The Hopkins Manuscript

CHAPTER FIVE

A few days after that wretched meeting of the British Lunar Society the Prime Minister made a remarkable speech in Parliament.

The headlines in the newspapers startled me. They announced: ‘DUGOUTS FOR ALL’ and for a moment I thought the Secret was out. But as I read the speech I realised what a clever move had been made.

The danger of air attack by foreign enemy, said the Prime Minister, was at last to be given vigorous attention and every town and village in Great Britain was to have its dugout for the protection of its citizens against bombs and gas.

Every community was immediately to set up its ‘Dugout Committee’ and work was to begin at once under the supervision of local engineers, who would receive full details and specifications from the Ministry of Defence.

The work as far as possible was to be done by voluntary labour and the newspapers put the scheme over in such a fascinating way that no sensible citizen could withhold his enthusiasm for a long-delayed necessity. Extracts from the official directions proved how skilfully the real purpose of the dugouts had been disguised. Modern bombs, it was announced, had such deep penetrating power that the dugouts should be thirty feet deep. Hillcrests and valleys were to be avoided and the sites selected should be upon hillsides protected as far as possible by the natural folds of the ground. This, it was explained, was to give security from aircraft observation and at the same time to place the dugouts out of reach of poison gas which naturally accumulates in the valleys. I knew, of course, that hillcrests and valleys were to be avoided because of hurricane in the one case and flood in the other.

It was evident that immense preparations had been under way for some months, for the Government announced that large quantities of oxygen cylinders and steel doors were already available and would be delivered immediately the local authorities announced the completion of their dugouts.

Personally I was delighted with this vigorous and sensible move. It meant that preparations would proceed in an orderly manner, free from the risk of panic, and when the truth had to be told the dugouts would be so far advanced that the news would act solely as a stimulus for completion.

It also made my secret infinitely more exciting and important, for everybody in Beadle would be talking about the impending disaster without actually knowing about it. I personally would be the only man in the village who knew the real reason for all this activity, and I could undoubtedly assist (without divulging the secret) by suggesting the best place to put the Beadle dugout.

Our village lay in the rural district of Makleton and Dr Hax was our local Member upon the Council. I accordingly went down to see him directly after breakfast and was lucky to find him in his surgery on the point of departing upon his rounds.

Dr Hax was a big, dusty-looking man with a flat white face and a clumsy, ambling walk. He was respected in the village but not greatly liked. He always carried a shabby little black bag of imitation, shiny leather which looked to me a perfect hotbed for germs. A stethoscope generally dangled out of his pocket and his bedside manner was poor to say the least of it. He had a habit of abruptly turning his back upon his patients that annoyed them but often cured them. He also had a small private income that was resented by old ladies with nothing the matter with them because he was sufficiently independent to tell them they weren’t ill.

‘Morning, Doctor!’ I said. ‘Seen the papers? – The Government’s waking up at last!’

He looked at me vaguely for a moment, then began stuffing his unsavoury little bag with cotton wool.

‘The great Dugout Scheme?’ He gave a short laugh. ‘Yes – most important! I hear the Germans are organising a big attack on Beadle Gravel Pit to put it out of action.’

‘Is that the way to treat a vital move towards national safety?’ I sharply rejoined.

‘Volunteers to build dugouts,’ he jeered. ‘If they got volunteers onto bringing some of our waste land under potatoes and wheat they’d be talking sense!’

I was appalled by this despicably narrow but typically ‘local’ attitude.

‘I came to offer my services as a good citizen with a respect for the safety of England!’

He looked at me curiously. ‘Sorry, Hopkins. Didn’t mean to offend. I’m a good citizen, too – or I hope I am. What d’you want to do?’

‘I thought,’ I replied stiffly, ‘that I could be of service upon the Dugout Committee. I’m not exactly a yokel. I’ve knowledge of geology – particularly of these parts – I might be able to advise upon a suitable position for the Beadle dugout.’

