Out of Time (8 page)

‘It’s beautiful.’

She waited impassively and made no comment.

Her loosely bound fair hair swung on her back as she went ahead. ‘What one would call well built,’ he thought. Her face was round, high cheekboned but well covered and too fleshy for his taste. She had blue green eyes and a repellant air of self-sufficiency. He wished it were Belinda showing him round. She was closer to his vague, undefined model of femininity.

Had she been on guard duty all night?

They turned right down an incline. A fast-flowing stream running into lower pastures, where cows and oxen grazed, fed a mill race below a water mill, smaller and squatter than others Joe had seen. Its sails were furled. Kathryn continued downhill, Joe following, to a network of barns and sheds, old but well maintained.

Four dun coloured calves inside a palisade set up indignant, high pitched bellows. Kathryn patted their outstretched noses but walked on under a wooden arch into a cobbled yard. She fetched a bucket and three legged stool from a dairy and motioned Joe to follow.

‘You have to get the cows.’

Trembling with uncertainty, unwilling to make a fool of himself in front of this commanding girl, Joe boldly opened the field gate. The cows, thick set and shaggy with horns curving upward in a generous sweep, Joe noted that they were the same variety as those he had seen by the river, walked sedately to a paddock where Kathryn was shaking feed into wooden mangers.

‘You’re to milk them,’ she said.

Joe had been taken round enough farms to know the routine, but only with the use of machines. As far as he knew no one ever milked by hand, his only model for this extraordinary activity being from an illustration in a childhood book nursery rhymes. It was not the ideal model. He walked tentatively to one cow, seized the stool and set it down, well distanced from her back legs, the bucket balanced precariously between his knees, his head well away. The cow swished her tail across his face. Kathryn watched him sardonically and he felt himself flush as he tried pulling at the two teats facing him, with no effect.

‘Don’t you know how?’

No, he bloody well didn’t.

‘Yes, of course I do!’

He gave them a hard, simultaneous pull. The cow stopped feeding, turned to look at him, and kicked her back leg into the bucket which fell to the ground. Kathryn picked it up, rinsed it in the stream and took the stool from him. She placed it close by the cow, murmured quietly, and rested her head intimately against the animal’s flank. Joe, feeling inadequate, stood back and watched her expert movements.

‘You do the back two first.’

She pulled at the teats with thumb and forefinger until a trickle of milk came out, then bunched her hands into closed fists, opening and closing them in a quick rhythmic motion. The milk spurted out, making a billowing foam. It smelled strong and sweet.

She handed him the bucket and he took her place, imitating her as best he could. He succeeded in extracting only a small trickle.

‘Not like that.’

‘You bloody well milk it then.’

He kicked the stool aside, threw the bucket down and stalked off.

‘It’s not an it, it’s a she!’ she called after him.

Joe went downhill with as much dignity as he could muster, past fields of upright stooks of corn marching in neat lines, over the stream spanned by a narrow bridge, and into the wood below the farm. He kicked a tree as hard as he could. This was a trick he had used to good effect at home, forcing his mother to give way on whatever issue was at stake, but he hurt his toes and with no one to impress it was a pointless exercise. He turned along the stream, wishing once again that he had refused to follow Randolph into this hornets’ nest of imperious people who seemed to take it for granted that he would work for them like a slave. This, he now decided, he was not prepared to do, even if they housed and fed him. But what options were open to him? He was isolated in a country whose inhabitants, whether here or in Bantage, were hostile. More, those in Bantage actively wanted to kill him for reasons that were unfathomable. Where could he go? The cave high on the cliff, subject to wind, rain and snow, would be uninhabitable in the winter, prey would be difficult to catch and his fire impossible to keep alight. He could easily die of exposure. Nor could he rely on finding help elsewhere. The country, apart from Bantage and here, appeared to be uninhabited. He had no option other than to lie low and wait at least until the winter was over.

He reached a high knoll that gave him a view of the farm. On the other side of the stream lay a well tended park-like area, oak, ash, birch and willow growing singly over patches of long, waving grass. He assumed it was where they spent their time off. He had still to discover that this was a concept unknown to the community.

He returned reluctantly to the farm.

Kathryn greeted him nonchalantly.

Later, with an air of insufferable superiority, she showed him round, familiarising him with the routine of feeding, mucking out sheds, piling the manure onto a heap, sweeping the yard; countless jobs to which he would not have objected had he been left on his own.

Kathryn reminded him of the girls in his class he disliked most, contemptuous, superior and tough. He could feel the assurance he had gained over the lonely summer in danger of disintegrating under her scorn. At least she had no wish to talk to him. Her conversation and murmured endearments were reserved exclusively for the animals.

They penned the sheep.

‘No dogs?’ he ventured.

‘And have them bark and give us away?’

‘To whom?’

She looked at him coldly.

‘Don’t pretend you don’t know.’

The same words as Belinda’s. What did it mean? The townspeople? It seemed the most likely but they were far away, surely too far to be a threat. There must be other enemies. He resented the assumption that he pretended not to know something he knew.

‘But I don’t.’

Ignoring him as both Otto and Belinda had ignored him, she said,

‘There are logs to be split.’

She gave him an axe and took him to a pile of branches and tree trunks.

‘Once they’re done you stack them up against the side of the house. There’s a wheelbarrow over there.’

She paused,

‘I suppose you know how to do it?’

He did not deign to reply.

