The Death of Grass

FOUR

The lull which seemed to have fallen on the world continued through the winter. In the Western countries, schemes for rationing foods were drawn up, and in some cases applied. Cakes disappeared in England, but bread was still available to all. The Press continued to oscillate^{52} between optimism and pessimism, but with less violent swings. The important question, most frequently canvassed, was the length of time that could be expected to ensue before, with the destruction of the virus, life might return to normal.

It was significant, John thought, that no one spoke yet of the reclamation of the lifeless lands of Asia. He mentioned this to Roger Buckley over luncheon, one day in late February. They were in Roger’s club, the Treasury.

Roger said: “No, we try not to think of them too much, don’t we? It’s as though we had managed to chop off the rest of the world, and left just Europe, Africa, Australasia, and the Americas. I saw some pictures of Central China last week. Even up to a few months ago, they would have been in the Press. But they haven’t been published, and they’re not going to be published.”

“What were they like?”

“They were in colour. Tasteful compositions in browns and greys and yellows. All that bare earth and clay. Do you know—in its way, it was more frightening than the famine pictures used to be?”

The waiter padded up and gave them their lagers in slow and patient ritual. When he had gone, John queried:

“Frightening?”

“They frightened me. I hadn’t understood properly before quite what a clean sweep the virus makes of a place. Automatically, you think of it as leaving some grass growing. If only a few tufts here and there. But it doesn’t leave anything. It’s only the grasses that have gone, of course, but it’s surprising to realize what a large amount of territory is covered with grasses of one kind or another.”

“Any rumours of an answer to it?”

Roger waggled his head in an indeterminate gesture. “Let’s put it this way: the rumours in official circles are as vague as the ones in the Press, but they do have a note of confidence.”

John said: “My brother is barricading himself in. Did I tell you?”

Roger leaned forward, curiously. “The farmer? How do you mean—barricading himself in?”

“I’ve told you about his place—Blind Gill—surrounded by hills with just one narrow gap leading out. He’s having a fence put up to seal the gap.”

“Go on. I’m interested.”

“That’s all there is to it, really. He’s uneasy about what’s going to happen in the next growing season—I’ve never known him so uneasy. At any rate, he’s given up all his wheat acreage to plant root crops. He even wanted us all to come and spend a year up there.”

“Until the crisis is over? He is worried.”

“And yet,” John said, “I’ve been thinking about it off and on since then… Dave’s always been more level-headed than I, and when you get down to it, a countryman’s premonitions are not to be taken lightly in this kind of business. In London, we don’t know anything except what’s spooned out^{53} to us.”

Roger looked at him, and smiled. “Something in what you say, Johnny, but you must remember that I’m on the spooning side. Tell me—if I get you the inside warning of the crack-up^{54} in plenty of time, do you think you could make room for our little trio in your brother’s bolt-hole^{55}?”

John said tensely: “Do you think it’s going to come to a crack-up?”

“So far, there’s not a sign of it Those who should be in the know are radiating the same kind of optimism that you find in the papers. But I like the sound of Blind Gill, as an insurance policy. I’ll keep my ear to the pipeline. As soon as there’s a little warning tinkle at the other end, we both take indefinite leave, and our families, and head for the north? How does it strike you? Would your brother have us?”

“Yes, of course.” John thought about the idea. “How much warning do you think you would get?”

“Enough. I’ll keep you informed. In a case like this, you can rest assured I shall err on the side of caution. I don’t relish the idea of being caught in the London area in the middle of a famine.”

A trolley was pushed past them, laden with assorted cheeses. The air was instilled with the drowsy somnolence of midday in the dining-room of a London club. The murmur of voices was an easy and untroubled one.

John waved an arm. “It’s difficult to imagine anything denting this.”

Roger surveyed the scene in turn, his eyes mild but acute.

“Quite undentable, I agree. After all, as the Press has told us sufficiently often, we’re not Asiatics. It’s going to be interesting, watching us being British and stiff-lipped, while the storm-clouds gather. Undentable. But what happens when we crack?”

Their waiter came with their chops. He was a garrulous little man, with less hauteur^{56} than most of the others there.

