She trembled, tensed, experienced a sense of guilt. She was not meant to see and yet she was determined. Candlelight; she had slept longer than she had thought and it was already dark outside. Her slitted eyes followed the wan circle of yellow light—saw him!
She suppressed a groan of disappointment; he had his back to her as usual, was kneeling before the fireplace with an armful of kindling wood, laying sticks on the newspaper. He wore a blue anorak and the hood was still pulled up, the wet snow on it melting and dripping on to the floor. Muddy Wellington boots had left a trail of footprints from the back door.
A matchbox rattled, a rasping noise, and a bright flame was applied to the paper, hungrily devouring it, the sticks crackling and hissing, A puff of smoke billowed back, made him cough. A fit of coupling, a handkerchief clutched to his mouth. A sound that frightened Jackie because it was reminiscent of that woman's coughing earlier.
Her alarm blended into disappointment as the man. turned away from the fire and she saw his features clearly for the first time. It was not him. Too old, so gaunt, no way was it the lover who haunted her dreams and fantasies.
'Hallo,' he nodded, not in the least surprised, as though he had quite expected to find her lying there on the sofa. He pushed his hood back and she noted the receding hairline, the balding crown. 'Now that I've found some wood we can have a fire. We'll soon get warm.'
She smiled, hoped her anguish didn't show. She also hoped that he would not make any demands on her although she would have traded anything and everything she had to offer for food and shelter.
'Rod.' He tapped his chest, gave another deep rumbling cough. 'Rod Savage.1
'Jac.' She pointed to herself, smiled again. They would have to overcome the language barrier. She had coped with Phil Winder. Somehow her vocal chords were incapable of producing this new language and even when she understood certain sounds she was unable to repeat them except in a barely articulate nasal tone.
'Pleased to meet you, Jac.' Rod Savage obviously welcomed the opportunity to talk to somebody even if they did not understand. Talking to oneself got exceedingly boring after several weeks. 'I expect you'd like some tea.' He took off his anorak, began opening some cans, sardines and spaghetti. A packet of Ryvita that was no longer crisp, spread with peanut butter. He boiled the kettle, made some tea.
Jackie ate ravenously, gave up trying to master the art of using a fork. Her companion did not seem to notice.
She watched him carefully as she ate. Certainly he was not well, his features shiny with sweat even though the blazing fire had not yet had a chance to warm the room. Periodically his eyes seemed to film over, cleared again. And always that hacking cough.
'Damned typewriter's broken.' He pushed his empty plate away. 'Carriage spring, I think. No chance of getting it repaired and I'm not mechanically minded so I'll have to write the rest of my "History of the New Britain" in longhand. Don't expect it will ever get published anyway because there's nobody left to publish it.' He tried to laugh, surrendered to another fit of coughing.
Jackie noticed that when the handkerchief came away from his mouth it was spottled with scarlet.
'I'm ill, y'know.' Clipped hurried speech as though he had got an awful lot to say and was afraid he would not get time to finish speaking. 'Had it a fortnight now. Some days it's not too bad, like today, other days it's pretty chronic. Pneumonia probably, came on when the weather changed. Maybe I'll rest up for a few days.' He spread his arms, spoke more directly. 'You're welcome to stay here as long as you like. Get it? You... stay... here ...'
She nodded. Phil Winder had taught her how to wash dishes and she would repay this strange man for his hospitality. He wouldn't expect anything else, he was too ill.
'Say, that's cute, real cute.' He watched her at the sink from the armchair. 'Never thought you lot would be able to master household chores. Have to make a note of that. I'll sub-title it "How I lived with a trained throwback".' He laughed and coughed again.
'Got you lot all worked out.' Rod Savage talked incessantly in spite of the fact that it was a strain. 'For weeks now you've been gathering in the hills. Couldn't understand it, anybody with any sense would stick to the valleys and lowlands with winter coming on. Then I hit on it. The old Iron Age trade route starts from here, I found an old book about it, the route marked on a map. Through these hills, heading south. Not that you've got anything to trade or anybody to trade with but old instincts die hard. You're massing for the great trek south. You need a warmer climate and that's where you're going, but if you ask me you've left it too damned late\'
Jackie slept on the sofa that night, lay and listened to the wind howling, buffeting the cottage, driving the snow against the walls, building up deep drifts. And hour after hour Rod Savage lay and coughed. She heard him turning restlessly in his bed directly above the tiny living-room, remembered that woman who had had to be carried, and the body in the snow.
She dozed uneasily. Tonight her lover did not come; she called out for him, willed him to join her, but he never came. Strange dreams of a land where everybody except herself was dead, the hills and forests littered with bodies where the fevered coughing illness had taken its toll.
Only she remained, alone in a dead hell, wanting to die but living, forced to walk the silent land in search of a will-o'-the-wisp that no longer came to taunt her. A land of cold and hunger and thirst.
When finally she awoke she was not sure whether it was light or not, went to the window and rubbed a patch in the condensation. A virgin white curtain of snow covered the outside of the glass pane. She turned back in despair, wondered if she could find sticks and paper with which to light a fire.
The wind had dropped. Suddenly she was aware of the total stillness, the cloying silence. And with it came a feeling bordering on panic. Rod Savage was no longer turning restlessly in his bed upstairs and coughing incessantly. No sound came from above.
And that was when Jackie's dream came back to her, of a land where everybody except herself was dead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
SYLVIA HAD found the village within an hour or so of leaving the cottage, had come upon it suddenly in the thick hill-fog. She could have drawn back, fled before the occupants caught sight of her. But she didn't.
She walked slowly, dazedly into the settlement. The snow was falling steadily, a refreshing wind threatening to whip it into a blizzard. A strange atmosphere which she sensed immediately, a kind of bustle of activity which had suddenly come to a stop. Loaded litters, the snow already beginning to cover them with a white film, a cluster of men who eyed her with a mixture of curiosity and apathy. We were about to leave but we've changed our minds. Who are you and what are you doing here?
They were all packed up and ready to go. Where to? Sylvia came to a halt before the group, eyed them question-ingly, felt she had to say something. They would not understand, but it didn't matter. Thinking, talking, was becoming increasingly difficult, her brain fogged and sluggish.
'My name's Sylvia. My husband's dead.' Grief that had been threatening like thunderheads on the horizon suddenly hit her. Unrestricted sobs. One of them pointed to the nearest dwelling-place. Go in there, woman, out of the cold.
She walked shakily towards it, paused in the entrance. The interior was dark, had a sharp unpleasant odour about it. She waited for her vision to adjust to the gloom, saw through a liquid misty flood, distorted shapes; somebody lay on a bed in the corner, not moving. A woman was stretched out on some hides by the wall, and it was quite obvious that she was dead. A fit of uncontrollable coughing attracted her attention and she turned her head and made out a boy of perhaps ten years of age squatting beyond the dying embers of the fire. Tiny rivulets of blood trickled down his chin. He saw her but his expression did not register surprise, just acceptance.