUCH in Washington. There it was decided that in view of the unprecedented global conditions, a special emergency study group should be established. This group was to be equipped to function for seventy-five years, whether man eventually recovered his ability to procreate or whether he failed to do so and became extinct. Members were enlisted from all over the world and trained to interpret their country’s agonies objectively and record them permanently.

“The group was called Documentation of Universal Contemporary History. The bracketed E means I’m one of the English wing. I joined the organization early, and was trained in Washington in ’01. Back in those days, the organization tried to be as pessimistic as possible. Thanks to their realistic thinking, we can go on functioning as individuals even when national and international contacts have broken down.”

“As has now happened. The President was eliminated by a bunch of crooks. The United States is in a state of anarchy. You know that?”

“Britain too.”

“Not so. We have no anarchy here, don’t know the meaning of the word. I know how to keep order, of that you can be quite convinced. Even with this plague on, we have no disorder and British justice prevails.”

“The cholera is only just hitting its stride, Commander Croucher. And mass executions are not a manifestation of order.”

Angrily, Croucher said, “Manifestations, hell! Tomorrow, everyone in the Churchill Hospital will be shot. No doubt you will cry out about that also. But you do not understand. You must expunge the erroneous misapprehension. I have no wish to kill. All I want is to keep order.”

“You must have read enough history to know how hollow that rings.”

“It’s true! Chaos and civil war are absolutely deterrent to me! Listen to me, what YOU tell Me Of DOUCH(E) confirms what I had already been informed. You were not lying to me. So-”

“Why should I lie to you? If you are the benefactor you claim to be I have nothing to fear from you.”

“Because if I was the madman you take me for, my main objective would be to kill any objective observers of my régime. The reverse is true — I visualize my job as to keep order — only that. Consequentially, I can utilize your DOUCH(E) set-up. I want you here, recording. Your testimony is going to vindicate me and the measures I am forced to implement.”

“Vindicate you before whom? Before posterity? There is no posterity. They died in addled sperm, if you remember.”

They were both sweating freely. The guard behind them shuffled weary feet. Croucher brought a tube of peppermints from his pocket and slipped one into his mouth.

He said, “How long do you keep on persevering with this DOUCH(E) job, Mr. Timberlane?”

“Till I die or get killed.”

“Recording?”

“Yes, recording and filming.”

“For posterity?”

After a moment of silence, Timberlane said, “All right, we both think we know where duty lies. But I don’t have to shoot all the poor old wrecks in the Churchill Hospital.”

Croucher crunched his peppermint. The eyes in his ugly face stared at the floor as he spoke.

“Here’s a nodule of information for you to record. For the last ten years, the Churchill has been devoted to one line of research and one only. The doctors and staff there include some expert biochemists. Their project and endeavour is trying to prolong life. They are not just studying ger — what do you call it, geriatrics; they are looking for a drug, a hormone; I am no medical specialist, and I don’t differentiate one from the other, but they are looking for a way to enable people such as me and you to live to be two hundred or two thousand years old. Impossible boloney! Waste an organization chasing phantoms! I can’t let that hospital run to waste, I want to utilize it for more productive purposes.”

“The Government subsidized the hospital?”

“They did. The corrupt politicians of Westminster aspired to discover this elixir of life and immortality and perpetuate it for their own personal advantage. With that kind of nonsense we aren’t going to be bothered. Life’s too short.”

They stared at each other.

“I will accept your offer,” said Timberlane, “though I cannot see how it will benefit you. I will record whatever you do at the Churchill. I would like documentary evidence that what you say about this longevity project is true.”

“Documents! You talk like one of those clever fool dons in the other room. I respect learning, but not pedantry, get that straight. Listen, I’m evacuating the whole bunch of crooks out of that hospital, them and their mad ideas; I don’t believe in the past — I believe in the future.”

To Timberlane it sounded only like an admission of madness. He said, “There is no future, remember? We killed it stone dead in the past.”

Croucher unwrapped another peppermint; his thick lips took it from the palm of his hand.

“Come to me tomorrow and I will show you the future. The sterility was not entirely total, you know. There was, there still are, a minimal trickle of children being born in odd corners of the world — even in Britain. Most of them are defectives — monstrosities beyond your conception.”