“No,” Roger said, “interesting—but not interesting enough to make me want to stop and see it.”

Spring was late in coming; a period of dry, cold, cloudy weather lasted through March and into April. When, in the second week of April, it was succeeded by a warm, moist spell, it was a shock to see that the Chung-Li virus had lost none of its vigour. As the grass grew, in fields or gardens or highways, its blades were splotched with darker green—green that spread and turned into rotting brown. There was no escaping the evidence of these new inroads.

John got hold of Roger.

He asked him: “What’s the news at your end?”

“Oddly enough, very good.”

John said: “My lawn’s full of it I started cutting-out operations but then I saw that all the grass in the district’s got it.”

“Mine, too,” Roger said. “A warm putrefying shade of brown. The penalties for failing to cut out infected grasses are being rescinded, by the way.”

“What’s the good news, then? It looks grim enough to me.”

“The papers will be carrying it tomorrow. The Bureau UNESCO^{57} set up claim they’ve got the answer. They’ve bred a virus that feeds on Chung-Li—all phases.”

John said: “It comes at what might otherwise have been a decidedly awkward moment You don’t think…?”

Roger smiled. “It was the first thing I did think. But the bulletin announcing it has been signed by a gang of people, including some who wouldn’t falsify the results of a minor experiment to save their aged parents from the stake. It’s genuine, all right.”

“Saved by the bell,” John said slowly. “I don’t like to think what would have happened this summer otherwise.”

“I don’t mind thinking about it,” Roger said. “It was participation I was anxious to avoid.”

“I was wondering about sending the children back to school I suppose it’s all right now.”

“Better there, I should think,” Roger said. There are bound to be shortages, because they will hardly be able to get the new virus going on a large enough scale to do much about saving this year’s harvest London will feel the pinch^{58} more than most places, probably.”

The UNESCO report was given the fullest publicity, and the Government at the same time issued its own appraisal of the situation. The United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand all held grain stocks and were all prepared to impose rationing on their own populations with a view to making these stocks last over the immediate period of shortage. In Britain, a similar but more severe rationing of grain products and meat was introduced.

Once again the atmosphere lightened. The combination of news of an answer to the virus and news of the imposition of rationing produced an effect both bracing and hopeful. When a letter came from David, its tone appeared almost ludicrously out of key^{59}.

He wrote:

There isn’t a blade of grass left in the valley. I killed the last of the cows yesterday—I understand that someone in London had the sense to arrange for an extension of refrigeration space during last winter, but it won’t be enough to cope with the beef that will be coming under the knife in the next few weeks. I’m salting mine. Even if things go right, it will be years before this country knows what meat is again—or milk, or cheese.

“And I wish I could believe that things are going to go right It’s not that I disbelieve this report—I know the reputation of the people who have signed it—but reports don’t seem to mean very much when I can look out and see black instead of green.

“Don’t forget you’re welcome any time you decide to pack your things up and come. I’m not really bothered about the valley. We can live on root crops and pork—I’m keeping the pigs going because they’re the only animals I know that might thrive on a diet of potatoes. We’ll manage very well here. It’s the land outside I’m worried about.”

John threw the letter across to Ann and went to look out of the window of the sitting-room. Ann frowned as she read it.

“He’s still taking it all terribly seriously, isn’t he?” she asked.

“Evidently.”

John looked out at what had been the lawn and was now a patch of brown earth speckled with occasional weeds. Already it had become familiar.

“You don’t think,” Ann said, “living up there with only the Hillens and the farm men… it’s a pity he never married.”

“He’s going off his rocker^{60}, you mean? He’s not the only pessimist about the virus.”

“This bit at the end,” Ann said. She quoted:

“In a way, I think I feel it would be more right for the virus to win, anyway. For years now, we’ve treated the land as though it were a piggy-bank, to be raided. And the land, after all, is life itself.”

John said: “We’re cushioned—we never did see a great deal of grass, so not seeing any doesn’t make much difference. It’s bound to have a more striking effect in the country.”

“But it’s almost as though he wants the virus to win.”

