Cloud Walker, All Fools' Day, Far Sunset (44 page)

‘Where is this alleged Jane?’ he asked at length. ‘Did your nightmares, imaginings or whatever give you a convenient map reference?

‘She’s in a kind of brothel near Manchester,’ answered Liz evenly. ‘It’s a kind of cellar – I think it’s underneath a town hall, or something like that. They keep her in a cage, and she gets screwed about four times a day, and if she’s lucky she gets just about enough to eat. But they never let her out of the cellar. She doesn’t know whether it’s summer or winter. She thinks she’s been there about a million years … She’s ill.’

‘That’s bloody marvellous,’ exploded Greville. ‘Assuming it’s not all a product of your sick mind, what do you expect to do – home in on the psychic emanations like a guided missile? And even if you do that, what the hell can you do when you get there? Shoot up the place single-handed? God dammit! If you want to commit suicide, why don’t you just walk into the lake?’

‘Thanks for the encouragement. If there’s nothing to be done, at least I can join her. That way we’ll share the load … Now, if you haven’t got any further illuminating observations, I’ll get my bits and pieces together – assuming, of course, you prefer not to be shot first. I’ll need the car, I think. But you shouldn’t have much difficulty picking up another one that still works … So the only question that remains to be answered is whether I pull the trigger or not.’

‘You crazy little bitch,’ said Greville quietly. ‘You bloody little screwing machine.’ He got up from the table, turned his back on her and walked through the doorway.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’ snapped Liz.

‘To look for a bleeding map,’ be called over his shoulder. ‘I’ve got one somewhere. If we’re going to bust up the happy home and go to Manchester – which is one of the most elaborate ways of dying that I can think of – then we’ll need to choose a route that combines the maximum safety with the maximum speed. To think I’ve been hoarding petrol for a half-cock trip like this!’

Liz stared after him, wide-eyed. Then she dropped the pistol and began to cry. Greville pretended to take no notice. He found the map – an ancient Esso road map, badly torn and with two sections missing – and spread it over the bed. Then he found a pencil and began to draw an intricate series of lines that crisscrossed the trunk-roads and avoided all towns.

He was still absorbed in plotting a route that would add up to less than two hundred miles – he had cautiously allowed twenty-five miles to the gallon – when Liz followed him into the bedroom.

She had discarded the pistol. She had also discarded her clothes. She was shivering a little. She lifted the map off the still unmade bed and scrambled between the sheets.

‘I haven’t got anything else,’ she said with a grin. ‘Besides, what else can you expect from a screwing machine?’

Greville began to take his shirt off. ‘We’ll start tomorrow morning,’ he said,
‘early. I don’t much care whether Jane is real or not. I don’t much care whether we get to Manchester or not. But I’ll do my best … One way or another, it had to come.’

‘Yes,’ murmured Liz. ‘It had to come.’

Oddly enough, and despite the promptings of sheer physical desire, they did not make love. There were too many ghosts. There was Jane and there was Francis. And above all, there was the sadly overwhelming ghost of a tiny refuge that was about to cease to exist.

Until this moment, thought Greville, he had never properly appreciated his cottage on the island at Ambergreave. It was the only place where he had learned what it was to be alive. It was the only place he had ever loved because it was the only place where he had dared to place his entire self in bondage.

He lay there with Liz in his arms, touching her for the sheer delight of touching. It didn’t matter that Francis and Jane were standing at the foot of the bed. It didn’t matter that mankind had gone down the drain and that personal death was lurking round the corner.

It mattered only that two people could come close enough to look at each other and, though they could never really touch each other or understand each other, not be afraid. Man, he reflected, was doomed to perpetual loneliness though he had never been programmed for it. Man – every man – was a skilled impersonator. But just occasionally there was no need to impersonate anyone or anything. It was enough to exist.

He looked at Liz, lying quietly by his side, and felt as if he were seeing her for the first and last time. He looked at the subtle curves of her breasts, the enigmatic roundness of her belly, the small brown forest that grew between her legs.