“I know what you mean. Do you remember the Infantop Corps during the war years? It was the British equivalent of the American Project Childsweep. I was on that. I know all about monstrosities. My feeling is that it would be sane to kill most of them at birth.”

“A percentage of the local ones are not killed at birth, motherly love being such as it is.” Croucher turned to the guards who were whispering behind him, and irritably ordered them to be silent. He continued, “I’m rounding up all these creatures, whatever they look like. Some of them are minus limbs. Sometimes they are without intelligence and unspeakably stupid. Sometimes they are born inside out, and then they die by degrees — though we have got one boy who survives despite his whole digestive system — stomach, intestines, anus — being on the outside of his body in a sort of bag. It’s a supremely gruesome sight. Oh, we’ve got all sorts of miscellaneous half-human creatures. They will be incarcerated in the Churchill for supervision. They are the future.” When Timberlane did not speak, he added, “Admitted, a frightening future, but it may be the only one. We must labour under the assertion that when these creatures reach adulthood, they will breed normal infants. We shall keep them and make them breed. Assure yourself it’s better a world populated by freaks than a dead world.”

Croucher eyed Timberlane challengingly, as if expecting him to disagree with this proposition. Instead, Timberlane said, “I’ll come and see you in the morning. You will place no censorship on me?”

“You will have a guard with you to ensure security. Corporal Pitt that you met has been detailed for the task. I do not want your reports falling into hostile hands.”

“Is that all?”

“No. I have to consider your own hands as hostile hands. Till you prove them otherwise, your wife will live here in these barracks as a token of your goodwill. You will billet here too. You’ll find the comfort will be more considerable than your flat was. Your belongings are already undergoing transportation to here from the flat.”

“So you are just a dictator, like all the others before you!”

“Be careful — I cannot stomach a stubborn mind! You will soon learn otherwise of me — you’d better! I want you as my conscience. Get that point clarified in your brain with all just momentum. You have seen I have surrounded myself with the intelligentsia; unfortunately, they superficially do what I say — at least to my face. Such a creed revolts me to my skin! I don’t want that from you; I want you to do what you have been trained for. Damn it, why should I bother with you at all when there’s plenty else to worry about? You must do as I say.”

“If I am to be independent, I must retain my independence.”

“Don’t go all highbrow on me! You must do as I say. I ask you to sleep here tonight, and that’s an order. Think this conversation over, talk with your wife. I saw immediately she was a fairly hirsute type. Remember, I offer you security, Timberlane.”

“In this insanitary fort?”

“You will be sent for in the morning. Guard, take this man away. Give him into Corporal Pitt’s keeping.”

As they came up in a business-like way to take Timberlane, Croucher coughed into a handkerchief, wiped his hand across his brown and said, “One concluding point, Timberlane. I hope friendship will originate between us, as far as that’s possible. But if you cogitate trying to escape, I had better inform you that from tomorrow new restrictive orders are in operation throughout the area in my jurisprudence. I will stamp out the spread of plague at all costs. Anybody caught trying to move from Oxford in future will be shot, no questions asked. Barriers will be erected round the city at dawn. All right, guard, remove him. And expedite me a secretary and a pot of tea immediately.”

Their quarters in the barracks consisted of one large room. It contained a wash basin, a gas ring, and two army beds with a supply of blankets. Their belongings arrived in fits and starts from a lorry downstairs. Other commandeered property arrived spasmodically, until they grew tired of the echo of army boots.

A senile guard sat on a chair in the doorway, fingering a light machine gun and staring at them with the stony curiosity of the bored.

Martha lay on one of the beds with a damp towel across her forehead. Timberlane had given her a full account of the talk with Croucher. They remained in silence, the man sitting on his bed, resting his head heavily on his elbow, sinking slowly into a sort of lethargy.

“Well, we’ve more or less got what we wanted,” Martha said. “We’re working for Croucher with a vengeance. Is he to be trusted?”

“I don’t think that’s a question you can ask. He can be trusted as far as circumstances allow. He had a way of not seeming to take in all that I was saying — as if his mind was working all the time on another problem. Perhaps I got a glimpse of that problem when he visualized a world populated by monsters. Perhaps he felt he must have someone to rule over, even if it was only a — a collection of abnormalities.”

His wife’s thoughts returned to a point they had reached earlier in the day.