“The countryman always has disliked and mistrusted the townsman. He sees him as a gaping mouth on top of a lazy body. I suppose most farmers would be happy enough to see the urban dweller take a small tumble. Only this tumble, if it were taken, would be anything but small. I don’t think David wants Chung-Li to beat us, though. He’s just got it on his mind.”

Ann was silent for a while. John looked round at her. She was staring at the blank screen of the television set, with David’s letter tightly held in one hand.

“It may be he’s getting a bit of a worriter^{61} in his old age. Bachelor farmers often do.”

Ann said: “This idea—of Roger warning us if things go wrong so that we can all travel north—is it still on?”

John said curiously: “Yes, of course. Though it hardly seems pressing now.”

“Can we rely on him?”

“Don’t you think so? Even if he were willing to take chances with our lives, do you think he would with his own—and with Olivia’s, and Steve’s?”

“I suppose not. It’s just…”

“If there were going to be trouble, we shouldn’t need Roger’s warning, anyway. We should see it coming, a mile off.”

Ann said: “I was thinking about the children.”

They’ll be all right. Davey even likes the tinned hamburger the Americans are sending us.”

Ann smiled. “Yes, we’ve always got the tinned hamburger to fall back on, I suppose.”

They went down to the sea as usual with the Buckleys when the children came back for the summer half-term holiday. It was a strange journey through a land showing only the desolate bareness of virus-choked ground, interspersed with fields where the abandoned grain crops had been replaced by roots. But the roads themselves were as thronged with traffic, and it was as difficult as ever to find a not too crowded patch of coast.

The weather was warm, but the air was dark with clouds that continually threatened rain. They did not go far from the caravan.

Their halting-place was on a spur of high ground, looking down to the shingle, and giving a wide view of the Channel. Davey and Steve showed a great interest in the traffic on the sea; there was a fleet of small vessels a couple of miles off shore.

“Fishing smacks,” Roger explained. “To make up for the meat we haven’t got, because there isn’t any grass for the cows.”

“And rationed from Monday,” Olivia said. “Fancy—fish rationed!”

“It was about time,” Ann commented. The prices were getting ridiculous.”

The smooth mechanism of the British national economy continues to mesh^{62} with silent efficiency,” Roger said. “They told us that we were different from the Asiatics, and by God they were right! The belt tightens notch by notch, and no one complains.”

“There wouldn’t be much point in complaining, would there?” Ann asked.

John said: “It’s rather different now that the ultimate prospects are fairly good. I don’t know how calm and collected we should be if they weren’t.”

Mary, who had been drying herself in the caravan after a bathe, looked out of the window at them.

“The fishcakes at school always used to be a tin of anchovies to twenty pounds of potatoes—now it’s more like a tin to two hundred pounds. What are the ultimate prospects of that, Daddy?”

“Potato-cakes,” John said, “and the empty tin circulating along the tables for you all to have a sniff. Very nourishing too.”

Davey said: “Well, I don’t see why they’ve rationed sweets. You don’t get sweets out of grass, do you?”

Too many people had started to fill up on them,” John told him. “You included. Now you’re confined to your own ration, and what Mary doesn’t get of your mother’s and mine. Contemplate your good fortune. You might be an orphan.”

“Well, how long’s the rationing going to go on?”

“A few years yet, so you’d better get used to it.”

“It’s a swindle,” Davey said, “—rationing, without even the excitement of there being a war on.”

The children went back to school, and for the rest life continued as usual. At one time, soon after they had made their pact, John had made a point of telephoning Roger whenever two or three days went by without their meeting, but now he did not bother.

Food rationing tightened gradually, but there was enough food to stay the actual pangs of hunger. There was news that in some other countries similarly situated, food riots had taken place, notably in the countries bordering the Mediterranean. London reacted smugly to this, contrasting that indiscipline with its own patient and orderly queues for goods in short supply.

“Yet again,” a correspondent wrote to the Daily Telegraph, “it falls to the British peoples to set an example to the world in the staunch and steadfast bearing of their misfortunes. Things may grow darker yet, but that patience and fortitude is something we know will not fail.”