Roger said: “You’re not counting Jane in?”
He thought Roger was joking at first, and laughed. Then he saw, to his astonishment, that it had been a serious question.
“No,” he said. “Not tonight.”
The girl was sitting close to Olivia; she had not strayed far from her all day. John had heard them talking together during the afternoon, and had heard Jane laughing once. She glanced up at the two men, her fresh, somewhat fat-cheeked face open and inquiring.
“You wouldn’t murder us in our beds, would you, Jane?” Roger asked her.
She shook her head solemnly.
John said to her: “Well, it’s best not to give you the chance, isn’t it?”
She turned away, but it was in embarrassment, he saw, not hatred.
He said: “It’s Ann’s first watch. The rest of us had better get down and get to sleep. You boys can put the fire out—tread out all the embers.”
Roger woke him, and handed him the shot-gun which the sentry kept He got to his feet, feeling stiff, and rubbed his legs with his hands. The moon was up; its light gleamed on the nearby river, and threw shadows from the small group of huddled figures.
“Seasonably warm,” Roger said, “thank God.”
“Anything to report?”
“What would there be, but ghosts?”
“Any ghosts, then?”
“A brief trace of one apparition—the corniest of them all.” John looked at him. “The ghost train. I thought I heard it hooting in the distance, and for about ten minutes afterwards I could have sworn I heard its distant roar.”
“Could be a train,” John said. “If there are any capable of being manned, and anyone capable of manning one, they might try a night journey. But I think it’s a bit unlikely, taken all round.”
“I prefer to think of it as a ghost train. Heavily laden with the substantial ghosts of Dalesmen{117} going to market, or trucks of ghostly coal or insubstantial metal ingots, crossing the Pennines. I’ve been thinking—how long do you think railway lines will be recognizable as railway lines? Twenty years—thirty? And how long will people remember that there were such things, once upon a time? Shall we tell fairy stories to our great-grandchildren about the metal monsters that ate coal and breathed out smoke?”
“Go to sleep,” John said. “There’ll be time enough to think about your great-grandchildren.”
“Ghosts,” Roger said. “I see ghosts all round me tonight. The ghosts of my remote descendants, painted with woad{118}.”
John made no reply, but climbed up the embankment to his post on the line. When he looked back from the top, Roger was curled up, and to all intents asleep.
The sentry’s duty was to keep both sides of the line under observation, but the far side—the north—was more important owing to the fact that the main road lay in that direction. That was the sentry’s actual post, out of direct sight of the group of sleepers. John took up his position there. He lit a cigarette, guarding the glowing end against possible observation. He didn’t really think it was necessary, but it was natural to adapt old army tricks to a situation with so many familiar elements.
He looked at the small white cylinder, cupped in his hand. There was a habit that would have to go, but there was no point in ending it before necessity ended it for him. How long, he wondered, before the exploring Americans land at the forgotten harbours and push inland, handing out canned ham and cigars, and scattering Chung-Li immune grass seed on their way? In every little outpost, like Blind Gill, where the remnants of the British held out, something like that would be the common daydream, the winter’s tale. A legend, perhaps, that might spur the new barbarians at last across the western ocean, to find a land as rough and brutal as their own.
For he could no longer believe that there would be any last-minute reprieve for mankind. First China, and then the rest of Asia, and now Europe. The others would fall in their turn, incredulous, it might be, to the end. Nature was wiping a cloth across the slate of human history, leaving it empty for the pathetic scrawls of those few who, here and there over the face of the globe, would survive.
He heard a sound from the other side of the railway line, and moved warily across to investigate. As he reached the edge of the embankment, he saw that a slim figure was climbing the last few feet towards him. It was Millicent. She put a hand up to him and he grasped it.
He said: “What the hell are you doing?”
She said: “Ssh—you’ll wake everyone up.”
She looked down at the sleeping group below, and then moved across towards the sentry post. John followed her. He was reasonably certain what the visit promised. The calm effrontery of it made him angry.
“You’re not on duty for another couple of hours,” he said. “You want to go back and get some sleep. We’ve got a long day in front of us.”
She asked him: “Cigarette?” He took one from his case and gave it to her. “Mind lighting it?”
He said: “I don’t think it’s a good idea to show lights. Keep it under, and cover it with your hands when you inhale.”
“You know everything, don’t you?”
She bent down to his cupped hands to take the lighter’s flame. Her black hair gleamed in the moonlight He was not, he realized, handling the situation very well. It had been a mistake to give her the cigarette she asked for; he should have sent her back to bed. She straightened up again, the cigarette now tucked behind her curled fingers.
“I can do without sleep,” she said. “I remember one week-end I didn’t have three hours sleep between Friday and Monday. Fresh as a daisy after it, too.”
“You don’t have to boast. It’s stamped all over you.”
“Is it?” There was a pause. “What’s the matter with Ann?”
He said coldly: “You know as much as I do. I suppose it wouldn’t have affected you—either what happened or what she did afterwards.”
Complacently, she said: “There’s one thing about not having very high standards—you’re not likely to go off your rocker when you hit something nasty—either from other people or yourself.”
John drew on his cigarette. “I don’t want to talk about Ann. And I don’t want an affaire with you—do you understand that? I should think you would see that, quite apart from anything else, this isn’t the time for that sort of thing.”
“When you want a thing is the time to have it.”
“You’ve made a mistake. I don’t want it.”
She laughed; her voice was lower when she did so, and rather hoarse.
“Let’s be grown up,” she said. “I may make mistakes, but not about that sort of thing.”
“You know my mind better than I do?”
“I shouldn’t be surprised. I’ll tell you this much, Big Chief. If it had been Olivia who had paid you this little visit, you would have sent her back straight away, and no back-answers. And why are you talking in whispers, anyway? In case we make anyone wake up?”
He had not realized that he had dropped his voice. He spoke more loudly: “I think you’d better get back now, Millicent.”
She laughed again. “What would be so unreasonable about not wanting to wake people up? I don’t suppose they’re all as good at doing without sleep as I am. You rise too easily.”
“All right. I’m not going to argue with you. Just go back to bed, and forget all about it.”
She said obediently: “O.K.” She dropped her cigarette, half smoked, and trod it into the ground. “I’ll just try the spark test{119}, and if you don’t fire, I’ll go right down like a good little girl.”
She came towards him. He said: “Don’t be silly, Millicent.” She paused just short of him. “Nothing wrong with a goodnight kiss, is there?” She put herself in his arms. He had to hold her or let her fall, and he held her. She was very warm, and softer to hold than he would have expected. She wriggled slightly against him.