The Penal Colony (22 page)

“Yes, but how did you get the seed?”

“Don’t know. It’s supposed to be pretty
potent.”

“Do you smoke it?”

“No. Bad for the brain.”

Smoking cannabis went contrary to the work
ethic. Routledge was surprised that Franks allowed it. But then,
considering, he saw how little else the villagers had in the way of
comfort or entertainment. And probably the supply was controlled to
Franks’s advantage. And further, any deviation in behaviour caused
by the drug would lead to expulsion, thus keeping its use under
control. Nonetheless, Routledge was surprised.

He applied himself to his beer. The glass was
again a cut-down jar, this time a marmalade jar decorated with a
motif of leaves and lemons. “Is the place always this full?” he
said.

“Sometimes it’s fuller. There’s a darts match
later. Then you’ll see it fill up. Mr Gunter is playing.”

“He’s the champion?”

“Defending, yes.”

With marijuana replacing tobacco, and the
drinkers dressed in ragged work clothes and a motley assortment of
leather and sheepskin jerkins, waistcoats, jackets, trousers, and
shorts, wearing boots or trainers or barefoot, the atmosphere in
the hut was otherwise that of a popular pub on pay night. It was
almost the last thing Routledge had anticipated finding on a penal
colony. Indeed, he had been totally unprepared for almost
everything he had encountered so far. He was still in a state of
shock.

Parrying remarks made at him by more of
King’s friends, he suddenly remembered that, ten minutes’ walk
away, one lying spreadeagled on a ledge, another on the beach
below, were two cadavers, with a third, impaled by a steel crossbow
bolt, almost as near in the other direction. Unless they had been
moved or already picked clean by the birds, each would now be an
inferno of flies. He had done that: and here he was, drinking beer
as if nothing had happened.

“Fill up?” King said.

“Well … is there something else? Fruit juice,
perhaps?”

While King was at the bar, Godwin’s
assistant, Fitzmaurice, came in. He acknowledged Routledge with no
great enthusiasm and ignored him thereafter.

Before Franks had taken him to Godwin’s
workshop, Routledge had been thinking almost continuously about
this morning’s interview with Appleton and the mysterious project
it implied. Here was a way, he had immediately realized, to advance
himself in the Village hierarchy; but he had had no idea what to
expect, and his introduction to the pudgy, sarcastic Godwin had
enlightened him hardly at all.

With Franks watching, Godwin had given
Routledge a test in arithmetic, in algebra, calculus, and various
simple statistical techniques. He had tested him too on his
knowledge of electronics and acoustics, and had asked him to draw a
circuit diagram to show how a dimmer switch worked. Routledge had
completed the tests satisfactorily, at which Godwin had signified
his grudging approval.

And now Routledge had landed himself a job
doing he knew not what: for the purpose of all the wiring, the
soldering, the bits and pieces of apparatus on Godwin’s bench, had
not been explained to him. When he had asked, Franks had said that
Godwin would tell him whatever he needed to know, at the time he
needed to know it. Meanwhile, Routledge was forbidden to divulge
details of the work to anyone, King included.

He would be starting tomorrow afternoon. His
working arrangements were to be flexible, depending on what Godwin
wanted. In any case he need put in no more than eight hours a day,
Franks had said, not, at least, while he was building his house,
although the work with Godwin was to take absolute priority. Extra
labour would if necessary be supplied to finish the house on time,
by the autumn.

Almost without doubt the project had
something to do with the Magic Circle. That could only mean one
thing. An escape attempt, a boat. The Community clearly had the
technical ability to build one: the problem was launching it
undetected and then getting clear away. Where would it go? The
Devon or Cornish coast. Who would be on it? Franks, of course,
probably Appleton, Godwin, and Fitzmaurice too. Plainly they were
having trouble with designing or testing the electronics. There was
no other reason they would have involved him, a newcomer, without
giving themselves time properly to assess his personality and
abilities. That meant they were running against some sort of
deadline. Why? And most important of all, what were the chances of
a place on the boat for himself?

