Fugue for a Darkening Island Page 7

  At this stage I grew extremely depressed and went to my father for assistance. Though he was now retired he had been managing director of a small chain of companies and still had some influence. Neither of us cared for the brief contact into which this brought us, as we had not communicated except formally and politely for several years. Though he managed to obtain for me an insignificant position in a cloth-cutting factory, I never found a way to express fully my gratitude. When he died a few months later I tried unsuccessfully to feel more than a few minutes of regret.

  With the more immediate aspects of the personal financial crisis solved, I turned my attention to developments on the national scene. There was no sign of a halt to the progress of events which were taking away the state of affairs I chose to think of as normal. It was of great significance to me that the government had closed the college. Though at first there had been a public outcry about the seemingly arbitrary way in which the universities were being dealt with, popular interest soon passed to other things.

  I shall not attempt to describe the details of my work in the cloth factory. In brief, my labours entailed cutting certain types and colours of cloth to determined lengths, ensuring that they were labelled and packed correctly, and following through each consignment to the despatch point.

  Within a week I had memorized all relevant details and from there the work degenerated into a meaningless routine which I acted out for the sole purpose of the money it brought me.

  I said to Isobel: "I want to talk to you. Come over here for a minute."

  "I want to talk to you too."

  We left Sally by the tents and walked back to where I had been before.

  We stood facing each other, uncomfortable in each other's presence. I realized that this was the first time I had been really alone with her for several days, if not weeks. That thought led me to remembering that we had not had intercourse for over three months.

  I tried not to look at her.

  "Alan, we've got to do something," she said. "We can't go on like this.

  I'm terrified of what's going to happen. We ought to go back to London. It isn't fair on Sally."

  "I don't know what to do," I said. "We can't go back, we can't reach Bristol. All we can do is wait."

  "But wait for _what?_"

  "How do I know? Until things settle down again. You know the position as well as I do."

  "Have you thought what this is doing to Sally? Have you _looked_ at her recently? Have you thought about what this is doing to me?"

  "I know what it's doing to all of us."

  "And you do damn-all about it!"

  "If you've got any positive suggestions . .

  "Steal a car from someone. Shoot someone. Do _anything_, but get us out of this damned field and back to decent living! There must be somewhere we can go. Things would be all right in Bristol. Or we could go back to that camp.

  I'm sure they'd have us if they saw Sally."

  "What's wrong with Sally?"

  "Nothing you'd ever notice."

  "What do you mean?"

  She didn't answer, but I thought I caught her intention. This was her way of using Sally against me.

  I said: "Be reasonable. You can't expect me to solve everything. There's nothing I or you can do. If there was, we'd do it."

  "There must be _something_. We can't live in a tent in somebody's field for ever."

  "Look, the country's in one hell of a state. I don't know what's going on, and I doubt if we would if we were in London. There are police on all the main roads, troops in most of the towns. There're no newspapers and nothing on the radio. All I'm suggesting is that we stay as we are as long as we have to, until things get better. Even if we had a car we probably wouldn't be allowed to drive it. How long is it since we saw one on the road?"

  Isobel burst into tears. I tried to comfort her, but she pushed me away.

  I stood by her, waiting for her to calm down. I was becoming confused. When I had thought about what I was going to say to her, it had seemed to be so simple.

  As she wept, Isobel stepped away from me, shouldering me aside as I tried to pull her back. Across the field I could see Sally staring in our direction.

  When Isobel had stopped crying, I said to her: "What do you want most of all?"

  "There's no point in telling you."

  "Yes, there is."

  She shrugged hopelessly. "I think I want us to be as we were before this started."

  "Living in Southgate? With all those rows going on?"

  She said: "And you out till all hours of the night, sleeping with some little whore."

  Isobel had known about my affairs for two or more years. She no longer possessed the ability to sting me with them.

  "You'd prefer that to this? Would you really? Think about it, will you?"

  "I've thought about it," she said.

  "And about the rest of the marriage? Would you honestly want any of that back again?" I had already considered the question, knew my own answer to it.

  Our marriage had finished before it began.

  "Anything . . . rather than this."

  "That's no answer, Isobel."

  I debated again whether or not to say to her what I had decided. As callous as it seemed to me in the face of her present state of mind, it presented an alternative to a situation we both detested. Though she wanted to retrogress and I was going to move on. Was there, I wondered, any real significance?

  "All right," she said. "How about this? We'll split up. You go back to London and try to find somewhere for us to live. I'll take Sally and we'll try to reach Bristol. We'll stay there until we hear from you."

  I said at once: "No. Absolutely not. I'm not letting you take Sally. I don't trust you with her."

  "What do you mean? I'm her mother, aren't I?"

  "That doesn't embrace every capability."

