Out of Time (26 page)

Hemmed in on every side I’m swept along by the deafening roar of the crowd, demented, unrestrained, wildly brandishing weapons, axes, knives, batons, bricks, stones; adults, children as young as five or six, one small boy wielding a heavy spade against an older man, others fighting fiercely side by side in a frenzied turmoil, citizen against citizen. It’s the uprising that we’ve hoped and prayed for, the death of the hated tyrant, the people’s revenge for misery and suffering, at last, at last; but we’re paying the price, there’s carnage all around. As I’m carried by the crowd into Weymouth Square I fall over corpses. Blood is everywhere and it’s infecting me, going to my head like champagne. I pick up a dropped knife and plunge it into the back of a man attacking a young girl. He falls dead at my feet and I exult. I’m a warrior, intent on killing, and I lash out in all directions. Now there’s cheering from the far side of the Square, near the Meeting House, getting louder and closer as an even greater press of people mills round a young man holding a prisoner. I can’t believe what I’m seeing. It is Meredith, he’s captured Helmuth, the hated face, unchanged from when I last saw it so many years ago, distorted with pain and anger, the people falling on him. Meredith tries to protect him but Helmuth is hacked to pieces. One man picks up his severed head, pierces a rod through the neck and holds it up to the crowd, a bloody symbol of repression. The hated tyrant is dead, his followers mown down. A woman close by me sinks her teeth into an officer’s neck. Blood spurts into her face. ‘That’s for my son!’ she screams. Corpses litter the ground. I should be horrified but we’re all intoxicated. Tears pour down my cheeks. We are witnesses to the beginning of the world.

It is then I see Joe, placed on a wall, a jubilant crowd at his feet, cheering him, touching him as though he were a lodestone. He is looking triumphant and, bizarrely, clutching a bunch of red roses. I push forward to join him but people block my way, I climb up on the erratic that stands in Weymouth Square and wave to Joe, why isn’t he by my side? ‘Joe, Joe, I’m here, I’m here,’ I shout. I see him looking round for me and for one magic moment our eyes meet. His face lights up and he makes a move towards me. Then, from my elevated vantage point, I see behind him a burly man preparing to strike him with a heavy baton. Before I can even cry out the man brings it down on the back of Joe’s head and he falls.

Joe is lying on the ground in a pool of his own blood, the flowers blood- soaked beside him. He does not move.

This is what I saw during the darkness of the eclipse.

*

Ian devises a plan for entry into number twenty-two. It is similar to that worked out previously by Joe - he will find a stone, wrap it in a piece of sacking and break a windowpane. He will climb through and let Susie in. This has to be done at the back, in the early hours while it is still dark, before anyone wakes.

It is surprisingly easy. He and Susie creep out of the shed over the dewy grass and across the vegetable garden. Ian is holding a piece of sacking. Inside it is a chisel they have found in the shed. Susie keeps watch while Ian tries to break the window panes; but they are made of tough glass and it is not as easy as they had hoped. They are frightened of making too much noise yet without a forceful blow they will not get inside. After an unsuccessful hour they withdraw into the shed.

The only other ploy Ian can think of is to try and pick the lock in the backdoor, but he is no practised thief and this too fails. Another night has been wasted.

The following night they grow bolder. They find a jagged stone and Ian smashes it into a small window below ground level. The pane shatters, shards of glass fall to the ground with what seems to them a noise like thunder; but no one stirs, no one has heard. Or this at least is what they hope. Ian covers his arm with the sack and puts it through the hole he has made. His fingers find the latch inside, he pulls it down, releases the catch and the window is open. They climb in, into a dank scullery and sink to the floor in relief.

William observes the children’s entry into the house. Tomorrow he will report them

*

For the first time Joe felt helpless without medical advice to refer to. As she slowly recovered over the following days his concern at Kathryn’s fit manifested itself in questioning her closely, trying to discover the cause. He feared her paroxysm might be the sign of an illness or more permanent disturbance; but she was able to reassure him, dismissing it firmly as a side effect, a mere physical reaction to the changing light; and as Joe also had found the eclipse eerie and a little frightening, he believed her. Nevertheless, sensitive to her every mood, he discerned a restlessness beneath her painfully strenuous attempts to appear normal. He suspected that she was holding something back, that she had had an experience she was unwilling to share.