Nil.

Even so, mental work, indoors, was vastly
preferable to carting compost or scavenging along the tideline.
When, eventually, he was able to begin making sense of this welter
of initial impressions, he knew he would regard with satisfaction
his appointment to Godwin’s project.

Routledge did not stay for the darts match.
Making his excuses, he left as early as he could and went to bed;
but he was so tired and miserable that he again had difficulty in
getting to sleep.

He lit a lamp and for a long time lay looking
into his favourite picture of Louise, taken on the Thames, on a
hired motorboat. She had been three months pregnant then, wearing a
blue sundress and sandals, one of which she had removed in order to
trail the toes of her right foot in the water.

The picnic had been her idea. He remembered
everything about that afternoon: the dank, shady smell of the
river, the glimpses of white houses and their lawns sloping down to
the water, the island temple at Remenham, the bankside mud eroded
and exposed by the wash of cabin cruisers and steamers. The Thames
at Henley Reach was already a river to be reckoned with, gathering
force from the heart of England as it moved towards London and the
sea. Its valley was broad and rich, on the grand scale, rising
northwards to the wooded Chiltern Hills, but it was in the small
things that the essence of the river was to be found. The furniture
of the riverbank – the gates and railings and signboards – had a
peculiarly apt and English flavour. Henley the town still retained
remnants of its former self. Downstream they had watched a rowing
eight at practice, and seen a grebe, and heard the breeze turning
the sallow leaves, and moored at some unnamed place to eat and
rest. He had loved her more on that day than ever before.

Eventually he put the photograph back in its
place, propped up on his makeshift bedside shelf. He turned on his
side and shut his eyes, but was still awake an hour later when King
returned.

King stole to the table, where Routledge had
left the oil lamp burning low, and, shielding the light from
Routledge’s end of the room, turned up the wick and began to carry
the lamp towards his own pallet bed.

“It’s all right, Mr King,” Routledge
said.

“Did I disturb you?”

“No. Not at all.” Routledge sat up. “Who won
the darts?”

“Mr Gunter.”

“Did you get your whisky?”

“Not yet. That only comes if he wins the
cup.” King removed his sweater and began unbuttoning his shirt.
“Can’t you sleep?”

“Well. There’s a lot to think about.”

“It’s best not to do too much of that.”

“Yes. I’m sure.”

“If you get too pissed off, let me know.
That’s what I’m here for. It’s a cliché, but it really does help to
talk.”

“And you? Have you adjusted to it yet?”

“No. I don’t think you ever can.”

“Does it get easier?”

“In some ways. I’ve been here for three
years. From the point of view of material comfort, the further you
get from your former life the better.” He poured water into the
bowl and began washing himself. “I dimly remember having a bathroom
with a fitted carpet. But this seems quite normal and adequate now.
It’s surprising what you can do without. The other things are
harder to give up. The mental things.” Having dried himself, King
turned away, took off his trousers and climbed into bed.

“Since we’ll be sharing the same roof till
September,” he said, after a moment, “I think you ought to know
what I’m here for. Multiple murder. I killed my next-door
neighbours.”

An image of a newspaper photograph, a lurid
headline, vaguely returned to Routledge’s mind. “How many of
them?”

“Three.”

Sitting up in bed, his mild features made
even more lugubrious by the lamplight, King then recounted a story
so horrific and grotesque that Routledge forgot for the moment his
own troubles and could only marvel at the depths of feeling which
existed behind anonymous front doors. King had lived in
Basingstoke, working by day as a languages teacher in a
comprehensive school and by night tending his disabled sister.
Their bungalow was the subject of a compulsory purchase order to
make way for a new road. The compensation was inadequate; they
could afford only a much smaller, attached, house, on a recent
development outside the town. The new house was badly built, with
thin walls which transmitted every sound.