Here, he thought, is life. Here is the ancient song. Here is the non-verbal answer to all the verbal sophistications that men have used to demolish themselves and each other since time began.

Then he looked through the window at the grey November light, at the motionless leaves rimmed with a myriad crystals, at the sleeping branches of the apple trees, and back again to the sad long light of impunity.

He didn’t want to make love. He just wanted to hold close and pray.

The only trouble was he was too proud, too empty and too lonely for prayer.

It had taken them the best part of three days to get within ten miles of Leicester. Greville had optimistically calculated that they could get to Leicester, which was slightly past the half-way mark, with about a hundred and twenty miles of driving. Instead, it had taken nearly two hundred miles of driving; and at that rate, unless he could indulge in a bit of successful scrounging, he would only have enough petrol for a one-way journey. But probably, he reflected with bitter consolation, it was only going to be a one-way journey, anyway. What Liz hoped to accomplish when and if they got as far as Manchester, he had no idea. It was a crazy expedition undertaken for the craziest of reasons in a crazy world by two crazy people. Its chances of success – even if success were only to be defined as mere survival – were just about zero.

They had made a late start from Ambergreave, for there was more work to be done than he had thought. They might have made an earlier start if Liz had not spent half the night screaming. The nightmares had begun a little after midnight. When the screaming started, he had slapped her; but she didn’t even open her eyes. It was as if she were in a trance, lost without recall in the terrors of a private world. The first fit didn’t last much more than an hour. When Liz came out of it, she refused to talk. She just looked at him, wild-eyed, as if he were a total stranger. Greville got up and made a warm drink for them both. Then they got a little sleep – until the next session. That didn’t last quite so long; but there were two more bursts of the same trancelike hysteria before dawn; and when they finally got up they were both bleary-eyed and already worn out.

After a hurried and rather sumptuous breakfast – they had far more food than they could take with them on the journey – Greville had rowed ashore and checked the car, while Liz busied herself collecting guns, ammunition and provisions.

There had been a hard frost and the windows of the station wagon were iced up. It took Greville the best part of an hour to clear them, check the tyres, oil, petrol and battery, and get the engine warmed up. At first he thought it wasn’t going to start – the battery didn’t seem to have enough juice in it to turn the engine over. Eventually, after about twenty minutes of cranking, he managed to get it to fire. He raced it for a while until the whole engine was warm, then switched off and rowed back to the island.

Liz had got most of their treasures out of the cellar and had dumped them
in a pile on the floor. There was far too much to carry, and more time was lost over the selection process.

By the time they were ready to move, both of them were feeling hungry again; so they sat down amid the wreckage of their little citadel to eat a final meal.

Greville surveyed what had been his private, secure and very comfortable retreat gloomily. Once it had felt and looked like home. He didn’t think he would ever see it again. Whatever else happened on the fantastic expedition which they were about to undertake, he did not think there would ever be any absolute turning back. The shade of Augustus Rowley could now rest in peace – until the next plague of locusts.

By the time they eventually got started, a red, wintry sun was peeping through the cloud-laden sky. To Greville, it seemed to be the colour of blood – a discouraging omen. Nevertheless, he gave Liz a cheery grin and started the car. They were on their way.

Then everything began to go wrong. Greville had not realised how rapidly the world in which he lived was deteriorating. Two of the roads he had chosen for the first day’s run were blocked – one by a large tree that had fallen across it, and the other by a large hole so camouflaged by grass and weeds that he nearly drove into it.

Greville was impressed by the hole. He got out of the car and inspected it. The grass that covered it had the air of grass that had been established for quite a long time: the dead and dying weeds – convolvulus, nettles, groundsel and bistort – looked as if they had been there since the beginning of the world. He came to the conclusion that the hole had been caused by high explosive. Quite a lot of it. He wondered why such a quiet country lane should have received such attention. He was wondering about it for a long time. But after a couple of days of hard driving, during which he had encountered several such holes, he thought he had the answer.

