Children of the Dust (11 page)

Bill reversed the truck in a scream of tyres on dust. In mid heave Ophelia fell backward and was sick on the floor of the cab. Dwight was furious. 'I couldn't help it!' Ophelia wept. And still her father drove on, heading back towards Gloucester.

It seemed like hours before they reached the river. Noise in the silence screamed in Ophelia's head. The stink stayed in her nostrils and her legs felt like jelly as Bill led her down the bank. Dwight was already filling a container with muddy water to clean out the cab, and if looks could have killed Ophelia would have been dead. But she was past caring. She lay among damp earth and rushes, stripped off her white protective suit. The arched shadows of Telford's bridge kept off the blistering effects of the sun's rays and the river swirled by her, leaving its traces on her ungloved hands.

She sluiced her face, sat with her head on her knees and waited. Long slow minutes trickled away but finally the echoes of the engine noise faded and other sounds took over. She could hear her father talking and Dwight pumping air into the front tyres, yet they were lost among the silences and the soft running music of the river. The queasy churning of her stomach was gone into the stillness where lace-winged flies danced among the sunlight and fish bubbles broke the surface. Brown water whirled and eddied with trails of green weed. A dragonfly flashed turquoise and insects sang, and a small flower crushed by her fingers gave off a sweet elusive scent. The flowers were everywhere under her, a spreading purple mat of sheer fragrance.

Ophelia gazed in a kind of wonderment. Sense impressions which she had never dreamed of, never imagined, stirred and awoke, and were overwhelmed. This was the world that had been destroyed, the world her father talked of... scents and sights, colours and sounds, the sweet fresh air and the green glory of grass. It was a little strip of paradise beside an English river where life was beginning again. A brown bird warbled on a branch of springing willow, and the dragonflies danced.

'A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.'

Those were the words her father had taught her and she had never understood what they meant until now. Back at the bunker there was no beauty like this. Here there was a wallflower growing from the old stones of the bridge, living petals, yellow streaked with scarlet, and the flies above the water were like winged jewels. Ophelia wished she could stay there for ever, but the shadow of Dwight fell darkly on the grass beside her.

'Feeling better?' he asked.

'What do you care?' Ophelia said angrily.

'We've got to move on,' said Dwight.

'We've only just got here! And why don't we move from the bunker and settle somewhere like this?'

'The river floods in spring and autumn,' Dwight informed her.

'Somewhere else then?'

'It's not easy living outside,' Dwight said.

He squatted beside her, stared at his hands, calloused and hard with the healed scars of blisters. Even above the smell of petrol Ophelia was aware of the sewery stink which seemed to be ingrained in him. Dwight had been working outside long enough to know the back-breaking labour entailed in trying to make the deserts grow. She understood what drove him. She knew England would never again be what it was, that General MacAllister was blind not to see it, that Erica was stupid to dream. But Ophelia belonged to that dream, an underground city with flowers, and water gardens, trees growing under artificial sunlight, birds and animals and people. It took courage to give up the dream and face reality, and Ophelia knew she would never be brave.

They crossed the Severn by Telford's bridge, which was the only one left standing, and Dwight took the wheel. Learning to drive the truck meant travelling slowly along roads of dust between dead hedges and abandoned villages as they headed west towards the borders of Wales. A hot summer wind blew through the open windows and on the river's flood plain the grass had dried brown, supporting nothing but a few skinny sheep that roamed across the miles. They saw dogs in the distance but no signs of people, nor any sign of pursuit. But somewhere behind they knew the convoy trucks would be following, qualified army drivers who could make up time and already knew the route.

Ophelia slept for a while with her head on her father's shoulder and when she awoke they were driving among rugged hills where gaunt skeletons of dead trees were still standing. Bare branches trailed dark ivy, sucking a little life from the ruined earth. Here and there among the burnt black ash were fronds of green bracken, patches of grass and a few pink foxglove flowers. Rabbits with blind white eyes bolted away, and the village houses were almost intact, black gaps of doors and windows and sagging roofs. Rooms and gardens were choked with stinging nettles and bramble mounds, leaves of elder hanging limp in the heat and grey with dust. All these alien plants Bill recognized and named, but Ophelia was feeling ill again. Waves of sickness washed over her and she sweated inside her white protective suit.

