Brother in the Land (9 page)

We put on all the clothes we had and left the shop. Charlie's gun was in my pocket, and I had a plastic carrier with our spare shoes in it.

I read this book once, about a kid in America who keeps getting expelled from schools. One time, he's walking away from this school and he looks back, trying to feel a goodbye but he feels nothing at all. Leaving the shop was like that. I mean, you'd think you'd feel something, leaving the place you were brought up in, but I didn't. I think everybody has just so much emotion in them, and no more. When it's used up, it's gone, and nothing can get to you any more. Anyway, I thought I ought to feel something and it reminded me of that book.

It was pitch dark and damn cold. I'd no plan – just to get away and maybe find somewhere warm.

The ground was covered in snow and we left prints. We walked in other people's tracks and dodged in and out of the houses in case they tried to follow. After a while we found a room with plastic over the window and some bits of carpet to sit on. We sat down with our backs to the wall and I got the gun out and watched the door, which was just visible in the gloom. I'd had to tell Ben about Dad and he was grizzling a bit.

Nothing happened for a while and I had time to think. With Dad gone and the soldiers looking for us, the future didn't look good. Food was going to be the first problem. If we showed up
in Ramsden Park they'd have us. They'd taken all the loose grub they could find and it was slim pickings for anyone without a card.

Then there was warmth and shelter. We couldn't live outside, or even in unheated rooms like this one. We'd need fire, and they'd taken all the timber too – even furniture and doors. There was a fuel ration, but if we tried to collect it we'd be caught.

Protection was the other thing. Most locals had rations, but the area was crawling with desperate outsiders who'd smash your skull in for a pair of shoes or a biscuit. What chance had we, two kids with a gun we'd never fired?

It wasn't long before I realised we hadn't any choice. I didn't fancy joining anything that had Rhodes in it, but we'd have to go to Old Branwell's. Maybe the old man would keep him off my back.

I was ruminating like this when Ben said in a watery voice, ‘Danny, I think I can hear a truck.'

We sat half-frozen, listening, as the truck came growling down the hill. A gear-change at the edge of town, then it was in the silent streets, its engine muffled now and then by the walls between. A silent interlude, followed by the slam of a door and the sound of a whistle. A picture in my head; a Lowry: small dark figures in the pale townscape.

Shots. A short burst and two singles. Shooting at shadows, I thought; or some innocent scapegoat. Myself, numb from the waist down like a man with a broken spine and Ben, toppling slowly sideways in his sleep – that Arctic sleep perhaps, from which there is no awakening.

Later, the motor again and Ben, unconscious at forty-five degrees.

The numbness lurking one inch below my heart: one more inch and pow! Straining my ears. Soon, the truck ascending the hill, gear by gear, like rungs on a ladder.

It took me all my time to move, and when I did I couldn't rouse Ben. He mumbled and lolled about, and even when I shook him hard he only half-opened his eyes.

I had to carry him. I staggered out of that house on frozen legs, with the bag in one hand and the kid slung over my shoulder.
I don't know how long it took me to get to Bran-well's, or how I got there at all, but after what seemed a lifetime I looked up and there was the house and a light in the window.

Old Ben. He damn near killed me that night, sleeping like a lead weight on my shoulder. I wish he was sleeping there now.

When Branwell opened the door I nearly fell in. He caught me, propped me against the wall and lifted the kid off my shoulders.

‘Good lad,' he grunted. ‘I was beginning to think they'd got you. Go in.' He nodded towards a doorway from which light spilled on to the bare boards of the hallway. I went in, while he closed the outer door and carried the sleeping Ben away.

The room was a mess, but it was the best place I'd been in since the bomb. The window frame and skirting board were charred and the carpet was disintegrating. There was a table with an oil-lamp and mugs on it, a few hard chairs and a book-case with its glass front smashed. Polythene had been nailed over the windows and a wood fire flickered in the hearth.

I went over to the fire and held out my hands to the warmth. After a couple of minutes Branwell came in. ‘That's it,' he said. ‘You get warm. How far did you carry the child?'

I shrugged. ‘Dunno. A mile, maybe. What have you done with him?'

‘I've put him to bed and he's fine, so don't worry. Welcome to Masada.'

‘What?' I was pressing warm hands over frozen ears and not hearing too well.

‘Masada.' He smiled. ‘That's what we call ourselves. It
stands for Movement to Arm Skipley Against Dictatorial Authority. Tea?'

‘What?' I was still half-frozen and not at my brightest.

He smiled again. ‘Would you like some tea?'

‘Oh – yes,' I said. ‘Yes please.'

‘Take that wet coat off then, and have a seat.' He waved towards a chair. I dropped the duffel coat on the floor and sat down.

The old man wrapped a rag round his hand, lifted a blackened kettle off the fire and poured water into two mugs. Teabags popped up and he held them down with a spoon till the air bubbled out.

‘Powdered milk, I'm afraid. Sugar?' I nodded. He dropped the kettle back among the flames and got a tin down from the top of the book-case. He ladled sugar into the mugs, stirred briskly and fished out the bags.

