The Death of Grass

NINE

In the morning, a subdued air was evident John had told them that Pirrie had shot Millicent, but had let the children think it was an accident He gave a full account to Roger, who shook his head.

“Cool, isn’t he? We certainly picked up something when we adopted him.”

“Yes,” John said, “we did.”

“Are you going to have trouble, do you think?”

“Not as long as I let him have his own way,” John said. “Fortunately, his needs seem fairly modest He felt he had a right to kill his own wife.”

Ann came down to him later, when he was washing in the river. She stood beside him, and looked at the tumbling waters. The sun was shining the length of the valley, but there were clouds directly above them, large and close-pressed.

“Where did you put the body?” she asked him. “Before I send the children down to wash.”

“Well away from here. You can send them down.”

She looked at him without expression. “You might as well tell me what happened. Pirrie isn’t the sort to have accidents with a rifle, or to kill without a reason.”

He told her, making no attempt to hide anything.

She said: “And if Pirrie had not appeared just at that moment?”

He shrugged. “I would have sent her back down, I think. What else can I say?”

“Nothing, I suppose. It doesn’t matter now.” She shot the question at him suddenly: “Why didn’t you save her?”

“I couldn’t. Pirrie had made up his mind. I would only have got myself shot as well.”

She said bitterly: “You’re the leader. Are you going to stand by and let people murder each other?”

He looked at her. His voice was cold. “I thought my life was worth more to you and the children than Millicent’s. I still think so, whether you agree or not.”

For the moment they faced each other in silence; then Ann came a step towards him, and he caught her. He heard her whisper:

“Darling, I’m sorry. You know I didn’t mean that. But it’s so terrible, and it goes on getting worse. To kill his wife like that… What kind of a life is it going to be for us?”

“When we get to Blind Gill…”

“We shall still have Pirrie with us, shan’t we? Oh, John, must we? Can’t we—lose him somehow?”

He said gently: “You’re worrying too much. Pirrie is law-abiding enough. I think he had hated Millicent for years. There’s been a lot of bloodshed recently, and I suppose it went to his head. It will be different in the valley. We shall have our own law and order. Pirrie will conform.”

“Will he?”

He stroked her arms. “You,” he said. “How is it now? Not quite so bad?”

She shook her head. “Not quite so bad. I suppose one gets used to everything, even memories.”

By seven o’clock they were all together, and ready to set out The clouds which had come over the sky still showed gaps of blue, but they had spread far enough to the east to hide the sun.

“Weather less promising,” Roger said.

“We don’t want it too hot,” John said. “We have a climb in front of us. Everything ready?”

Pirrie said: “I should like Jane to walk with me.”

They stared at him. The request was so odd as to be meaningless in itself. John had not thought it necessary to have the party walk in any particular order, with the result that they straggled along in whatever way they chose. Jane had automatically taken up her position alongside Olivia again.

John said: “Why?”

Pirrie gazed round the little circle with untroubled eyes. “Perhaps I should put it another way. I have decided that I should like to marry Jane—insofar as the expression has any meaning now.”

Olivia said, with a sharpness quite out of keeping with her usual manner: “Don’t be ridiculous. There can’t be any question of that.”

Pirrie said mildly: “I see no bar. Jane is an unmarried girl, and I am a widower.”

Jane, John saw, was looking at Pirrie with wide and intent eyes; it was impossible to read her expression.

Ann said: “Mr Pirrie, you killed Millicent last night Isn’t that enough bar?”

The boys were watching the scene in fascination; Mary turned her head away. It had been silly, John thought wearily, to imagine this world was a world in which any kind of innocence could be preserved.

“No,” Pirrie said, “I don’t regard it as a bar.”

Roger said: “You also killed Jane’s father.”

Pirrie nodded. “An unfortunate necessity. I’m sure Jane has resigned herself to that.”

John said: “I suggest we leave things over for now, Pirrie. Jane knows your mind. She can think about it for the next day or two.

“No.” Pirrie put out his hand. “Come here, Jane.”

Jane stood, still gazing at him. Olivia said:

“Leave her alone. You’re not to touch her. You’ve done enough, without adding this.”

Pirrie ignored her. He repeated: “Come here, Jane. I am not a young man, nor a particularly handsome one. But I can look after you, which is more than many young men could do in the present circumstances.”

