The Death of Grass

ELEVEN

Ann tried to stop him when she saw him tying a large white handkerchief on the end of a stick.

“You can’t do that! They’ll shoot you!”

John shook his head. “No, they won’t.”

“They fired on all of us without provocation. They’ll fire at you, too.”

“Without provocation? A whole gang of us marching up the road, and with arms? It was as much my mistake as theirs. I should have realized how their minds would work.”

“Their minds? David’s!”

“No. Probably not. He can hardly be manning the fence all the time. God knows who it is. Anyway, it’s a different thing with one man, unarmed, under a flag of truce. There’s no reason why they should fire.”

“But they might!”

“They won’t.”

But he had an odd feeling as he walked along the middle of the road towards the fence, his white flag held above his head. It was not exactly fear. It seemed to him that it was nearer to exhilaration—the sense of fatigue allied to excitement that he had sometimes known in fevers. He began to measure his paces, counting soundlessly: one, two, three, four, five… In front of him, he saw that the barrel of the machine-gun poked through a hole in the fence a good ten feet above the ground; not far from the top. David must have built a platform on the other side.

He stopped, seven or eight feet from the fence, and looked up. From somewhere near the gun muzzle, a voice said:

“Well, what are you after?”

John said: “I’d like to have a word with David Custance.”

“Would you, now? He’s busy. And the answer’s no, anyway.”

“He’s my brother.”

There was a moment’s silence. Then the voice said:

“His brother’s in London. Who do you say you are?”

“I’m John Custance. We got away from London. It’s taken us some time to travel up here. Can I see him?”

“Wait a minute.” There was a low murmur of voices; John could not quite catch what was said. “All right You can wait there. We’re sending up to the farm for him.”

John walked a few paces, and stared into the Lepe. From beyond the fence he heard a car engine start up and then fade away along the road up the valley. It sounded like David’s utility^{143}. He wondered how much petrol they would have in store inside Blind Gill. Probably not much. It didn’t matter. The sooner people got used to a world deprived of the internal combustion engine as well as the old-fashioned beasts of burden, the better.

He called up to the man behind the fence: “The people with me—can they come out of the ditch? Without being shot at?”

“They can stay where they are.”

“But there’s no point in it. What’s the objection to their being on the road?”

“The ditch is good enough.”

John thought of arguing, and then decided against it. Anyone on the other side of the fence was someone they would have to live with; if this fellow wanted to exercise his brief authority, it was best to put up with it. His own disquiet had been allayed by the promptness with which it had been agreed to send for David. That at least removed the fear that he might have lost control of the valley.

He said: “I’ll walk along and tell my lot what’s happening.”

The voice was indifferent. “Please yourself. But keep them off the road.”

Pirrie was sitting up and taking notice now. He listened to what John had to tell them, but made no comment. Roger said:

“You think it’s going to be all right, men?”

“I don’t see why not. The bloke behind the machine gun may be a bit trigger-happy, but that won’t bother us once we’re behind him.”

“He don’t seem very anxious to let us get behind him,” Alf Parsons said.

“Carrying out orders. Hello!”

There was the sound of an engine approaching. It halted behind the barrier.

“That will be David!” John got to his feet again. “Ann, you could come along and have a word with him, too.”

“Isn’t it a risk?” Roger asked.

“Hardly. David’s there now.”

Ann said: “Davey would like to come, too. I should think—and Mary.”

“Of course.”

Pirrie said: “No.” He spoke softly, but with finality. John looked at him.

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“I think they would be safer here,” Pirrie said. He paused. “I don’t think you should all go along there together.”

It took several seconds for John to grasp the implication; he only did so then because the remark came from Pirrie and so could be founded only on an utterly cynical realism.

“Well,” he said at last, “that tells me something about how you would act in my place, doesn’t it?”

Pirrie smiled. Ann said: “What’s the matter?”

John heard David’s voice calling him in the distance: “John!”

“Nothing,” he said. “Never mind, Ann. You stay here. It won’t take me long to fix things with David.”

He had half expected the gate in the fence to open as he approached, but he realized that caution—possibly excessive, but on the whole justified—might prevent this until John’s status, and the status of the troop that accompanied him, had been settled. He stood under the fence, still blind to whatever was happening on the other side of it, and said:

“Dave! That you?”

He heard David’s voice: “Yes, of course—open it. How the devil is he going to get in if you don’t?”

He saw the muzzle of the gun waggle as the gate beneath it opened slightly. No chances were being taken. He squeezed through the gap, and saw David waiting for him. They took each other’s hands. The gate closed behind him.

