Out of Time (29 page)

‘’The guards went after him,’ William says, ‘but failed to find him. They are making plans to go again.’

He rises to go.

‘We will find a way of communicating more regularly. Once you trust me,’ he says.

Two days later the children find a parcel tucked behind the water barrel. Inside are girls’ clothes in all sizes, beautifully made. Susie and Issie gasp with joy. They have never seen such clothes. Their own have long been in tatters and they have never been decently dressed but Ian will not allow them to touch them.

*

The manner of her death was now Kathryn’s sole preoccupation and she surprised herself by her dispassionate assessment of the alternatives. A straightforward suicide was the most obvious solution but this would pervert her purpose. Joe would guess the reason. It would leave him with an intolerable burden of guilt, a way of killing him by other means. No, her death had to be subtly engineered, made to look as though it was an accident.

A grisly parade of images floated before Kathryn’s eyes. She could jump into the well as Joe had but they would find her body and know her death was not an accident; she could walk into the wilderness in the hope that the wolves would tear her apart but this was uncertain and she flinched from such an end. She did not, in any case, want to disappear. Her body had to be there, tangible. She needed something that would act invisibly and would make her death seem a natural event, to be mourned but inevitable, nature reclaiming its grip on mortality.

She had long been versed in the art of herbal remedies, was relied on to alleviate sickness and pain. She knew the potency of mushrooms. There was one, small, deadly and efficacious, that would perfectly answer her purpose.

She said nothing of this to Meredith but he felt a great sense of relief at seeing her return to cheerfulness and wondered whether Joe had changed his mind. Of this idea he was soon disabused. On a night walk observing the stars Joe appeared suddenly at his side and, after a decent interval, told him of his plan to go to Bantage, asking him to keep it to himself. Meredith’s heart sank.

As the repository of both their confidences he was in the position of a spectator watching a tragedy unfold, helpless to change its course.

Thus all three, Kathryn, Meredith and Joe, were caught in the deadly grip of the drug.

SUNSHINE returned. A second cutting of the hay left long swathes of meadow grass lying in the fields, the air scented with thyme and clover. A period of comparative inactivity followed before the serious business of harvesting began.

The inner conflicts of the past weeks had subsided. Joe and Kathryn, having secretly made their respective decisions, were experiencing the tranquillity that comes after inner turmoil has occupied all one’s waking moments. They both felt free, Joe delighting in what he took to be Kathryn’s exuberant happiness, her joy in him, her intense pleasure in the shimmering countryside. They were at the zenith of their passion, every minute a world of experience. They took to wandering in the wild, making occasional forays to a deep pool below a waterfall, a green and silent place, the haunt of geese and ducks and, to their pleasure, swans.

‘I wonder if they’ve come from Abbotsbury,’ Joe said

‘Where?’

‘You remember the swans we saw outside Weymouth?’

She nodded.

‘I didn’t tell you at the time but in my world that’s a swannery. Swans are bred and looked after there.’

‘It’s extraordinary,’ Kathryn said, ‘how everything is the same and everything is different. Do you think it’s the same swans?’

‘It’s the same me.’

‘But I’m not in your world.’

‘No. I must have broken through, or something. It doesn’t matter. I found you!’

They watched the swans, embellishments on the water.

‘They’re monogamous, you know, never change partners, even after one of them has died.’ He added, ‘like us.’

The iridescent blue of a kingfisher flew past and disappeared into the river bank.

‘If I died.’ she began

‘A likely chance!’

‘Don’t be so sure,’ she said lightly.

‘You’re the one who is immortal.’

‘No, long lived.’

The temptation to tell her his plan was great but caution prevailed.

‘Joe, promise me one thing.’

‘Anything!’

‘Not to stay alone.’

‘Alone?’

‘If something happens to me.’

‘Oh, I promise, I’ll take four wives.’

He dived into the water and beckoned her to follow. He covered her face with kisses and they went under and emerged spluttering. But he was to remember her request and much later to understand its significance.

*

The children do not know what to make of their neighbour. Their habit is not to trust anyone but they are trapped.

Ian will not agree to the girls wearing the new clothes William has left them. They finger them with longing. The dresses and skirts are hand stitched, buttonholes exquisitely edged, pearl buttons exactly matched, embroidery decorating the skirts and sleeves. There is loving care in these clothes.

‘If William and his wife had to give up their baby, how come he has clothes for five and twelve year olds?’

This is a question no one can answer. It increases their suspicion.

William does not reappear for some time and is not seen in his garden. The children fear that he too has been captured but one night they hear gentle knocking on the door. William has returned, explaining his long absence as caution.

Ian faces him with his doubts about the clothes.

‘Mary made them after the baby had gone, clothes for every year of her age. She wouldn’t believe Myra wasn’t coming back. I couldn’t stop her sewing. Her mind had given way.’

His distress is evident. None of the children can doubt its sincerity.

‘I have a proposition to put to you,’ William says. ‘I cannot come to you through the garden. It’s too dangerous. But we live next door to one another and.’

‘We could open a connection between the two houses,’ Susie puts in.

Ian, not so easily persuaded of William’s trustworthiness, looks at her accusingly but Susie is putting her faith in her instinct about this man. She believes he will help them.

‘Yes, that is what I wanted to propose. You can discuss it among yourselves and let me know whether you agree.’

He returns two days later but before committing them further, Ian has some questions for William. On his answers will depend their decision.

‘You said you were one of the original people who took the drug.’

William concedes the point.

‘Then why did you let Helmuth rule?’ Ian asks. ‘How could you allow things to get to this state, everyone living in terror? You’ve got a long life, but what’s it for?’