He shut his bag with a snap. ‘That’ll all be dealt with by the Makleton Council,’ he said. ‘They’ll be responsible for the villages in their area. There’s a meeting on Thursday week and I’ll know more about it then. They’ve got to discuss a big new drainage scheme but maybe they’ll bring up the dugouts if there’s time. Come along down and see me in a fortnight. Maybe I’ll have some news and you can come and dig and bury yourself. Now I’ve got to get over to Horley Farm to bring a baby into the world.’

I was too astonished and appalled to make a reply. I stuttered something and watched him drive down the lane in his ramshackle little motor car. Thursday week! – and they might discuss it if the Drainage Scheme gave time! How ghastly the whole thing was! – Here were a hundred good honest Beadle folk, frittering away precious moments upon sweeping roads and ploughing fields and playing darts when they might be doing something to save their lives and save humanity! – and there went that pitiful fool of a doctor to bring a baby into the world! – might as well bring a dewdrop into a blast furnace.

I was determined to arouse the public conscience, and strode down to the Fox & Hounds. Murgatroyd was there, lounging behind his bar, and he was naturally surprised to see me after so long an absence.

‘Morning, Mr Hopkins – glass of sherry? You haven’t been in for quite a while.’

‘I was in a few days ago,’ I replied shortly, annoyed that the barmaid had not recognised me and reported my previous visit.

There were two or three men lounging by the bar, including Mr Bewdley who kept the grocery store, and I was pleased to find that they were discussing the ‘Dugout Scheme’.

‘Where’s ours to be?’ asked Mr Bewdley.

‘I’ll let ’em have my cellar,’ said Murgatroyd. ‘Turn the air raids into a nice little business boom for the Fox & Hounds – beer’s better than oxygen tubes when it comes to keeping alive!’

‘I’ve just seen Dr Hax,’ I announced. ‘He casually informs me that the Dugout Scheme may be discussed by the Makleton Council on Thursday week! – if the Drainage Scheme allows time!’

‘We been waiting for that Drainage Scheme these eighty years,’ said an old fellow behind a tankard in the corner. ‘If that goes through it’ll put all Hanley Marsh under the plough. Drains first – dugouts second, I says.’

‘Hear, hear,’ said the other imbeciles.

‘The defence of our country comes first,’ I declared. ‘What protection have we? What’s the good of draining Hanley Marsh if the whole of Beadle is wiped out – by bombs and gas?’ (I quickly added).

For some reason this aroused an inane laugh.

‘Got the wind up?’ enquired Murgatroyd, winking at one of the loungers.

‘I got an old tin hat I’ll give you,’ said the old man in the corner.

I left the Fox & Hounds with laughter ringing in my ears and a grim determination to let the whole village be swept to eternity as reward for its stupidity. Criminal stupidity of this type deserved but one thing – destruction.

I learnt a few days later that the Makleton Council had called a special meeting. It seemed that the Government had anticipated the wretched slackness that I had discovered in Beadle and had sent out a skilfully-worded Memorandum, hinting at the possibility of a sudden war and urging immediate construction of the dugouts.

I had a silent laugh at the doctor’s expense but did not put myself to the indignity of offering my services again. Later I heard what I had expected: the Dugout Committee for Beadle had been formed – without me.

It consisted of Dr Hax as Chairman, Major Willoughby (our unpleasant bridge player of last year), Pawson, a retired policeman, and the Vicar. It was too ludicrous for words. They had as technical adviser some fellow who had been a railway engineer in India, and they began the dugout in the grounds of Burgin Park one Sunday afternoon.

I ignored the whole thing. It was so utterly ludicrous. The one man in the village who knew everything was excluded from the Committee! I simply had to laugh.

But one day I could not resist the curiosity to walk by and see what they were doing. They had dug a big clumsy hole in the hillside and a dozen or more men were wheeling barrows of chalk and tipping it into a hollow. Some children were playing about on a pile of timber, Dr Hax and his wonderful ‘committee’ were fussing about in an aimless way and a stranger, presumably the ‘expert’, had a lot of coloured poles stuck up and was peering at them through an instrument. I stood nearby for some while, but naturally they were all too busy and self-important to notice my smile of amused tolerance.