Ann said: “Look after her—or murder her?”

“Millicent,” Pirrie said, “had been unfaithful to me a number of times, and was attempting to be so again. That is the only reason for her being dead.”

Incredulously, Ann said: “You speak as though women were another kind of creature—less than human.”

Pirrie said courteously: “I’m sorry if you think so. Jane! Come with me.”

They watched in silence as, slowly, Jane went over to where Pirrie waited for her. Pirrie took her hands in his. He said: “I think we shall get on very well together.”

Olivia said: “No, Jane—you mustn’t!”

“And now,” said Pirrie, “I think we can move off.”

“Roger, John,” Olivia said. “Stop him!”

Roger looked at John. John said: “I don’t think it’s anything to do with the rest of us.”

“What if it had been Mary?” Olivia said. “Jane has rights as much as any of us.”

“You’re wasting your time, Olivia,” John said. It’s a different world we’re living in. The girl went over to Pirrie of her own free will There’s nothing else to be said. Off we go now.”

Ann walked beside him as they set off, walking along the railway line. The valley narrowed sharply ahead of them, and the road, to the north, veered in towards them.

There’s something horrible about Pirrie,” Ann said. “A coldness and a brutality. It’s terrible to think of putting that young girl in his hands.”

“She did go to him voluntarily.”

“Because she was afraid! The man’s a killer.”

“We all are.”

“Not in the same way. You didn’t make any attempt to stop it, did you? You and Roger could have stopped him. It wasn’t like the business with Millicent You were only a couple of feet from him.”

“And he had the safety catch on. Either of us could have shot him.”

“Well?”

“If there had been ten Janes and he had wanted them all, he could have had them. Pirrie’s worth more to us than they would be.”

“And if it had been Mary—as Olivia said?”

“Pirrie would have shot me before he mentioned the matter. He could have done so last night, you know, and very easily. I may be the leader here, but we’re still kept together by mutual consent It doesn’t matter whether that consent is inspired by fear or not, as long as it holds. Pirrie and I are not going to frighten each other; we each know the other’s necessary. If either of us were put out of action, it might mean the difference between getting to the valley or not.”

She said intensely: “And when we get there—will you be prepared to deal with Pirrie then?”

“Wait till we get there. As to that—”

He smiled, and she noticed it. “What?”

“I don’t think Jane’s the kind of girl to remain afraid for long. She will shake herself out of it And when she does… I wouldn’t trust her on night watch—Pirrie proposes taking her to bed with him. It seems odd to think of Pirrie as being over trustful—all the same, he’s already been mistaken in one wife.”

“Even if she wanted to,” Ann said, “what could she do? He may not look much, but he’s strong.”

“That’s up to you and Olivia, isn’t it? You keep the cutlery items.”

She looked at him, trying to estimate how seriously the remark had been intended.

“But not until we get to the valley,” he said. “She will have to put up with him until then, at any rate.”

As they climbed up to Mossdale Head, the sky darkened continually, and gusts of rain swept in their faces. These increased as they neared the ridge, and they breasted it to see the western sky black and stormy over the rolling moors. They had four light plastic mackintoshes in the packs, which John told the women to put on. The boys would have to learn to contend with being wet; although the temperature was lower than it had been, the day was still reasonably warm.

The rain thickened as they walked on. Within half an hour, men and boys were both soaked. John had crossed the Pennines by this route before, but only by car. There had been a sense of isolation about the pass even then, a feeling of being in a country swept of life, despite the road and the railway line that hugged it.

That feeling now was more than doubly intensified. There were few things, John thought, so desolate as a railway line on which no train could be expected. And where the pattern of the moors seen from a moving car had been monotonous, the monotony to people on foot, struggling through rain squalls, was far greater. The moors themselves were barer, of course. The heather still grew, but the moorland grasses were gone; the outcrops of rocks jutted like teeth in the head of a skull.

During the morning, they passed occasional small parties heading in the opposite direction. Once again, there was mutual suspicion and avoidance. One group of three had their belongings strapped on a donkey. John and the others stared at it with amazement. Someone presumably had kept it alive on dry fodder after the other beasts of burden were killed along with the cattle, but once away from its barn it would have to starve.

