Jamie leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. ‘Jane, I never expected to ever say this in real-life, but you’re a bad-ass!’
She grinned and sniggered. ‘I’ve never thought of myself as a bad-ass before! Mind you; you haven’t done too badly yourself so far. Six months ago neither of us had fired a gun before: how times change!’
In the last two weeks of June they went out for walks every evening to locate fruit trees to harvest when the time came, marking the locations on a street map. The fruit was growing well on most trees due to the good weather they’d had predominantly so far. The cherries would be ready for picking within a few weeks, but the apples and pears would take considerably longer before they were ready. They would have to keep a close watch on the cherry trees in the area and harvest them as soon as was possible, before the birds ate them all.
One evening, in the last week of June, they diverted on the way home and stopped at The Colonnade, on the seafront behind the De La Warr Pavilion. It was a beautiful semi-circular structure supported by pillars, with turrets and balustrades above, built in 1911 to mark the coronation of King George V. In happier times before the plague there had been a popular café there, where locals and tourists would sit and enjoy the view. They had a flask of coffee with them and sat down outside at a table.
‘I often used to come here for coffee and a snack,’ said Jane. ‘I’d sit here reading for an hour when the weather was good… such a shame.’
‘I know: I often used to come here, too, and do the same.’
She gave him a nostalgic smile. ‘You know, it’s possible that at some point we were both sitting here at the same time, oblivious of each other!’
‘And wouldn’t that have been bizarre?’ he replied, smiling. ‘Both of us sitting here at the same time, maybe, not knowing how our lives would become entwined or what would happen in the near future…’
Max was stretched out on the ground beside them, enjoying the early evening sun. They looked at each other wistfully and Jamie poured more coffee.
‘Hello there!’ said a voice from above. Max jumped up and barked. They both jumped in shock and stood up, reaching for their guns. Looking up to the balustrade they saw two women’s faces looking down at them. The one who had spoken smiled nervously.
‘Whoops! Sorry to startle you. Hi; do you mind if we come down and join you?’
Jane recovered first and smiled in response. ‘Yes of course; please do.’ She and Jamie looked at each other in amazement. The two women walked round and down the steps to the promenade then along to The Colonnade. They were in their late forties probably and both had shotguns slung on their shoulders.
Max was tense at first, ready to jump to the defence of his family, but soon relaxed when no threat was detected. The two women introduced themselves as Sarah and Georgie; it was obvious they were sisters and they shook hands all round. Sarah was around five years older than Georgie and maybe into her fifties: both were dressed in classic country clothing and they had an air of elegance and robust good health about them. They had strong faces that in earlier times might have been called handsome, rather than pretty, and both bore a passing resemblance to Katharine Hepburn, especially Sarah.
‘Goodness me!’ said Sarah, ‘You’re almost the first people we’ve seen in months. It’s nice to meet you, and to see there are some other people left!’
‘Likewise,’ said Jamie. ‘Until fairly recently we’d seen only six people in several months – and two of those encounters were bad ones. We met a nice family near Hooe six or seven weeks ago, and also we’ve seen four more in Battle, and that was a bad encounter as well.’
‘I know what you mean.’ said Georgie. ‘The two people we saw some time ago gave us trouble – a man and a woman. They raided our place and killed two chickens, then came into our house and started ransacking the place. I came downstairs with my gun and the woman cut me with a knife and knocked me down. I was lying on the floor when Sarah came back in from the farm and shot them both. We burned the bodies and buried the remains. The sad and ironic thing is that if they’d been decent people and had knocked on the door asking for help, we would gladly have helped them.’
‘A nasty business and not something I’m proud of, but I won’t dwell on it,’ said Sarah. ‘We drove down here this evening for a look around. We parked the Land Rover in the car park, wandered over and were amazed to see you two sitting here drinking coffee! You looked decent so we thought we’d say hello.’
Jamie and Jane had been sharing a cup and he had a spare one, so offered them some coffee. They accepted gladly and sat down with them to talk. The two sisters lived along Watermill Lane, a mile or two north of Sidley, which was on the northern edge of Bexhill. They kept chickens and bees and grew vegetables that they used to sell from the farm shop. They had several hives, and before the plague they had run courses on beekeeping and looking after poultry. They had run the place with their father until he’d become sick with the plague and died.
‘It was horrible,’ Georgie said. ‘He came back one day from a visit into town and went straight into one of the outbuildings and locked himself in. When we went out to see what was going on he spoke to us through the door and said that a man had sneezed on him in town and he didn’t want to take any chances, so he quarantined himself. Within two days he had all the symptoms and by the fourth day he was dead. There was nothing we could do. He refused to let us bring food in for him, but we poked a hosepipe through a gap in the wall so he had water.’
‘After he died,’ continued Sarah, ‘we had to drag him out with a rake in case he was still contaminated and burn his body; it was awful.’ Jamie and Jane said how sorry they were.
They had been surviving pretty well on their own so far. They had chickens and, therefore, eggs, a pair of goats for milk, and had stores of preserved fruit and veg’ from the previous season, along with lots of other food they had stockpiled when it all started. They had planted vegetables the previous autumn and early this year and were harvesting some now, and there were many fruit trees on their property.
Jane and Jamie took turns in telling them about their own deeds and adventures since it had begun, and how they had met and joined together. Sarah and Georgie were interested in all they had to say and listened attentively. Both were amazed at Jane’s account of how Jamie had saved her and then removed the pellets from her leg, and congratulated him. They were especially interested in the different preserving techniques they were using, including the making of jerky.
The light started to fade and the sisters said they should be heading back home. They gave each other their addresses and directions, and both couples told each other they were welcome to visit any time they wanted. Jamie and Jane accompanied them back to their truck in front of the De La Warr Pavilion and they all shook hands. Sarah and Georgie stroked Max and then started the truck and drove off, waving. They walked home discussing the encounter and feeling happy. It looked like there might be more survivors out there that they would meet in time, but they knew from experience that they weren’t all going to be as friendly as Sarah and Georgie. They now had another two friends in the wilderness that Bexhill had become and didn’t feel quite so alone.
Eighteen
The first two weeks of July were very busy for them, harvesting and preserving the cherries from the area. Many were a little under-ripe and rather tart, but they thought that if they left them to fully ripen on the trees they might lose most of them to the birds. Some trees were easily accessible from the road or from the front gardens of houses, while others were located in back gardens and involved climbing over walls and gates to gain access to them. They used leaf-collecting rakes sometimes for the fruits that were out of reach. On two occasions Jane was reduced to laughter watching Jamie struggle to climb the trees and shake the branches, while cherries rained down on her. After the second time he came down with his face covered in scratches from branches, looking rather annoyed.