We sat with our hands wrapped round the mugs. The sodden bags lay steaming on the table. I said, ‘Where's Kim?'

The old man chuckled. ‘I'm sorry, old lad, she doesn't actually live here. She comes in the daytime to lend a hand. Quite a few people do.'

‘Oh.' I sat gazing into the flames, wondering whether he'd deliberately mislead me. Probably not. After a bit I said, ‘The people I saw, Rhodes and them. Do they live here?'

‘Most of 'em.' He sipped his tea. ‘Here in the house or in the paddock. We've a couple of huts in the paddock. Oh – and then there's always two or three guarding the factory.'

‘Factory?'

‘Yes. Across the way. Used to make toys.'

I nodded. ‘I used to pass by here on my way to school. What's in there?'

He got up and put his mug on the table. ‘Stores,' he said. ‘And a workshop. We're making preparations.'

‘For what?'

He began walking about the room with his hands in his pockets, scuffing up bits of charred carpet with his shoes.

‘For a fight, unfortunately,' he sighed. ‘You'd think we'd have had enough of that sort of thing, wouldn't you?'

I shrugged. ‘I don't know. Are you going to fight the soldiers?'

He nodded. ‘It's inevitable, I'm afraid. You see, our Commissioner and his people have learned nothing from all of this. They ought to be out, organizing food and shelter and medical help for every poor wretch they can find; trying to get life back to something resembling normality, hopeless though that might be. That was the theory, when these pathetic Commissioners were appointed. Instead, they're doing what any group does that finds itself sitting pretty in the midst of chaos. They're sitting up there at Kershaw Farm, plotting how they can hang on to their privilege. It's human nature. They'll probably try to set up a sort of feudal community, with the soldiers in their hill-fort and the peasants, that's us, toiling to feed them. And when they've got it all going, they'll start riding out armed to the teeth like knights from a castle, looking for other communities to plunder and kill. They have no reverence for life, even now. They're practically pre-Neanderthal.'

I looked at him.

‘How d'you mean?'

‘Well, the Neanderthals were the first people with human feelings. They took care of their sick, and buried their dead with flowers. Pre-Neanderthal people abandoned their sick and ate their dead. Nature made them brutal because only brutes could survive in the harsh world that existed then. And when, thousands of years later, we began to develop weapons of mass-destruction, nature saw what was coming and began turning us back into brutes, so that we might survive in a devastated world.'

‘How were we turned into brutes?' I asked.

‘We watched death and destruction on T.V. newsreels till it meant nothing to us – till it didn't shock us any more. If we'd realized in time what was happening to us, if we'd clung on to our reverence for life, then we'd never have launched those missiles. That's what I think, anyway.'

‘Can we win the fight?' I asked.

He took the empty mug from my hand and put it on the table.

‘We've got to,' he said. ‘Because if we don't the whole thing will start again. Bigger and bigger weapons; bigger and bigger, till their power is beyond man's power to imagine and he unleashes them, or they unleash themselves.'

Pre-Neanderthal. The phrase kept repeating in my head. Pre-Neanderthal.

We sat on a while, watching the ashes settle. He didn't speak for a long time. He knew he'd given me something to think about and he was letting me do it in peace.

Presently he said, ‘Come on, old lad, time you got some sleep.' He took the lamp and led me along the hallway and into a room with about ten beds in it. They were all occupied except one, and I sat down on it, half-asleep, while he helped me off with my boots. Then he went away with the lamp and I pulled the rough blankets over myself and sank at once into a dream in which I shambled like an ape-man through a desolate landscape, with a club in my hand.

I woke when it was still dark to find men struggling into their clothes, grunting and cursing in the overcrowded room. I lay still, wondering whether I ought to join them. Nobody shook me or called out or anything; in fact they seemed to make every effort to be as quiet as possible, and in the end I lay with my eyes closed and the blanket up over my ear till they left the room.

When they'd gone I tried to drop off again but couldn't. My body felt warm and heavy, but my thoughts raced like an LP at seventy-eight and in the end I gave up and got out of bed.

Somebody had kicked one of my boots away, but by this time enough light showed through the dirty polythene window for me to find it.

I made my way along the passage to the room I'd sat in the night before. I expected it to be full of men but it wasn't. There was only old Branwell, lifting a big pan of water off the fire. He glanced round.

‘Ah, good morning, Danny. Sleep well?' Pouring the water into a big plastic bowl.

‘Yes thanks,' I said. ‘It's funny, sleeping in a proper room again.'

He smiled and nodded, piling mugs and plates in the steaming bowl.

‘The men didn't disturb you?'

‘No.' I looked round. ‘Where are they?'

‘Gone.' He squirted detergent into the water, swished it to suds with a cloth and began rapidly washing mugs; twisting the cloth in them and placing them upside-down on the table.

‘Where to?' I asked.

‘Oh, to their various tasks – a man's got to be ready to turn his hand to anything here in Masada. A woman too, of course.'