Roger said: “A variation of the old sleigh-dog technique, I imagine. You get it to take you as far as you can, and then eat it.”

“It’s a standing temptation to any other party you happen to meet, though, isn’t it?” John said. “I can’t see them getting very far with that once they reach the Dale.”

Pirrie said: “We could relieve them of it now.”

“No,” John said. “It isn’t worth our while, in any case. We’ve got enough meat to last us, and we should reach Blind Gill tomorrow. It would only be unnecessary weight.”

Steve began limping shortly afterwards, and examination showed him to have a blistered heel.

Olivia said: “Steve! Why didn’t you say something when it first started hurting?”

He looked at the adult faces surrounding him, and his ten-year-old assurance deserted him. He began to cry.

There’s nothing to cry about, old man,” Roger said. “A blistered heel is bad luck, but it’s not the end of the world.”

His sobs were not the ordinary sobs of childhood, but those in which experience beyond a child’s range was released from its confinement He said something, and Roger bent down to catch his words.

“What was that, Steve?”

“If I couldn’t walk—I thought you might leave me.”

Roger and Olivia looked at each other. Roger said:

“Nobody’s going to leave you. How on earth could you think that?”

“Mr Pirrie left Millicent,” Steve said.

John intervened. “He’d better not walk on it It will only get worse.”

“I’ll carry him,” Roger said. “Spooks, will you carry my gun for me?”

Spooks nodded. “I’d like to.”

“You and I will take him in turns, Rodge,” John said. “We’ll manage him all right Good job he’s a little ’un.”

Olivia said: “Roger and I can take the turns. He’s our boy. We can carry him.”

She had not spoken to John since the incident of Jane and Pirrie. John said to her:

“Olivia—I do the arranging around here. Roger and I will carry Steve. You can take the pack of whoever happens to be doing it at the tune.”

Their eyes held for a moment, and then she turned away.

Roger said: “All right, old son. Up you get.”

Their progress immediately after this was a little faster, since Steve had been acting as a brake, but John was not deceived by it The carrying of a passenger, even a boy as small as Steve, added to their difficulties. He kept them going until they had nearly got to the end of Garsdale, before he called a halt to their midday meal.

The wind, which had been carrying the rain into their faces, had dropped, but the rain itself was still falling, and in a steadier and more soaking downpour. John looked round the unpromising scene.

“Anybody see a cave and a pile of firewood stacked inside? I thought not A cold snack today, and water. And we can rest our legs a little.”

Ann said: “Couldn’t we find somewhere dry to eat it?*

About fifty yards along the road, there was a small house, standing back. John followed her gaze towards it.

“It might be empty,” he said. “But we should have to go up to it and find out, shouldn’t we? And then it might not be empty after all. I don’t mind us taking risks when it’s for something we must have, like food, but isn’t worth it for half an hour’s shelter.”

“Davey’s soaked,” she said.

“Half an hour won’t dry him out And that’s all the time we can spare.” He called to the boy: “How are you, Davey? Wet?”

Davey nodded. “Yes, Dad.”

“Try laughing drily.”

It was an old joke. Davey did his best to smile at it. John went over and rumpled his wet hair.

“You’re doing fine,” he said. “Really fine.”

The western approach to Garsdale had been through a narrow strip of good grazing land which now, in the steady rain, was a band of mud, studded here and there with farm buildings. They looked down to Sedbergh, resting between hills and valley on the other side of the Rawthey. Smoke lay above it, and drifted westwards along the edge of the moors. Sedburgh was burning.

“Looters,” Roger said.

John swung his glasses over the stone-built town.

“We’re meeting the north-western stream now; and they’ve had the extra day to get here. All the same, it’s a bit of a shaker. I thought this part would still be quiet.”

“It might not be so bad,” Roger said, “if we cut north straight away and get past on the higher ground. It might not be so bad up in the Lune valley.”

Pirrie said: “When a town like that goes under, I should expect all the valleys around to be in a dangerous condition. It is not going to be easy.”

John had directed the glasses beyond the ravaged town to the mouth of the dale along which they had proposed to travel. He could make out movements but it was impossible to know what they constituted. Smoke rose from isolated buildings. There was an alternative route, across the moors to Kendal, but that also took them over the Lune. In any case if Sedburgh had fallen was there any reason to think things were any better around Kendal?