“Everyone is obsessed with the Accident, even if they do not show it immediately. We’re all sick with guilt. Perhaps that’s Croucher’s trouble, and he has to live with a vision of himself ruling over a twilight world of cripples and deformed creatures.”

“His grip on the present seems stronger than that would imply.”

“How strong is anyone’s grip on the present?”

“It’s a pretty fleeting grip, as the cholera reminds us, but—”

“Our society, our biosphere, has been sick for forty years now. How can the individual remain healthy in it? We may all be madder than we know.”

Not liking the note in her voice, Timberlane went over and sat on the edge of her bed, saying strongly, “Anyhow, our immediate concern is with Croucher. It will suit the DOUCH scheme if we co-operate with him, so that’s what we will do. But I still can’t see why, at a time like this, he should want to encumber himself with me.”

“I can think of a reason. He doesn’t want you. He’s after the truck. He probably thinks there is evidence in it he could use.”

He squeezed her hand. “It could be that. He might think that as we have come from London, I have recorded information he could use. Indeed I may have done. London is his best-organized enemy at present. I wonder how long they will leave the truck where it is now?”

The DOUCH(E) truck was a valuable piece of equipment. When national governments broke down, as foreseen by the Washington foundation, the trucks became in themselves small DOUCH HQ’s. They contained full recording equipment, stores, and sundry supplies; they were fully armoured; an hour’s work would convert them into tracked vehicles; they ran on the recently perfected charge-battery system, and had an emergency drive that worked on petrol or any of the current petrol substitutes. This neat packet of technology, or Timberlane’s sample of it, had been left in its garage, below the flat in Iffley Road.

“I have the keys still,” Timberlane said, “and the vehicle is shuttered down. They haven’t asked me for the keys.”

Martha’s eyes were closed. She heard him, but she was too tired to reply.

“We’re well placed here to observe contemporary history,” he said. “What DOUCH did not consider was that the vehicles might be an attraction to the history-makers. Whatever happens, we must not let the truck pass out of our control.”

After a minute of silence, he added, “The vehicle must be our first concern.”

With the sudden energy of fury, she sat up on the bed. “Damn and blast the bloody vehicle!” she said. “What about me?”

She slept fitfully throughout that stuffy night in the barracks. The silence was fractured by army boots stamping across a parade ground, by shouts, by the close vibrations of a mosquito or by the surge of a Windrush coming home. Her bed rumbled like an empty stomach when she turned in it.

Night, it seemed to her, was a padded pincushion — she almost had it in her hand, so closely did its warmth match the humidity of her palm — and into it, an infinite number of pins, went the sound effects of militant humanity. But each pin pierced her as well as the cushion. Towards morning, the noises grew less frequent, though the heat bowl of the square outside remained unemptied. Then from a different quarter came the faint ring, long continued, of an alarm clock. Distantly, a cock crowed. She heard a town clock — Magdalen? chime five. Birds quarrelled over the dawn in their guttering. Army noises slowly took over again. The clang of buckets and iron utensils from the cookhouse proclaimed that preparations for breakfast had begun. She slept, fading out on a tide of despair.

Her sleep was deep and restorative.

Timberlane was sitting grey and unshaven on the edge of his bed when she awoke. A guard came in with a breakfast tray, set it down, and departed.

“How are you feeling, my love?”

“I’m better this morning, Algy. But what a noise there was in the night.”

“A lot of stretcher parties, I’m afraid,” he said, glancing out of the window. “We’re in one of the centres of infection here. I am prepared to give Croucher guarantees about my conduct if he’ll let us live away from here.”

She went over to him, cupping his stubby jaws in her hands. “You’ve come to a decision, then?”

“I had last night. We took on a job with DOUCH(E). We are after history, and history is now being made here. I think we must trust Croucher; so we remain in Cowley to co-operate with him.”

“You know I don’t question your decisions, Algy. But can we trust a man in his position?”

“Let’s just say that a man in his position does not seem to have any reason to shoot us out of hand,” he said.

“Perhaps a woman looks at these things differently, but let’s not allow DOUCH to take precedence over our safety.”