Not wanting to be importunate he let the matter drop; but it remained an uneasy murmur in his mind.

He was, in any case, harbouring his own secret and, honest enough not to indulge in double standards, could not blame Kathryn for keeping hers. Yet he was hurt by her lack of confidence and bitterly aware that fate had once again manoeuvred them into something akin to mutual distrust.

The idea of going into the town and finding the long life drug, despite Kathryn’s fearful arguments against it, had taken hold and, try as he might, he could not dislodge it. Arguments within himself in which he decided that Kathryn was right in thinking it folly to go to Bantage were soon dispelled by the inevitability of growing old and seeing pity replace love. It was a prospect more abhorrent than any danger. There was also, he could not deny, an element of revenge in his plan, of hurt personal pride. His defeat, his ignominious flight from the town, had lowered his estimation of himself. Though no more than a schoolboy, helpless against overwhelming odds, it rankled. He felt that now, tall, strong and with a beautiful girl in love with him he had, like some latter day St George, to prove his valour. He did not contemplate immediate action. The right moment to fight the dragon would announce itself.

He dismissed the possibility that he might be defeated and not return.

*

William goes to work in the morning, intent on giving the children away. But he does not do it. Something is holding him back. Instead, he continues to watch whenever they venture outside and to listen to their movements through the dividing wall between their houses.

Susie and Ian have established themselves in Fairfax Road. They share a bedroom for they are too frightened to sleep on their own but revel in having the run of the house. They have removed all portraits of the hated tyrant, except those visible from the street, but left everything else untouched. There is a sufficient supply of preserved food, strips of dried meat hanging on hooks, a barrel of salted meat and dried salt cod. The remains of last year’s harvest of apples and pears, ranged on slatted shelves, fill the cellar with their pungent aroma. Someone very careful has been living here. They cannot believe their good fortune. But they are not careless. No lamps are lit at night and they only go out into the back garden when necessary.

Susie has told Ian about the light she saw in Jarvis Road and her faint hope that her parents might be hiding there. One night they leave when all outside is still and make their silent way to the house. There too absolute quiet reigns. They wait and watch but see nothing, neither light nor movement. Susie would like to know whether the house is empty. She knows a secret way to open the back door but to their amazement it is unlocked. They go in. No one disturbs them. They move quietly through the downstairs rooms, a kitchen, scullery, passageway and front and back rooms which, as far as they can see from the light of their small and shaded lamp, are empty. But once they are on the first floor Susie suddenly grasps Ian’s arm and they stand absolutely still. At first they hear nothing but then a thin wailing cry, quickly subdued, breaks the silence. They wait but nothing happens until they hear a shuffling sound and see a door slowly opening.

‘Come back in here,’ a young voice whispers from inside the room.

Susie and Ian can just make out a small figure. They wait, breathless.

‘It’s nothing,’ the voice says.

The door is shut.

It is clear from what they have seen and heard that there are young fugitive children hiding in the house. The danger is that they may not be alone, that some adult who would resent Susie’s and Ian’s presence, is lurking. And even if they are alone, they represent a huge problem. Small children is the last thing Ian and Susie need, a liability and responsibility for which they do not have the resources. They will be of no help, will have to be fed, looked after and, above all, kept silent. Susie and Ian withdraw to the kitchen and confer in low whispers. The alternative, to steal away and leave them to their fate, occurs to both and is at once dismissed by both. They must add this burden to all the others. They will work something out. They return upstairs. For the moment their most pressing problem is how to reveal themselves without creating a disturbance and frightening the children.

Susie goes forward and knocks gently on the door. There is a terrified silence.

She knocks again.

‘We’re friends,’ she whispers urgently.

There is still no response.

‘We’re children, come to help you. Let us in.’

