Thimblewinter (2 page)

In the morning Cal came back for breakfast; he was tired, as you would expect, but also jumpy.

“They have captives, Rachel,” he said, “basically slaves.”

He sighed and pushed his plate away.

“The world gets worse,” he said, “not better.”

I was not supposed to be listening. Though there was no school that day, because of the strangers, I was still supposed to be doing homework, reading the ancient, dog-eared books and writing essays in exercise books that had been re-used time and again. But I heard all that Cal said.

“I recognised one of their captives. It was a man called Adam from that old hippy settlement two valleys along. I recognised his dreadlocks. He managed to tell me that their place was wiped out, everything stolen or burnt, people killed or taken.”

I had already stopped writing, something in Cal’s voice, as well as his words, had scared me. And I was even more frightened now, because I knew the place he meant and could see it in my mind’s eye. For, two summers ago, though it was dangerous and not really allowed, Cal had taken me on a trading journey to the hippy settlement. I did not know why they called it that, but I remembered the conical tents they called tipis and the women who smelled of incense and wore flowers in their hair. I squeezed my eyes shut to try and stop myself seeing the scorched circles where once the tents had been and the crows feasting on dead bodies. Because there were still crows; there were no song birds but the carrion eaters still thrived.

We would always remember those two nights, when nearly all of the village stayed awake expecting them to storm our walls and deal with us as they had dealt with most of the settlements they came across. But it didn’t happen and few wondered why. Mostly people were exhausted from lack of sleep and from fear.

Eventually they left, packing up forlornly on the second morning; many of them still seemed stupid from drink. They marched off in silence, herding their captives along and taking our trailer with them. But as a final twist, before they were out of ear-shot, the rear-guard, made up of stragglers and drunks, started shouting:

“See you soon! We’ll be back before winter comes!” Or some such words.

That evening the Constable held a village meeting. Apart from the guards and the younger children, everyone came together in the Capel. All the people sat down in the simple wooden pews and listened as if to a sermon, but what the Constable was asking called for answers.

“Some of you will know by now, or have guessed, that the strangers who have just left us have been raiding and pillaging all of the villages and settlements up and down these valleys.”

He paused for a while, as if for questions, but no-one said anything, all struck as dumb.

“You may well be thanking your god or good fortune that we were not attacked, but the Council met before this meeting and we think that there is a reason for our deliverance.”

I knew that the council had met; Mrs. Sharma, the schoolteacher, Miss Davies, the librarian, Cyril, who had once been in the army and was their military adviser and Enfys, the old Minister’s daughter, who was a sort of chaplain. And Cal and the Constable, and Edgar, newly returned from the Hafod, to make up the seven. I knew because I’d spied on them as they went into the schoolroom and hung around beneath the big picture window.

“We think,” Mrs. Sharma went on, “that they spared us for a reason. They need a place to winter. They need a roof over their heads and a well-stocked store-house. We think that’s what they intend to do and that’s why some of them were taunting us as they left. That’s what they meant.”

The silence set like ice forms on a pond, only quicker.

“We have to decide what to do.” It was the Constable speaking now.

My first sight of the city was of a wide, blackened expanse of ground with chimneys and jagged walls standing out like old rotten teeth. I saw it from where I had just woken up, in the back of the old Land Rover as it lurched to a stop, the engine still running, in front of a barricade.

There was not much to differentiate between the piles of rubble and rubbish and the barricade, just the corrugated iron gate that broke up the makeshift barriers of bricks, rotting furniture and old cars.

Cal, who was driving, had a whispered conversation with the Constable beside him, as we saw a group of men in tattered blue uniforms swing open the gates and beckon us forward.

“Is it safe?” He asked. “Are they real police?”

“Most probably city militia,” the Constable answered, “we’ll have to negotiate a toll, but they should be alright.”

The Land Rover inched forward and one of the men, with sergeant’s stripes, came to talk to the Constable, while another two came to inspect the back of the vehicle. Close to I could see that their outfits were made up of various bits and pieces of clothing and equipment, though there had been some attempt to retain a semblance of uniformity with blue jackets and caps or berets predominant.

They had guns, of course; pistols at their belt and shotguns. Cal had told me afterwards that the pistols were mainly for show, as bullets were scarce, but everyone carried shotguns, as you could with precious little skill make your own loads.

I was too busy watching the two men who came to look at us, to catch what the other man, the sergeant, said to the Constable. Mrs. Sharma and I didn’t move and they didn’t ask us to get down. One of them was a young, thin man, with a sharp, bony face and a cleft lip. He muttered something as he poked around in the bundles on the floor, but it was hard to understand what he was saying, though I don’t think it was complimentary of Mrs. Sharma or me. The other one was bald-headed beneath his beret and fat, though how anybody got enough to eat these days to make them fat was a wonder to me. He moved me off what I was sitting on, but was not rough. Instead, he tried to joke with me.

