John looked across at Ann. She said:
That was the East, though, wasn’t it? Even if things were to get short—this country’s more disciplined. We’ve been used to rationing and shortages. And at present there’s no sign of any real trouble. It’s asking rather a lot for John to throw things in and all of us to come and sponge on you for a year—just because things might go wrong.”
“Here we are,” David said, “sitting round the fire, at peace and with full bellies. I know it’s hard to imagine a future in which we shan’t be able to go on doing that. But I’m worried.”
“There’s never been a disease yet,” John said, “either of plant or animal, that hasn’t run itself out, leaving the species still alive and kicking. Look at the Black Death{51}.”
David shook his head. “Guess-work. We don’t know. What killed the great reptiles? Ice-ages? Competition? It could have been a virus. And what happened to all the plants that have left fossil remains but no descendants? It’s dangerous to argue from the fact that we haven’t come across such a virus in our short period of observation. A man could live a long life without seeing a comet visible to the naked eye. It doesn’t mean there aren’t any comets.”
John said, with an air of finality: “It’s very good of you, Dave, but I couldn’t, you know. I may not care for its results, but I like my work well enough. How would you like to spend a year in Highgate, sitting on your behind?”
“I’d make a farmer out of you in a month.”
“Out of Davey, maybe.”
The clock that ticked somnolently on the wall had rested there, spring cleanings apart, for a hundred and fifty years. The notion of the virus winning, Ann thought, was even more unlikely here than it had seemed in London.
She said: “After all, I suppose we could come up here if things were to get bad. But there’s no sign of them doing so at present.”
“I’ve been brooding about it, I expect,” David said. “There was something Grandfather Beverley said to me, the first time we came to the valley—that when he had been outside, and came back through the gap, he always felt that he could shut the door behind him.”
“It is a bit like that,” Ann said.
“If things do turn out badly,” David went on, “there aren’t going to be many safe refuges in England. But this can be one of them.”
“Hence the potatoes and beet,” John observed.
David said: “And more.” He looked at them. “Did you see that stack of timber by the road, just this side of the gap?”
“New buildings?”
David stood up and walked across to look out of the window on the wintry landscape. Still looking out, he said:
“No. Not buildings. A stockade.”
Ann and John looked at each other. Ann repeated:
“A stockade?”
David swung round. “A fence, if you like. There’s going to be a gate on this valley—a gate that can be held by a few against a mob.”
“Are you serious?” John asked him.
He watched this elder brother who had always been so much less adventurous, less imaginative, than himself. His manner now was as stolid and unexcited as ever; he hardly seemed concerned about the implications of what he had just said.
“Quite serious,” David said.
Ann protested: “But if things turn out all right, after all…”
“The countryside,” David said, “is always happy to have something to laugh at Custance’s Folly. I’m taking a chance on looking a fool. I’ve got an uneasiness in my bones, and I’m concerned with quietening it Being a laughing-stock doesn’t count beside that.”
His quiet earnestness impressed them; they were conscious—Ann particularly—of an impulse to do as he had urged them: to join him here in the valley and fasten the gate on the jostling uncertain world outside. But the impulse could only be brief; there was all the business of life to remember. Ann said involuntarily:
“The children’s schools…”
David had followed the line of her thought; he showed neither surprise nor satisfaction. He said:
There’s the school at Lepeton. A year of that wouldn’t hurt them.”
She looked helplessly at her husband. John said:
“There are all sorts of things…’ The conviction communicated from David had already faded; the sort of thing he was imagining could not possibly happen. “After all, if things should get worse, we shall have plenty of warning. We could come up right away, if it looked grim.”
“Don’t leave it too late,” David said.
Ann gave a little shiver, and shook herself. “In a year’s time, all this will seem strange.”
“Yes,” David said, “may be it will.”
FOUR
The lull which seemed to have fallen on the world continued through the winter. In the Western countries, schemes for rationing foods were drawn up, and in some cases applied. Cakes disappeared in England, but bread was still available to all. The Press continued to oscillate{52} between optimism and pessimism, but with less violent swings. The important question, most frequently canvassed, was the length of time that could be expected to ensue before, with the destruction of the virus, life might return to normal.
It was significant, John thought, that no one spoke yet of the reclamation of the lifeless lands of Asia. He mentioned this to Roger Buckley over luncheon, one day in late February. They were in Roger’s club, the Treasury.
Roger said: “No, we try not to think of them too much, don’t we? It’s as though we had managed to chop off the rest of the world, and left just Europe, Africa, Australasia, and the Americas. I saw some pictures of Central China last week. Even up to a few months ago, they would have been in the Press. But they haven’t been published, and they’re not going to be published.”
“What were they like?”
“They were in colour. Tasteful compositions in browns and greys and yellows. All that bare earth and clay. Do you know—in its way, it was more frightening than the famine pictures used to be?”
The waiter padded up and gave them their lagers in slow and patient ritual. When he had gone, John queried:
“Frightening?”
“They frightened me. I hadn’t understood properly before quite what a clean sweep the virus makes of a place. Automatically, you think of it as leaving some grass growing. If only a few tufts here and there. But it doesn’t leave anything. It’s only the grasses that have gone, of course, but it’s surprising to realize what a large amount of territory is covered with grasses of one kind or another.”
“Any rumours of an answer to it?”
Roger waggled his head in an indeterminate gesture. “Let’s put it this way: the rumours in official circles are as vague as the ones in the Press, but they do have a note of confidence.”
John said: “My brother is barricading himself in. Did I tell you?”
Roger leaned forward, curiously. “The farmer? How do you mean—barricading himself in?”
“I’ve told you about his place—Blind Gill—surrounded by hills with just one narrow gap leading out. He’s having a fence put up to seal the gap.”
“Go on. I’m interested.”
“That’s all there is to it, really. He’s uneasy about what’s going to happen in the next growing season—I’ve never known him so uneasy. At any rate, he’s given up all his wheat acreage to plant root crops. He even wanted us all to come and spend a year up there.”
“Until the crisis is over? He is worried.”
“And yet,” John said, “I’ve been thinking about it off and on since then… Dave’s always been more level-headed than I, and when you get down to it, a countryman’s premonitions are not to be taken lightly in this kind of business. In London, we don’t know anything except what’s spooned out{53} to us.”