“How did you make it?” David asked. “Where’s Davey—and Ann and Mary?”

“Back there. Hiding in a ditch. Your machine-gunner damn near killed us all.”

David stared at him. “I can’t believe it! I told the people at the gate to look out for you, but I never believed you would get here. The news of the ban on travel… and then the rioting and rumours of bombing… I’d given you up.”

“It’s a long story,” John said. “It can wait. Can I bring my lot in first?”

“Your lot? You mean…? They told me there was a mob on the road.”

John nodded. “A mob. Thirty-four of them, ten being children. We’ve all been on the road for some time. I brought them here.”

He was looking at David’s face. He had seen the expression only once before that he could remember: when, after their grandfather’s death, they had heard that the whole estate was being left to David, It showed guilt and embarrassment.

David said: “It’s a bit difficult, Johnny.”

“In what way?”

“We’re crowded out already. When things began getting bad, the locals began to come in. The Rivers from Stonebeck, and so on. It was their boy who got hold of the machine-gun—from an army unit near Windermere. Three or four of the men came with him. It’s spread thin. We’ll manage all right, but there’s no margin for accidents—a potato failure, or anything like that.”

“My thirty-four will spread it thinner,” John said. “But they’ll work for their keep. I’ll answer for that.”

“That’s not the point,” David said. “The land will only support so many. We’re over the mark now.”

A brief silence followed. The Lepe rushed past on their right. The man tending a fire on which a pot was simmering and the two men up on the platform were both out of earshot. Nevertheless, John found himself lowering his voice. He said:

“What do you suggest? That we turn back towards London?”

David grasped his arm. “Good God, no! Don’t be a fool. I’m trying to tell you—I can make room for you and Ann and the children; but not for the others.”

“Dave,” he said, “you’ve got to make room for them. You can do, and you must.”

David shook his head. “I would if I could. Don’t you understand—those people aren’t the first we’ve had to turn away. There have been others. Some of them were relations of people already here. We’ve had to be hard. I’ve always told them that you and your family must come in if you got here. But thirty-four…! It’s impossible. Even if I agreed, the others would never let me.”

“It’s your land.”

“No one holds land except by consent. They are in the majority. Johnny—I know you don’t like the idea of abandoning the people you’ve been travelling with. But you will have to. There’s no alternative.”

“There’s always an alternative.”

“None. Bring them here—Ann and the children—you can make some excuse for that. The others… they’ve got arms, haven’t they? They’ll manage all right.”

“You’ve not been out there.”

Their eyes met again. David said: “I know you won’t like doing it, but you must. You can’t put the safety of those others before Ann and the children.”

John laughed. The two men on the platform looked down at them.

“Pirrie!” he said. “He must be psychic.”

“Pirrie?”

“One of my lot. I don’t think we should have got through without him. I was going to bring Ann and the children with me when I came to meet you. He put a stop to it. He made them stay behind. I saw that he was protecting himself and the others against a double-cross, and I was righteously indignant. Now … if I did have them here, inside the fence, I wonder what I would have done?”

David said: “This is serious. Can’t you fool him somehow?”

“Fool him? Not Pirrie.” John looked away, up the long vista of Blind Gill, snug beneath its protecting hills. He said slowly: “If you turn those others down, you’re turning us down—you’re turning Davey down.”

“This man, Pirrie… I might persuade them to let one other in with you. Can he be bribed?”

“Undoubtedly. But the idea will have entered the heads of the others by now—particularly since I shall have to tell them they can’t just walk in as they had been hoping. There isn’t a hope of my getting the children in here without them all coming.”

“There must be some way.”

“That’s what I said to you, isn’t it? We aren’t free agents any longer, though.” He stared at his brother. “In a way, we’re enemies.”

“No. We’ll find a way round this. Perhaps… if you were to go back, and then I got our people to run a sortie against you, under machine-gun cover… you could have passed the word to Ann and the children to lie still until we had chased them away.”

John smiled ironically. “Even if I were prepared to do it, it wouldn’t work. Mine have been blooded. That ditch makes a fair cover. The machine-gun isn’t going to scare them.”

“Then… I don’t know. But there must be something.”

John looked up the valley again. The fields were well cropped, mostly with potatoes.

“Ann will be wondering,” he said, “not to mention the others. I shall have to get back. What’s it to be, Dave?”

He had come already to his own decision, and the agony of his brother’s uncertainty could not touch that grimness. Dave said at last, forcing the words out:

“I’ll talk to them. Come back in an hour. I’ll see what they say about letting the others in. Or perhaps we’ll think of something in that time. Try to think of something, Johnny!”