The roads he had chosen led only through small villages; and if anyone still lived in those villages they might reasonably be expected to protect themselves as best they could against scroungers – particularly well-armed and motorised scroungers, and most particularly against scroungers in convoy who might be able to overwhelm any local resistance and take whatever they wanted.

Greville had a sudden mental vision of all the roads of England – why stop at England? All the roads of the world – being steadily choked by weeds and grass and trees or being deliberately destroyed by man. In the end, with radio and telephone gone, with travel reduced to what a man could accomplish by walking, the world would contain nothing but groups of desert islanders. Strangers would be feared not because they might be dangerous but simply because they were strangers. Then tabu would raise its indestructible head
once more; and anyone who did not belong to the family, sect, clan or tribe would be destroyed for the very clear and logical reason that he did not belong.

Greville had to make two major and several minor detours before darkness on the first day. When darkness came, he tried driving on his headlamps; but the effort was too tiring. There was always the risk that every clump of grass concealed a hazard, and even if it was only a pot-hole large enough to break a half-shaft, it was still large enough not only to wreck the expedition but to completely ruin the chances of its survival. For Greville and Liz were already a long way from any known sanctuary; and while it was still possible to attempt to get back to Ambergreave on foot, the possibility was not such as to inspire optimism.

They drove off the road and spent the first night in a little clearing that had once been part of a large field. Liz had brought a paraffin stove; and so they were able to heat some of their tinned food and have a reasonably satisfying meal.

They slept uneasily and uncomfortably in the car with the windows up. It was just as well that Greville, despite protestations from Liz, had refused to allow any ventilation.

Huddled together in contortions which they would regret bitterly next day, they had not been dozing long when there was a pattering all over the car that sounded like heavy rainfall. However, it was not heavy rainfall, as Greville discovered when he switched on the interior lighting. It was rats – hundreds or more probably thousands of them – trying to get in.

They could smell meat; and the meat they could smell was filled with terror. Liz gazed at the phalanx of vicious little faces on the bonnet and began to shake uncontrollably. With a curse, Greville leaned forward and pressed the horn. The rats disappeared almost instantly; but within a second or two they were back.

Greville switched on the headlights and illuminated an entire mobile carpet of rats. The clearing was alive with them. They seemed to ebb and flow, an evil hungry tide that looked as if it was about to engulf the entire car.

He started the engine. The noise drove them back briefly. But they became accustomed to it and came on once more.

In a fit equally compounded of anger and fear and plain irritability, Greville slipped the car into first gear and began to drive round the clearing in a tight circle. The rats fell away from the bonnet. Those already on the roof were thrown clear by the motion. Dozens of them, hypnotised by the headlights, passed beneath the wheels. They were immediately torn to pieces by those who perished next time round.

Eventually, it dawned upon the rats that they were on a no-win basis. The survivors – and that included the vast majority – took their leave. But they
left behind them a stench; and the stench was so bad that Greville had to move the car back to the relatively exposed road.

Again they tried to settle down to sleep; but sleep would not come. And it was with relief that they took up the journey once more at first light.

It was another jewelled morning. The flat East Anglian landscape, unfettered now, free from the tidy patterns of agriculture, the greedy attentions of man, was reverting to its own primal mystery. Fen and woodland marched towards each other; and the rolling brown acres of ploughed land were no more.

The frost was a heavy one; but the car started easily. While it was warming up Greville and Liz stretched themselves and stamped about to get warm. Liz wanted to make a hot drink, but Greville decided to drive for a while first. As far as human beings – and animals – were concerned, early morning was probably a good time for travelling. Very few of either were at their aggressive best until the day had properly started. Frost translated the petrified landscape into the kind of pictures that were used to illustrate old-fashioned children’s books. Any moment, thought Greville as he chugged along cautiously at twenty-five miles an hour, one might be confronted by the inevitable knight on a white charger. Or possibly dragons.