Pirrie glanced at him speculatively. “If I may offer a comment, I think we are under-armed for the conditions that lie ahead. Those, people with the donkey—we should probably have got a gun or two out of them, apart from the animal. They would hardly have had the temerity^{123} to travel as they were doing, unarmed.”

Roger said: “It might not be as bad as it looks. We shall have to make the effort, anyway.”

John looked out over the confluence of valleys and rivers.

“I don’t know. We may find ourselves walking into something we can’t cope with. It might be too late then.”

“We can’t stay here, can we?” said Roger. “And we can’t go back, so we must go forward.”

John turned towards Pirrie. He realized, as he did so, that, although Roger might be his friend, Pirrie was his lieutenant. It was Pirrie’s coolness and judgement on which he had come to rely.

“I think we need more than just guns. There aren’t enough of us. If we’re going to be sure of getting to Blind Gill, we shall have to snowball. What do you think?”

Pirrie nodded, considering the point. “I’m inclined to agree. Three men are no longer an adequate number for defence.”

Roger said impatiently: “What do we do then? Hang out a banner, with a sign on it: ‘Recruits Welcomed’?”

“I suggest we make a halt here,” John said. “We’re still on the pass, and we’ll get parties going both ways across the Pennines. They will be less likely to be downright looters, too. The looters will be happy enough down in the valleys.”

They looked again down the vista their position commanded. Even in the rain it was very picturesque. And, even in the rain, the houses down there were burning.

Pirrie said thoughtfully: “We could ambush parties as they came through—there’s enough cover about a hundred yards back.”

There aren’t enough of us to make a press-gang^{124},” John said. “We need volunteers. After all, if they have guns we should have to give them back to them.”

Roger said: “What do we do, then? Make camp? By the side of the road?”

“Yes,” John said. He looked at his bedraggled group of followers. “Let’s hope not for long.”

They had to wait over an hour for their first encounter, and then it was a disappointing one. They saw a little party struggling up the road from the valley, and, as they drew nearer, could see that they were eight in number. There were four women, two children—a boy about eight and a girl who looked younger—and two men. They were wheeling two perambulators, stacked high with household goods; a saucepan fell off when they were about fifty yards away and rolled away with a clatter. One of the women stooped down wearily to pick it up.

The two men, like their womenfolk, looked miserable and scared. One of them was well over fifty; the other, although quite young, was physically weedy.

Pirrie said: “I hardly think there is anything here that will be to our advantage.”

He and Roger were standing with John on the road itself, holding their guns. The women and children were resting on a flat-topped stone wall nearby.

John shook his head. “I think you’re right. No weapons, either, I should think. One of the kids may have a water-pistol.”

The approaching party stopped when they caught sight of the three men standing in the road, but after a whispered consultation and a glance backwards into the smouldering valley, they came on again. Fear stood on them more markedly now. The older man walked in front, and tried to look unconcerned, with poor success. The girl began to cry, and one of the women tugged at her, simultaneously frantic and furtive, as though afraid the noise would in some way betray them.

As they passed, in silence, John thought how natural it would have been, a few days before, to give some kind of greeting, and how unnatural the same greeting would have sounded now.

Roger said quietly: “How far do you think they’ll get?”

“Down into Wensleydale, possibly. I don’t know. They may survive a week, if they’re lucky.”

“Lucky? Or unlucky?”

“Yes. Unlucky, I suppose.”

Pirrie said: “They appear to be turning back.”

John looked. They had travelled perhaps seventy-five yards farther on along the road; now they had turned and were making their way back, still pushing the perambulators. By turning, they had got the rain in their faces instead of on their backs. The little girl’s mackintosh gaped at the neck; her fingers fumbled, trying to fasten it, but she could not.

They stopped a short distance away. The older man said:

“We wondered if you was waiting for anything up here—if there was anything we could tell you, maybe.”

“John’s eyes examined him. A manual worker of some kind; the sort of man who would give a lifetime’s faithful inefficient service. On his own, under the new conditions, he would have small chance of survival, his only hope lying in the possibility of attaching himself to some little Napoleonic gangster of the dales who would put up with his uselessness for the sake of his devotion. With his present entourage^{125}, even that was ruled out.

“No,” John said. There’s nothing you can tell us.”

