Cloud Walker, All Fools' Day, Far Sunset (51 page)

The jeep was moving again. The road had given way to a narrow and overgrown track. The Convent of the Sacred Heart was only two or three hundred yards ahead.

Greville began to relax. The first part of the journey was over without a single casualty. It was, he felt, a major triumph. What was more important, Liz had not given birth en route. And that was an even greater triumph.

The jeep pulled up at the convent gates. Greville glanced round quickly. The jeep was covered, he was pleased to note, by two groups of Father Jack’s young ladies, complete with rifles, sten-guns and machine pistols. Somewhere in the background he caught a glimpse of a bazooka team.

Father Jack himself, unchanged, still wearing the long black habit of a priest, came out through the convent gates and greeted him. ‘Forgive the welcome committee, but one doesn’t take unnecessary chances … I trust you had a reasonable journey, my son.’

‘Much better than I thought,’ said Greville. ‘Incidentally, how many girls have you got? My messengers said you had thirty-five?’

Father Jack sighed. ‘We were rather inconvenienced in January. A very bad month. The number is now twenty-seven … How many men have you got?’

‘Eighty-three.’

‘My, my,’ said Father Jack. ‘What lucky girls they are … You realise, of course, that the whole expedition is ludicrous.’

‘Certainly. Life itself has become ludicrous. What have we got to lose?’

Father Jack smiled. ‘I don’t know about you. But I personally have a great deal to lose – I’m happy to say … I trust, my dear fellow, for the sake of your sanity, that you never have to be responsible for a body of women.’

At that point, a small boy ran forward to the jeep. ‘Please, general,’ he said breathlessly, ‘it’s Liz. I was told to say she had been taken short. They reckon the baby is going to come pretty soon. They said I was to tell you because you said you wanted to be there.’

Father Jack beamed. ‘Well, well. An auspicious omen. Needless to say, we have our own maternity ward. Some of the girls are a trifle adventurous at times. Perhaps you had better bring your dear lady inside.’

Greville’s shoulder began to ache once more.

He looked at the sky.

It started to rain.

7 July 2011. Shortly after dawn.

A servant carrying a tray entered the tent of the Kaygee of the Army of the Western Republic. The servant coughed deferentially and set the tray down by the white-haired old man in the sleeping bag.

Greville was awake, but he pretended to be asleep. He thought the servant might decide to go away. He would have liked a few more minutes to savour his private thoughts.

But the man just stood there uncertainly, coughing and making discreet little noises, hoping to rouse his master without appearing to have actually done so.

Greville sighed. It wasn’t the man’s fault, of course. He had standing orders for the expedition: to deliver early morning tea every day fifteen minutes after dawn.

The man coughed again, louder. Greville sat up.

‘Good morning, Kaygee. I hope you slept well.’

‘Well enough. What’s the weather like?’

‘It’s going to be another fine day. A little early mist, but it will be gone by the time you have finished breakfast. Shall I pour, sir?’

‘Yes.’

Greville watched the level of hot, steaming tea rise in his cup. It was going to taste wonderful. It always did. He still had not accustomed himself to the luxury. It was only a year ago that some adventurous young captain had taken his windjammer as far as Ceylon and brought back the first cargo of tea for over thirty years.

As yet, thought Greville, sipping the delicious liquid gratefully, tea was only for the rich and the powerful. But soon other windjammers would follow the first; and then everyone in the Republic would be able to have his morning cup. Which would prove that God was in his heaven once more and all was right with the world.

‘Another cup, Kaygee?’ The servant held the pot expectantly.

‘No thank you. That’s quite enough.’

The servant smiled, put the cup and saucer (fine bone china) back on the tray and went out of the tent. Greville amended his list of tea-drinkers to the rich and the powerful – and their servants. He knew that the pot would be
drained and a pinch of carbonate of soda added to the tea-leaves to make them yield a second brew before they were thrown away.