From the start there was trouble from the
people next door, a couple with a nine-year-old boy. The main
problem was noise, keeping King’s sister awake, preventing him from
concentrating on his marking and preparation. The television was
left on almost permanently, at a high volume; at other times the
stereo played pop music with a driving, insistent beat which
penetrated every corner of the house. Requests to turn the sound
down were at first complied with, then ignored, then met with
abuse.

The following Christmas the boy was given a
puppy as a present, a terrier. As it grew older it learned to bark.
Anything and everything set it off. Sometimes it barked for no
reason at all. When the neighbours went out shopping or visiting
relatives the dog was left locked in the house, and then it barked
without cease. The woman used to let it out at five to six in the
morning and again at a quarter past eleven at night, so that King’s
hours of sleep were determined by the habits of the dog. His health
began to suffer.

In October the family bought a second terrier
– to keep the first one company, as they explained. By the
following spring King had tried to raise a petition among the other
people living nearby, a prerequisite for legal action. No one had
been willing to sign. The dogs did not disturb them, they said;
some pretended they could not even hear them. King began to be
regarded as an eccentric. He was ostracized. He tried to move
house, but could find nowhere suitable.

Matters came to a head during the ensuing
summer, on a muggy Sunday afternoon in June, at the height of the
lawn-mowing season. The neighbours had an electric rotary mower
which emitted a high-pitched whine. King was trying to mark a heap
of examination scripts on his desk. Eventually, when the neighbour
had gone inside, he decided to cut his own tiny lawn. He took his
push-mower from the garage. As he fitted the grass-box, both
terriers came out as usual and began yapping at him. The gardens
were separated only by a low, white plastic picket fence.

He went back into the garage. He took a can
of petrol, which was full, and poured the contents into a polythene
bucket. Before leaving the garage he made sure he had some matches
and a quantity of old newspaper.

The dogs were still barking. They redoubled
their efforts as he drew near. He flung the petrol at them. Both
were drenched, the older one taking the brunt. With the newspaper
alight, King jumped over the fence and set them on fire.

In the few seconds left to them the dogs made
instinctively for sanctuary – for the open French window – and ran
indoors. Within a few minutes the whole house was blazing; all
attempts by the family to put out the fire had failed.

The three of them appeared at the kitchen
door. The wife had seen everything; her husband was armed with a
metal vegetable rack. Shouting incoherently, he rushed at King, who
easily wrested the thing away from him. The scuffle proceeded to
the garage. King punched him in the face. As the man went down,
King snatched a spade and hit him over the head. The wife, who had
been trying to assist her husband, also received a blow, as did the
boy. After that, King’s mind went blank.

“By the time the police and fire brigade got
there, all three were dead.” He pushed a hand through his hair. “My
defence tried to show provocation, but it didn’t wash. It was the
dogs. No jury would forgive me that. Not in England.”

Routledge remained silent for a while.
Finally he said, “And your sister, Mr King?”

“King. Call me King. The firemen got her out.
She had to move away, of course. She’s in Milton Keynes now, in a
home.”

“You had a letter this afternoon.”

“Yes. From her. She writes nearly every week.
It’s censored, but she knows that, so we’ve evolved a sort of
code.”

“In what way censored?”

“They black out whatever they feel you
shouldn’t know. There aren’t any rules. Outgoing letters are
censored more heavily still. Anything about conditions here is
always expunged, anything about the Village or the outsiders. One
or two men once put some messages in bottles, just to see what
would happen. We didn’t get any feedback.”

“Couldn’t you build a radio?”

“They’d know. They’d pick up the
transmissions immediately. Then there’d be no more helicopter till
the radio stopped. Besides, the Father wouldn’t permit it. There’s
no point in antagonizing them.”

“He’s an interesting man,” Routledge said,
experimentally.

“The Father is more than that. Without him
we’d have been lost.”

“What was he before?”

“I don’t know. He comes from County Cork, I
think. Near Kinsale.”

“Was he a terrorist?”

King said nothing. He blew out the lamp.
“You’ve an early start tomorrow. You know you’re seeing Mr Appleton
to get a plot for your house, don’t you?”

“Yes.”