  For a second or two I saw genuine hatred in Isobel's face and I looked away. My unfaithfulness to Isobel in the past had been a negative reaction away from her, rather than some distinct movement to someone else in seeking something that she could not provide. It had come about through my inadequacy to confront the reality of our marriage, instead of out of a constructive awareness of some shortcomings in the relationship. Though I knew that our generally unsuccessful sex-life, which had initiated in some psychological difficulty in Isobel, was one of the first causes, it was no longer the whole reason and it was the complexity of our failure that made me unable to deal with it. My own motives were suspect. Thus, in provoking Isobel's overt hatred, I was rendered discomfited.

  She said: "That's what I want. You're obviously incapable of supplying an alternative."

  "I do have a suggestion."

  "What is it?"

  And so I told her. I said I was taking Sally and that she was to go on to Bristol by herself. I offered her most of our remaining cash and as much equipment as she wanted. When she asked me why I wished to do this, I told her without compromising my earlier conception. I said as bluntly as I could that our marriage as such was over, that the social disruption had only resolved the situation into a more recognizable form. I told her that if she persisted in thinking that we could pick up again she was deluding herself and, in the long run, jeopardizing Sally's future. The break had been forced on us, but nevertheless it was a natural one. I considered that Sally would be safer with me, and that when things settled down again we could obtain a divorce and Sally would get legal protection.

  Isobel just said: "I don't know," and walked away.

  I examined the rifle at the earliest opportunity and discovered that it was of a sort for which we carried ammunition. Lateef had this, so I was obliged to reveal to him that I had come into possession of a rifle.

  Lateef had had the ammunition when I first joined his group, and I had no idea from where it had come.

  Speaking to me in private, he told me that he had twelve rounds of ammunition that would suit my rifle, but warned me that it was in the interests of us all t
o dispose of the weapon at once. When I asked him why, he told me that he had heard that the death-penalty had been invoked for the unlicensed use of firearms.

  From what he said, I drew the conclusion that he was envious of my having found the rifle.

  I argued the need for protection, that had we been armed earlier we might have been able to protect the women. I made the observation that atrocities against refugees were on the increase, and that there was now no organized force which we could trust.

  Lateef countered my arguments by pointing out the increased frequency of interrogations, and that so far we had managed to avoid personal violence against ourselves, whereas other refugee groups had suffered beatings, imprisonment and rape at the hands of military bodies.

  His contention was that this was because we were manifestly defenceless.

  I told him that I was prepared to accept any and all consequences of my being found in possession of the rifle; that if we were taken for interrogation I would hide it at once, and that if I was caught actually holding or using the rifle I would absolve the rest of the group from any knowledge or complicity.

  Lateef seemed satisfied that this undertaking of mine effectively disposed of any disadvantage to him or the others, and in due course gave me the ammunition.

  I took the weapon to pieces, cleaned and lubricated it, and learned how to sight it. Unwilling to waste any of the ammunition, or to draw attention to ourselves by the sound of its explosion, I did not fire it. A man in our group who knew something of rifles told me that it was powerful and accurate, and should be used with discretion.

  In the days that followed I appreciated that there had been a subtle shift of emphasis in the way in which the group organized itself. I came to town in the early afternoon, while arrangements for the day's festivities were in their last stages. The square in the centre of the town had been emptied of cars, and people walked across the open space as if unaware that on normal days the town was jammed tight with the traffic passing through towards the coast.

  Most of the shops which opened on to the square had laid out wooden stands in front of their windows and laden them with goods. Several men worked on the tops of ladders, attaching coloured bunting across the streets. Nearly every window ledge was decorated with a handful of flowers.

  At the wide end of the square, in front of the council offices, there was a small fairground, consisting of a children's roundabout, a helter-skelter, a row of swing-boats and several prizebooths.

  As I waited outside my hotel, a large coach stopped in a nearby sidestreet and about fifty or sixty passengers climbed out and trooped into a mock-Tudor restaurant on the far side of the square. I waited until the last one was inside, then walked in the opposite direction until I was out of the town centre and in residential sidestreets.

  When I returned the festivities were in full swing.

  I caught my first sight of the girl as she stood by a display of handbags outside a leather store. It was the fashion at that time for girls to wear clothes made of very light material and with skirts several inches above the knee. She was dressed in pale blue and wore her hair straight and long. To me she was very beautiful. As I crossed the square towards her she moved on and was lost in the crowds. I waited by the leather shop, hoping to catch another glimpse of her, but was not able to. After a few minutes I changed my position and stood in the narrow alley that ran between the shooting-gallery and coconut-shy.

  I returned to my hotel after an hour and ordered some coffee. Later, I went back into the square and saw her profile against the side of one of the lorries that transported the fairground equipment. She was walking at right angles to my line of sight, staring thoughtfully at the ground. She reached the steps outside the council offices and walked up them. At the top she turned and faced me. Across the square we gazed at one another. I walked towards her.

  I reached the bottom of the steps and she turned and went into the building. Not liking to follow her, I went up to where she had been standing and stood facing into the building. Behind me, I heard an abrupt explosion and a scream, and the sound of several people shouting. I did not turn. For about two minutes the square was noisy with the sound of shouting and music.

