“I’ve been accused of having no imagination,” he said. “That’s not true, anyway. I can visualize the starving Indians, all right. But I can also visualize this land brown and bare, stripped and desert, and children here chewing the bark off trees.”
For a while they all sat silent; a silence of speech, but accompanied by distant bird-song and the excited happy cries of the children.
John said: “We’d better be getting back. I’ve got the car to go over. I’ve been putting it off too long as it is.” He called out for Mary and David. “It may never happen, Rodge, you know.”
Roger said: “I’m as slack as the rest of you. I should be getting into training by learning unarmed combat, and the best way to slice the human body into its constituent joints for roasting. As it is, I just sit around.”
On their way home, Ann said suddenly:
“It’s a beastly attitude to take up. Beastly!”
John nodded his head, warningly, towards the children.
Ann said: “Yes, all right. But it’s horrible.”
“He talks a lot,” John said. “It doesn’t mean anything, really.”
“I think it does.”
“Olivia was right, you know. There isn’t anything we can do individually. Just wait and see, and hope for the best.”
“Hope for the best? Don’t tell me you’ve started taking notice of his gloomy prophecies!”
Not answering immediately, John looked at the scattering autumn leaves and the neat suburban grass. The car travelled past a place where, for a space of ten or fifteen yards, the grass had been uprooted, leaving bare earth: another minor battlefield in the campaign against Phase 5.
“No, I don’t think so, really. It couldn’t happen, could it?”
As autumn settled into winter, the news from the East steadily worsened. First India, then Burma and Indo-China relapsed into famine and barbarism. Japan and the eastern states of the Soviet Union went shortly afterwards, and Pakistan erupted into a desperate wave of Western conquest which, composed though it was of starving and unarmed vagabonds, reached into Turkey before it was halted.
Those countries which were still relatively unaffected by the Chung-Li virus, stared at the scene with a barely credulous horror. The official news accentuated the size of this ocean of famine, in which any succour could be no more than a drop, but avoided the question of whether food could in fact be spared to help the victims. And those who agitated in favour of sending supplies were a minority, and a minority increasingly unpopular as the extent of the disaster penetrated more clearly, and its spread to the Western world was more clearly envisaged.
It was not until near Christmas that grain ships sailed for the East again. This followed the heartening news from the southern hemisphere that in Australia and New Zealand a vigilant system of inspection and destruction was keeping the virus under control. The summer being a particularly brilliant one, there were prospects of a harvest only a little below average.
With this news came a new wave of optimism. The disaster in the East, it was explained, had been due as much as anything to the kind of failure in thoroughness that might be expected of Asiatics. It might not be possible to keep the virus out of the fields altogether, but the Australians and New Zealanders had shown that it could be held in check there. With a similar vigilance, the West might survive indefinitely on no worse than short commons{47}. Meanwhile, the laboratory fight against the virus was still on. Every day was one day nearer the moment of triumph over the invisible enemy. It was in this atmosphere of sober optimism that the Custances made their customary trip northwards, to spend Christmas in Blind Gill.
On their first morning, John walked out with his brother on the rounds of the farm.
They encountered the first bare patch less than a hundred yards from the farm-house. It was about ten feet across; the black frozen soil stared nakedly at the winter sky.
John went over it curiously, and David followed him.
“Have you had much of it up here?” John asked.
“Perhaps a dozen like this.”
The grass around the verges of the gash, although frost-crackled, was clearly sound enough.
“It looks as though you’re holding it all right.”
David shook his head. “Doesn’t mean anything. There’s a fair degree of evidence that the virus only spreads in the growing season, but nobody knows whether that means it can remain latent in the plant in the non-growing season, or not God knows what spring will bring. A good three-quarters of my own little plague spots were end-of-season ones.”
Then you aren’t impressed by the official optimism?”
David jerked his stick towards the bare earth. “I’m impressed by that.”
They’ll beat it They’re bound to.”
“There was an Order-in-Council{48},” David said, “stating that all land previously cropped with grain should be turned over to potatoes.”
John nodded. “I heard of it.”
“It’s just been cancelled. On the News last night.”
They must be confident things are going to be all right.”
David said grimly: “They can be as confident as they like. Next spring I’m planting potatoes and beet.”
“No wheat, barley?”
“Not an acre.”
John said thoughtfully: “If the virus is beaten by then, grain’s going to fetch a high price.”
“Do you think a few other people haven’t thought of that? Why do you think the Order’s been rescinded{49}?”
“It isn’t easy, is it?” John asked. “If they prohibit grain crops and the virus is beaten, this country will have to buy all its grain overseas, and at fancy prices.”
“It’s a pretty gamble,” David said, “—the life of the country against higher taxes.”
“The odds must be very good.”
David shook his head. “They’re not good enough for me. I’ll stick to potatoes.”
David returned to the subject on the afternoon of Christmas Day. Mary and young David had gone out into the frosty air to work off the effects of a massive Christmas dinner. The three adults, preferring a more placid mode of digestion, lay back in armchairs, half-heartedly listening to a Haydn{50} symphony on gramophone records.
“How did your monstrosity go, John?” David asked. “Did you get it finished on time?”
John nodded. “I almost retched when I contemplated it in all its hideousness. But I think the one we’re on now will be able to give it a few points for really thoroughgoing ugliness.”
“Do you have to do it?”
“We must take our commissions where they lie. Even an architect has to accommodate himself to the whims of the man with the money to spend, and I’m only an engineer.”
“You’re not tied, though, are you—personally tied?”
“Only to the need for money.”
“If you wanted to take a sabbatical year, you could?”
“Of course. There’s just the odd problem of keeping the family out of the gutter.”
“I’d like you to come up here for a year.”
John sat up, startled. “What?”
“You would be doing me a favour. You needn’t worry about the financial side of things. There’s only three things a farmer can do with his ill-gotten gains—buy fresh land, spend them on riotous living, or hoard them. I’ve never wanted to have land outside the valley, and I’m a poor spender.”
John said slowly: “Is this because of the virus?”
“It may be silly,” David said, “but I don’t like the look of things. And I’ve seen those pictures of what happened in the East.”