John nodded. “I’ll try. So long, Dave.”

David looked at him miserably: “Give my love to them all—to Davey.”

John said: “Yes, of course I will.”

The two men came down from the platform and unbarred the gate again. John squeezed through. He did not look at David as he went.

They were waiting for him as he dropped into the ditch. He saw from their faces that they expected only bad news; any news was bad that was not signalled by the gate to the valley thrown open, and an immediate beckoning in.

“How’d it go, Mr Custance?” Noah Blennitt asked.

“Not well.” He told them, baldly, but passing quickly over the invitation to his own family to come in. When he had finished, Roger said:

“I can see their point of view. He can make room for you and Ann and the children?”

“He can’t do anything. The others had agreed about that, and apparently they’re willing to stick by it.”

“You take it, Johnny,” Roger said. “You’ve brought us up here—we haven’t lost anything by it, and there’s no sense in everyone missing the chance because we can’t all have it.”

The murmur from the others was uncertain enough to be tempting. It’s been offered, he thought, and they won’t stop me if I take it straight away while they’re still shocked by their own generosity. Take Ann and Mary and Davey up to the gates, and see them open, and the valley beyond… He looked at Pirrie. Pirrie returned the look calmly; his small right hand, the fingers still carefully manicured, rested on the butt of his rifle.

Seeing the bubble of temptation pricked, he wondered how he would have reacted if he had had the real rather than the apparent freedom of action. The feudal baron, he thought, and ready to sell out his followers as cheerfully as that. Probably they had been like that—most of them, anyway.

He said, looking at Pirrie: “I’ve been thinking it over. Quite frankly, I don’t think there’s any hope at all of my brother persuading the others to let us all in. As he said, some of them have seen their own relations turned back. That leaves us two alternatives: turning back ourselves and looking for a home somewhere else, or fighting our way into the valley and taking it over.”

Ann said: “No!” in a shocked voice. Davey said: “Do you mean—fighting Uncle Dave, Daddy?” The others stayed silent.

“We don’t have to decide straight away,” John said. “Until I’ve seen my brother again, I suppose we can say there’s an outside chance of managing it peaceably. But you can be thinking it over.”

Roger said: “I still think you ought to take what’s offered you, Johnny.”

This time there was no kind of response; the moment of indecision past, John reflected wrily. The followers had realized the baron’s duty towards them again.

Alf Parsons asked: “What do you think, Mr Custance?”

“I’ll keep my opinion until I come back next time,” John said. “You be thinking it over.”

Pirrie still did not speak, but he smiled slowly. With the bandage round his head, he looked a frail and innocent old man. Jane sat close by him, her pose protective.

It was not until John was on the point of going back to the gate that Pirrie said anything. Then he said:

“You’ll look things over, of course? From inside?”

“Of course,” John said.

If there had been any hope in his mind of David persuading the others in the valley to relent, it would have vanished the moment he saw his brother’s face again. Four or five other men had accompanied him back to the fence, presumably to help the three already on guard in the event of John’s troops being reluctant to accept their dismissal. There was, John noticed, a telephone point just inside the fence, so that the men there could summon help quickly in the event of a situation looking dangerous. He glanced about him, looking for further details of the valley’s defences.

David said: “They won’t agree, Johnny. We couldn’t really expect them to.”

The men who had come with him stayed close by, making no pretence of offering privacy to the brothers. As much as anything, this showed John the powerlessness of his brother’s position.

He nodded. “So we have to take the road again. I gave Davey your love. I’m sorry you couldn’t have seen him.”

“Look,” David said, “I’ve been thinking—there is a way.” He spoke with a feverish earnestness. “You can do it.”

John looked at him in inquiry. He had been noting the angle the fence made with the river.

“Tell them it’s no good,” David said, “—that you will have to find somewhere else. But don’t travel too far tonight. Arrange things so that you and Ann and the children can slip away—and then come back here. You’ll be let in. I’ll stay here tonight to make sure.”

John recognized the soundness of the scheme, for other people under other conditions. But he was not tempted by it. In any case, David was underestimating the intervention Pirrie might make in the plan; a reasonable error for anyone who did not know Pirrie.

He said slowly: “Yes, I think that might work. It’s worth trying, anyway. But I don’t want to have the kids mown down by that gun of yours in the night.”

David said eagerly: “There’s no fear of that. Give me our old curlew whistle as you come along the road. And it’s full moon.”

“Yes,” John said, “so it is.”