The young voice they heard before replies,

‘How do I know that?’

‘We’d have come and seized you if we weren’t. There’s only two of us. Come and look.’

Hesitation, then padding feet; two heads appear in the doorway, one above the other. Ian lights the lamp and puts it in the hands of the elder child, a boy who gravely lets it travel over their faces.

With odd formality he says,

‘My name is John and this is my sister Issie.’

They shake hands. John is seven years old, they learn, and his sister Issie four. John is tall for his age but both are painfully thin and have the ravaged look that spells deprivation.

The children sit down together and in low whispers get to know one another. Their histories are similar but John and Issie have had a particularly hard time. The children of a farming couple on the outskirts of the town, they were successfully hidden at the insistence of their mother. The father, a rough and brutal man, ill- treated them and resented the danger they represented. One day, despite their mother’s pitiful protests, he pulled them from their hiding place and kicked them out of the house, telling them they would have to fend for themselves. They have been on the run ever since, hiding at night, foraging where they could, their only respite when discovered by a woman who gave them food and shelter for a few days but was too frightened to keep them longer. Everyone is frightened, John tells Susie and Ian, no one feels safe.

‘How did you know that this house was empty?’

‘We kept a watch on it.’

‘And the neighbour next door? Did you see him?’ Susie asks anxiously.

‘No, we have seen no one; but we haven’t been here very long.’

They now have to decide which house to stay in, this one or Fairfax Road. They weigh the pros and cons and calculate that the risks of discovery are probably less in Fairfax Road; and it holds a greater store of food. John and Issie are down to the last few potatoes and have been forced to steal from neighbours’ gardens. This is really dangerous and Ian curses inwardly at the aggravated risk. There is no help for it. They must move on. But first Susie asks them to wait. She climbs upstairs with painful familiarity until she reaches the attic. Here everything is untouched as though she and her parents had only just left. She pushes the cupboard aside and crawls into her little room. It looks smaller and more cramped than it did before. It too has been left undisturbed. Susie Two is lying on the bed, looking at her miserably. Susie picks her up and cradles her in her arms. Then she removes the brick from the wall under her bed and extracts her diary and her writing materials.

She takes them downstairs. Issie has never had a doll and can’t take covetous eyes off Susie Two. Susie places the doll in Issie’s arms. At first Issie’s large lustrous eyes glow with joy but when she looks more closely at Susie Two tears course down her cheeks.

‘What’s wrong?’ Susie asks.

Issie does not reply. Issie is a beautiful child. She has abundant, dark, curly hair, pale skin that is now taut on her face but does not spoil her extraordinary ethereal quality. As Susie waits for Issie’s answer her heart goes out to her.

‘She doesn’t speak,’ John says.

‘What d’you mean, she doesn’t speak?’ Ian asks.

‘What I say. She doesn’t utter a word but she understands everything.’

Susie kneels down and takes Issie in her arms. She wipes away her tears and takes Susie Two back. She rubs out Susie Two’s down-turned mouth and sad eyes and with her newly acquired charcoal stick draws a happy face.

Issie’s face lights up. This is all the thanks Susie needs.

They make a plan. Ian and Issie are to leave the house first. They gather up some tattered clothing and go into the night. Issie is clutching the doll. Despite Ian’s worries he finds she is well versed in the need to move silently. The streets are quiet and she follows him submissively to number twenty-two. Ian breathes a sigh of relief once they are safely inside.

Susie and John wait a while and then they too make their way. But their journey is not uneventful. As they come out of the house Susie sees her hated neighbour slink out of his front door. He looks around suspiciously but after a few moments goes in again. The children, who have shrunk into the shadows against a wall, do not think he saw or heard them but they cannot be certain.

Susie takes a long way round to Fairfax Road, stopping regularly to make sure they are not being followed. But another shock awaits them. As they are about to turn into their road they hear footsteps. Four men march into sight, clad in the familiar long black coats. Two of them are carrying nets. They look purposeful and the children cannot doubt that they are on their way to make an arrest.