John said: “No. No more cars.”
There was a moment’s silence. Then Roger said:
“You’re not starting to develop scruples, are you, Johnny? Because if you are, then the best thing you can do with Pirrie’s rifle is shoot yourself. I didn’t like the way those bastards down there treated us, but I have to admit they had the right idea. It’s force that counts now. Anybody who doesn’t understand that has got as much chance as a rabbit in a cage full of ferrets.”
Only this morning, John thought, his reasons might have been based on scruples; and along with those scruples would have gone uncertainty and reluctance to impose his own decision on the others. Now he said sharply:
“We’re not taking another car, because cars are too dangerous now. We were lucky down there. They could easily have riddled us with bullets first and stripped the cars afterwards. They will have to do that eventually. If we try to make it to the valley by car, we’re asking for something like that to happen. In a car, you’re always in a potential ambush.”
“Reasonable,” Pirrie murmured. “Very reasonable.”
“Eighty odd miles,” Roger said. “On foot? You weren’t expecting to find horses, were you?”
John gazed at the weed-chequered ground on which they stood; it looked as though it might once have been pasture.
“No. We’re going to have to do it on foot. Probably it means three days, instead of a few hours. But if we do it slowly, it’s odds on our making it The other way, it’s odds against.”
Roger said: “I’m for getting hold of a car, and making a run for it There’s a chance we shan’t meet any trouble at all; there won’t be many towns will have organized as quickly as Masham did—there won’t be many that will have the sense to organize anyway. If we’re making a trek across country with the kids, we’re bound to have trouble.”
“That’s what we’re going to do, though,” John said.
Roger asked: “What do you think, Pirrie?”
“It doesn’t matter what he thinks,” John said. “I’ve told you what we’re going to do.”
Roger nodded at the silent watchful figure of Pirrie. “He’s got the gun,” he said.
John said: “That means he can take over running the show, if he has the inclination. But until he does, I make the decisions.” He glanced at Pirrie. “Well?”
“Admirably put,” Pirrie remarked. “Am I allowed to keep the rifle? I hardly think I am being particularly vain in pointing out that I happen to have the greatest degree of skill in its use. And I am not likely to develop ambitions towards leadership. You will have to take that on trust, of course.”
John said: “Of course you keep the rifle.”
Roger said: “So democracy’s out. That’s something I ought to have realized for myself. Where do we go from here?”
“Nowhere until the morning,” John said. “In the first place, we all need a night’s sleep; and in the second, there’s no sense in stumbling about in the dark in country we don’t know. Everybody stands an hour’s watch. I’ll take first; then you, Roger, Pirrie, Millicent, Olivia”—he hesitated—“and Ann. Six hours will be as much as we can afford. Then we shall go and look for breakfast.”
The air was warm, with hardly any breeze.
“Once again,” Roger said, “thank God it’s not winter.” He called to the three boys: “Come on, you lot You can snuggle round me and keep me cosy.”
The field lay just under the crest of a hill. John sat above the little group of reclining figures, and looked over them to the vista of moorland that stretched away westwards. The moon would soon be up; already its radiance had begun to reinforce the starlight.
The question of whether the weather held fair would make a lot of difference to them. How easy it would be, he thought, to pray—to sacrifice, even—to the moorland gods, in the hope of turning away their wrath. He glanced at where the three boys lay curled up between Roger and Olivia. They would come to it, perhaps, or their children.
And thinking that he felt a great weariness of spirit, as though out of the past his old self, his civilized self, challenged him to an accounting. When it sank below a certain level, was life itself worth the having any longer? They had lived in a world of morality whose lineage could be traced back nearly four thousand years. In a day, it had been swept from under them.
But were there some who still held on, still speaking the grammar of love while Babel{110} rose all round them? If they did, he thought, they must die, and their children with them—as their predecessors had died, long ago, in the Roman arenas. For a moment, he thought that he would be glad to have the faith to die like that, but then he looked again at the little sleeping group whose head he now was, and knew their lives meant more to him than their deaths ever could.
He stood up, and walked quietly to where Ann lay with Mary in her arms. Mary was asleep, but in the growing moonlight he could see that Ann’s eyes were open.
He called softly to her: “Ann!”
She made no reply. She did not even look up. After a time he walked away again and took up his old position.
There were some who would choose to die well rather than to live. He was sure of that, and the assurance comforted him.
EIGHT
During her watch, Millicent had seen distant flashes towards the south, twice or three times, and had heard a rumble of noise long afterwards. They might have been atom-bomb explosions. The question seemed irrelevant It was unlikely that they would ever know the full story of whatever was taking place in the thickly populated parts of the country; and, in any case, it no longer interested them.
They began their march on a bright morning; it was cool but promised heat The objective John had set them was a crossing of the northern part of Masham Moor into Coverdale. After that, they would take a minor road across Carlton Moor and then strike north to Wensleydale and the pass into Westmorland. They found a farm-house not very far away from where they had slept, and Roger wanted to raid it for food. John vetoed the idea, on the grounds that it was too near Masham. It was uncertain how far the Mashamites proposed to protect their outlying districts. The sound of shots might easily bring a protecting party up from the town.
They therefore kept away from habitation, travelling in the bare fields and keeping close beside the hedges or stone walls which formed the boundaries. It was about half-past six when they crossed the main road north of Masham, and the sun had warmed the air. The boys were happy enough, and had to be restrained from unnecessary running about. The whole party had something of a picnic air, except that Ann remained quiet, withdrawn, and unhappy.
Millicent commented on this to John, when he found himself walking beside her across a patch of broken stony ground.
She said: “Ann shouldn’t take things too much to heart, Johnny. It’s all in a day’s work.”
John glanced at her. Neatness was a predominating characteristic of Millicent, and she looked now as though she were out for an ordinary country walk. Pirrie, with the rifle under his arm, was about fifteen yards ahead of them.
“I don’t think it’s so much what happened,” John said, “as what she did afterwards that’s worrying her.”
“That’s what I meant was all in a day’s work,” Millicent said. She looked at John with frank admiration. “I liked the way you handled things last night. You know—quiet, but no nonsense. I like a man to know what he wants and go and get it.”
Discounting her face, John thought, she looked a good deal more than a score of years younger than Pirrie; she was slim and tautly figured. She caught his glance, and smiled at him. He recognized something in the smile, and was shocked by it.