“We was heading across the Pennines,” the man went on. “We reckoned it might be quieter over in those parts. We thought we might find a farm or something, out of the way, where they’d let us work and give us some food. We wouldn’t want much.”

A few months ago, the pipe-dream^{126} had probably been a £75,000 win on the football pools. Their chances of that had been about as good as the chances of their more modest hopes were now. He looked at the four women; only one of them was sufficiently youthful to stand a chance of surviving on sexual merits, and with youth her entire store of assets were numbered. They were all bedraggled. The two children had wandered away, in the direction of the wall where Ann and the others were sitting. The boy was not wearing shoes, but plimsolls, which were wet through.

John said harshly: “You’d better get on, then, hadn’t you?”

The man persisted: “You think we might find a place like that?”

“You might,” John said.

“All this trouble,” one of the women said. “It won’t last long, will it?”

Roger looked down into the valley. “Only till hell freezes over.^{127}”

“Where was you thinking of heading?” asked the older man. “Were you thinking of going into Yorkshire as well?”

John said: “No. We’ve come from there.”

“We’re not bothered about which way we go, for that matter. We only thought it might be quieter across the Pennines.”

“Yes. It might.”

The mother of the two children spoke: “What my father means is—do you think we could go whichever way you’re going? It would mean there was more of us, if we ran into any trouble. I mean—you must be looking for a quiet place, too. You’re respectable people, not like those down there. Respectable folk should stick together at a time like this.”

John said: “There are something like fifty million people in this country. Probably over forty-nine million of them are respectable, and looking for a quiet place. There aren’t enough quiet places to go round.”

“Yes, that’s why it’s better for folks to stick together. Respectable folk.”

“How long have you been on the road?” John asked her.

She looked puzzled. “We started this morning—we could see fires in Sedburgh, and they were burning the Follins farm, and that’s not more than three miles from the village.”

“We’ve had three days’ start on you. We aren’t respectable any longer. We’ve killed people on our way here, and we may have to kill more. I think you’d better carry on by yourselves, as you were doing.”

They stared at him. The older man said at last:

“I suppose you had to. I suppose a man’s got to save himself and his family any way he can. They got me on killing in the First War, and the Jerries^{128} hadn’t burned Sedburgh then, nor the Follins farm. If you’ve got to do things, then you’ve got to.”

John did not reply. At the wall, the two children were playing with the others, scrambling up and along the wall and down in a complicated kind of obstacle race. Ann saw his glance, and rose to come towards him.

“Can we go with you?” the man said. “We’ll do as you say—I don’t mind killing if it’s necessary, and we can do our share of the work. We don’t mind which way you’re going—it’s all the same as far as we’re concerned. Apart from being in the army, I’ve lived all my life in Carbeck. Now I’ve had to leave it, it doesn’t matter where I go.”

“How many guns have you got?” John asked.

He shook his head. “We haven’t got any guns.”

“We’ve got three, to look after six adults and four children. Even that isn’t enough. That’s why we’re waiting here—to find others who’ve got guns and who will join up with us. I’m sorry, but we can’t take passengers.”

“We wouldn’t be passengers! I can turn my hand to most things. I can shoot, if you can come by another gun. I was a sharpshooter in the Fusiliers^{129}.”

“If you were by yourself, we might have you. As it is, with four women and two more children… we can’t afford to take on extra handicaps.”

The rain had stopped, but the sky remained grey and formless, and it was rather cold. The younger man, who had still not spoken, shivered and pulled his dirty raincoat more tightly round him.

The other man said desperately: “We’ve got food. In the pram—half a side of bacon.”

“We have enough. We killed to get it, and we can kill again.” The mother said: “Don’t turn us down. Think of the children. You wouldn’t turn us down with the children.”

“I’m thinking of my own children,” John said. “If I were able to think of any others, there would be millions I could think of. If I were you, I should get moving. If you’re going to find your quiet place, you want to find it before the mob does.”

They looked at him, understanding what he said but unwilling to believe that he could be refusing them.

Ann said, close beside him: “We could take them, couldn’t we? The children…’ He looked at her. “Yes—I haven’t forgotten what I said—about Spooks. I was wrong.”

“No,” John said. “You were right There’s no place for pity now.”