He got out of the sleeping bag and stretched. Then he began to put on his clothes slowly, cautiously, methodically. At sixty-seven one did everything slowly, cautiously and methodically, he reflected. It was not an age at which one could easily afford sudden movements. Nor was it an age at which one could easily make lightning decisions … Or, having made them, understand why …

He stepped out of the tent, and sniffed the morning air. The sentry brought his rifle to the present and slapped its butt so hard that Greville winced. The man’s hand must be tingling with pain, yet he stared ahead blankly.

‘Way for the Kaygee!’ he shouted ceremoniously, though there was no one in the immediate vicinity to obstruct the passage of the Kaygee.

‘Good morning,’ said Greville.

‘Morning – sir !’ shouted the sentry, as if he were addressing a multitude.

‘Dismiss.’

The sentry slapped his rifle again and went ostentatiously through the ritual of dismissal.

Greville was alone. Except for the fact that if he so much as sneezed half a dozen men would appear from nowhere to protect the Kaygee against disaster.

He had marched a column of two hundred men all the way from Truro to London. And he still didn’t know why.

There had been reasons, of course. There had to be reasons – otherwise Father Jack, the first President of the Republic, would not have given his official blessing. Greville would have come just the same; but for political purposes it was necessary for the Kaygee and the President to be in complete harmony.

The reasons he had given Father Jack were quite convincing: it was necessary – now that the Republic was thriving – to find out the state of the country, to explore the possibility of further recruitment, to look for various scientific and technical instruments that could not at present be manufactured by the Republic’s resources, and to seek out any other organised communities with which the Republic might develop mutually profitable relations.

But Father Jack was not easily deluded.

‘Greville, my son, he had said, ‘we have nearly seven thousand citizens, the economy is sound and I don’t give a damn if the clever lads at Truro University need an electron microscope or whatever. As far as I can see, what they need first of all is a change of nappies … But if you have set your heart on this expedition, then I’ll have to give the official say-so, in which case it’s just as well that you’ve got some nice official reasons. They don’t mean anything to
me but I suppose they’ll keep the Council of Electors happy. Just don’t get yourself killed, that’s all.’

And so, after a leisurely march across southern England, Greville’s column was encamped in what had once been Battersea Park on the South Bank of the Thames. Today, they would enter what was left of the City of London. But that was not important to Greville. All that mattered at the moment was that he was about to keep a sentimental rendezvous.

It was almost eleven years since Liz had died. She had given him two sons and a daughter. Then all had been set for them to share a decade or two of contentment and relative peace. Except that she had developed cancer of the womb. When it got too bad, Greville himself had delivered the
coup de grace
. That was the way Liz had wanted it.

Two sons and a daughter. Conrad, twenty-nine, and – so they said – a brilliant biologist. But Greville was never really sure that Conrad was his own son; and, oddly, because of that he loved him more than the others. Then there was Jason, twenty-three, a born trouble-maker who thought that everybody who had ever lived had been crazy except, perhaps, Joe Stalin and Mao-tse-tung. And after Jason there was Jane, nineteen, and probably the most beautiful woman in the Republic. Jane was a born actress, as was evinced by the packed houses of Truro Theatre. She didn’t look at all like Liz. She didn’t look at all like Greville. Only Jason looked like Liz – which was, perhaps, why Greville couldn’t carry out his duty and execute him when he had led the rebellion. About three hundred citizens had been killed before it was over. The death penalty was obvious and inevitable.

But, in the end, Father Jack had saved the day with his decree of lifelong exile. Jason had been packed off to Ireland to see if he could convert the savages to neo-Marxism.

Greville looked at the remains of Battersea Park in the early light. It was nothing more than a piece of wilderness – primeval, as if man had just set foot in it for the first time …

‘Kaygee, will you breakfast now?’

Greville was snapped out of his reverie by the appearance of a bright young man with one star on his shoulder.

‘I rather think I will not breakfast at all, thank you.’

‘But, Kaygee, the President himself instructed us to—’

‘The President is over-anxious,’ said Greville. ‘Dismiss.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Wait a moment.’ Greville had a sudden thought. ‘The scouts have been across to the other side?’

‘Yes, Kaygee.’

