‘What visitors?’
She stepped inside and closed the door behind her. The day before, Owen had been interviewed by two officials from Customs and Excise, she told me. They suspected there had been at least one survivor from the boat that had recently gone down just off the coast. If the person or persons in question were illegal immigrants, as appeared to be the case, they would have to be apprehended and taken to a detention centre where their true status could be established.
‘He didn’t mention me,’ I said, ‘did he?’
‘He said he’d seen some statues on the beach, but that was all.’
‘Did they believe him?’
‘I think so.’
‘I’m sorry. I should have told you.’
‘There was no need. As far as we’re concerned, it doesn’t matter where you’re from. You’re the reason we can go on living here. We’re hardly going to hand you over to the authorities.’
‘All the same, it’s best I leave as soon as possible.’
‘I’m afraid so.’ Rhiannon reached into the knapsack and handed me a wallet. ‘Owen had a collection for you.’
The wallet was stuffed with notes of all denominations, and plenty of loose change. ‘This is a lot of money,’ I said.
‘He didn’t want you to leave empty-handed, not after what you’ve done for us.’ She passed me the knapsack. ‘A few things to keep you going.’
I shook my head. ‘You didn’t need to do all this.’ Then I remembered the principles on which the community had been founded. ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘For everything.’
She smiled. ‘Are you ready?’
Aware that the house might be under observation, she took me along a series of overgrown paths that would see me safely off the property. As we came through a wooded hollow, I heard the stuttering of rotor blades.
‘That’s probably them now,’ she said.
She held quite still and listened, then she moved on up the slope. I followed her. The chatter of the helicopter faded.
We scaled a fence, then struck out along one edge of a field. When we arrived at the stile in the corner, the land unfolded in front of me, sleepy and unspoiled. This was as far as she could go, Rhiannon said. In the knapsack I would find a detailed map of the area. For the first few miles, I should keep to footpaths and bridleways. She doubted the Customs and Excise people would be looking for me there.
I thanked her again. We embraced quickly. Stepping back, I saw that her face had altered, as if the bones had shifted a fraction.
‘Think of us sometimes,’ she said.
With those words, I felt she had given something away — something she’d wanted me to see all along, perhaps, but hadn’t wanted to spell out. I had thought of the Church of Heaven on Earth as a kind of cult, though it was actually more like a charity. Owen had created a place in which he could try and redress the damage wreaked by the division of the kingdom. Losses could be overcome there. Injuries could heal. Maybe that was what Rhiannon had meant when she said I would fit in. Maybe that explained the unfathomable smile. She had identified me as a casualty, not of the shipwreck, but of an earlier catastrophe — the Rearrangement — and if times had been different, who knows, I might even have stayed on. How had she been wounded, though? What was the origin of the pain I thought I’d seen in her? I turned to speak to her, but it was too late. She was already halfway across the field.
Though it was almost December, the air had a sweet burnt smell, and the sky was tall and blue and empty. The recent storm had blown the clouds into a different part of the world altogether; all that bad weather had piled up somewhere else. I had the feeling that my life, too, had been swept clean, put in order. I walked northwards through open, undulating country. To the east I had a view of a ruined castle. Beyond it, a finger of water pointed inland. An estuary, I thought, or possibly the sea.
After a couple of hours I paused for a rest. In the knapsack Rhiannon had given me, I found some mineral water. I drank half of it, then consulted the map. Now that I had money, of course, I could afford a train. I decided to make for a town to the north-west, whose station was on the main line to the capital. Even if I kept to the footpaths and bridleways, as Rhiannon had advised, I should be able to get there in two days. I would be thirty miles from the coast by then, and breaking cover ought not to be a problem. Pleased with my strategy, I tucked the map and water-bottle back into the knapsack and hurried on.
Once, as I climbed down into a gully, I heard the helicopter again, though it was only a subdued grinding in the distance, little more than a vibration. I saw it too, above the treetops, heading busily in the wrong direction.
By the time I stopped for lunch I must have walked ten miles. A kind of heath spread out all round me, pine trees relishing the sandy soil. Gorse clung to the ground in strands like natural barbed wire, and every now and then my trouser-legs would snag on its sharp spines. Unpacking the knapsack, I discovered hard-boiled eggs, crusty rolls filled with slabs of cheese, several apples, a bar of chocolate, and a second bottle of water. As I ate and drank, I checked my position on the map. I was in a white space, between two rivers. Ahead of me lay an area of downland, the hills topped with ancient forts and barrows, the valleys housing villages with quaint, humorous-sounding names. The going would be more arduous, but at least I ought to be able to find a place to stay. I finished the bread and cheese, then ate an apple. I kept the rest of the food and water for later on. My energy renewed, I set off again, determined to make full use of the daylight.
That afternoon I passed through several farms, every one of them abandoned. The houses had been boarded up, and the cattle sheds were empty, ghostly places, doors hanging off their hinges, hay strewn haphazardly about. Not long before the Rearrangement, disease had swept the countryside, and huge numbers of livestock had been slaughtered and then burned. The farmers had never recovered. A substantial percentage of the Blue Quarter’s population had been vegetarian for years.
Imagine my surprise, then, when I saw a large flock of sheep about a mile to the west. As I watched them move across the wide green flank of a hillside, though, I realised they weren’t sheep at all but people — White People. It was astute of them to favour the Blue Quarter. They would be treated kindly here; in some areas, in fact, they would be revered, or even worshipped. I had always felt a good deal of sympathy for them, a feeling that had only been enhanced by my encounter on the front steps of the Sheraton, but I had never really believed in their so-called powers, preferring to find rational explanations for their sometimes mystifying, almost supernatural behaviour, and I remembered a story Marie had told me, one from which we had drawn quite different conclusions.
The incident occurred during Victor and Marie’s walking tour of the Red Quarter. They had been in the far north at the time. Instead of slavishly following the border, they decided to scale a ridge that ran parallel to it. The ground had been marshy at first. After a while, though, it turned into high pasture, punctuated by pale-grey boulders. The ridge was further away than it had looked, but they had started now, and both father and daughter agreed that nothing tried the patience more than the process of having to retrace your steps. They would reach the ridge, they said, even if it killed them. And it almost had.
They toiled onwards, upwards. The grass became a steeply sloping field of stones. No sooner had they arrived at what they had imagined to be the summit than another summit would appear, one which, until that point, had been concealed by the angle of their ascent. To make matters worse, a mist had drifted in behind them, obscuring the route they had taken. They peered at the ridge. It had transformed itself into a crest of ominous black rock. They glanced at each other. On they went.