“Look at it this way, Martha. In Washington we didn’t just take on obligations; we took on a way of thinking that makes sense when most human activities no longer do. That may have a lot to do with the way we have survived as a pair in London while all around us personal relationships are going to pot. We have a mission; we must serve it, or it won’t serve us.”

“You put it like that and it sounds fine. Just let’s not fall into the trap of putting ideas before people, eh?”

They turned their attention to the breakfast. It looked like soldier’s rations; because tea was scarce, there was weak beer to drink, and to eat the inevitable vitamin pills that had established themselves as a national food since domestic animals were stricken, a grainy bread, and some fillets of a brown and nameless fish. Because whales and seals had almost vanished from the sea, and freak radiation effects seemed to have encouraged the growth of plankton and minute crustacea, fish had multiplied. Many farmers in coastal areas throughout the world had been forced to take to the seas when their livestock dwindled; so there was still a strip of fish to stretch across the cracked plates of the world.

As they ate, Martha said, “This Corporal Pitt who is acting as combined gaoler and bodyguard is a nice sort of man. If we must have someone sitting over us all the time, perhaps we could have him. Ask Croucher about it when you see him.”

They were swallowing the vitamin pills down with the last of the beer, when Pitt came in with another guard. On his shoulder tabs, Pitt wore the insignia of a captain.

“It looks as if we have to congratulate you on a good and swift promotion,” said Martha.

“You needn’t be funny,” Pitt said sharply. “There happens to be a shortage of good men round these parts.”

“I was not trying to be funny, Mr. Pitt, and I can see from the number of stretchers busy outside that men are growing shorter all the while.”

“It doesn’t do to try and make jokes about the plague.”

“My wife was attempting to be pleasant,” Timberlane said. “Just watch how you answer her, or there will be a complaint in.”

“If you have any complaints, address them to me,” Pitt said.

The Timberlanes exchanged glances. The unassuming corporal of the night before had disappeared; this man’s voice was ragged, and his whole manner highly strung. Martha went over to her mirror and sat down before it. How the hollows crept on in her cheeks! She felt stronger today, but the thought of the trials and heat that lay before them gave her no reassurance. She felt in the springs of her menstruation a dull pain, as if her infertile and unfertilizable ovaries protested their own sterility. Laboriously, from her pots and tubes, she endeavoured to conjure into her face a life and warmth she felt she would never again in actuality possess.

As she worked, she studied Pitt in the glass. Was that nervous manner simply a result of sudden promotion, or was there another reason for it?

“I am taking you and Mrs. Timberlane out on a mission in ten minutes,” he told Timberlane. “Get yourself ready. We shall proceed to your old flat in Iffley Road. There we shall pick up your recording van, and go up to the Churchill Hospital.”

“What for? I have an appointment with Commander Croucher. He said nothing to me about this yesterday.”

“He told me he did tell you about it. You said you wanted documentary evidence of what has been going on up at the hospital. We are going up there to get it.”

“I see. But my appointment—”

“Look, don’t argue with me, I’ve got my orders, see, and I’m going to carry them out. You don’t have appointments here, anyway — we just have orders. The Commander is busy.”

“But he told me—”

Captain Pitt tapped his newly acquired revolver for emphasis.

“Ten minutes, and we are going out. I’ll be back for you. You are both coming with me to collect your vehicle.” He turned on his heel and marched noisily out. The other guard, a big slack-jawed fellow, moved ostentatiously to stand by the door.

“What’s it mean?” Martha asked, going to her husband. He put his arms about her waist and gave her a worried frown.

“Croucher must have changed his mind in some way. Yet it may be perfectly okay. I did ask to see the Churchill records, so perhaps he is trying to show he will co-operate with us.”

“But Pitt is so different, too. Last night he was telling me about his wife, and how he had been forced to take part in this massacre in the centre of Oxford…”

“Perhaps his promotion has gone to his head…”

“Oh, it’s the uncertainty, Algy, everything’s so — nothing’s definite, nobody knows what’s going to happen from day to day… Perhaps they are just after the truck.”

She stood with her head against his chest, he stood with his arms round her, neither saying more until Pitt returned. He beckoned to them and they went down into the square, the new captain leading and the slack-mouthed guard following.

They climbed into a Windrush. Under Pitt’s control, the motor faltered and caught, and they moved slowly across the parade ground and through the gates with a wave at the sentries.

