Black August (34 page)

The sentry at Veronica's newly-erected notice board reported, when Gregory reached it, that he had had a trying day. On one occasion he had actually had to fire his rifle over the heads of a party of intruders before he could scare them away; so on the last mile into Shingle Street, Gregory resolved that his guards should be trebled, and two men apiece from his new Labour Colony levies set to support each of his armed sentries. It was evidently no longer safe to leave them in such isolated positions on their own.

That night at dinner Gregory told them of his conversation with Merrilees and his agreement to shelter the population of the Labour Colony if they were attacked, but Kenyon shrugged his shoulders.

‘I can't see what either of you are worrying about,' he declared. ‘We may have to deal with a few poor starving wretches that any well-fed man who is callous enough could drive off with a stick, but the refugees from the great centres aren't organised, so what earthly harm can they do to us?'

‘No, but those who survive soon will be,' Gregory prophesied grimly. ‘The strong men are probably forming Workers' and Soldiers' Councils now, and to keep the life in their bodies they'll take anything they can lay their hands on before we're through.
I haven't thrown up these entrenchments to keep off tramps and derelicts, but an organised attack upon a definite source of supply. Our only hope then will be to make it so hot for them that they will leave us alone and go for easier game until they settle down, with an enormously reduced population, to new conditions. Then we may be able to make a deal with whatever powers there may be.'

Silas laughed suddenly. ‘You'll be a Kommissar-General before we're through.'

‘Well!' Gregory smiled back at him, ‘I've no rooted objection to Kommissars providing I'm one myself. Care for a stroll, Veronica?'

She smothered a fake yawn. ‘Why not, O reincarnated Vicar of Bray.'

‘You think I change coats too quickly, eh?' he asked directly they were outside.

She laughed. ‘My dear, if only some of papa's old cronies could see you in your present get-up!'

‘They're probably all dead by now, so what's it matter?'

‘Not two hoots in hell, General, dear. If you choose to become an acrobat and get yourself up in tights, it's all the same to me.'

‘You're no fool, are you?' he exclaimed.

‘No dearie, I certainly am not.'

‘This way.' He suddenly pulled her arm and turned inland behind the houses. ‘The surf makes so much noise you can't hear yourself speak; and the shingle's hellish hard to sit on.'

‘So we're about to sit are we?'

‘Yes, unless you prefer to go back to the pub; I should not dream of protesting against your decision.'

‘And you're no fool either, are you?'

‘Yes; if I'd had any sense I'd have shot another half-dozen of those bloody mutineers, then we'd be running south from the Azores by now.'

‘Don't kick yourself unnecessarily. You put up a pretty marvellous one-man show.'

‘Not too bad, but I ought to have done better. How's this?' Gregory pointed to a gently-sloping grassy bank.

‘I've seen worse in my career of crime.' Veronica stooped to sit down.

‘Half a minute, it may be damp,' he warned her as he slipped off his tunic and spread it out for her to sit on.

Thank you, Sir Walter; but what about you?'

‘I shan't die that way,' he laughed, and pulled her down beside him.

‘You're a strange bird, aren't you?' she said after a moment.

‘Yes, I suppose I am, but so are you for that matter.'

‘
Touchée
—and birds of a feather!'

That's about it, but honestly I should go mad if you weren't in this party.'

‘Liar!'

‘No, I mean that.'

‘Tra-la-la! so you say.'

‘It's a fact, but I wonder why it is that women always see the main issue of a thing so much clearer than the average man. Kenyon can't chuck off his stupid public-schoolboy morality, Silas is so damn soft-hearted he thinks I'm a devil from hell; Thompson and the troops still believe me to be a Brigadier so “theirs not to reason why”; Andrews is only interested in the welfare of his people, and good old Rudd follows me blindly, never pausing to think at all. Not one of them really appreciates that although I could clear out on my own tomorrow I'm staying here to fight their battle as well as my own. You're the only one in the whole party who may protest at times but, given a reason, understands and approves my actions.'

‘Perhaps that's because woman always consider the man so much more important than the principle.'

