Out of Time (28 page)

Her every instinct demanded that she save Joe. But quietly at first, then louder and louder, in the still night air, she could hear the dead clamouring justice for their sacrifice. She put her hands over her ears to block out their demands. She did not want to listen. The dead were dead and Joe was alive. She could not, would not, allow him to give his life for their sakes. Their ancient struggle was nothing to do with him, an innocent bystander, a young and vibrant man from another world. His death would taint them forever with his blood, the dragon’s teeth would sprout, exact their revenge and bring further calamities to their lives.

And there was reason on her side. Kathryn knew too - who better? that while revolutions did not occur without leaders, neither were they initiated by them alone. They erupted on a tide of popular feeling, they broke out through the culmination of the people’s will. No power on earth can halt an avalanche of humanity determined to get its way. The mass knows instinctively when the time to act is ripe. If her vision was to be believed Joe had happened to be present at this climactic moment, the wrong person in the right place.

To prevent his going was her duty, a decision she justified to herself and to her past companions lying in the ground. If forgiveness was what she needed, she asked them to forgive her.

Thus Kathryn used the imperious demands of her heart to silence her intellect; but Fate follows its own rules and sometimes we unwittingly deliver ourselves into her hands.

Joe sleepily put out an arm to find Kathryn but touched empty space. He wondered idly where she was but, occupied with his own thoughts, lost track of time. He was planning his trip to Bantage and intended to wait until autumn, before the hard winter set in, though he had only the vaguest plan of what he would do once there. His only potential contact was the skipping child and her parents. He remembered their house in Jarvis Road. It was certain that they were opponents to the regime for otherwise they would not have hidden the little girl. He could go to them for help, shelter and information. He needed to know where the drug was kept, what safeguards were employed, what alarm was in place, the routine of guards. His mission successfully completed he would leave, taking the girl with him. The parents would no doubt be glad to have her in a safe haven and it would add an extra member to the community.

His pride and sense of potential benefit to the others by bringing in a new life glossed over the most worrying aspect of his venture: the necessity of concealing it from Kathryn. No matter how obsessively he turned it over in his mind, he knew that once he had told her she would do everything in her power to stop him going. He would be helpless against her opposition and would, as time went by and he grew older, resent her for having prevented him from obtaining the drug and remaining vigorous and young. Unless he acquired it their future looked bleak.

There were other aspects to his quest of which Joe was not unaware, but he pushed them into the recesses of his mind: the attractions of the drug itself, the power over his own life that it would bestow, limitless opportunities for choices not available to people confined by a normal span. He had felt disadvantaged since he had learned of the drug’s efficacy, an ordinary, puny human instead of the more Olympian figures of his companions.

He needed help. Meredith. He would seek his advice, ask him to tell Kathryn after he had left, protect her while he was away and above all stop her from following him. He felt no fear, confident that he was smarter than Helmuth and his henchmen and that he could infiltrate the town, steal the drug and come back safe and victorious. He pictured the hero’s return and it filled him with exultation.

Kathryn did not return to bed and he rose, dressed and went into the kitchen but this too was empty. Outside, under the dim light of the stars, he followed her footsteps in the dewy grass, past the farm, down the hill and to the cemetery. He too had sometimes sat here, lost in thought, trying to reach the ghosts that had joined the festivities in the kitchen. It seemed long ago, in another era. He wished he could release them from their cold beds.

He saw her, sitting under the trees, in deep contemplation and gave a discreet cough. She turned in surprise and smiled at him. He sat down beside her and took her hand.

‘What are you doing here?’ he asked softly.

‘Thinking.’

‘About...?’

She turned towards him.

‘If I hadn’t been here or if we hadn’t fallen in love would you have wanted to remain?’

He considered it with the care and honesty her question demanded and did not reply at once. He could no longer imagine life in this place without Kathryn. Heaven is here where Kathryn lives. He thought back on when he had first arrived, his sense of alienation and the trials he had had to endure before the community would or could accept him; he attempted to visualise what this new life would have been without the magic of his love affair - hard manual labour and commitment to a group of people from another world whose roots were far removed from his own. Yet he had grown to love and value them.

‘I suppose, for a time. But not forever.’

‘Would you have wanted to get back home? I mean, if given the opportunity?’

This was more difficult to gauge. He had long ago given up the possibility and indeed dreaded that it remained but he had not forgotten his pre-Kathryn longing to return to his old life.

‘If given the opportunity, I suppose yes. But not now,’ he added fiercely.

‘You see, I was wondering,’ she said quietly, ‘if your love for me is keeping you here.’

‘That’s what I want more than anything in the world.’

They sat companionably in silence.

‘What do you miss most?’

‘My mother, friends, family, all the familiar things. And I worry about Mum, wonder what she thinks happened to me. Girls disappear often enough but boys of my age.... I hope she doesn’t think I’ve run away. It would kill her.’

‘Gone to find your father perhaps. Would you?’

‘Would have done eventually, yes. I need to know why he left. There’s always that hidden feeling of guilt, was it something I did, was it my fault?’

She squeezed his hand.

‘Perhaps he fell in love with someone else.’

It was what he had claimed.

‘Did that kind of thing happen in your old world, I mean before the drug?’

‘Yes and no. People married but on the whole they stayed together, certainly until their children grew up. Naturally, there were many infidelities but no one really cared. Didn’t matter. People changed partners, we were all so close it didn’t signify. There was no question of anyone disappearing. They might move on to another village but that was really it. The ties were strong.’

‘Anyway it’s all in the past,’ he said, ‘my father I mean.’

‘The past has a way of catching up.’

They remained until the light crept forward on the far horizon and then, arms twined round one another, went to breakfast and their daily tasks.