This boy has the knack of asking uncomfortable, direct questions which put William in a place he does not want to be. He answers as best as he can but his memory of events leading to the present are confused.

‘It’s difficult for you to understand but at the beginning, after the drug was discovered, life was full of hope. We thought it would be wonderful to live forever and Helmuth promised so much!’

‘How could you believe a man like that?’

‘He used to be a sage, a wise man. There was no way of knowing he would turn into a tyrant. He said that anyone who followed him would have access to the drug, they would live in new towns and there’d be plenty and freedom. But things changed over the years, bit by bit.’

‘You could have stopped it while it was happening!’ Ian says.

‘’We didn’t realise. You have no idea how gradual it was. Laws were passed, bit by bit. You don’t notice the chains until they hold you helpless. Before we knew what had hit us we were nothing less than slaves.’

‘And when they stopped you having children?’

‘It was too late by then. And anyway, the junta made the argument sound logical, asked what did we need new generations for when the present one was still alive and wouldn’t die? They’d be nothing but an economic burden, more and more people living for years on end. It made a sort of sense. We’d stopped thinking by then, though when there were some murmurs of protest Helmuth called a meeting and said we could vote on whether to pass the law or not.’

‘But you did!’ Susie says accusingly.

‘There were secret spies all over the place. You didn’t dare vote against a Helmuth decree. It meant certain death. We knew that.’

‘Well, at least some parents defied the state. Like mine,’ Susie says proudly.

‘Yes, quite a lot have. But at what price!’

He has no need to elaborate. But then he asks them,

‘Do you think they were right? Your parents I mean. Your lives....’

‘Of course we do!’ Susie feels she is speaking for them all. The children nod their agreement.

They sit in the cellar where they are less likely to be heard and talk well into the night. The children listen enthralled to a history the telling of which has been denied them. And in the end even Ian feels that he can trust this man and that he could be the key to the success of their grandiose hopes.

They agree to install a connecting door between the houses.

‘I can come and go as we please though I won’t intrude. We’ll have an arranged signal. But,’ he looks at them curiously, ‘what do you want to do eventually? You can’t stay here forever.’

‘We know that.’

‘There’s a dissident community. I don’t know where but somewhere in the wild.’

‘No,’ Ian says firmly, ‘we have other plans.’

He explains that they are not leaving until they have brought down the regime and freed their friends and all other children.

William looks at them with incredulity.

‘Have you any idea how? Have you got contacts in the town?’

‘No, not yet,’ Susie says. ‘We’re waiting for someone who has. Then we can make our plan.’

The four children pitted against Helmuth. William admires their foolhardy courage, possible only because they are innocent and inexperienced. He wonders for a moment whether he should back out. These children are dangerous. But he checks himself. He has determined to revenge his wife, his child and the hundreds of people who have cruelly suffered. He must hold firm.

‘Now, what is the first thing I can do for you?’

‘Contact the other children in the sewers,’ Susie says, ‘let them know we are safe.’

*

Kathryn made a careful reckoning of when she thought Joe would leave for Bantage. He was needed during harvest; cold, ice and snow would prevent a journey during winter. The likeliest time was late autumn and she prepared herself for the inevitability of events. But she remained unmoved in her resolve.

Joe too was making plans.

‘When do you intend to go?’ Meredith asked in one of his few references to Joe’s foray into the town.

‘Before the worst of the winter weather sets in.’

Meredith, who did not play to lose, made no attempt to dissuade him; but the knowledge weighed heavy. He had no power over what, from whichever angle he considered it, was the unfolding tragedy of two people whose passionate love for one another would destroy them. He had only once, many years ago, been deeply in love and that had ended in the death of his beloved, killed in battle by the townspeople. It was a long time ago but the hurt had left him unwilling to risk himself again. But now, against his every instinct and desire, he had been drawn into Kathryn’s and Joe’s heady relationship. Both had confided in him because both trusted him. He could not ignore their plight and indeed felt some lingering responsibility for it. Without his demonstration of the timing of the eclipse Kathryn might not have had her vision and the devastating train of events not occurred. Had his pride tempted fate and fate used him to its own ends? He feared this might be so. He had flown too high.

But what to do? He debated options through the long reaches of the night, methodically considering the merit of each. There were few available. Kathryn was like a closed book. Her evident happiness, an ecstatic almost unnatural joy, contrasted with brooding silences when she thought herself unobserved. It filled him with dread for he well knew the power of her will, her disregard for her own safety and her capacity for sacrifice. She had risked herself often to save friends; what would she now do to save her lover? Guarded questions met with evasion. As for Joe, he was as stubborn as she was and made it clear that his decision to go to the town was not negotiable. Meredith wearily decided that he could take responsibility for his own actions alone.

He could do little for Kathryn for he did not know her plan; but it seemed to him that the one in the greatest jeopardy was Joe. He needed protection and it followed that if he were saved Kathryn would not do whatever it was she had planned. In this way he might save them both.

The possibility of the townspeople claiming yet another of the people he loved filled Meredith with horror and with rage. He felt now that he had been passive too long, that he had not done enough against the enemy. He had, in any case, another reason for revenge, a personal vendetta against Helmuth which reached back to an earlier time when Helmuth’s promises for a new society had seduced them all. Joe’s foolhardiness might give him the opening to redress the balance. If Joe could not be prevented from going Meredith would go with him. One alone was doomed but with two people fighting, the possibility of success doubled. He would secretly follow Joe and reveal himself only when it was too late to turn back. But the central problem remained. Kathryn had to be pacified and held back after Joe and he had gone. His only recourse was to seek help from Randolph and Belinda and though he was reluctant to break a confidence, for he had promised not to tell, he felt the urgency of the situation demanded it.