Empty World (9 page)

He straightened up. Someone
had
been here, and recently. A girl: it was the mark of a girl's shoe, several sizes smaller than his own. He felt his heart pounding and suddenly, involuntarily, heard himself crying out:

“Hello! Hello?”

He felt foolish, listening to the echoes, but called again and again, for several minutes.

• • •

Afterwards he was more rational, and planned things. He had always used the doors at the north-west corner, but there might be other ways in and out. He checked carefully, and found that the main door, in Brompton Road, had also been forced, but that the rest were locked. He returned to the Stationery department, found two white cards and a black fibre-tip marker, and wrote his message on each:

“My name is Neil Miller. I am at 170 Princes Gate.”

He thought for a moment, then added:

“Opposite Hyde Park.”

He placed a card in each entrance, conspicuously so that no-one coming in could avoid seeing it. For an hour or two afterwards he still hung about the store; it was improbable that she would come back again so soon, but he was reluctant to go away. Eventually hunger made him go.

Neil thought about it as he prepared his meal.
His general feeling had been that if he did find someone else it would be of his own sex. That probably stemmed from an ingrained belief that the female was the weaker—that with odds against survival so high, only males could be expected to have come through.

But there was no rational ground for thinking it. There had been nothing to suggest that women were more susceptible to the Plague than men—the only forbearance it had shown, and that minimal, had been towards the young rather than the old. And subsequent conditions of life, though strange, had not been particularly hard or dangerous, requiring special strength. After the rat menace had flared and died, all that was needed was a reasonable ability to take care of oneself. A girl might even be better equipped from that point of view.

Plus, he thought, remembering Peter Cranbell, the ability to sustain loneliness. He felt the crushing weight of that more than he had done for some time: the thought of another living person, within reach perhaps, sharpened the awareness of being on his own, not just in this room in this house, but with thousands of empty houses surrounding him.

He wondered what she would be like. The small footprint made him picture a slim girl, quick in her movements. With fair hair, long but very neat—braided, perhaps. Not blue eyes, though: brown. And a quiet voice, with a lilt to it.

Neil found himself smiling. Creating a girl, down to hair and eyes and voice, on the basis of a solitary footprint: how ridiculous! But ridiculous or not, the image was not easily dismissed. He thought of her as he went to sleep and saw her clearly. She was wearing a light blue dress, with white cuffs and collar.

• • •

For the next two days he went to Harrods both morning and afternoon. The cards were where he had left them but he still called out, with no response. On his second visit on the third day, though, the card he had left in the main entrance was gone.

Neil stared at the place where it had been. The previous day he had gone again to the Cosmetics department, to reassure himself of the footprint's reality, but even so the episode had begun to seem unreal. He found it hard to believe in the stranger's
existence. If she did exist, the visit had been a chance one, not to be repeated. But she had come back! As the fact penetrated, he found himself shouting again:

“Hello! Where are you? Hello . . . hello. . . !”

He stopped abruptly. Having discovered the card, obviously she had gone to Princes Gate, to look for him. He made for home, running most of the way. He called to her outside the house and went inside, racing through the rooms. There was no-one there, and no message. He could have outpaced her, he told himself, and stared out of the window. Birds fluttered through the air and he saw a scuttling rat: nothing else.

He waited for an hour. He had another idea—that she might have come, found no-one at home, and gone back to the store. She might have left a message in replacement of his. He retraced his steps but found nothing—called out again, but knew it to be futile.

That night he gave it a lot of thought. She had taken his message, but not responded. There could be a reason: frightening things might have happened to her. But he would not accept a refusal of
contact. Whether or not she wanted it, there must be a meeting.

Neil reviewed the shreds of information he had. Since she had come to the store a second time it was unlikely that she was a transient. He had heard no engine sound—and
would
have done this time because he had been on the alert—which meant she had travelled on foot. Almost certainly, in that case, she was living within a couple of miles' radius of Harrods. He was confident he would find her.

