‘The Fuehrer will wear a knife,’ retorted Avery. Tom made no move to claim the gun. Presently the two of them went to collect driftwood. The sun glared fiercely down.
They came back hot, weary and loaded about half an hour later. Finding driftwood of a suitable size had not been as easy as Avery had hoped.
They saw Barbara and Mary sitting in front of the tents, sipping water from plastic tumblers.
‘That’s something I should have thought about,’ said Avery, licking his dry lips. ‘How do we know it’s fit to drink?’
‘I found a canvas bucket,’ said Mary. ‘It had a box of pills inside. The instructions said to dissolve one pill in each gallon of drinking water.’
‘I see. About how many pills are there?’
‘I don’t know. Five hundred. Perhaps a thousand. See for yourself.’ She gave him the box. Avery did a rough count of the top layer and then an even rougher multiplication sum. He thought the answer came to nearer two thousand.
‘How does the water taste?’
‘Like Vichy water,’ said Barbara. ‘It’s got a pleasant sort of tingle. Try some. You both look as if you need it.’ She got two more tumblers and poured from the canvas bucket.
Avery sipped some of the water, rolled it round his mouth and swallowed. For a split second, the entire landscape seemed to ripple slightly—as if he were drinking some kind of alcohol with an immediate and powerful kick. Then the ripple froze back into reality, and it was as if colours and shapes were even sharper than before.
Barbara was right. It did taste a bit like Vichy water. But, perhaps because of the strenuous work they had been doing, it seemed the most refreshing liquid he had ever drunk.
‘Quite a wallop!’ said Tom with enthusiasm. He drained his tumbler and held it out for more.
It was then that Mary screamed.
Avery dropped the tumbler and whipped round, his knife miraculously already in his hand. Out of the comer of his eye he saw—and was enormously reassured by it— that Tom was in a similar, half-crouching position, with his knife ready to strike as well. They gazed towards the trees, about twenty yards away, at which Mary was staring and pointing. There was nothing.
‘I—I saw a man! ’
Still there was nothing. They all stared in silence for a few seconds. Then Barbara broke the tension.
‘Never scream at men, honey. It tends to give them a bad impression.’
‘What was he like?’ asked Avery, still keeping his eyes on the trees.
‘Tall, golden hair, very solid looking.’
‘That wasn’t a man. That was a vision,’ said Barbara. ‘The spring water seems to be more potent than you’d think.’
‘I did see him,’ persisted Mary.
Avery looked at her. She looked rather shaken, but she did not seem like the sort of girl who might be inclined to have visions of tall golden men. ‘What was he wearing?’ asked Avery.
‘Nothing—I think.’
Tom snorted. ‘That’s just about all we need—a bloody naked Adonis lurking in the background.’
‘Do you know whether he was armed or not?’ went on Avery.
‘He didn’t seem to be. But—but it was all so quick….I think he was just as surprised as I was.’
Avery thought that at least a token investigation was called for. ‘Tom, you and I will go and take a look. If there was somebody, he is probably half a mile away by now; but I suppose we had better try to make a thorough search of all possible cover within range of about a hundred yards.’ He turned to Barbara. ‘I parked the revolver in the tent here. You’d better get it and keep your eyes skinned while we’re gone. Don’t use it unless you absolutely have to.’
The search took quite a long time. Nobody saw anything. By the time they got back to camp, Avery was feeling tired, and irritable. He saw the smoke rising from the fire that Barabara and Mary had made, and was unreasonably angry.
‘Who the devil told you to make a fire. It can be seen for miles.’
Barbara gazed at him coolly. ‘No one, actually. I just used my own little brains.’
‘You didn’t use them very well, then. Tom and I collected that driftwood to make a fence, not a bloody picnic fire.’
‘I assumed,’ said Barbara, ‘that you would not care to eat your meat raw. Perhaps I should have enquired more closely into your tastes.’
Someone had skinned and dismembered the ‘rabbit’, and Mary was busy roasting parts of it on a couple of sticks. Someone had also been collecting fruit. There was a small pile of what looked like grapefruit and some extraordinarily large pears. Someone, in fact, had been busy.
‘Sorry,’ said Avery. ‘My nerves are on edge.’
‘Don’t mention it,’ said Barbara. ‘Incidentally, I checked the fruit with our coloured cigarette cards. The pears are supposed to be very nutritious, and the others are thirst-quenchers. At least we shan’t starve to death. About every tenth tree has fruit of some kind.’
The pieces of rabbit were spitting and sizzling as Mary, with sweat pouring down her face, doggedly turned them over the embers of the tiny fire. The smell of cooking meat that assailed Avery’s nostrils was positively enchanting.
Mary sighed. ‘Lunch is about ready. You can have roast fingers as well, if you like.’
‘Hang on a second,’ said Barbara. ‘I’ll get plates and cutlery. We might as well keep it as civilized as possible.’ She laid four plates neatly on the ground in front of one of the tents.
The rabbit tasted good—not like terrestrial rabbit, but still good. It had quite a strong flavour, but its flesh was very tender.
As they sat in front of the tents at this, their first meal that could come under the heading of ‘living off the country’, Avery marvelled at the unreal normality of it all. Not so long ago they had been living in London in a bleak February. They had been strangers. Perhaps they had even passed each other in the street; or during the rush hour maybe a couple of them had been pushed together in the Underground. Yet now they were no longer strangers: they had been collectively banded—was that the right word?—light-years away from Earth in a conspiracy of survival.
Avery began to try to take stock of his companions. Tom was the kind of man with whom, he knew, he had very little in common. If the two of them had been brought together somehow in the old days—funny how one already began to think in terms of the old days—they would have taken an instant dislike to each other and would probably have avoided any further meeting. But now, depending upon each other, each of them was going to have to adapt. Avery would have to get used to Tom’s silly jokes, his brittle bonhomie and his little stupidities. Tom, he supposed, would also have to adjust to Avery’s irritability, his impatience and what, trying to be objective, he regarded as his own colourless personality. Yet, in an odd sort of way, Tom seemed reliable. He seemed to possess a combination of stubbornness and staying power. Within the limitations of his vaguely adolescent approach, he could be a useful character. Avery remembered the moment when Mary had screamed. Tom had not stood by with a foolish look on his face. He had been ready to fight. And if there had been cause to fight, doubtless he would have given a pretty good account of himself.
As for the women, well, they were more complex characters than Tom. Or, perhaps, thought Avery, it was just that all women seemed complex to him—all except one. But he stopped that train of thought immediately. Now was not the time to think of Christine, even though recent experiences had somehow made her seem obscurely close.
He gave his attention to Barbara. Superficially, she was tough and capable. Superficially—and, indeed, so far all the evidence had supported this impression—she did not seem like the kind of woman who would have the vapours if things went badly. But, thought Avery, the toughness could be no more than a front—a mask which she had learned to present to a tough and unfriendly world. Underneath, he suspected, there was a different Barbara: a child looking for a lost doll, a little girl in search of security…