'I want to get out,' she said faintly.

'Just a few more miles,' said Bill.

Roads had reverted to wilderness and the truck swerved and jolted over rough ground as Dwight detoured to avoid a fallen tree, shuddered up the slope and rumbled down into the next valley. Ophelia saw the village ahead, stone-built cottages where smoke billowed from the chimney stacks. Five skinny cattle grazed in a paddock by the stream. Small fields grew wheat and potatoes and arable crops. Children, goats and chickens wandered around the dusty compound of the street, scattered and fled as the truck drove in. People watched from the inside darkness of decaying rooms, and one little girl, blind and legless, heaved herself along on a makeshift wooden trolley. Fat flies fed upon the festers of her eyes and Ophelia fought down the sickness as Dwight stuck his head through the window and asked her the way.

The child pointed and the truck drove on past a stone quarry and a churchyard and an abandoned coal-mine, and on again over the hills and down through the cracked streets of a deserted town. Surrounding hills were tinged with a pinkness of willowherb and a few sapling birch trees grew among the forests of the dead. It was afternoon by the sun and the heat was stifling, and the land her father had expected to recognize seemed unfamiliar and changed. He had to study the map.

'How much further?' Ophelia moaned.

'Just a few more miles.'

'You said that hours ago! And I bet that village was the place we were looking for.'

'Five cows don't make a herd,' said Bill.

Which way now?' asked Dwight.

Then, from the top of the next rise, Ophelia saw the settlement before her. It was in a valley surrounded by hills, a collection of shacks, a few battered glasshouses, and a stone-built cottage and barn. But the squalor was lost in the fields around it, acres of wheat and potatoes, rows of string beans and ripe red strawberries, and velvet green pasture by the stream where the cattle grazed. Tall hedges of flowering elder made a mottled shade. There were willows by the water and young trees foresting the hills beyond. Someone had cleared and planted. Someone had made the desert bloom in a glory of green. Ophelia could actually feel the coolness and peace of it.

'Johnson's place!' said Bill.

'You know it?' Dwight asked him.

'I've just this minute recognized where I am. It used to be a market garden. I remember bringing Sarah here.'

'It looks pretty well organized,' said Dwight.

'So what are we waiting for?' Ophelia asked.

'They could be armed,' said Dwight.

'Johnson was a pacifist,' said Bill.

'It may not be Johnson, not after twenty years.'

'So why don't we go and see?' Ophelia repeated.

The truck rattled and banged down the hillside, then lurched to a stop. Tangled fortifications of rusting barbed wire encircled the settlement, half buried in gorse and bracken and brambles, which they had been unable to see from above. It was a trap for dogs and people alike, and barbed wire gates were padlocked against them, blocking the track.

'Doesn't look exactly friendly,' said Dwight.

Bill put his hand on the horn, sound blasting through the heat and stillness and echoing around the surrounding hills. After a while they saw a woman coming towards them, walking slowly between bean fields scarlet with flowers. Her stomach was huge in the last weeks of pregnancy, and she was carrying a gun. Her sparse brown hair was matted and unkempt, her dress thin and colourless after years of washing. Ophelia pushed up her visor, waited as Dwight and her father left the truck and went to meet her, watched as the woman levelled the gun. Her finger touched the trigger and it was aimed at Bill.

It was not fear of her father's death that made Ophelia cry out, tear off her protective helmet and hurl herself from the cab. It was the sight of a face in the sunlight, burned red and blistering, hideously scarred, human deformity that made her instantly sick. At the foot of a gorse bush Ophelia heaved and vomited until she had nothing left to bring up. Liquid colours . . . leaf green, sky blue and golden . . . slowly revolved and grew still. The journey was over and voices screamed through the still heat.

'Go away! There's nothing here for the likes of you!'

'You don't understand. We're here to warn you.'

'We've given all we can and there's no more!'

'If we could speak to whoever's in charge?'