“What have we here?” he said. “Little girl come to see the big city?”

Then he said something I didn’t understand:

“Turn again, turn again. No pavements made of gold here.”

I didn’t know what he meant, but in one way it was quite apt.

The Constable gave something to the sergeant and then we were through the barricade. The road here was better than the one we had come in on, though it was still holed and rutted. There were houses and other buildings lining the street, but there were still piles of rubbish and old cars rotting beside the road. There were women and children around, though few, and dogs that didn’t look feral. I wondered how Cal knew the way, but then I realised that all the roads led to the docks now.

And there were birds. Crows of course, on top of the rubbish heaps, but other big, white birds that were in conflict with them; gulls Cal called them and told me they were, from the sea.

Our journey had been decided on at the village meeting, though there had been much conversation before all was set. There was no-one to appeal to and no-one to help. We all knew this in our hearts.

The closest thing to government within a hundred miles, the Constable said, was the city council and their writ hardly ran beyond the city perimeter. We had not seen army soldiers for years and those had mainly been small bands of deserters and scavengers, more trouble than use. But just as everyone became despondent, the Constable told us his plan. If we wanted help, he told us, we would have to pay, either in food, or some other commodity.

“People still use gold,” the Constable said, “paper money is worthless, but in the city they still trade in gold. Or silver and precious stones.”

I’d never known a time when trade was done by anything other than barter and perhaps some of the people really had forgotten this, almost. But now the villagers remembered and recalled also that we had gold and that this was yet another story, another secret of the village.

What had occurred no-one was telling. But I knew - or at least had guessed some facts and learnt some others - that when things had started getting bad, during the sickness and in the fighting, there were all kinds of people on the road and all kinds of things with them. And the villagers, on their scavenging trips, hadn’t only taken food and petrol, but also these other things; rings and jewellery and even coins and plate.

Cal had once shown me our hoard of things, one wet day when he was stripping an engine in the lean-to next to the warehouse. He had let us into the dark, cave-like space with his key and shown me the sacks and cartons of a pirate treasure; watches that no-longer worked, rings and bracelets. It had seemed wondrous to be, awesomely pretty, but I had not thought it of any real use. Pirates, though, always had treasure and it occurred to me that perhaps we were, after all, somehow akin to pirates.

There were two things we needed, according to the Constable, weapons and people to show us how to use them. He would go to the city, he said, and see what he could find. He had no argument to win, as no-one put forward any other ideas. There was some discussion, though, on who should go with him.

We couldn’t spare many people and, besides, a big party of people on the road was probably more likely to attract attention than a little one. Cal had to go, that was sure, because if they were going to take one of the vehicles, there was a pressing need for a mechanic to keep it going.

Mrs. Sharma had volunteered to go and that made sense too, as she still had family in the city, or at least she thought so, and they were merchants, business-men, and could be useful to us. Lastly, it was decided that the Constable would go; though the people were loath to risk his safety, he insisted that it was his plan and he should follow it through.

Cal had decided to take the old Land Rover, as he reckoned he could find enough bio-diesel to power it there and back. They would take some trade goods, but that would be just to give the illusion we were traders, the gold would be hidden in the chassis. Not that any ordinary bandit you might meet on the road would find any use for it, but we are all magpies at heart, as grandmother used to say, and can still dream and wonder.

The Constable had decided that the best plan was to cut along some of the old mountain tracks and descend to the valley that way. Though there was more risk of the road washing-out or subsiding, the party would avoid the risk of ambush on the main road and would have less chance of striking up against our late visitors or other bands like them. Down in the Cwm, where one of those big highways had run, it would be best to join a road-train, the only safe way to travel. Though nothing was really safe these days, as the men who organised the trains were not much distanced from the bandits they were supposed to protect you against.

The preparations took some days. Cal had to cut out and weld a hidden compartment for the gold and other supplies and trade goods had to be brought together, but they were keen to be on their way, as the morning chill in the air and the low sun and the deep blue of the sky told us all that winter would not be long in coming.

The morning of the departure came and I was up before dawn, as I had planned to climb up the hills to our windmills, so I could watch them go. But as I sat there waiting in the half-light, I took to thinking of the journey they were going to make, and how it was like one of those old adventures I had read of. I thought of Captain Cook and Vasco da Gama, and suddenly I knew that I had to go and how I could make them take me. So I ran down the other side of windmill hill and picked my way over the boggy slopes and down into the woods.

