The Death of Grass

TWELVE

John dropped down into the ditch where they all were.

He said immediately: “We shan’t get in there peaceably. They won’t budge. My brother’s tried them, but it’s no good. So we have the alternatives I spoke of—going somewhere else or fighting our way into Blind Gill. Have you thought about it?”

There was a silence; Alf Parsons broke it. He said:

“It’s up to you, Mr Custance—you know that. We shall do whatever you think best.”

“Right,” John said. “One thing first. My brother looks like me, and he’s wearing blue overalls and a grey and white check shirt. I’m telling you this so you can watch out for him. I don’t want him hurt, if it can be helped.”

Joe Harris said: “We’re having a go, then, Mr Custance?”

“Yes. Not now—tonight. Now we are going to beat an orderly retreat out of range of vision of the people on the fence. It’s got to look as though we’ve given up the idea of getting in. Our only hope is having the advantage of surprise.”

They obeyed at once, scrambling out of the ditch and heading back down the road, away from the valley. John walked at the rear, and Roger and Pirrie walked with him.

Roger said: “I still think you’re doing the wrong thing, Johnny. You could leave us and take the family back. They would have you.”

Pirrie remarked, in a speculative tone: “I don’t think it’s going to be easy, even a surprise attack.” He looked at John. “Unless you know a way of getting in over the hills.”

“No. Even if there were a reasonable way, it wouldn’t do. The hillsides are steep in there. It would be impossible to avoid starting small slides of stones and once they knew where we were we should offer a target they couldn’t miss.”

“I take it,” Pirrie said, “that you do not contemplate rushing that fence—with a Vickers machine-gun behind it?”

“No.” John looked at Pirrie closely. “How do you feel now?”

“Normal.”

“Fit enough to wade half a mile through a river that’s cold even at this time of year?”

“Yes.”

They were both watching him in inquiry. John said:

“My brother put a fence across the gap between hill and river, but he took it for granted the river was fence enough in itself. By the banks it’s deep as well as swift—there have been enough cattle drowned in it, and quite a few men. But I fell in from the other side when I was a kid, and I didn’t drown. There’s a shelf just about the middle of the river—even as a boy of eleven I could stand there, with my head well above water.”

Roger asked: “Are you suggesting we all wade up the river? They would see us, surely. And what about getting out of it, if it’s as deep by the banks as you say?”

Pirrie, as John had anticipated, had grasped the idea without the need for elaboration.

“I am to knock out the machine gun?” he suggested. “And the rest of you?”

“I’m coming with you,” John said. “I’ll take one of the other rifles. I’m not likely to succeed if you fail, but it provides us with an extra chance. Roger, you’ve got to take that fence once we’ve got the gun quiet. You can get the men up within a hundred yards of it, along the ditch. The fence is climbable.

“They will bring the gun round to bear on us as soon as they are under fire from the rear. That’s when you take our lot in.”

Roger said doubtfully: “Will it work?”

It was Pirrie who answered him. “Yes,” he said, “I believe it will.”

He stood with Ann, looking at the children as they lay asleep on the ground—Davey and Spooks and Steve tangled up together, and Mary a little apart, her head pillowed on an out-thrust arm. He told her then, in an undertone, of David’s plan. When he had finished, she said:

“Why didn’t you? We could have done it. We could have got away from Pirrie somehow”—she shivered—“killed him if necessary! There’s been enough killing of innocent people—and now there’s going to be more. Oh, why didn’t you take it? Can’t we still?”

The sun had gone down and the moon was yet to rise. It was quite dark. He could not see much of her face, nor she of his.

He said: “I’m glad of Pirrie.”

“Glad!”

“Yes. I needed the thought of that trigger finger of his to stiffen me, but it only stiffened me into taking the right course. Ann, some of the things I’ve had to do to get us here have been nasty. I couldn’t have justified them even to myself, except in the hope that it would all be different once we got to the valley.”

“It will be different.”

“I hope so. That’s why I won’t pay for admission in treachery.”

“Treachery?”

“To the rest of them.” He nodded his head towards the others. “It would be treachery to abandon them now.”

“I don’t understand.” Ann shook her head. “I don’t begin to understand. Isn’t it treachery to David—to force a way in?”

“David isn’t a free agent. If he were, he would have let us all in. You know that. Think, Ann! Leaving Roger and Olivia outside—and Steve and Spooks. What would you tell Davey? And all these other poor devils… Jane… yes, and Pirrie? However much you dislike him, we should have never got near the valley without him.”

Ann looked down at the sleeping children. “All I can think is that we could have been safe in the valley tonight—without any fighting.”

“But with nasty memories.”

“We have those anyway.”

“Not in the same way.”

She paused for a while. “You’re the leader, aren’t you? The medieval chieftain—you said so yourself?”

John shrugged. “Does that matter?”

“It does to you. I see that now. More than our safety and the children’s.”

He said gently: “Ann, darling, what are you talking about?”

“Duty. That’s it, isn’t it? It wasn’t really Roger and Olivia, Steve and Spooks, you were thinking about—not them as persons. It was your own honour—the honour of the chieftain. You aren’t just a person yourself any longer. You’re a figurehead as well.”