The new day had brought no improvement in Oxford’s appearance. Down Hollow Way, a row of semi-detacheds burned in a devitalized fashion, as though a puff of wind might extinguish the blaze; smoke from the fire hung over the area. Near the old motor works, there was military activity, much of it disorganized. They heard a shot fired. In the Cowley Road, the long straggling street of shops which pointed towards the ancient spires of Oxford, the façades were often boarded or broken. Refuse lay deep on the pavements. By one or two of the shops, old women queued for goods, silent and apart, with scarves round their throats despite the growing heat. Dust eddying from the underthrust of the Windrush blew round their broken shoes. They ignored it, in the semblance of dignity that abjection brings.

Throughout the journey, Pitt’s face was like brittle leather. His nose, like the beak of a falcon, pointed only ahead. None of the company spoke. When they arrived at the flat, he settled the machine to a poor landing in the middle of the road. Martha was glad to climb out; their Windrush was full of stale male odours.

Within twenty-four hours their flat had become a strange place. She had forgotten how shabby and unpainted it looked from outside. They saw a soldier sat at what had been their living-room window. He commanded a line of fire on to the garage door. At present, he was leaning out of the flat window shouting down to a ragged old man clad in a pair of shorts and a mackintosh. The old man stood in the gutter clutching a bundle of newspapers.

“Oxford Mail!”, the old man croaked. As Timberlane went to buy one, Pitt made as if to stop him, muttered, “Why not?”, and turned away. Martha was the only one to see the gesture.

The paper was a single sheet peppered with literals. A prominently featured leader rejoiced in being able to resume publication now that law and order had been restored; elsewhere it announced that anyone trying to leave the city boundaries without permission would be shot; it announced that the Super Cinema would give a daily film show; it ordered all men under the age of sixty-five to report within forty-eight hours to one of fifteen schools converted into emergency military posts. Clearly, the newspaper had fallen under the Commander’s control.

“Let’s get moving. We haven’t got all day,” Captain Pitt said.

Timberlane tucked the paper into his hip pocket and moved towards the garage. He unlocked it and went in. Pitt stood close by his side as he squeezed along the shuttered DOUCH(E) truck and fingered the combination lock on the driver’s door. Martha watched the captain’s face; over and over, he was moistening his dry lips.

The two men climbed into the truck. Timberlane unlocked the steering column and backed slowly out into the road. Pitt called to the soldier in the window to lock up the flat and drive his Windrush back to the barracks. Martha and the slack-mouthed guard were told to climb aboard the truck. They settled themselves in the seats immediately behind the driver. Both Pitt and his subordinate sat with revolvers in their hands, resting them on their knees.

“Drive towards the Churchill,” Pitt said. “Take it very slowly. There’s no hurry at all.” He cleared his throat nervously. Sweat stood out on his forehead. He rubbed his left thumb up and down the barrel of his revolver without ceasing.

Giving him a searching glance, Timberlane said, “You’re sick, man. You’d better get back to barracks and have a doctor examine you.”

The revolver jerked. “Just get her rolling. Don’t talk to me.” He coughed, and ran a hand heavily over his face. One of his eyelids developed a nervous flutter and he glanced over his shoulder at Martha.

“Really, don’t you think—”

“Shut up, woman!”

With Timberlane hugging the wheel, they crawled down a little dead side street. Two Cowley Fathers in black habits were carrying a woman between them, moving with difficulty under her weight; her left hand trailed against the pavement. They stood absolutely still as the truck came level with them and did not move until it had gone past. The dead vacant face of the woman gaped at Martha as they growled by. Pitt swallowed spittle audibly.

As if coming to a resolution, he raised his revolver. As the point swung towards Timberlane, Martha screamed. Her husband trod on the brake. They rocked back and forth, the engine died, they stopped.

Before Timberlane could heave himself round, Pitt dropped the gun and hid his face in his hands. He was weeping and raving, but what he said was indistinguishable.

The slack-mouthed fellow said, “Keep still! Keep still! Don’t run away! We don’t none of us want to get shot.”

Timberlane had the corporal’s revolver in his hand. He knocked Pitt’s arms down from his face. Seeing how his weapon had changed owners sobered Pitt.