‘Did they establish any contact?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Then we may take it that the bridge is clear and open?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Good, I think I’ll take a little walk. Give me two men and tell the Second that I’ll be back in half an hour.’

‘But, Kaygee,’ protested the young man helplessly, ‘we have explicit instructions from the President not to let you—’

‘Bugger the President,’ interrupted Greville calmly. ‘In the nicest possible way, of course. Now do what I said.’

‘Yes, Kaygee,’ said the young man miserably. ‘Will you confirm it in writing?’

‘I’ll confirm your arse if you don’t move.’

The lieutenant almost literally evaporated. He was replaced by two of Greville’s bodyguard, armed with automatic rifles and grenades.

‘Follow me at twenty paces, and don’t let me know you’re there unless it’s a matter of life and death.’

‘Yes, Kaygee,’ they said simultaneously.

Pretending that he was entirely alone, Greville strode briskly forward, making his way out of the Battersea Park and towards the road that led to Chelsea Bridge.

I wonder, he thought, how many of them know what Kaygee stands for? Probably they think it’s some mystical title that goes back to antiquity. A few of the older ones will know. But to the young ones, Kaygee is nothing more than an incantation. It’s a word that means everything and nothing. It’s not even something they can still make jokes about … The trouble with people nowadays is that they take everything too seriously. Goddammit, there isn’t a decent transie left!

He laughed aloud at the notion; and the men following him fingered their guns nervously. They had not heard the Kaygee laugh for a long time. They couldn’t decide whether it augured well or badly.

The morning mist had already cleared. Greville stood on the grass and moss-covered roadway and gazed at Chelsea Bridge, twenty yards ahead. Then he turned to the two men who had been following him.

‘You will stay here. I am going to take a short walk along the bridge. I’ll be back in a few minutes.’

‘Sir. Permission to speak.’

‘Granted.’ There was a touch of annoyance in Greville’s tone that boded ill for the man who had spoken.

‘Sir, we are supposed to protect you,’ he continued desperately. ‘We cannot fulfil our duty if we have to remain here.’

‘You will not need to protect me on the bridge, and I shall not cross to the other side.’

Greville turned away to avoid further argument. Really! They were treat
ing him as if he were a baby. Something would have to be done about discipline. He could hardly move these days without stumbling over some well-meaning idiot armed to the teeth.

He walked slowly on to the bridge.

He looked over the side.

He was filled with childish delight.

The Thames was blue.

A blue river! He had seen plenty of blue rivers in the last twenty years. But somehow he had never expected that the Thames could turn blue once more. But having been free from industrial pollution for nearly forty years, what other colour could it be?

He was amazed and enchanted.

Greville turned his attention to the bridge. It was falling to pieces.

The suspension cables were coated with rust. So were the vertical wires. He doubted very much whether it would last another decade …

A voice, familiar but unrecognised, came from nowhere and whispered in his ear: ‘Love somebody … Build something.’

Then suddenly the past came rushing back.

He remembered that night with Pauline. The cat that he had killed; and then the growing tension between them, resolved finally in the crash. He remembered Liz in the thin dawn light – a girl in a faded blue shirt and a pair of men’s trousers that was two sizes too big for her. He remembered the dogs …

But most of all he remembered two faces. Pauline’s face, dead and beautiful: Liz’s face, alive and innocent, pale and bruised.

It was all so long ago. So very long ago. Pauline belonged to another world; but Liz only belonged to another time.

And yet … And yet they had both belonged to that other world.

So much had happened …

So much that was strange and terrible. So much that was warm and intimate …

Now, a new world was being born – a world in which the older people, the transies, were treated with a mixture of amusement and affection and fear; while the younger people, convinced of their own sanity and general soundness, were busy with dreams of new civilisations, new empires, new systems, new golden ages.

It was all, thought Greville, so sadly amusing. It was like Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture – full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

I am an old man, he thought. I have lived sixty-seven years and I am in my dotage. It appears that I have brought two hundred men all the way to London just so that I can keep a rendezvous with memories. I ought to be shot …