Ann said: “This idea—of Roger warning us if things go wrong so that we can all travel north—is it still on?”
John said curiously: “Yes, of course. Though it hardly seems pressing now.”
“Can we rely on him?”
“Don’t you think so? Even if he were willing to take chances with our lives, do you think he would with his own—and with Olivia’s, and Steve’s?”
“I suppose not. It’s just…”
“If there were going to be trouble, we shouldn’t need Roger’s warning, anyway. We should see it coming, a mile off.”
Ann said: “I was thinking about the children.”
They’ll be all right. Davey even likes the tinned hamburger the Americans are sending us.”
Ann smiled. “Yes, we’ve always got the tinned hamburger to fall back on, I suppose.”
They went down to the sea as usual with the Buckleys when the children came back for the summer half-term holiday. It was a strange journey through a land showing only the desolate bareness of virus-choked ground, interspersed with fields where the abandoned grain crops had been replaced by roots. But the roads themselves were as thronged with traffic, and it was as difficult as ever to find a not too crowded patch of coast.
The weather was warm, but the air was dark with clouds that continually threatened rain. They did not go far from the caravan.
Their halting-place was on a spur of high ground, looking down to the shingle, and giving a wide view of the Channel. Davey and Steve showed a great interest in the traffic on the sea; there was a fleet of small vessels a couple of miles off shore.
“Fishing smacks,” Roger explained. “To make up for the meat we haven’t got, because there isn’t any grass for the cows.”
“And rationed from Monday,” Olivia said. “Fancy—fish rationed!”
“It was about time,” Ann commented. The prices were getting ridiculous.”
The smooth mechanism of the British national economy continues to mesh{62} with silent efficiency,” Roger said. “They told us that we were different from the Asiatics, and by God they were right! The belt tightens notch by notch, and no one complains.”
“There wouldn’t be much point in complaining, would there?” Ann asked.
John said: “It’s rather different now that the ultimate prospects are fairly good. I don’t know how calm and collected we should be if they weren’t.”
Mary, who had been drying herself in the caravan after a bathe, looked out of the window at them.
“The fishcakes at school always used to be a tin of anchovies to twenty pounds of potatoes—now it’s more like a tin to two hundred pounds. What are the ultimate prospects of that, Daddy?”
“Potato-cakes,” John said, “and the empty tin circulating along the tables for you all to have a sniff. Very nourishing too.”
Davey said: “Well, I don’t see why they’ve rationed sweets. You don’t get sweets out of grass, do you?”
Too many people had started to fill up on them,” John told him. “You included. Now you’re confined to your own ration, and what Mary doesn’t get of your mother’s and mine. Contemplate your good fortune. You might be an orphan.”
“Well, how long’s the rationing going to go on?”
“A few years yet, so you’d better get used to it.”
“It’s a swindle,” Davey said, “—rationing, without even the excitement of there being a war on.”
The children went back to school, and for the rest life continued as usual. At one time, soon after they had made their pact, John had made a point of telephoning Roger whenever two or three days went by without their meeting, but now he did not bother.
Food rationing tightened gradually, but there was enough food to stay the actual pangs of hunger. There was news that in some other countries similarly situated, food riots had taken place, notably in the countries bordering the Mediterranean. London reacted smugly to this, contrasting that indiscipline with its own patient and orderly queues for goods in short supply.
“Yet again,” a correspondent wrote to the Daily Telegraph, “it falls to the British peoples to set an example to the world in the staunch and steadfast bearing of their misfortunes. Things may grow darker yet, but that patience and fortitude is something we know will not fail.”
FIVE
John had gone down to the site of their new building, which was rising on the edge of the City. Trouble had developed on the tower-crane, and everything was held up as a result. His presence was not strictly required, but he had been responsible for the selection of a crane, which was of a type they had not used previously, and he wanted to be on the spot.
He was actually in the cabin of the crane, looking down into the building’s foundations, when he saw Roger waving to him from the ground. He waved back, and Roger’s gestures changed to a beckoning that even from that height could be recognized as imperative.
He turned to the mechanic who was working beside him. “How’s she coming now?”
“Bit better. Clear it this morning, I reckon.”
“I’ll be back later on.”
Roger was waiting for him at the bottom of the ladder.
John said: “Dropped in to see what kind of a mess we were in?”
Roger did not smile. He glanced round the busy levels of the site.
“Anywhere we can talk privately?”
John shrugged. “I could clear the manager out of his cubbyhole. But there’s a little pub just across the road, which would be better.”
“Anywhere you like. But right away. O.K.?”
Roger’s face was as mild and relaxed as ever, but his voice was sharp and urgent. They went across the road together. “The Grapes’ had a small private bar which was not much used and now, at eleven-thirty, was empty.
John got double whiskies for them both and brought them to the table, in the corner farthest from the bar, where Roger was sitting. He asked:
“Bad news?”
“We’ve got to move,” Roger said. He had a drink of whisky. The balloon’s up.{63}”
“How?”
“The bastards!” Roger said. “The bloody murdering bastards. We aren’t like the Asiatics. We’re true-blue{64} Englishmen and we play cricket.”
His anger, bitter and savage, with nothing feigned in it, brought home to John the awareness of crisis. He said sharply:
“What is it? What’s happening?”
Roger finished his drink. The barmaid passed through their section of the bar and he called for two more doubles. When he had got them, he said:
“First things first—game, set, and match{65} to Chung-Li. We’ve lost.”
“What about the counter-virus?”
“Funny things, viruses,” Roger said. “They stand in time’s eye like principalities and powers, only on a shorter scale. All-conquering for a century, or for three or four months, and then—washed out. You don’t often get a Rome, holding its power for half a millennium{66}.”
“Well?”
“The Chung-Li virus is a Rome. If the counter-virus had been even a France or a Spain it would have been all right. But it was only a Sweden. It still exists, but in the mild and modified form that viruses usually relapse into. It won’t touch Chung-Li.”
“When did this happen?”
“God knows. Some time ago. They managed to keep it quiet while they were trying to re-breed the virulent strain.”
“They’ve not abandoned the attempt, surely?”
“I don’t know. I suppose not. It doesn’t matter.”
“Surely it matters.”
“For the last month,” Roger said, “this country has been living on current supplies of food, with less than half a week’s stocks behind us. In fact, we’ve been relying absolutely on the food ships from America and the Commonwealth. I knew this before, but I didn’t think it important. The food has been pledged to us.”