• • •

He started the search early next morning, and spent the day driving around. All he achieved was a fuller awareness of what a warren London was; and the unhappy realization that in guessing her mode of transport he had overlooked a third possibility. It could have been a bicycle, which made the potential range much greater.

It was with this in mind that he had what he thought was a brainwave. He remembered the dinging bells of burglar alarms, harshly calling attention to themselves. They had depended on electrical power, but there was something that didn't, and would be heard over a far greater area.

The first church he found was itself equipped with an electrical bell system, but the second had ropes. He heaved on one, and heard the bell clang out high above. He rang and rang, pulling until his arms were sore; then found a pew and sat down. Sparrows had found a way in before him and chattered up in the rafters. Hugging his aching shoulders he realized what a fool he had been—how absurd the brainwave. If she had not come in response to the card, why should she answer a peal of bells?

Something else was also clear: the car had been a mistake. She would have heard him, streets away. If he was going to track her down, he must use stealth.

Neil thought of the acres of interlocking streets, the vast area within easy cycling distance of the store. There must be a way of limiting the range. The thing to remember was that she had been facing the same problems as himself, and had very likely come to similar solutions. He had chosen Princes Gate for comfort, and for access to a good supply of fresh water. Was there an alternative location, offering the same possibilities?

He did not have to think long: the answer was
obvious. The best water supply possible—better than the Serpentine—was the Thames. And riverside Chelsea abounded in comfortable houses. That was where he should concentrate his search.

• • •

Neil took rations for several days, and spare batteries for his torch. He picked out his sturdiest pair of shoes, but on reflection abandoned them in favour of some with crepe soles. It was not too cold—grey but mild—but he crammed a jersey in. He wanted to be prepared for a long expedition.

He passed through the museums area of South Kensington on his way and remembered Saturday afternoons, and ice-creams sold from barrows. The gutters were choked and the forecourt of the tube station, where the paper-boys had shouted, was thick with accumulated dirt and rubbish. He trudged on south, to Sloane Square and the King's Road. Behind the grimy glass window of a boutique, models struck weird gymnastic poses, and a sign said:
THIS YEAR THIS IS IT
!

The big private houses near the river were the best bet, and he headed that way. But there were so many of them, so many once-affluent tree-lined streets. He studied the houses he passed for signs of
occupancy. If she were avoiding people she would probably try not to leave any, but something might give her away. He thought he was on to something when he saw a trail worn across what had been a small lawn, but it led him to a large hole under a wall—a fox's earth, most likely.

He took a break for a snack, and pushed on grimly. He kept at it until after dusk had fallen before finding a place to spend the night. He stayed in the big ground-floor sitting room where there was a comfortable settee. It was old-fashioned, well supplied with family photographs in silver frames. They did not interest him any longer.

Three more days of fruitless tramping followed. He was discouraged, and wondered if he could have guessed wrong about the district. She might not have had his idea about a fresh water supply, or she might have picked a different stretch of the river bank. The south side, perhaps, even though the houses were smaller and less luxurious there.

His luck changed unexpectedly. He had finished the provisions in his haversack; he thought of going back home, but decided it would be easier to forage near at hand. He went to the nearest supermarket in
the King's Road, and smashed a way in. There was plenty of food, but also sections of shelf which had been stripped. He looked more closely and saw the signs of a recent human presence: dust disturbed on the shelves and floor.

Neil followed the track. It led not to the door he had broken, but out to the back. There was a yard, and a steel gate. The gate was padlocked, but the chain had been severed with metal cutters.

From that point all he had to do was wait. He found an upper room across the street with a view of the gate, drew a chair up to the window, and settled down. He watched carefully all that day, and most of the next.

Even so, he missed her; she had probably entered the store while he was in the bathroom. He looked out to see the gate opening, and at the same time realized he had not noticed an addition to the scene—an old-fashioned lady's bicycle, with a basket in front of the handlebars, leaning against the wall further down.

Neil ran for the stairs. She was getting on the bicycle as he came out of the front door. He did not call, but raced towards her.