“Shoot me if you must — think I’d care? Go on, better get it over with. I shall be shot anyhow when Croucher finds I let you escape. Shoot us all and be done with it!”

“I never done no one any harm — I used to be a postman. Let me get out! Don’t shoot me,” the slack-mouthed guard said. He still nursed his revolver helplessly on his lap. The sight of his captain’s breakdown had completely disorganized him.

“Why should I shoot either of you?” Timberlane asked curtly. “Equally, why should you shoot me? What were your orders, Pitt?”

“I spared your life. You can spare mine. You’re a gentleman! Put the gun away. Let me have it again. Shut it in a locker.” He was recovering again, still confused, but cocky and casting his untrustworthy eye about. Timberlane kept the gun aimed at his chest.

“Let’s have that explanation.”

“It was Croucher’s orders. He had me in front of me — I mean in front of him, this morning. Said that this vehicle of yours should be in his hands. Said you were just an intellectual troublemaker, a spy maybe, from London. Once you’d got the truck moving, I was to shoot you and your lady wife. Then Studley here and me was to report back to him, with the vehicle. But I couldn’t do it, honest, I’m not cut out for this sort of thing. I had a wife and family — I’ve had enough of all this killing — if my poor old Vi—”

“Cut out the ham acting, Mr. Pitt, and let us think,” Martha said. She put an arm over her husband’s shoulder. “So we couldn’t trust friend Croucher after all.”

“He couldn’t trust us. Men in his position may be fundamentally liberal, but they have to remove random elements.”

“You got that phrase from my father. Okay, Algy, so we’re random elements again; now what do we do?”

To her surprise, he twisted round and kissed her. There was a hard gaiety in him. He was the man in command. He removed the revolver from the unprotesting Studley, and slipped it into a locker.

“In the circumstances we have no alternatives. We’re getting out of Oxford. We’ll head west towards Devon. That would seem to be the best bet. Pitt, will you and Studley join us?”

“You’ll never get out of Oxford and Cowley. The barricades are up. They were put up during the night across all roads leading out of town.”

“If you want to throw in your lot with us, you take orders from me. Are you going to join us? Yes or no?”

“But I’m telling you, the barricades are up. You couldn’t get out of town, not if you were Croucher you couldn’t,” Pitt said.

“You must have a pass or something to permit you to be driving round the streets. What was that thing you flashed at the guard as we left the barracks?”

Pitt brought a pass sheet out of his tunic pocket, and handed it over.

“I’ll have your tunic, too. From now on you are demoted to private. Sorry, Pitt, but you didn’t exactly earn your promotion, did you?”

“I’m no murderer, if that’s what you mean.” His manner was steadier now. “Look, I tell you we’ll all get killed if you attempt to drive through the barricades. They’ve established these big concrete blocks everywhere. They stop traffic and tip up GEM’s.”

“Get that tunic off before we talk.”

The Cowley Fathers came level with the truck. They stared in before labouring into a public house with their burden.

As Timberlane passed his jacket over to Martha and slipped on Pitt’s tunic — it creaked at its rotten seams as he struggled into it — he said, “Food must be still coming into the town, mustn’t it? Food, stores, ammunition — God knows what. Don’t tell me Croucher isn’t intelligent enough to organize that. In fact he’s probably looting the counties all round for his supplies.”

Unexpectedly, Studley leant forward and tapped Timberlane on the shoulder. “That’s right, sir, and there’s a fish convoy coming up from Southampton due here this morning, ’cos I heard that Transport Sergeant Tucker say so when we signed for the Windrush earlier on.”

“Good man! The barriers will have to go down to let the convoy through. As the convoy enters, we go out. Which way will it be coming from?”

As they trundled south through the devouring sunlight, the sound of an explosion came to them. Farther up the road, they saw by a pall of smoke to their right that Donnington Bridge had been blown up. A way out of the city had been cut off. Nobody spoke. Like the cholera, the desolation in the streets was contagious.

At Rose Hill, the blocks of flats set back from the road were as blank as cliffs. The only alleviation to the stark nudity of the the thoroughfare was an ambulance that crawled from a service road, its blue light revolving. All its windows were blanketed. It mounted the grass verge, crossed the main road only a few yards ahead of the DOUCH(E) vehicle, and stopped on the opposite verge with a final shudder. As they passed it, they caught sight of the driver sprawled across the wheel…

Farther on, among private houses, it was less like death. In several front gardens, old men and women were burning bonfires. And what superstition did that represent? Martha wondered.