‘That's about it; and in this instance I'm the man, aren't I?'

‘Your grammar, my sweet, is appalling.'

‘Does that matter?'

‘Not a nickel in hell!'

‘Good for you; are you comfy?'

‘Yes.'

‘I'm glad of that because I now propose to kiss you.'

‘Well,' she turned her face up to his in the moonlight. ‘I'm glad of that because it will intrigue me to see if you are as great a lover as you are a leader of men.'

The first ten days at Shingle Street had seen the transformation of that quiet hamlet into a pulsing centre of strange and seemingly unconnected activities: the second saw them take form and cohesion. Regular convoys were proceeding between the village and the Labour Colony. The small fishing fleet was organised on Naval lines the men electing, at Gregory's suggestion, the most experienced among themselves as Commander and Lieutenant. They ordered sailings in accordance with weather and tide, while Petty Officer Sims augmented the flotilla by supervising repairs to boats that had long been out of service. The majority of farm carts, now no longer needed, were knocked to pieces, and from the material a jagged but stout palisade erected behind the village under the lee of the houses. Into the compartments of this great corral the live stock were herded, safe from the rigours of the coming winter or the depredations of desperate men who might slip past the sentries under cover of the night.

The fortifications were now almost completed and a long line of breastworks linked the Martello Tower on the south with Silas's redoubt to the north, screening the whole village and the stockaded enclosure upon the landward side. Gregory well knew the weakness of his defence to be his limited armaments. Only thirteen men with rifles had survived the debacle of the
Shark,
and his pistol and those of Silas, Kenyon, Sims and Rudd would be of little use except at close range. He still had his three Lewis guns, however, and leaving those in charge of picked troops, passed on the rifles to some of the ex-service men in his Labour Colony levy. He had also acquired eight shotguns and several hundred cartridges on his forays into the interior, and formed a special squad to bring these into action if an attack was pressed to within the limits of their range, so he hoped to be able to put up a performance which would lead an enemy to think that the garrison was far stronger than it was in fact.

However, he placed his confidence far more in rendering the place almost impossible of approach, and for that purpose raked the village from end to end for suitable material. Wireless aerials, now silent and therefore useless, flagstaffs, wood fencing, iron palings, obsolete fishing-nets. Every box, barrel, and wicker basket in the place, to be filled with shingle and inserted in the breastworks. Old potato-sacks and tarpaulins were filled with earth, and he even demolished several shreds to utilise their corrugated iron roofing for revetments.

Entrenchments were dug and emplacements thrown up, fields of fire cleared for the Lewis guns and these rendered doubly difficult of approach by a hundred ingenious devices. Tangles of wire and netting, pieces of board with long nails driven through them and scattered broadcast in the long grass to stab the feet of running men, and lines of pits with pointed stakes set upright in them, but cunningly concealed by rushes and dried turf.

Veronica meanwhile, slim and boyish in her borrowed overalls, worked at her mending in the August sunshine, or, when she could, sneaked off to sun-bathe in a sheltered dip of the beach that she had found, continuing in the evenings her dual flirtation.

She felt that she liked the big American the better of the two; he never pestered her, but placid, smiling, efficient, always seemed to be at her side when wanted, and as she grew to know him better she came to appreciate more and more the immense and kindly tolerance of his simple straightforward nature. He was widely travelled, deeply read, a distinguished
amateur
of music and at some time or other he seemed to have met nearly all the really important people who had influenced events, a month—no, it seemed to her a year—ten years ago, in that other, now so distant and orderly, existence. Yet he seldom spoke of the influence he had wielded and only little by little did she become aware of his vast interests.

