I had little or no idea where to start, or what would constitute an effective defence.
I felt uneasy because the town was within Afrim-held territory, and although I was not impeded in any way I felt my movements were being observed.
All shops had been looted. The main parade was a desolate line of ruined stores, their racks emptied by repeated pillagings, but in one store I discovered a domestic-sized glass-cutting instrument, and pocketed it in lieu of there being anything else of worth.
I moved on down to the shore.
There was a large group of white refugees here, living in a crude encampment of old beach-huts and tents. Though I approached them, they shouted at me to go away. I walked along what had once been the beach promenade in a westerly direction until out of their sight.
I encountered a long row of bungalows which, judging by their affluent appearance, at one time would have been occupied by the wealthy retired. I wondered if the Africans had any plans to use them and why the refugees I had seen were not camping there. Most of the bungalows were unlocked and there appeared to be nothing to prevent entry. I walked along the row, glancing into them all. There was no food to be had from any of them, nor anything that could be conceivably used as a weapon. Though most of them were still furnished, removable commodities, such as sheets and blankets, had been taken.
About two-thirds of the way along the line I encountered a bungalow that was empty of all furniture. Its doors were locked securely.
Intrigued, I broke in through a window, and searched it. In one of the back rooms I noticed that some of the floorboards had been removed and replaced. I levered them up with my knife.
In the space below there was a large crate full of empty bottles. Someone had gouged a diagonal line across each of them with a file, thus weakening them. Near by was a neatly folded pile of linen, torn into squares about fifteen inches across. In another room, also under the floorboards, I discovered ten five-gallon drums of petrol.
I considered the use of petrol-bombs to us and whether it would be worth telling Lateef of their presence. It was obviously impossible for me to move them single-handed, and it would be necessary for several men to come here to take them.
In the time I had been with Lateef and the other refugees, there had been some considerable discussion concerning the kinds of weapons which would be of use to us. Rifles and guns were obviously the prime necessity, but they were at a premium. It was unlikely we would ever obtain them except by stealing. Then there was the problem of ammunition. We all carried knives, though they were of assorted qualities. My own had formerly been a carving-knife, which I had honed down to a usable size and sharpness.
The kind of use to which a petrol-bomb is best put is as an anti-personnel device in enclosed spaces. Operating as we were in the countryside, we would have little use for incendiaries.
In the end I returned the bottles, linen and petrol to their hiding-places, reasoning that if Lateef disagreed with me, we could always return for them.
The lavatory was in working condition and I used it. Afterwards I noticed that a bathroom cabinet on the wall still had its mirror intact, and this gave me an idea. I prised it away and, using the glass-cutter, I sliced it up into long triangular strips. I managed to cut seven such strips from the thick glass. I fashioned the ends to as sharp a tine as possible, twice drawing my blood in the process. With a chamois leather I took from my bag I made handles for the daggers, wrapping it in strips around the thicker ends.
I tried out one of the new daggers, swinging it experimentally in the air. It made a lethal but difficult weapon. I would have to devise some method by which the daggers could be carried conveniently so that their users would not be endangered by them if they fell. I packed the seven new daggers into a heap, and prepared to roll them up into a piece of sacking so that I might carry them back to the others. As I did so, I noticed that one of the shards had a minute fault in the glass, near the handle. I saw that it might shatter easily, perhaps lacerating the hand of whoever used it. I discarded it.
I was ready to return to Lateef and the others. Night was falling, so I waited for the dark to come. The twilight was shorter than normal, because of the atmospheric murk and low clouds. When I felt it would be safe to move, I collected my possessions and started back towards the encampment.
The time I had spent by the shore had had a strangely soothing effect on me, and I felt it might be good future policy to spend more time there. I resolved to suggest it to Lateef.
I was hiding at the top of a barn because my elder brother had told me that the bogey would get me. I was about seven years old. Had I been older I would have been able to rationalize the fears that took me. They were formless, but for the clear image of some monstrous being with black skin that was out to get me.
Instead, I cowered at the top of the barn, lying in my own private hidey-hole which no one knew was there. Where the farmer had stacked the bales of straw, a small cavity had been left between three of them and the roof.
The comforting subjective security of the hide-out restored my confidence, and some time later my fears had receded and I was involved in a juvenile fantasy involving airplanes and guns. When I heard rustling in the straw below, my first panicky thoughts were of the bogey, and I lay in a state of frozen terror while the rustling continued. Finally, I summoned courage to creep as silently as possible to the edge of my hide-out and peer downwards.
In the loose straw on the ground, at the back of the bales, a young man and a girl were lying with their arms around one another. The man was on top of the girl and the girl had her eyes closed. I did not know what they were doing. After a few minutes, the young man moved slightly and helped the girl to take off her clothes. It seemed to me that she did not really want him to take them off, but she resisted only a little. They lay down again and within a very short period of time she helped him remove his own clothes. Not wishing to change my position, I lay very still and quiet. When they were both naked he lay on top of her again and they began to make noises with their throats. The girl’s eyes were still closed, though the lids fluttered from time to time. I can recall very little of my impressions during this; I know I was curious to see a girl who could open her legs so wide — all the women with whom I had come into contact (my mother and my aunts) had seemed incapable of opening their knees more than a few inches. After a few more minutes the couple stopped moving around and lay together in silence. It was only then that the girl’s eyes opened properly and looked up at me.
Many years later my elder brother was among the first British National soldiers to be killed in action against the Afrims.
The words of the official at the U.N. camp came to mind as I drove along the North Circular Road. The radio had confirmed that an amnesty had been offered by Tregarth’s emergency cabinet, but had implied also that the leaders of the Afrims were not responding in a wholly favourable way.
One possibility was that they did not trust Tregarth. On several occasions in the past he had initiated social reforms that had acted against the Afrims, and there was no reason that now they had an upper hand in a military sense Tregarth would compromise with them in a way prejudicial to his own administration. With a rift established in the armed forces, and another threatened within the police forces, any policy of appeasement which was at all suspect would not work.