“Tomorrow it will be all over. We can forget about it all then.”

“No. You half convinced me before, but I know better now. You’ve changed and you can’t change back.”

“I’ve not changed.”

“When you’re King of Blind Gill,” she said, “how long will it be, I wonder, before they make a crown for you?”

The risky part, John thought, was the stretch between the bend of the river and the point, some thirty yards from the fence, where the shadow of the hill cancelled out the moonlight. If they had left it until the moon was fully risen, the project would have been almost impossible, for the moonlight was brilliant and they had to pass within yards of the defenders.

As it was, they were exposed, for some twenty-five yards, to any close scrutiny that the people behind the fence turned on the river. The reasonable hope was that their attention would be focused on the obvious approach by road rather than the apparently impractical approach up so swift and deep a river as the Lepe. Pirrie, in front of him, crouched down so that only his head and shoulders, and one hand holding the rifle on his shoulder, were out of the water, and John followed suit.

The water was even colder than John remembered it as being, and the effort of struggling forward against the current was an exhausting one. Once or twice, Pirrie slipped, and he had to hold him. It was a consolation that the noise of the river would cloak any noise they might make.

They pushed ahead and at last, to their relief, found themselves clear of the moonlight. The hill’s shadow was long but of no great width; they could see the moonlit road and the fence quite plainly. John had not been sure of this beforehand, and it raised his hopes still further. If the fence had been in shadow, even Pirrie’s marksmanship might not have availed them.

When they were not more than ten yards from the fence, Pirrie stopped.

John whispered urgently: “What is it?”

He heard Pirrie draw gasping breaths. “I… exhausted…”

It was a shock to remember that Pirrie was an old man, and of frail physique, who had made a harassing journey and only a few hours before had been knocked over by a bullet. John braced himself and put his free arm round Pirrie’s waist.

He said softly: “Rest a minute. If it’s too much for you, go back. I’ll carry on by myself.”

They stayed like that for several seconds. Pirrie was shuddering against John’s body. Then he pulled himself upright.

He gasped: “All right now.”

“Are you sure?”

Making no answer, Pirrie waded on. They were abreast of the fence, and then beyond it.

John looked back. The valley’s defences were outlined in the moon’s soft radiance. There were three men on the platform, and another three or four huddled on the ground behind it, presumably asleep. He whispered to Pirrie:

“Here?”

“Give ourselves a chance,” said Pirrie. “Lengthen the range… I can hit them at another twenty yards…”

His voice seemed stronger again. Pirrie was probably indestructible, John reflected. He trudged after him through the swirling water, aware of fatigue now in his own limbs, doubling the water’s drag.

Pirrie stopped at last, and turned, bracing himself against the current. They were about twenty-five yards inside the valley. John stood at his left elbow.

“Try for the one on the right,” Pirrie said. “I’ll manage the other two.”

“The machine-gun first,” John said.

Pirrie did not bother to reply to that. He drew his rifle up to his shoulder, and John, more slowly, did the same.

Pirrie’s rifle cracked viciously, and in the moonlight the figure of the man behind the machine-gun straightened up, cried in pain, and went down again, clutching at the edge of the platform and missing it. John fired for his own target, but did not hit. More surprisingly, Pirrie’s second shot failed of its mark. Both men remaining on the platform raced for the machine-gun, and tried to swing it round. Pirrie fired again as they did so, and one of them slumped across it. The other pushed him free, and managed to turn it. John and Pirrie fired again unsuccessfully. The figures beneath the platform had risen and were reaching for guns. Then the machine-gun began to sputter in a staccato rhythm of sound and flame.

It did not manage much more than a dozen rounds before Pirrie got his third victim, and the deadly chatter stopped. The men on the ground had begun to fire at them now, but the whine of individual bullets seemed irrelevant.

Pirrie said: “The ladder… keep them off the platform…”

His voice was weaker again, but John saw him re-load, and, with his usual snatched but unwavering aim, hit yet another figure, which had begun to climb the ladder to the platform. John tried to listen for sounds of Roger and the others beyond the fence, but could hear nothing. They must have reached the fence by now. He looked at the black line of the fence’s top, searching for the figures that should be climbing over it.

Suddenly, in an entirely natural and unforced tone, Pirrie said:

“Take this.”

He was holding out his rifle.

John said: “Why…?”

“You fool,” Pirrie said. “I’m hit.”

A bullet whined towards them across the surface of the water. John could see, examining him closely, that his shirt was holed and bloody at the shoulder. He took the gun, dropping the one he had into the water.

“Hang on to me,” he told Pirrie.

“Never mind that. The ladder!”

There was another figure on the ladder. John fired, re-loaded, fired again. The third shot succeeded. He turned to Pirrie.

“Now…’ he began.

But Pirrie was gone. John thought he saw his body, several yards downstream, but it was difficult to be sure. He looked back to the more important concern—the fence. Figures were swarming across the top, and one already had hold of the machine-gun, tilting it downwards.

He saw the remaining defenders throw their guns away and then, chilled and utterly tired, began looking for the best place to get in to the bank.