Roger looked at him, and smiled. “Something in what you say, Johnny, but you must remember that I’m on the spooning side. Tell me—if I get you the inside warning of the crack-up{54} in plenty of time, do you think you could make room for our little trio in your brother’s bolt-hole{55}?”
John said tensely: “Do you think it’s going to come to a crack-up?”
“So far, there’s not a sign of it Those who should be in the know are radiating the same kind of optimism that you find in the papers. But I like the sound of Blind Gill, as an insurance policy. I’ll keep my ear to the pipeline. As soon as there’s a little warning tinkle at the other end, we both take indefinite leave, and our families, and head for the north? How does it strike you? Would your brother have us?”
“Yes, of course.” John thought about the idea. “How much warning do you think you would get?”
“Enough. I’ll keep you informed. In a case like this, you can rest assured I shall err on the side of caution. I don’t relish the idea of being caught in the London area in the middle of a famine.”
A trolley was pushed past them, laden with assorted cheeses. The air was instilled with the drowsy somnolence of midday in the dining-room of a London club. The murmur of voices was an easy and untroubled one.
John waved an arm. “It’s difficult to imagine anything denting this.”
Roger surveyed the scene in turn, his eyes mild but acute.
“Quite undentable, I agree. After all, as the Press has told us sufficiently often, we’re not Asiatics. It’s going to be interesting, watching us being British and stiff-lipped, while the storm-clouds gather. Undentable. But what happens when we crack?”
Their waiter came with their chops. He was a garrulous little man, with less hauteur{56} than most of the others there.
“No,” Roger said, “interesting—but not interesting enough to make me want to stop and see it.”
Spring was late in coming; a period of dry, cold, cloudy weather lasted through March and into April. When, in the second week of April, it was succeeded by a warm, moist spell, it was a shock to see that the Chung-Li virus had lost none of its vigour. As the grass grew, in fields or gardens or highways, its blades were splotched with darker green—green that spread and turned into rotting brown. There was no escaping the evidence of these new inroads.
John got hold of Roger.
He asked him: “What’s the news at your end?”
“Oddly enough, very good.”
John said: “My lawn’s full of it I started cutting-out operations but then I saw that all the grass in the district’s got it.”
“Mine, too,” Roger said. “A warm putrefying shade of brown. The penalties for failing to cut out infected grasses are being rescinded, by the way.”
“What’s the good news, then? It looks grim enough to me.”
“The papers will be carrying it tomorrow. The Bureau UNESCO{57} set up claim they’ve got the answer. They’ve bred a virus that feeds on Chung-Li—all phases.”
John said: “It comes at what might otherwise have been a decidedly awkward moment You don’t think…?”
Roger smiled. “It was the first thing I did think. But the bulletin announcing it has been signed by a gang of people, including some who wouldn’t falsify the results of a minor experiment to save their aged parents from the stake. It’s genuine, all right.”
“Saved by the bell,” John said slowly. “I don’t like to think what would have happened this summer otherwise.”
“I don’t mind thinking about it,” Roger said. “It was participation I was anxious to avoid.”
“I was wondering about sending the children back to school I suppose it’s all right now.”
“Better there, I should think,” Roger said. There are bound to be shortages, because they will hardly be able to get the new virus going on a large enough scale to do much about saving this year’s harvest London will feel the pinch{58} more than most places, probably.”
The UNESCO report was given the fullest publicity, and the Government at the same time issued its own appraisal of the situation. The United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand all held grain stocks and were all prepared to impose rationing on their own populations with a view to making these stocks last over the immediate period of shortage. In Britain, a similar but more severe rationing of grain products and meat was introduced.
Once again the atmosphere lightened. The combination of news of an answer to the virus and news of the imposition of rationing produced an effect both bracing and hopeful. When a letter came from David, its tone appeared almost ludicrously out of key{59}.
He wrote:
There isn’t a blade of grass left in the valley. I killed the last of the cows yesterday—I understand that someone in London had the sense to arrange for an extension of refrigeration space during last winter, but it won’t be enough to cope with the beef that will be coming under the knife in the next few weeks. I’m salting mine. Even if things go right, it will be years before this country knows what meat is again—or milk, or cheese.
“And I wish I could believe that things are going to go right It’s not that I disbelieve this report—I know the reputation of the people who have signed it—but reports don’t seem to mean very much when I can look out and see black instead of green.
“Don’t forget you’re welcome any time you decide to pack your things up and come. I’m not really bothered about the valley. We can live on root crops and pork—I’m keeping the pigs going because they’re the only animals I know that might thrive on a diet of potatoes. We’ll manage very well here. It’s the land outside I’m worried about.”
John threw the letter across to Ann and went to look out of the window of the sitting-room. Ann frowned as she read it.
“He’s still taking it all terribly seriously, isn’t he?” she asked.
“Evidently.”
John looked out at what had been the lawn and was now a patch of brown earth speckled with occasional weeds. Already it had become familiar.
“You don’t think,” Ann said, “living up there with only the Hillens and the farm men… it’s a pity he never married.”
“He’s going off his rocker{60}, you mean? He’s not the only pessimist about the virus.”
“This bit at the end,” Ann said. She quoted:
“In a way, I think I feel it would be more right for the virus to win, anyway. For years now, we’ve treated the land as though it were a piggy-bank, to be raided. And the land, after all, is life itself.”
John said: “We’re cushioned—we never did see a great deal of grass, so not seeing any doesn’t make much difference. It’s bound to have a more striking effect in the country.”
“But it’s almost as though he wants the virus to win.”
“The countryman always has disliked and mistrusted the townsman. He sees him as a gaping mouth on top of a lazy body. I suppose most farmers would be happy enough to see the urban dweller take a small tumble. Only this tumble, if it were taken, would be anything but small. I don’t think David wants Chung-Li to beat us, though. He’s just got it on his mind.”
Ann was silent for a while. John looked round at her. She was staring at the blank screen of the television set, with David’s letter tightly held in one hand.
“It may be he’s getting a bit of a worriter{61} in his old age. Bachelor farmers often do.”