When they reached a roundabout, soldiers with slung rifles came out from a check point to meet them. Timberlane leant out of the window and flashed the pass without stopping. The soldiers waved him on.

“How much farther?” Timberlane asked.

“We’re nearly there. The road block we want is at Littlemore railway bridge. Beyond that it’s just country,” Pitt said.

“Croucher has a long boundary to defend.”

“That’s why he wants more men. This blocking of roads was a bright idea of his. It helps keep strangers out, as well as us in. He doesn’t want deserters getting away and setting up in opposition, does he? The road takes a right bend here towards the bridge, and there’s a road joins it from the right. Ah, there’s that pub, the Marlborough — that’s on the corner!”

“Right, do what I told you. Take a tip from that ambulance we passed. All right, Martha, my sweet? Here we go!”

As they rounded the bend, Timberlane slumped over the wheel, trailing his right hand out of the window. Pitt slumped beside him, the other two lolled back in their seats. Steering carefully, Timberlane negotiated their vehicle in a drunken line towards the public house Pitt had mentioned. He let it mount the pavement, then twisted the wheel and released the clutch while remaining in gear. The truck shuddered violently before stopping. They were facing Littlemore Bridge, a mere two hundred yards up the road.

“Good, keep where you are,” Timberlane said. “Let’s hope the Southampton convoy is on time. How many vehicles is it likely to consist of, Studley?”

“Four, five, six. Hard to tell. It varies.”

“Then we ought to aim to get through after the second truck.”

As Timberlane spoke, he was scanning ahead. The railway line lay hidden in its cutting. The road narrowed into two traffic lanes by the bridge. It was concealed beyond the bridge by the rise of the land but, fortunately, the road block had been set up on this side of the bridge, and so was visible from where they waited. It consisted of a collection of concrete blocks, two old lorries, and wooden poles. A small wooden building near by had been taken over by the military; it looked as if it might house a machine-gun. Only one soldier could be seen, leaning by the door of the building and shading his eyes to look down the road at them.

A builder’s lorry stood near the barrier. A man was standing in it, throwing bricks down to another man. They appeared to be strengthening the defences, and to judge by their clumsy movements they were unused to the job.

Minutes passed. The whole scene was nondescript; this dull stretch of road was neither town nor country. Not only did the sunlight drain it of all its pretensions; it had perhaps never been surveyed as purposefully as Timberlane surveyed it now. The slothful movements of the men handling bricks took on a sort of dreamlike persistence. Flies entered the DOUCH(E) track, droning their way fruitlessly about the interior. Their noise reminded Martha of the long summer days of her girlhood, when into her happiness, to become an inseparable part of it, had entered the realization that a wrong like a curse hung over her and over her parents and over her friends — and over everyone. She had seen the effects of the curse spread wider and wider, like the sand in a desert sandstorm that erodes the sky. Wide-eyed, she stared at the hunched back of her husband, indulging herself in a little horror fantasy that he was dead, really dead of the cholera. She succeeded in frightening herself.

“Algy—”

“Here they come! Watch it now! Lie flat, Martha; they’re bound to shoot as we go through.”

He sent them rolling forward, bumping back on to the road. A first lorry, a big furniture lorry plastered in dust, humped itself over the narrow bridge from the other side. One soldier came to attend to it; he drew back part of the wooden barricade to allow the lorry through. It growled forward through the narrow opening. As it moved down the road towards the DOUCH(E) vehicle, a second lorry — this one an army lorry with a torn canopy — appeared over the bridge.

Their timing had to be good. Rolling steadily ahead, the DOUCH(E) truck had to pass that second lorry as close to the bridge as possible. Timberlane pressed his foot down harder. Elms by the roadside, tawdry from dust, scattered sunlight red and white across his vision. They passed the first lorry. The driver called something. They sped towards the army lorry. It was coming through the concrete blocks. The driver saw Timberlane, gestured, accelerated, swung his wheel to the near side. The sentry ran forward, swinging up his rifle. His mouth flapped. His words were lost in the sound of engines. Timberlane drove straight at him.