With horror, she said: “Don’t say that.”

He gestured towards the smoke, rising in the valley. “Pity always was a luxury. It’s all right if the tragedy’s a comfortable distance away—if you can watch it from a seat in the cinema. It’s different when you find it on your doorstep—on every doorstep.”

Olivia had also come over from the wall. Jane, who had made little response to Olivia, following her morning of walking with Pirrie, also left the wall, but went and stood near Pirrie. He glanced at her, but said nothing.

Olivia said: “I can’t see that it would hurt to let them tag along. And they might be some help.”

“They let the boy come on the road in plimsolls,” John said, “in this weather. You should have understood by now, Olivia, that it’s not only the weakest but the least efficient as well who are going to go to the wall^{130}. They couldn’t help us; they could hinder.”

The boy’s mother said: “I told him to put his boots on. We didn’t see that he hadn’t until we were a couple of miles from the village. And then we daren’t go back.”

John said wearily: “I know. I’m simply saying that there’s no scope for forgetting to notice things any more. If you didn’t notice the boy’s feet, you might not notice something more important. And every one of us might die as a result. I don’t feel like taking the chance. I don’t feel like taking any chances.”

Olivia said: “Roger…”

Roger shook his head. “Things have changed in the last three days. When Johnny and I tossed that coin for leadership, I didn’t take it seriously. But he’s the boss now, isn’t he? He’s willing to take it all on his conscience, and that lets the rest of us out. He’s probably right, anyway.”

The newcomers had been following the interchange with fascination. Now the older man, seeing in Roger’s acquiescence the failure of their hopes, turned away, shaking his head. The mother of the children was not so easily shaken off.

“We can follow you,” she said. “We can stay here till you move and then follow you. You can’t stop us doing that.”

John said: You’d better go now. It won’t do any good talking.”

“No, we’ll stay! You can’t make us go.”

Pirrie intervened, for the first time: “We cannot make you go; but we can make you stay here after we’ve gone.” He touched his rifle. “I think you would be wiser to go now.”

The woman said, but lacking conviction: “You wouldn’t do it.”

Ann said bitterly: “He would. We depend on him. You’d better go.”

The woman looked into both their faces; then she turned and called to her children: “Bessie! Wilf!”

They detached themselves from the others with reluctance. It was like any occasion on which children meet and then, at the whim of their parents, must break away again, their friendship only tentatively begun. Ann watched them come.

She said to John: “Please…”

He shook his head. “I have to do what’s best for us. There are millions of others—these are only the ones we see.”

“Charity is for those we see.”

“I told you—charity, pity… they come from a steady income and money to spare. We’re all bankrupt now.”

Pirrie said: “Custance! Up the road, there.”

Between Baugh Fell and Rise Hill, the road ran straight for about three-quarters of a mile. There were figures on it, coming down towards them.

This was a large party—seven or eight men, with women and some children. They walked with confidence along the crown of the road, and even at that distance they were accompanied by what looked like the glint of guns.

John said with satisfaction: “That’s what we want.”

Roger said: “If they’ll talk. They may be the kind that shoot first. We could get over behind the wall before we try opening the conversation.”

“If we did, it might give them reason to shoot first.”

“The women and children, then.”

“Same thing. Their own are out in the open.”

The older man of the other party said: “Can we stay with you till these have gone past, then?”

John was on the verge of refusing when Pirrie caught his eye. He nodded his head very slightly. John caught the point: a temporary augmentation, if only in numbers and not in strength, might be a bargaining point.

He said indifferently: “If you like.”

They watched the new group approach. After a time the children, Bessie and Wilf, drifted away and back to where the others were still playing on the wall.

Most of the men seemed to be carrying guns. John could eventually make out a couple of army pattern .300 rifles, a Winchester .202, and the inevitable shot-guns. With increasing assurance, he thought: this is it. This was enough to get them through any kind of chaos to Blind Gill. There only remained the problem of winning them over.

He had hoped they would halt a short distance away, but they had neither suspicion nor doubts of their own ability to meet any challenge, and they came on. Their leader was a burly man, with a heavy red face. He wore a leather belt, with a revolver stuck in it. As he came abreast of where John’s party stood by the side of the road, he glanced at them indifferently. It was another good sign that he did not covet their guns; or not enough, at least, even to contemplate fighting for them.