'My husband's ill! I'm telling you to go!'

'They're coming to steal your cattle!'

'No one steals! We give!'

Ophelia staggered towards the gate.

It did not matter how ugly the woman was.

She knew what it meant to suffer.

Please,' said Ophelia. 'All I want is a drink of cold water and a place to lie down.'

The woman regarded her. Blue human eyes gazed at her from the ulcerated remains of a face. Even in decay her eyes were still young, still capable of expression. Ophelia was not sure what she saw . . . disbelief, astonishment, recognition, even delight . . . but suddenly the woman dropped the gun, opened the gate and held out her arms to embrace her.

'Sarah!' she cried. 'You've come back! I thought you were dead! All these years I've been thinking you were dead! Where have you been? And what happened to William?' 

Ophelia stared at her, backed away. 

'It's me,' she said. 'Catherine! Your sister!'

'My God!'said Bill.

Dwight drove the truck down the track towards the settlement and Ophelia followed behind with Catherine and her father. Summer wind disturbed the scent of elder flowers, set the green leaves dancing in flickers of gold shade across her upturned face. The air was liquid with lark songs over the hills and loud with the hum of bees. There were hives by the river, Catherine said, and all of this Johnson had made. He had dreamed of a garden and made it grow from the dust.

They leaned on the gate leading into a walled field full of potatoes and her voice drifted through the wine-sweet air of afternoon, Ophelia's new-found sister telling her story. It had not been easy, she said. They had been thirty people crammed into one small cottage through a nuclear winter eighteen months long. She remembered it well, the cold and the darkness and the snow that buried the world.

She remembered the days before it had set in, going with Johnson in a Land Rover fetching hay and cattle feed for the calves. She had been alone with him then, but as they travelled around the farms and villages others had joined them. They hacked down trees to keep the heating system running, and insulated the shed to keep the generator from freezing. But the lights had stayed burning in the glass-houses where the plants grew and the animals were kept. They dug tunnels in the snow, and lived on goat's milk, eggs, beans and potatoes.

People had survived in other places too. Some had taken livestock into their homes, people and animals sharing the same warmth. Some had eaten dead meat frozen in the snow, rats and corpses, insects and worms, rotting vegetables and even manure. Even when the winter was over it had not been easy. There was disease, and sickness, and starvation, and babies were born deformed. But slowly, over the years, they had consolidated their hold on the land and established separate communities.

Things were getting better, Catherine said. They produced enough food to see them through the winter, ground their own flour and baked bread in the fire ovens. They did not kill animals for meat except when they were old or sickly, but nobody went hungry or cold. They had learned to spin sheep's wool, dye, knit, and weave. They made waterproof clothes out of goatskins, shoes out of cow-hide, willow baskets, clay pots, and herbal remedies.

'We're hoping to build a communal living house,' said Catherine. 'Johnson said it will be easier to run than individual homes. The old nuclear family system didn't work so we're going to live and work together. Before the war each family was isolated, which destroyed the spirit of the community. At least, that's how Johnson sees it.'

'Johnson sounds like a remarkable man,' said Bill.

'He is,' said Catherine. 'Quite remarkable. He thought of everything. When the snows receded he took the Land Rover for a trip to the local libraries and brought back all the books we were likely to need. People come here if they want to know anything and Johnson teaches them, from the books. We're a kind of distribution centre. I think we've supplied almost every settlement in the area with seeds and livestock, although not all of them have cattle yet. Johnson believes that the stuff of life, like knowledge itself, belongs to all people, and we have no right to keep things to ourselves. Right from the beginning, however little we had, we always shared it.'

'The true spirit of communism,' her father murmured.

'Yes,' said Catherine. 'But now Johnson is dying.'

'I'm sorry to hear that.'

'We shall miss him,' Catherine said simply.

She spoke of Johnson like a holy man, with reverence in her voice. Yet Ophelia knew that nobody was perfect. She had only to look at Catherine, her weeping sunburn and rotting teeth, stringy hair that failed to conceal the radiation sores that festered on her scalp, to see that ugliness and suffering still existed, even here in the garden paradise Johnson had created.