They roared past the army lorry without touching it, all four of them instinctively watching and yelling. Their offside headlight struck the soldier before he could turn. His rifle went flying. Like a bag of cement, he was flung against one of the concrete blocks. Something screamed as they scraped past the barrier: steel on stone. As they lurched across the bridge, the third vehicle in the convoy loomed up ahead of them.

From the wooden sentry post they had passed, a machine-gun woke into action. Bullets clattered against the grating across the back of their truck, making the inside ring like a steel drum. The windscreen of the vehicle ahead shattered, new rips bloomed sharp across its old canvas. With a whistle of tyres, it slewed off to one side. The driver flung open his door, but fell back into the cab as it canted to the other side. Bumping and jarring, it smashed through railings down the embankment towards the railway line below.

Timberlane had swerved in the other direction to avoid hitting the lorry. Only the accident that overtook it enabled him to get past it. They lurched forward again, and the road was clear ahead. The machine-gun was still barking, but the lie of the land sheltered them from it.

If Studley had not collapsed at that point, and had not needed to be rested in a deserted village called Sparcot, where other refugees were gathering, they might have made it down to Devon. But Studley had the cholera; and a paranoiac called Mole arrived to turn them into a fortified outpost; and a week later severe rains washed out a host of opportunities. The halt at Sparcot lasted for eleven long grey years.

Looking back to that time, Martha reflected on the way in which the nervous excitement of their stay at Cowley had embalmed it in memory, so that it all came back easily. The years that followed were less clear, for they had been dulled by misery and monotony. The death of Studley; the deaths of several others of that original bunch of refugees; the appearance of Big Jim Mole, and the quarrels as he distributed them among the deserted houses of the village; the endless struggle, the fights over women; the abandonment of hope, convention, and lipstick; these were now like figures in a huge but faded tapestry to which she would not turn again.

One event in those days (ah, but the absence of children had been a sharper wound in her mind then!) remained with her clearly, because she knew it still fretted her husband; that was their bartering of the DOUCH(E) truck, during the second winter at Sparcot, when they were all light-headed from starvation. They exchanged it for a cart-load of rotting fish, parsnips and vitamin pills belonging to a one-eyed wandering hawker. She and Algy had haggled with him throughout one afternoon, to watch him in the end drive away into the dusk in their truck. In the darkness of that winter, their miseries had reached their deepest point.

Several men, among them the ablest, had shot themselves. It was then that Eve, a young girl who was mistress to Trouter, bore a child with no deformity. She had gone mad and run away. A month later her body and the baby’s were found in a wood near by.

In that vile winter, Martha and Greybeard had organized lectures, not entirely with Mole’s approval. They had spoken on history, on geography, on politics, on the lessons to be learnt from life — but as all their subject matter was necessarily drawn from an existence that died even as they spoke, the lectures were a failure. To the hunger and deprivation had been added something more sinister: a sense that there was no longer a place on earth for mind.

Someone had invented a brief-lived phrase for that feeling: the Brain Curtain. Certainly the brain curtain had descended that winter with a vengeance.

In January, the fieldfares brought their harsh song of Norway to Sparcot. In February, cold winds blew and snow fell every day. In March, the sparrows mated on the crusted and dirty piles of ice. Only in April did a softer air return.

During that month, Charley Samuels married Iris Ryde. Charley and Timberlane had fought together in the war, years earlier, when both had formed part of the Infantop Corps. It had been a good day when he arrived at the motley little village. When he married, he moved his bride into the house next to Martha and Algy. Six years later, Iris died of cancer that, like sterility, was an effect of the Accident.

That had been an ill time. And all the while they had laboured under Mole’s fears, hardly aware of the imposition. To get away was like a convalescence, when one looks back and sees for the first time how ill one has been. Martha recalled how eagerly they had conspired with nature, encouraging the roads to decay, sealing them off from the dangerous world outside, and how anxiously they guarded Sparcot against the day when Croucher’s forces moved to overwhelm them.

Croucher never came to Sparcot. He died from the pandemic that killed so many of his followers and converted his stronghold into a morgue. By the time the disease had run its course, large organizations had gone the way of large animals; the hedges grew, the copses heaved their shoulders and became forests; the rivers spread into marshland; and the mammal with the big brain eked out his dotage in small communities.