Gregory on the other hand treated her in a fashion she would have resented from any other man. He forced her to fulfil her daily quota of the mending that she so detested, as ruthlessly as he made his soldiers dig; stalked off to bed immediately after dinner when he felt that way inclined, hardly troubling to throw her a casual ‘good night', yet such was his magnetism that when he uttered an abrupt ‘Come on—let's walk,' her resistance seemed to crumple and with a half-guilty, half-defiant glance at Silas
she would gaily respond ‘Why not?' and accompany him to the grassy bank behind the stockade. He was as great a lover as he was a leader of men, when he chose to devote himself to her. His crisp intellect was a continual delight and he confided in her alone, often days in advance, every new plan as he devised it for their better security and comfort. He knew too, instinctively it seemed, just when to caress her and when to refrain; so that his passion never irked her, and she began to crave the deft touches of his masterful hands. She wondered sometimes what would have happened if they had met in normal times and felt, that if he had insisted on it, she might quite well have abandoned Grosvenor Square for Gloucester Road.

Some nights he would neither go to bed nor make love to her, but set off alone on long tramps, penetrating far inland and often not returning until dawn. No one else was allowed outside the fortifications on any pretext, so their news of the outer world was confined to such rumours as he chose to pass on to them after these solitary expeditions. However, he spoke little of them, except to state that conditions in the interior were growing more and more terrible and the roving population desperate to a primitive degree, until at the end of the third week of their stay he told them that he had good reason to believe that a Communist Government had been established in London.

‘What effect is that likely to have on us?' Kenyon inquired.

‘The disruption has been too great for it to have any at the moment,' Gregory replied slowly; ‘and it is doubtful if it can last for more than a week or two. If the old order couldn't feed the people how can the Communists? Yet it is the danger that I have feared all along. Similar groups may gain control in places like Ipswich, and while they last they will endeavour to secure any sources of supply which are left for their own maintenance, regardless of the remainder of the people. Our state of plenty here must be known for miles around by now, and it is to protect us from a proper organised attack that I have thrown up all these defences, my automatic and a loaded crop would have been good enough to scare off anything short of a multitude without arms.'

‘Do you think we'd be able to defend this place against troops then?' Silas asked.

‘Yes,' Gregory declared firmly; ‘the surrounding marshes form a natural barrier and all the ordinary approaches are now
so skilfully protected that I am prepared to hold Shingle Street for the Shingaleese against all comers. They won't have any artillery and nothing short of shell fire could drive us out of here.'

During all his days of labour at the entrenchments and palisades, Kenyon's thoughts had never been far from Ann. Had he supposed her threatened by any danger, he would have set out for Orford instantly, but Rudd had reported her safe delivery into the hands of her delighted uncle with a wealth of fluent detail. He reported that the leading citizens of Orford had formed themselves into a committee to deal with any emergency and that, just as at Shingle Street, a plentiful supply of fish could be relied upon to keep the small population from any danger of actual starvation. The little town was shut away from the industrial areas and great trunk roads by miles of desolate heath and sparsely-populated farm lands, so there seemed little imminent risk of invasion by hunger marchers; feeling her to be secure, Kenyon had flung himself whole-heartedly into the work alloted to him in the early days of their arrival.

As time wore on the urge to see her again was strengthened by a desire to reassure himself about her safety, and in the second week he spoke of it to Gregory, but the General reasoned with him.

‘Hang on for a day or two,' he begged. ‘Ann's no fool and if there is any trouble at Orford she's certain to seek shelter here. I simply can't do without you, even for a day, until Shingle Street is straightened up and my plans completed.'

‘Perhaps she would like to now but is afraid to face the journey with all these toughs on the roads.'

‘Nonsense, Kenyon. They wouldn't attack a woman; it's food they are after, and anyhow, she knows the district like the back of her hand, she could easily come by bypaths if she wanted to.'

‘All right,' Kenyon agreed reluctantly, his uneasiness quieted for the moment by Gregory's reasonable hypothesis, but as the days passed he began to worry again. Orford might have its watch committee, but the town possessed no military strength, so how could they resist the growing bands of hungry desperadoes who were pressing daily nearer to the sea? Despite the hard labour on the fortifications which left his body tired each night, and should have ensured a sound healthy sleep, he could no longer quieten the wild and horrible misgivings which filled his
brain. His imagination began to play havoc with his nerves and night after night he tossed and turned sleepless with anxiety until the paling of the stars.