She heard him; and without looking round started to pedal away. If she had had another second or two she would have outdistanced him, but he managed to get close enough to grab the carrier at the back. The metal cut into his fingers and a backward-­kicking foot bruised his arm, but he held on. The bicycle swerved, and she fell.

9

K
EEPING HIS VOICE AS CASUAL
as possible, Neil said:

“I'm sorry, but. . . . Are you all right?”

There was no reply from the figure on the ground. He did not think she was injured, but the fall might have winded her. He stooped and took an arm.

“Let me help you.”

She rejected his hand, but got up on her own. He could not see her properly until she was standing. Thick fair hair was pulled back under a cap from a pointed face. The figure, shapeless in a short padded coat and trousers, matched his own in height. He
felt a shock of disappointment: it was not a girl, but a boy.

He repeated: “Are you all right?” The face stared sullenly. “Sorry if I took you by surprise.”

They looked at one another. There was a response at last, a brief shrug.

“I'm all right.”

The voice, low-pitched in a vaguely northern accent, was feminine. He could see now that it was a girl's figure as well. But a bit of a far cry from the one he had imagined.

At least, though, it was a fellow human being. He smiled, in an attempt at reassurance. She was wary and timid, possibly with good reason. Any approach would have alarmed her, let alone a full-blooded chase and tackle.

He asked: “Where are you living?”

She hesitated slightly. “In Chelsea.”

Tins and packages had been spilt from the basket. Neil gathered them and righted the bicycle, while she watched. Holding the handlebars, he said:

“I'm Neil Miller. What's your name?”

She looked at him doubtfully. “Docket. Billie Docket.”

“I'll walk you back, Billie.”

Her figure tensed. “No.”

“Look,” he said, “I'm not going to hurt you. Not in any way. I realize things may have been rough. They could be rougher still in time to come. It makes sense to help one another.”

She shook her head. “I'm all right.”

The note of dismissal was unmistakeable, but Neil would not accept it. He smiled at her; unnaturally, he felt, but he kept it fixed. He said flatly:

“I'm coming with you.”

She was unresponsive still, but seemed to recognize an inevitability. She nodded and set out walking, with Neil pushing the bicycle at her side.

His efforts to make conversation, though, were not very successful. To direct questions she gave terse unforthcoming replies. No, she had not been in London all the time. Where had she come from? Derby. When had she come to London? A while back. Had she met other survivors? A look, another shrug. No.

He had a feeling she might not be telling the truth there, but whatever she was concealing was plainly something she did not want to talk about.
Something unpleasant, probably: it would not be a good idea to press the point. He stopped questioning, and talked about his own experiences. She stayed silent, apparently uninterested. It did not look as though she were likely to provide either stimulating or restful companionship. But she was alive. He told her about the balloon, and finding Peter Cranbell's body. She made no comment. Then abruptly she said:

“I want to go in here.”

The sign said
LADIES
. Neil watched her go in. He propped the bicycle against the wall and gazed along the street. In the dusk of a grey afternoon it looked almost normal. Next year, though, with the spring growth, there would be a difference. How long before the saplings reached roof level?

It was very quiet, of course, a stillness to which he had become accustomed. The click was faint, but it alerted him. He ran round to the back of the convenience: a small window was open and she was half out of it. They stared at each other in silence; then she dropped down inside and came out by the way she had entered.

Neil said: “I'm really not going to attack you, or
anything. You do believe that, don't you?”

She did not answer, and he did not pursue it. They walked side by side without talking. He was trying to puzzle her out. She was obviously scared of him, yet somehow did not give that impression. But whatever it was, he knew he must be patient.

They were in Chelsea, walking through the streets he had fruitlessly searched. This was one like all the rest, Something-Gardens. He thought he detected a difference in her, an added tension. She slowed slightly, then walked faster. He suspected she might be on the point of making another break for it, and prepared to ditch the bicycle. Instead she stopped dead, as a voice broke the stillness:

“Billie!”