*

Susie and Issie are washing in the tub when Susie feels a heavy hand on her shoulder. She turns with a streaming face and sees the neighbour from number twenty. Both she and Issie are paralysed with fear. Susie is not even able to call out and warn Ian and John.

They look at each other a long moment. Then William says,

‘May I come inside?’

Susie does not know what to say. It is not a request to which she can agree but she has no means of stopping him. She watches with horror and amazement as he tries to take Issie’s hand but Issie starts crying and shrinks into the wall. Susie hurries her inside.

‘Don’t be frightened,’ William calls after the two girls.

He walks firmly behind them through the unlocked back door. Ian and John are speechless with terror but Ian stands bravely in front of the children, protecting them and facing the man even though he knows his stand is hopeless.

*

The essentially loaded question of how to stop Joe going to the town remained unresolved. Endless possibilities presented themselves, coercion, persuasion, explanation, even unashamed pleading. But in the final analysis these were, in the face of Joe’s determination, weapons destined to fail. There was no alternative to Joe persuading himself to abandon his quest. It was the only way. How could this be achieved? A drastic event, perhaps, to induce a sense of reality about his venture; but no matter how hard Kathryn thought, she could not fathom what it could be.

The answer hit her early one morning as she lay in bed and watched the rising sunlight filter through the window, laying its complicated pattern on the floor. She sat up with a start, astonished that she had not thought of it before - but there it was, perfect in its symmetry, beautiful in its simplicity. She examined it from every angle, sought flaws and pitfalls but in this moment of overwhelming relief could find none. Arrived at by instinct, her new solution did not give way under logical scrutiny. It was simply this. Joe’s motivation for risking his life was on their behalf, hers and Joe’s. If she were absent, if she had gone, all reason for his journey would disappear and the fatal attractions of the drug would vanish. She needed to arrange her death.

She felt exultant and light-headed, as though all her past life was nothing other than a preparation for this moment. The years behind her seemed like an arduous mountain path which she had climbed with heavy burdens on her back. Now, at the summit, the world spread before her, she had given herself permission to shed them and lay herself to rest. For what, in the long run, had she to offer Joe? Childlessness and a lifestyle that was not his own, violence and fear. And love. She had to let him go.

It was the right decision. This she did not doubt, that it was achingly painful she could not deny; nor did she underestimate the grief that Joe would suffer if, when, she died. But he was young, adventurous, thirsty for a life still ahead. She had faith in his revivifying spirit. With time, he would adjust to her death and draw strength from their profound love. Love never ends, it continues beating its wings forever.

And what was the alternative to sacrificing herself? She weighed it with thoughtful care but the answer always came out the same. If she stayed alive and Joe was killed life would cease to have meaning. She would blame herself every minute of the night and day and would have no option but to die. The choices she had thought she had were no choices at all.

*

‘Don’t be frightened,’ William says again. ‘I’ve come to help you.’

The four children do not believe him. And indeed, William can hardly believe himself.

Ian steps forward.

‘How can we be sure?’ he asks.

‘You can’t,’ the neighbour says, ‘but time will tell.’

‘What is your name?’

‘William. I live next door at number twenty. I have been watching you for some time, first this little girl living in the garden shed,’ he points at Susie, ‘and then you. If I wanted to hand you in I would have done so by now.’

‘And why haven’t you?’

William is taken aback by this question for it is one he has asked himself time and time again. Now that he is face to face with the children he knows that his intended plan to get to know them in order to betray them is doomed to failure. He cannot bring himself to do it. He understands at last what has been preventing him. A part of him that has long lain dormant has resurfaced with sudden and frightening force, memories of his childhood and its lost innocence, of happiness and hope. These have confronted him daily in the form of these abandoned and persecuted children, they have opened his eyes to cruelties to which he has long been conditioned and which he has refused to countenance: even when they affected his very soul.

‘Because I am against the regime,’ he hears himself saying.

‘Why? It’s not you that suffers.’

William cannot bring himself to tell Ian his innermost secret, long ago expunged from his memory.

He says nothing.

‘Why?’ Ian demands again.

His words speak themselves.

‘Because they took my little girl. At least,’ he says in shame and misery, ‘I handed her over.’

It is the first time he has been faced so starkly with his guilt; and indeed the children’s horrified expressions mirror what is in his heart.

‘We were designated parents.’

‘And you gave your child away?’

‘Yes.’

There is a short silence.

‘Where are these children kept?’ Ian asks.

William does not know. Nobody knows. He explains that the children disappear as though they have never been and when they are returned as adults to the town they can no longer be identified. There has been one case when the mother thought she recognised her daughter. She was swiftly eliminated.

‘Are you one of the people brought up by the state?’

‘No, I am one of the original people to have taken the drug. I dimly remember the old life, before Helmuth turned into a tyrant.’

‘So why did you do it?’

In a moment of acute pain and a dawning sense of release William replies,

‘Because I was blind and foolish. Mary begged and begged me to keep our child hidden. No one had noticed her pregnancy and no one was present at the birth but I knew I would be putting our lives in danger if I did not report it. I was too frightened. I deeply regret it. I have lost my child and I lost Mary. She died of a broken heart. No long life drug could save her.’

The children listen silently to this tale. It is difficult not to believe, so stark is the man’s grief.

‘I will go now,’ William says, ‘but I will come back with food and things you need though I can’t do so often. Someone will see me. Your neighbour at number twenty four is an informer. It was he who reported the man who owned this house.’

‘What for?’

‘A teenage boy came to him, perhaps for help and though he called the alarm it was thought he gave the boy a warning first. That is punishable by death.’

‘Who was the boy?’ Ian asks.

‘We don’t know. He disappeared.’

‘I saw him too,’ Susie says. This boy, she notes, seems constantly to show up. Everyone knows about him but no one knows who or where he is.