Tomorrow.' He avoided her gaze. 'I want to spend today lugging firewood. We're going to need every stick we can find.'
'But just how long do you think we're going to have to stay here?' She dropped her spoon into her bowl. The way you're talking we're going to be here forever!'
That's a strong possibility. If Gwyther was a typical specimen of what mankind has reverted to then we're going to be holed up here for the rest of our lives like a pair of rabbits down a warren with a hungry fox's earth right on top of us.
'Well?' Sylvia was insistent. 'If you won't do something positive then /will. I'll take the Land Rover myself. And I might not come back!'
You probably wouldn't. He sighed. Damn her, if only Jackie was here instead.
'OK, we'll go to the village tomorrow,' he told her, 'but today I want to get some wood in. Also I want to see if I can round up those nanny goats.'
'Another boring day for me loafing around the house,' she groaned. 'And if I don't get a proper meal soon I'll waste away. I might even die of starvation.'
'Once we've got wood we can cook. I'll maybe shoot a rabbit or something, and I guess we may as well start eating the vegetables. We'll have to risk contamination sometime but personally I think we'll be OK. It's certainly not radioactive fall-out.' We just might end up like old Bill Gwyther instead!
'You haven't told me what happened at Gwyther's farm?' She asked the question pointedly now. Don't lie to me, Jon, because I can tell that something was dreadfully wrong there. You can't hide it from me.
'Much the same as here.' He did his best to meet her gaze. The animals had gone wild, broken out. Old Bill's gone, too, I guess.' He had that; Jon Quinn felt his stomach churn, relived that awful moment when Gwyther's head had exploded like a ripe tomato thrown at a wall. I'll go and make a start on the wood.' He scraped his chair back. Then tomorrow we'll go down to the village.'
She accepted his decision reluctantly and he went outside. Tomorrow they would definitely be going into the village.
He walked across to the tractor, an old Ferguson which had seen better days back in the sixties. Rusted and battered it had given him good service. Today was probably its most important day since it came off the assembly line.
The trailer was hitched, he climbed up into the seat. The engine fired first time, belched thick black oily smoke out of its upright exhaust. He revved the engine, thought about the shotgun in the porch. Maybe he should take it. No, he would not be gone long, he could pick it up for the next trip if necessary. If he went back for it now it might alarm Sylvia still further. She was getting to be a real pain in the arse; there were going to be problems with her shortly. I'm bored. I don't like the food here. I'm lonely. That was the difference between a wife and a mistress. The latter you mostly saw the good side of because you didn't have to live with her, the former was the devil you knew and you could compromise with. Except that he hadn't compromised with Jackie.
There was a lump in his throat as he pulled out of the yard on to the rutted track. Oh God, Jackie, if only you were here. But she wasn't and she wouldn't be returning. That was something he had to face up to.
He headed for that strip of pinewoods where the poultry had been perching. Beyond it was a tract of silver birch, part of the Winders' farm. Scrub that was no good to anybody, not even a useful shelter belt. Winder had told him months ago to help himself to any wood he wanted out of it because he was going to get some contractors in to clear it and plough it. Jon hadn't had time to bother up until today. Now he could have taken wood from anywhere he chose and it wouldn't have mattered a damn but he still thought of it as stealing. Maybe in a few weeks he would have got over that psychological hurdle but for the moment he would cut his firewood legitimately. Live for today because there might be no tomorrow. That was a very strong possibility.
He skirted the tall pines, slowed up and tried to look up into their branches but the dark green foliage was too dense to afford him a proper view. He didn't have time to go and see if the hens were still up in the branches. In a far corner of the adjoining field he spied the nanny goats browsing the hawthorn hedge. Later he would try and catch Rosie, maybe milk her by force if necessary. The longer he left it, the more difficult it would be.
The strip of scrub was an untidy two or three acres, silver-birch which had reached their allotted span of a half century, died, rotted, and conceded to the gales. Trunks lay half buried in the bracken; an hour or so with the chainsaw and he would fill the trailer. Two or three trips would last them up until Christmas at least.
He swung round in a half-circle, backed the trailer up as near to the spinney as he could, switched off the engine. He sat there listening. A wood-pigeon was cooing softly in the tall pines, a peaceful summer sound that transcended anything mankind did. A bird that was at peace with the world. Some distance away a carrion crow was calling, magpies answering with their harsh ratchet noises; corvines conversing over what had befallen Man?
Jon climbed down, lifted the chainsaw out of the trailer; so many windblown trees that it was a job to know where to start. Even as he grasped the cord, was about to jerk the saw into life, something caught his eye, made him hesitate. A patch of white showing starkly through the green fronds of bracken, artificiality spoiling the natural scenery.
He almost ignored it. It could have been an empty plastic fertiliser bag blown off Winder's fields (damn the man, he would never understand that he was polluting the environment with his chemicals). Or a discarded bedsheet dumped by selfish Jitterbugs. Or ... he didn't have to go and see, it wasn't even his wood, but he found himself laying down the chainsaw and walking in that direction. A hunch, a very uneasy one.
Realisation came slowly because it took him several seconds to identify the remains of the dead animal. His first thought was that it was a ewe that had wandered in here, got caught up in the briars and died. But the fleece was not woolly enough, the patchy white hairs coarse and strong. A broken neck had twisted the head round at an unnatural angle so that the empty eye sockets watched him. Skeletal, just the hide remaining, the scavengers had done their task well.
Those magpies were still telling the crow all about it, how they had feasted from first light to dusk, and then the foxes had come and taken over; rats, too. Now the meat was all gone.
Long curved horns. Jon tried to tell himself that it was a ram, lied to try and avoid accepting the fact that what was left of the carcass was indisputably goat. Billy goat. Gilbert.'
He wished again that he'd brought the shotgun. Damn it, he's dead, he can't hurt you now. No, but whatever killed him might still be around, lurking in the undergrowth, creeping up on you . . .
He glanced back to where he had left the chainsaw, began edging towards it. A hellish weapon in the right hands. Pull yourself together, Gilbert was probably killed soon after we last saw him, jumped by that dog of Gwyther's in the same way that it killed the calf. It ran before and it'll run again, like a desert jackal. It won't attack a human.
All the same he fetched the saw, kicked it into life and began cutting up a thick trunk, a deafening whine that showered sawdust everywhere. Chainsaws were noisy things, they let all and sundry know exactly where you were . . . and you wouldn't hear if anything crept up on you.
Nervous, working fast, wanting to get the job over and done with. But you're coming back for another load. And a third.
Within an hour the trailer was full of neatly sawn cylindrical birch trunk. He climbed back up to the wheel, started on the bumpy journey back home.