John called to him: “Just a minute.”

He stopped and looked at John with a deliberation of movement that was impressive. His accent, when he spoke was thickly Yorkshire.

“You wanted summat^{131}?”

“My name’s John Custance. We’re heading for a place I know, up in the hills. My brother’s got land there—in a valley that’s blocked at one end and only a few feet wide at the other. Once in there, you can keep an army out. Are you interested?”

He considered for a moment. “What are you telling us for?”

John pointed down towards the valley. “Things are nasty down there. Too nasty for a small party like ours. We’re looking for recruits.”

The man grinned. “Happen^{132} we’re not looking for a change. We’re doin’ all right.”

“You’re doing all right now,” John said, “While there are potatoes in the ground, and meat to be looted from farmhouses. But it won’t be too long before the meat’s used up, and there won’t be any to follow it. You won’t find potatoes in the fields next year, either.”

“We’ll look after that when the time comes.”

“I can tell you how. By cannibalism. Are you looking forward to it?”

The leader himself was still contemptuously hostile, but there was some response, John thought, in the ranks behind him. He could not have had long to weld his band together; there would be cross-currents, perhaps counter-currents.

The man said: “Maybe we’ll have the taste for it by then. I don’t think as I could fancy you at the moment.”

“It’s up to you,” John said. He looked past him to where the women and children were; there were five women, and four children, their ages varying between five and fifteen. “Those who can’t find a piece of land which they can hold are going to end’ up by being savages—if they survive at all. That may suit you. It doesn’t suit us.”

“I’ll tell you what doesn’t suit me, mister—a lot of talk. I never had no time for gabbers^{133}.”

“You won’t need to talk at all in a few years,” John said. “You’ll be back to grunts and sign language. I’m talking because I’ve got something to tell you, and if you’ve got any sense you will see it’s to your advantage to listen.”

“Our advantage, eh? It wouldn’t be yours you’re thinking about?”

“I’d be a fool if it wasn’t. But you stand to get more out of it. We want temporary help so that we can get to my brother’s place. We’re offering you a place where you can live in something like peace, and rear your children to be something better than wild animals.”

The man glanced round at his followers, as though sensing an effect that John’s words were having on them. He said:

“Still talk. You think we’re going to take you on, and find ourselves on a wild-goose chase up in the hills?”

“Have you got a better place to go to? Have you got anywhere to go to, for that matter? What harm can it possibly do you to come along with us and find out?”

He stared at John, still hostile but baffled. At last, he turned to his followers.

“What do you reckon of it?” he said to them.

Before anyone spoke, he must have read the answer in their expressions.

“Wouldn’t do any harm to go and have a look,” a dark, thickset man said. There was a murmur of agreement The red-faced man turned back to John.

“Right,” he said. “You can show us the way to this valley of your brother’s. We’ll see what we think of it when we get there. Where abouts is it, anyway?”

Unprepared to reveal the location of Blind Gill, or even to name it, John was getting ready an evasive answer, when Pirrie intervened. He said coolly:

That’s Mr Custance’s business, not yours. He’s in charge here. Do as he tells you, and you will be all right.”

John heard a gasp of dismay from Ann. He himself found it hard to see a justification for Pirrie’s insolence, both of manner and content; it could only re-confirm the leader of the other group in his hostility. He thought of saying something to take the edge off the remark, but was stopped both by the realization that he wouldn’t be likely to mend the situation, and by the trust he had come to have in Pirrie’s judgement. Pirrie, undoubtedly, knew what he was doing.

“It’s like that, is it?” the man said. “We’re to do as Custance tells us? You can think again about that I do the ordering for my lot, and, if you join up with us, the same goes for you.”

“You’re a big man,” Pirrie observed speculatively, “but what the situation needs is brains. And there, I imagine, you fall short.”

The red-faced man spoke with incongruous softness:

“I don’t take anything from little bastards just because they’re little. There aren’t any policemen round the corner now. I make my own regulations; and one of them is that people round me keep their tongues civil.”

Finishing, he tapped the revolver in his belt, to emphasize his words. As he did so, Pirrie raised his rifle. The man, in earnest now, began to pull the revolver out. But the muzzle was still inside his belt when Pirrie fired. From that short range, the bullet lifted him and crashed him backwards on the road. Pirrie stood in silence, his rifle at the ready.