• • •

It came from a house they had just passed. Neil saw another girl, leaning out of an upper window and waving. He turned to Billie.

“I thought you said you hadn't met anyone else?”

She did not reply, but turned and walked back to the house. Neil followed with the bicycle. It was not surprising he had passed the place before without noticing anything. There was no indication of
anyone living here; and fallen leaves had been carefully strewn over path and steps. It provided an effective camouflage.

Billie pushed open the door. Neil followed close as she went in, in case she attempted to slam and bolt it on him; but her attention was all on the slim figure running downstairs.

“I couldn't understand why you were going past.” She halted a step or two from the bottom, and looked over Billie's shoulder towards Neil. “Who is it?”

The hall was lit only by a fanlighting over the door, and it was not possible to make out her appearance very clearly. She was smaller than Billie, a little younger probably, and Neil knew at once it had been her footprint he had seen. Her voice was lighter, more animated than the other's. It had a soft country burr.

Billie did not immediately answer the question, so he did it for her.

“I'm Neil Miller. I found her outside the Supermarket.”

She was studying him carefully, but he did not
get the same impression of antagonism he had had with Billie. She asked:

“Was it you rang the bells?”

“Yes.”

There was a pause. Her look was considering still. He said:

“I'm not dangerous, I promise.”

“You don't sound dangerous.” She paused again. “I'm Lucy Stephens. You'd better come up, rather than just stand there.”

He followed them both to the first floor. Lucy led the way into a sitting room, the one from whose window she had waved. It was lighter than downstairs, but shadowy from the growing dusk outside. Lucy pulled curtains across: they were of a heavy material, and he observed that she tweaked them fully into place so that not a chink of light showed through. They were in pitch blackness until she switched on a lantern-torch, and put on others in different parts of the room. They were rigged up with pretty shades.

When she had finished, she asked:

“Cup of tea?”

Neil nodded. “Thanks.”

There was a primus stove in the hearth, and she bent down to pump and light it. Neil had a strange feeling as he watched her. It was a sort of calm excitement, a curiosity so deep that it seemed to twitch at his nerve ends; along with a weird sense of fear and boldness mixed up together.

He could see her more clearly in the light from the lantern-torches. She had a thin face, he thought at first, but corrected it: above a slight hollowness of cheek, the actual cheekbones were quite broad. Her forehead was high, nose small and slightly snub. In concentrating on the primus stove she bit her lower lip: her teeth were small and even, very white.

Apart from her slimness she bore no resemblance to the girl he had visualized. Her eyes were neither blue nor brown, but hazel. And she was brunette, her hair a very dark brown, almost black, curling at the ends.

She asked Billie: “Did you remember teabags?”

“Yes.”

“Is the stuff still in the bike basket? Be a dear and bring it up.”

Billie hesitated, but reluctantly went. Lucy looked up, brushing hair back from her face.

“You rang the bells in the hope of someone coming?” Neil nodded. “And no-one did?”

“No.”

“We talked about it.”

She sat back on her haunches. She wore a white skirt and blouse, very fresh-looking. He said:

“And decided not to do anything?” She nodded. “Why?”

“Billie thought it was too risky. I suggested we might go along quietly to see, without showing ourselves, but she said it might be a trap.” He looked at her in query. “There might have been more than one—others waiting in ambush.”

“The blackout of the windows.” He gestured towards the curtains. “And spreading leaves in front of the door—did Billie think of them?”

“Yes.”

Billie came hurrying upstairs, her arms full. Neil said:

“And not replying to the message I left?”

Lucy wrinkled her brow. “Message?”

“In Harrods. After I found your footprint there.”

“We have been in Harrods. A footprint?” She laughed. “Like Robinson Crusoe?”

“I put my name and address on cards, and left them in both doorways.”

“We didn't see any cards.”

“But one was taken.”

Billie, who had been listening in silence, said:

“Blown away, maybe.”

“I don't think so. It was quite heavy. And out of the wind.”