I knew the route and where to put my feet in the bog; I had been this way before, but never alone always with shepherds or hunters. So it wasn’t until I was well into the woods, where no dawn light had managed to seep in, that I started being afraid and listening for the sounds of dogs, or a human footfall, or looking for the silky darkness of a big cat amongst the trees.

If there was anything in the woods, it probably thought I was a ghost, some sort of phantom and kept its distance. It was a pine forest, so it was easy going, no trailing brambles or undergrowth to trip you or snag you. I came out of the woods to a grey morning of low, heavy cloud and kept on downhill until I came to the tumble of rocks that they would have to pass on their way down the mountain, as the track snaked around the outcrop.

By the time I got to the rocks I was exhausted and my boots and trousers were wet from the dew, so I was cold too. I had just settled into a place between two boulders, where I could be comfortable but still see out, when I heard a sound like an animal screaming, but somehow I knew it was a human voice. I scanned the land around and then saw, somewhere below me, in broken ground before another band of woodland, some human figures moving about.

Even from this distance I could see that they looked almost like animals, with clothing of fur and hides, but I didn’t see too much, as I had tucked my head down and hid as best I could. I was regretting what I’d done and worrying. What would happen if, by some bad fortune, they didn’t take this track, or I fell asleep, which was likely, and missed them?

Sometime later, though, they did turn up. I heard the Land Rover’s engine labouring around the bend in the track and I appeared like some forlorn thing at the side of the road. Cal was angry, though Mrs. Sharma fussed over me and the Constable just seemed to accept my presence there. It was too late to go back, he said, it would take far too long to get the Land Rover up the track and they couldn’t spare anyone to walk me up the mountain. So we carried on looping around the ridge track and, as we went, I could still hear the call of the strange human animals down below in the woods.

By evening we were down in the Cwm and we crossed the river on the old railway bridge heading for the nearest way-station. We came up to a big, old building, burnt-out and in ruins, an old supermarket Mrs Sharma told me, in front of which was a vast flat space on which a road-train was being put together. There was another building there also; an old inn, Cal said, which was now the way-station.

“The inn is called ‘The Rock and Fountain’,” the Constable told me, as we parked amongst the other vehicles, “and it’s been here for at least four hundred years, since the days of stage coaches.”

But some of the vehicles were not that far removed from those stage coaches. I looked around me and saw various contraptions, some horse-drawn carts and trailers, some cars or vans powered by all sorts of fuel, with chimneys and tanks at odd angles all over the bodies and truck-beds. The centre pieces of this assembly were the two ancient steam tractors that would pull two vast trailers for goods and people afoot, but there were also some there with handcarts and wheel-barrows, who would follow the convoy for safety, being too poor to afford a ride.

“God help them if they fall behind,” said Mrs. Sharma looking at some of these unfortunate wretches.

The road-train agent did all his business in the inn, so the Constable set off there, though Cal, Mrs. Sharma and I stayed with the Land Rover. People seemed friendly. Some had fires going and were brewing tea; hedge tea of course, nothing special. But Mrs. Sharma told me to be wary of people, not all were as they seemed and things were harder for young girls; there were always those looking to take advantage of you. But you couldn’t live your life looking over your shoulder, as grandmother used to say, so I took little notice of her.

The next dawn we set out, after a night spent sleeping where we could in and around the Land Rover. And it was all such a spectacle, the big steam tractors at the front pulling the trailers and any other vehicles which could tag onto them. The ramshackle procession of wagons, cars and trucks was in the middle of the convoy and the people on foot and with all sorts of handcarts were bringing up the rear. All proceeding at a stately pace of about two miles an hour over the ragged strands of tarmac and pitted, muddy fissures of what had once been a mighty highway. And all around us the outriders, the road-train guards, like shepherds with a flock of sheep or more like sheep dogs worrying at stragglers.

There was one thing, which I will always remember, that occurred on the second day towards evening, in the half-light, at the time when the scouts were usually ahead looking for somewhere to camp. It inevitably happened that, by this time, some of the people who were walking fell behind and often, but not always, the guards would hurry these people up and try and get them back to the main body of the train.

Because it was getting late, the light was going, and people were getting weary, no-one had noticed that an old man with a hand-cart and two girls - daughters or grand-daughters, who could tell - had fallen behind, by half a mile or so. The old man seemed unwell, but had insisted on pushing his cart, an old pram. The girls, one a teenager the other a child, had helped, but the younger one seemed to tire easily and had a bad chest.

None of us had realised how far they were in the rear until we heard the shotgun blast, then most of us in the middle part of the convoy stopped. Nobody had seen the small band of riders who had stalked the three stragglers. And all I saw, as I stood on the wagon bed of the Land Rover, was the figure of the old man slumped by the up-turned pram and the two girls, the older one struggling, taken up on the horses and borne away.