My knowledge of the true facts had lifted me above the petty trivialities of the village: more and more I ignored these silly people as if they had already ceased to exist and took the moon – that suffering, struggling moon – as my sole companion. I no longer regarded it as an enemy – I understood it for what it really was: a calm, lovely thing that had shed its sublime beauty upon the earth since time began – a faithful servant, wrenched from its divine course by a devilish power that had sent it plunging against its will to its own and the earth’s destruction.

During the early days of the November moon the skies were overcast, and only upon one night was I able to see the thin crescent high overhead. It shone through a film of tarnished cloud and seemed very much the same as usual. But never shall I forget the Tuesday night of that November moon’s third week. It was at about half-past eight when I left my house to walk down to the Vicarage for our evening of bridge. I was just passing through the wicket gate that led from my garden into the meadow when I chanced to look up into the sky.

For the first time in several nights the sky was partly clear, and as I looked upwards, the clouds suddenly drew aside to reveal the full moon riding for a few moments in a deep, unrippled pool of blackness. In that one glance the whole of my carefully assumed sympathy and understanding with the moon was shattered, and I prayed for the clouds to draw their merciful veil. I can swear that it was bigger than ever I had seen it in my life – but there was something far worse than that. Its familiar, benevolent smile seemed gone for ever and in its place I saw a hideous, pock-marked face, blazing with fever – a hungry, silver-bleached skull that raved for blood. And when a ragged mantle of black cloud submerged it, it was as if the light in a room had been flicked out and we were plunged in blackness. The silver birches in the Vicarage garden were like pale slits of light shining through the drawn curtains of a darkened room.

Mrs Edwards glanced at me in surprise as she let me in, for try as I would, I was unable to disguise the panic that had sent me floundering for the friendly shelter of the Vicarage. My boots were muddy and my trousers splashed, for I had taken no account of the pools that lay beside the road. But Mrs Edwards was too well mannered to make remark and by the time we were seated for the game I had recovered sufficiently to joke about the wet weather of the past few days.

It took me a long time to concentrate upon my cards. My distorted imagination pictured the whole world outside staring in horror at that blazing white monster in the sky. My ears were cocked towards the windows – I expected to hear sudden cries – the pounding of running feet – a terrified banging at the Vicarage door. But the minutes passed and there was nothing but the distant hooting of an owl…

That evening, as we sipped our coffee during an interval in the game, I began to regard the old Vicar with a new interest. I wondered how that simple, gentle old man would play his part when it became his duty to announce his terrible message to the little congregation of his church.

It had been vigorously advocated in scientific circles that as the first news of the impending calamity was to be announced from the churches, every clergyman should be admitted to the Secret at once in order that he should have more time to prepare his message. But this had been opposed upon the grounds that many might find it incompatible with their calling to keep such a secret, and possibly be forced into lies and deceptions should their people become alarmed before the facts were announced.

Hubert Edwards would have barely a week to prepare his message when the time came; but as I glanced over my cards at that fine, careworn face and calm grey eyes I had little doubt that the Vicar of Beadle would discharge his awful task with dignity and humanity.

I met Wilson, the policeman, as I left the Vicarage gate upon my journey home. He bade me a cheerful ‘Good evening’ and walked beside me with his bicycle to the stile that led me to my meadow. We spoke of casual things – of Parsons, the goalkeeper of Beadle Football Club, who had sprained his ankle in the game against Makleton last Saturday, and of Burton, the lad who was to play in his place. Carefully I turned the conversation to the weather – to the cloudy skies – to a delicate question: –

‘I don’t suppose we’ve hardly seen the moon this month!’

The remark caused no reaction – Wilson hitched up the electric torch on his belt and said:

‘We had a clear patch around nine o’clock. Quite bright for a bit.’

I breathed again. Wilson had noticed nothing, and the nights that followed were shrouded in dark cloud. When the skies cleared with the frost in the first week of December the moon had gone, and we were saved for another month – for one last happy Christmas!