Some of the women screamed. John’s eyes were on the men opposing him. He had restrained his impulse to raise his own shot-gun, and was glad to see that Roger also had not moved. Some of the other men made tentative movements towards their guns, but the incident had occurred too quickly for them, and too surprisingly. One of them half lifted a rifle; unconcernedly, Pirrie moved to cover him, and he set it down again.

John said: “It’s a pity about that.” He glanced at Pirrie. “But he should have known better than to try threatening someone with a gun if he wasn’t sure he could fire first. Well, the offer’s still open. Anyone who wants to join us and head for the valley is welcome.”

One of the women had knelt down by the side of the fallen man. She looked up.

“He’s dead.”

John nodded slightly. He looked at the others.

“Have you made up your minds yet?”

The thick-set man, who had spoken before, said:

“I reckon it were his own look-out. I’ll come along, all right. My name’s Parsons—Alf Parsons.”

Slowly, with an air almost ritualistic, Pirrie lowered his rifle. He went across to the body, and pulled the revolver out of the belt. He took it by the muzzle, and handed it to John. Then he turned back to address the others:

“My name is Pirrie, and this is Buckley, on my right. As I said, Mr Custance is in charge here. Those who wish to join up with our little party should come along and shake hands with Mr Custance, and identify themselves. All right?”

Alf Parsons was the first to comply, but the others lined up behind him. Here, more than ever, ritual was being laid down. It might come, in time, to a bending of the knee, but this formal hand-shake was as clear a sign as that would have been of the rendering of fealty^{134}.

For himself, John saw, it signified a new role, of enhanced power. The leadership of his own small party, accidental at first, into which he had grown, was of a different order from this acceptance of loyalty from another man’s followers. The pattern of feudal chieftain was forming, and he was surprised by the degree of his own acquiescence—and even pleasure—in it. They shook hands with him, and introduced themselves in their turn. Joe Harris… Jess Awkright… Bill Riggs… Andy Anderson… Will Secombe… Martin Foster.

The women did not shake hands. Their men pointed them out to him. Awkright said: “My wife, Alice.” Riggs said: “That’s my wife, Sylvie.” Foster, a thin-faced greying man, pointed: “My wife Hilda, and my daughter, Hildegard.”

Alf Parson said: “The other’s Joe Ashton’s wife, Emily. I reckon she’ll be all right when she’s got over the shock. He never did treat her right.”

All the men of Joe Ashton’s party had shaken hands.

The elderly man of the first party stood at John’s elbow.

He said: “Have you changed your mind, Mr Custance? Can we stay with your lot?”

John could see now how the feudal leader, his strength an over-plus, might have given his aid to the weak, as an act of simple vanity. After enthronement, the tones of the suppliant beggar were doubly sweet It was a funny thing.

“You can stay,” he said. “Here.” He tossed him the shot-gun which he had been holding. “We’ve come by a gun after all.”

When Pirrie killed Joe Ashton, the children down by the wall had frozen into the immobility of watchfulness which had come to replace ordinary childish fear. But they had soon begun playing again. Now the new set of children drifted down towards them, and, after the briefest of introductions, joined in the playing.

“My name’s Noah Blennitt, Mr Custance,” the elderly man said, “and that’s my son Arthur. Then there’s my wife Iris, and her sister Nelly, my young daughter Barbara, and my married daughter Katie. Her husband was on the railway; he was down in the south when the trains stopped. We’re all very much beholden^{135} to you, Mr Custance. We’ll serve you well, every one of us.”

The woman he had referred to as Katie looked at John, anxiously and placatingly.

“Wouldn’t it be a good idea for us all to have some tea? We’ve got a big can and plenty of tea and some dried milk, and there’s water in the brook just along.”

“It would be a good idea,” John said, “if there were two dry sticks within twenty miles.”

She looked at him, shy triumph rising above the anxiety and the desire to please.

“That’s all right, Mr Custance. We’ve got a primus stove in the pram as well”

“Then go ahead. We’ll have afternoon tea before we move off.” He glanced at the body of Joe Ashton. “But somebody had better clear that away first.”

Two of Joe Ashton’s erstwhile followers hastened to do his bidding.