  Finally, someone thought to turn off the music that was being relayed by tannoy into the square, and silence fell. Somewhere a woman was sobbing.

  Only as the ambulance arrived did I turn to face the square and saw that an accident had happened on the roundabout. A small child was trapped by its legs between the platform and the motor in the centre.

  I waited for the child to be released. The ambulance men did not appear to know how to go about it. Finally, a fire-appliance drove up and three men using an electric saw cut through the wood of the platform and freed the child's legs. The child was unconscious. As the ambulance drove away, and the music started up again, I realized that the girl stood beside me. I took her hand and led her away from the centre into the streets along which I had walked earlier.

  Her beauty took away from me my ability for glib conversation. I wanted to flatter her and impress her, but the appropriate words would not flow.

  We returned to my hotel in the evening and I bought her dinner. When we had finished eating she became distracted and told me she had to leave. I saw her to the door of the hotel but she would not allow me to escort her any farther. I went into the hotel lounge and watched television for the rest of the evening.

  The following morning I purchased a newspaper and learned that the child had died on the way to hospital. I threw away the newspaper.

  I had arranged to meet Isobel in the afternoon and had until then in which to pass the time. For most of the morning I watched the men dismantling the pieces of the fairground and loading them on to the lorries. By midday the square had been emptied of equipment and the police were allowing normal traffic to pass through.

  After luncheon in the hotel I borrowed a friend's motor-cycle and took it out on to the main road. Half an hour later in a buoyant mood, I met Isobel. She was wearing the pale-blue dress again, as I had requested. Again we walked, this time leaving the town and finding several paths through the countryside. I wanted to make love to her, but she would not allow me to.

  On our way back to the town we were caught unexpectedly in a summer shower, which soaked us thoroughly. I had planned to entertain her with another dinner at the hotel, but instead we hitched a ride back to her house.

  She would not let me go inside with her. Instead, I promised to return to the town during the following week. She agreed to see me then.

  As I went into the foyer of the hotel one of the porters told me that the mother of the child had committed suicide in the afternoon. It had been she, according to the porter, who had encouraged the child to stand on the roundabout as it was moving. For a while we discussed the tragedy, then I had a meal in the hotel restaurant. Afterwards I went to the local cinema and watched a double-feature horror programme. In the interval I noticed Isobel sitting a few rows in front of me, kissing with a young man approximately her own age. She didn't see me. I left at once and in the morning I returned to London.

  In one village I discovered a transistor radio. Its batteries were flat.

  I took them out of the back of the radio and warmed them slowly the next time I was near a fire. While they were still warm I put them back into the radio and switched it on.

  At that time the BBC was broadcasting on one wavelength only, interspersing long sessions of light music with newsreports. Though I listened until the batteries went flat two hours later, I heard no bulletin about the fighting, nor about the plight of the refugees, nor about any political subject whatsoever. I gathered that there had been a plane-crash in South America.

  The next time I had batteries for the radio, the only channel I could find was Radio Peace . . . broadcast from a converted iron-ore ship moored off the Isle of Wight. The output of that was limited to prolonged prayer-sessions, Bible-readings and hymns.

  We were running sh
ort of food again and Lateef made the decision to approach a near-by village and arrange a barter. We consulted our maps.

  From experience we had learned that it was good general policy to avoid any village or town with more than about a thousand inhabitants, or situated anywhere near a major road. We had found that a high percentage of such places were either occupied by one faction or another and were subject to martial law in practice as well as theory, or else that a small garrison or camp would be maintained. As this effectively took from our sphere of operations most towns and villages, we were obliged to obtain the bulk of our supplies from isolated hamlets and solitary farms and houses. If we were fortunate enough to find somewhere that would provide us readily with what we needed, then we would either make an encampment near by, or keep on the move in the immediate neighbourhood.

  Looking at the map, Lateef made a decision to go towards a village about two miles to the west of us. One of the other men dissented, saying that he had heard that in the town three miles beyond this village was a Nationalist Forces headquarters. He said he would be happier if we detoured around the town either through villages to the north or to the south.

  For a while we discussed it, but finally Lateef overruled us. He said that our primary concern was food and that because of the number of farms near the village we would stand the best chance there.

  As we approached the village we saw two or three farms securely barricaded and defended.

  By an unwritten law of the countryside, refugees were allowed to traverse or camp in fields lying fallow, on condition they stole no food nor attempted to enter the farmhouses. In all my time on the road, I was subconsciously aware of this rule, and like everyone else I tried to work within it.

  For a short time some refugees from East Anglia had joined Lateef's group, but they clearly adopted the attitude of each man for himself, and Lateef had separated us from them.

  We passed the farmhouses, therefore, and headed for the village.

  As was our custom, Lateef walked at the head of our column with three other men, immediately behind them came the handcarts containing our possessions, camping equipment and goods for barter, and the rest of the group followed on behind.