I wondered if that was a hint and said, ‘Can I wipe those for you?'

‘Aye, lad, there's a cloth over there.' It had been, then. I flushed, unhooked the cloth from its nail and stood beside him, wiping hot crockery and stacking it on a dry part of the table.

‘What sort of tasks?' I pursued.

The old man dumped a handful of cutlery in front of me. ‘Well now, let me see. This morning most of them are burying corpses.'

‘Corpses?' I glanced at him sideways.

‘Corpses. The town's full of 'em. It's not so bad this time of year but if we let 'em lie till the warm weather comes – ' He shrugged. ‘You know – disease. Epidemic, probably. Not a pleasant job, but it has to be done.'

‘But how? I mean, there's hundreds. Thousands. It'll take years.'

He nodded. ‘Without the proper equipment, yes. Of course, it's really the duty of those people at Kershaw Farm. They've got earth-moving equipment. Still, we can only do our best. A little at a time, you know.'

I nodded. ‘What else happens here?'

He fished the last spoon out of the suds and grabbed a corner of my tea-towel to dry his hands. ‘A few of the men are over at the factory. We've got a vehicle or two and they're doing them up, ready for when we need them. Then there are the guards over there, and a couple on the roof here. Two nurses on duty in the hospital-hut, and the rest out foraging for grub and bits of cars, stuff like that.'

‘Wow!' I said. ‘All this going on and nobody knows anything about it. What's the hospital hut?'

He jerked his head in the direction of the paddock. ‘Hut out
there. Full of people who joined us, then fell sick. Creeping doses, most of them – on their way out.'

‘Creeping doses?'

‘Aye. A lot of places round here are radioactive. As people wander about they accumulate radiation in their bodies till it kills 'em. Or it lowers their resistance to disease and they die of something else.'

I shivered. ‘How d'you know we aren't all collecting radiation like that?'

He shrugged. ‘I don't. Nobody does. It's quite possible that in a couple of years' time there'll be no such thing as a human being in England, or the world for that matter. We carry on and hope, that's all. Beans and coffee for breakfast, by the way.'

While I ate, he left the room and came back carrying Ben. The little kid knuckled his eyes and gazed about, wondering where he was. Branwell sat him on a chair and put a plate of beans in front of him. He looked across the table at me. ‘What's this place, Danny?' he mumbled, still half-asleep. ‘I want to go home.'

I scooped up the last of my beans. ‘This is our home now, Ben,' I said with a mouth full. ‘If Mr Branwell will have us, that is.' The thought gave me a sudden, euphoric lift.

The old man mussed Ben's hair. ‘Of course he will, laddie; what's a house without kids, eh?'

When Ben had eaten, Branwell said, ‘Now then, you fellows slept in your clothes last night and for many a night before that, by the looks of you. So, the next thing's a thorough wash and a change of clothes. Oh, yes.' He'd seen my expression. ‘We're properly organized here, lad – a shower, no less, and clothing to fit all sizes. Follow me.'

I grabbed Ben's hand, and the old man led us right along the passage, through a defunct kitchen and out onto the paddock. It was the first time I'd seen it since the nukes, and it was completely different. The goat-house had gone, and three long huts now occupied most of the space. The little duck-pond was a snow-filled depression and the scraggy elders under which hens had scratched would never bear leaves again. A tarred
lean-to still stood against the house wall, and it was towards this that Branwell led us.

It was pretty dark inside. We stood blinking in the doorway, till our eyes adjusted themselves and we could make out an odd structure that almost filled the lean-to. It was a sort of box perched on long wooden legs with cross-pieces nailed to the legs. It reminded me of one of those watch-towers in prisoner of war films. On the floor between the legs were two raft-like duckboards.

‘What the heck's that?' I said. Branwell chuckled.

‘That's the shower,' he said. ‘Very proud of that, we are. Look.' There was an old saw-horse by the wall. He dragged it over and stood on it, removing one side of the box. There was a second box inside. In the space between the boxes, a safety-lantern burned. He replaced the side and got down.

‘The inner box is zinc,' he said. ‘It's full of water. The outer box is wood, padded with cotton-waste and polystyrene and anything else we could find. Between, on all four sides are lanterns burning spirit. The water gets quite warm overnight.'

My own spirit had just begun to soar when he added, ‘Of course, that water was used up by the others. Still, the lamps'll have taken the chill off the fresh lot.'

If they had, I didn't notice. You pulled on an old lavatory-chain and it came sprinkling down like liquid ice. I gasped and dodged out from under, with Ben yelping at my heels. The old guy laughed, said we'd get used to it and handed me a hard brush and a block of gritty soap.

‘Scrub each other,' he said. ‘And lather your hair. I'll get rid of this lot and fetch some clean stuff.' He went out, carrying our smelly clothes and letting in an icy blast.

I won't go on about it. It was damn cold and we didn't get used to it. We managed though, and he came back with rough towels and in no time we were clean and dry and decently dressed for the first time in God knows how long. It felt so good I nearly cried.