“Or a rat took it. I've seen them carrying quite big things.”

Neil did not comment on the improbability. He guessed she was lying again: she had found the card, and removed it before Lucy could spot it. But it would do no good to suggest that. The kettle was beginning to boil and Lucy bent towards it. He said only:

“I could do with a cup of tea.”

• • •

Afterwards they talked. Neither girl had originally lived in London; like Neil they had been drawn to it by the promise of plenty. Lucy came from a village
in Oxfordshire; her father had worked on the land. Her mother had died following the birth of a brother, when she was five. She'd looked after the household from an early age. She referred to her father indifferently, and Neil gathered he had been a cold man, but he thought there were tears in her eyes when she spoke of her little brother.

She had met Billie while wandering through the outskirts of London. For her that had been the only contact since the Plague. Billie, on the other hand, had had encounters, she said: unpleasant ones. Neil asked in what way unpleasant?

He looked at Billie as he put the question, but she stared back mutely. Lucy said:

“She doesn't like talking about them. So don't ask.”

She had told
him
that she had not met anyone. That had been to conceal the fact of Lucy's existence, but he wondered if anything she said was to be relied on. The unpleasant encounters could have been another lie, aimed at Lucy. Not pursuing that, either, he told again the story of Peter Cranbell. It troubled Lucy.

“How dreadful. . . . And if you'd managed to get there just a bit sooner. . . .”

“Yes.”

Billie made a comment at last.

“He must have been weak-minded, to do something like that.”

Neil looked at her. “How long did you have of it?”

“Of what?”

“Being on your own.” He turned to Lucy. “Have you been together long?”

“A couple of months. Three, nearly.”

“You don't get used to it. It gets worse, not better.”

Lucy said: “I suppose it would. I hadn't thought. You didn't meet anyone, before us?”

“Only once. And only for a few hours.”

He told them about Clive. Billie showed more interest.

She said:

“You can't say
he
wasn't mad.”

She spoke with some satisfaction. Neil said: “Perhaps. Fairly harmless, though.”

“Was he? He ripped your car up, didn't he? You were lucky he didn't use the knife on you.” She
spoke to Lucy, her whole stance excluding Neil. “It's like I've said. It doesn't make sense to take chances—to trust anyone, the way things are now. There's no policeman on the corner, and you can't dial 999.”

“But you've got to take chances,” Neil said. “How many people are there alive, do you think, in the whole of England? A few hundred? Less, probably. Some of them may be mad, some may be dangerous, but you can't just isolate yourself.”

Billie regarded him with open hostility.

“Can't you?” She added, with emphasis: “We've been all right, on our own.”

There was a silence, which Lucy ended.

“Anyway, you've found us. And you don't strike me as either mad or dangerous. The least we can do is ask you to stay to supper.”

The hostile look was still fixed on Neil. He ignored it, and said to Lucy:

“That's kind of you. It'll be a pleasant change to sample someone else's cooking.”

• • •

Rather to Neil's surprise, Billie cooked the meal. She was a good cook, using seasonings and spices to improve the flavour of the inevitable tinned meat
and vegetables. She made him realize how primitive and inadequate his own techniques had been.

After supper she was mostly silent, while Neil and Lucy did the talking, but he found her silent presence oppressive. He tried to disregard it, and talked of the problems of the winter, now almost on them. For heating the girls had paraffin stoves, and a plentiful supply of fuel. (They had decided against open fires, he realized, because of the impossibility of disguising a smoking chimney: Billie's decision.) Neil mentioned the Calor gas he had found in Peter Cranbell's house, and his idea of fitting gas cylinders into a central heating system.

Lucy was dubious. It would need skilled plumbing, she pointed out, and proper tools.

“I could find the tools,” Neil said. “And a do-it-yourself plumbing manual I could learn from.”

“Do you know where there's a supply of Calor gas cylinders?”

“No. But Peter Cranbell managed to find some. Clive, too. It shouldn't present that much of a problem.”