This at least was a satisfying activity which avoided contact with Kathryn and allowed him to pursue his own unproductive thoughts; and there was satisfaction in sheer physical activity. By evening when he joined the others for a substantial meal, he was tired. Conversation was sparse. He escaped to his room as soon as it was over, there to brood on his fate. He was exhausted and angry at the loss of his independence. He slumped on the bed and eventually fell asleep.

‘He isn’t used to working,’ Kathryn later told the others, ‘but he’s not an escaped dissident. Too fit. Can’t imagine what he’s been doing - or where he’s come from.’

Otto was equally puzzled.

‘I found some faded writing in his clothes.’

‘How bizarre. What did it say?’

‘Couldn’t read it properly. All I could make out was that his pants had ‘St. Michael’ on a label tacked to the back, then a lot of stuff underneath, letters and numbers. That hooded jumper was really odd. GAP stitched in the front in huge letters, you saw it last night. A tag that had been cut in half on the inside, at the base of the hood, done perhaps to stop us reading it.’

‘What does it all mean?’

‘Impossible to know,’ Otto said, ‘but we’d better watch out.’

*

Susie has found a small stone in her cell. It has an edge sharp enough to make marks. She uses it as her charcoal and writes stories on the wall. They occupy much of her time and become more and more fantastic.

One day while she is writing she hears tapping through the wall. Someone is trying to communicate with her. She signals back. At first, the tappings appear to be random but after a while she discerns a pattern. The pattern perhaps forms words. She makes some up for each set of taps and replies. She does not know if she is making sense to the other person but it does not matter. She has human contact.

*

It was impossible to make contact. Joe was sharing his life with a group of young people whom he could see, hear, even touch but who had nothing to say, either to Joe or to one another, for each one appeared to be absorbed in ceaseless conversation with himself. He sensed that they had been together so long words were superfluous.

Angry and resigned by turns, he pursued the daily tasks he was allotted and, under Kathryn’s reluctant tutelage, quickly acquired farming skills; but no sense of companionship developed for there was disdain on her part for his ignorance of the most practical tasks and resentment on his for her disdain. In any case, he was too absorbed in his own problems to attempt drawing her out. His victory over loneliness and depression in the cave had induced a certain euphoria which made him, however irrationally, believe that his return home was imminent, even though he could not imagine how it would occur. He visualised his homecoming, tried to imagine what it would be like, wondered whether his mother, friends, teachers had despaired of seeing him again. Had the police been informed, was he a missing person or had they given him up, adding his name to the long list of young people who disappeared, never to be seen again? And would they recognise in the strong young man he had become the much punier boy he had been? How had his friends developed? Were they unchanged, absorbed by the same pre-occupations, still going to gigs, following favourite bands, smoking weed, going after girls, drinking, gathering at parties? Not that he had been away long, a summer and now the autumn but it felt longer. Time in this place did not have the same progression as it had at home. Calendars and diaries had no meaning. Wearily he accepted the inevitable.

He was, in any case, soon too occupied for long periods of contemplation. Farm work kept him busy. He helped gather dry stooks from stubbled fields, piled onto carts pulled by oxen and brought to the edge of the home field that lay beside the farm. He learnt to throw the stooks by pitchfork to Meredith and Randolph, precariously balanced on a fast growing rick. It was hard, dusty work but he found satisfaction in it; or would have if he had felt some sense of companionship. But there was none. Joe wished with longing that there were other people to meet or friendships to cultivate, but the community, relying entirely on its own resources, had no outside contacts. The good life, glamourised by television, was a hard taskmaster which left no time for thought or play or even the relieving jolliness of banter. Remembering the robust relationship among his mates Joe was puzzled at these young people’s unrelieved seriousness like older, disillusioned adults.

Each one had their allotted tasks, Randolph and Meredith in the fields, Kathryn on the farm, Belinda in the house making and mending clothes. Otto cooked and saw to provisions. Everyone took their turn keeping watch at night, with the exception of Joe and Otto, the latter spared most physical activity. Joe had offered, although he had no idea what to watch for. He hoped that they might tell him. They turned him down without thanks, excluding him from an activity they clearly considered important. He felt it keenly.

His sense of isolation grew, greater now than during his solitary period in the cave. There he had been his own man, here he was merely tolerated, an outsider in a close and tightly knit community.

Joe longed for home with a with a painful ache in his heart.

S U S I E is still in her cell but her circumstances have changed. Her food has improved, small extra morsels appear on her plate. She looks forward keenly to her meals. Then one day her guard points at the slop bucket and motions Susie to follow. Susie can scarcely lift the overflowing bucket but manages to take it as far as a small room of overwhelming stench. She almost passes out. She lifts a wooden lid and empties the contents into the foetid hole below.

She is led to a small paved patch. It is not closed in. There is sky, there is light. It is blissful. The guard, expressionless, hands Susie a skipping rope. Susie skips though she is weak and cannot skip for long. But the routine is repeated daily. She is allowed to empty the slop bucket and then to skip. Her strength improves.

She never sees another person but the tapping through the wall has continued. She makes up what she cannot understand and imagines the other prisoner is a child, older than herself. She does not know for certain.

*

The days grew shorter. Sheds were repaired, roofs checked for leaks and loose tiles, more logs cut and piled against the house. Making good took up most of the time. Joe felt as if they were preparing for a siege; which indeed they were.

The trees shed their leaves. One morning sheets of rain battered at Joe’s window. Struggling into his clothes in the cold room he went downstairs, to find Otto in the kitchen, twigs and tinder box in hand, before an unlit stove.

‘Doesn’t Randolph usually do that?’

‘He won’t be here today.’

‘Where has he gone?’