Out of Time (24 page)

‘You mean I’ll grow tired of you?’

‘Perhaps. Probably.’

He laughed at her.

‘Anyway, we don’t have the drug. They’ll kill you if you try to get it. Life without you....’

Her words trailed off into desolation.

It was difficult to prevail against her impassioned plea.

*

Susie lies in the shed all day. Other bodies are brought and thrown in. The smell of unwashed corpses waiting to be buried is overpowering. Susie has to hold herself back not to rush out when evening falls but she waits until the middle of the night and there is no sound of movement outside.

The door is on a latch. Susie opens it bit by bit and looks out. She can see no one. Fearfully, quietly, she slips out. She closes the door softly behind her, as though not to disturb the sleeping bodies inside.

She is not certain where she is for this is a part of Bantage she has not been in before. She is not in open country near the farms nor in the town centre but somewhere on the immediate outskirts. As her eyes adjust she can see a concentration of roofs ahead and she tentatively moves towards them, pausing every few minutes to make sure she is alone. The night is silent and she gains in confidence and hastens her steps until she finds herself in a set of roads that look familiar. Soon she is at the back of the park.

It is tempting to take the route to her house - perhaps her parents are there - but she resists it. Later. For the time being she must stick to the plan and investigate the possibilities of twenty two Fairfax Road. While she is not entirely certain where it is, she has a rough idea and goes in the direction Ian has described, skirting the park’s perimeter. She looks apprehensively at the bells but their clappers are still. The silence is absolute.

She is hungry and thirsty but these are minor considerations. She must first find shelter.

After some trial and error she sees the welcome sign, Fairfax Road. It is very frightening moving along inhabited streets. Every moment Susie expects a door or window to open and the bells to ring; but it does not happen. She appears to be invisible.

She slides along the street until she reaches number twenty two. Then she stops. The house, like all the others, is silent and still. Is it empty? Susie does not know how to find out. All she can do is rely on Ian’s account.

She opens the gate and creeps along the side of the house, avoiding the front door. The garden door is forbiddingly closed and when she applies gentle pressure remains firmly locked. She cannot and dare not break it down.

Tears of frustration fall down her cheeks but she brushes them away and follows Ian’s alternative instructions to go round to the back and slip in through the garden. He has described this minutely. She follows the same path that Joe took so long ago and is at last standing before the garden shed, gazing with fear at the dark and impenetrable doors and windows at the back of the house. If there is anyone inside there is no sign of them.

Susie tries the shed door. To her infinite relief it is unlocked. It is dark inside and she is scared of bumping into something and making a noise. And she is very, very tired. She can feel rough cloth underfoot. Hoping that this is sacks, she lies down, covers herself and goes to sleep.

*

They were almost home, only two nights away. A fine drizzle had sent them into the shelter of an abandoned building and they lay on the ground, wrapped in one another’s arms.

‘You think we can attain perfect happiness,’ Kathryn whispered

‘We already have,’ he said but knew he was playing with the truth.

‘We can’t, not even us with our long lives.’

‘Why not?’ he turned to her, his mouth against her hair.

‘We’re not immortal. Life isn’t infinite.’

‘But long, much longer than I can hope for! I don’t want us to be confined to my puny years.’

But they might be all they had. Kathryn was alarmed to find that she could discern no future for Joe and her, only a terrifying blankness. Time was passing. She had no faith in the future Joe so confidently predicted.

She saw too that Joe’s desire to obtain the drug was not confined to his fears about ageing; she had already warned him of the power of the drug itself, its insidious temptations undiminished. They too had thought that to live countless years was to experience bliss, to have penetrated nature’s holiest secret a triumph; but they had been credulous. Failing to see the consequences of their arrogance, they had unknowingly made a pact with evil. Now they were paying the price, Nature’s revenge for defying her, frustrating her infinite rhythm of death and regeneration. Even her womb, Kathryn reflected bitterly, failed to bear life, her precious seeds gone to waste. It filled her with shame but on this point at least Joe was able to comfort her for he had never contemplated the possibility of having children. In many respects he was still a child himself. Although it poured balm on her hurt, his response was of a piece with their doomed but determined effort to bring their diverse lives into alignment, to iron out differences and create a reality that did not exist.

When first settled at the house, the community had relied on having children, on restoring to a new generation the principles of liberty on which they themselves had been raised; but the years passed without new life, a loss that affected the relationship between couples who, without the next generation to nurture, gave way to a sense of hopelessness. Various herbal remedies were tried to induce conception, the cycles of the moon brought into play. Without success. Plans for the future of the community had to be readjusted. It was a severe blow. Nor could they understand the reasons. If the drug were responsible the townspeople would be infertile. They were not. They concluded that either a hidden, inner safety mechanism was at work, for without the drug parents with an indefinite life span would be forced to see their children die, or the stress of their lives made childbearing impossible.

Susie sleeps all that night and most of the next day for it is the first time since her incarceration that she is able to breathe without the overpowering stench of decay and can rest in darkness and in quiet. It is a glorious feeling and when, towards evening, she rouses herself, she can feel life returning to her wasted limbs. But she needs food.

Susie knows the way of the townspeople. Each house has a cellar in which provisions are stored, the amount varying according to what goods individuals have to barter. A shoemaker for instance would do well, or a weaver or tailor for they supply objects that are essential. She wonders what the captured man used to do and if his store is full. She also knows that garden sheds are sometimes used for keeping vegetables§ but they also often house man-catching nets. In the dim light coming through the cracks of the door she sees two leaning threateningly against the back wall. She tries to ignore them. In a wooden box filled with sand she finds carrots and potatoes. She bites into them hungrily. They have gone soft and taste bitter but it is the first fresh food she has eaten since she was taken from her home. Even the raw potatoes taste like manna from heaven. She eats as much as she can but she is still thirsty. Despite this, she lies down and goes to sleep again, hoping against hope that no one will discover her.

She sleeps until just before dawn the next morning. Her stomach feels distended and sore and her need for water has become urgent. She slowly opens the shed door. There is, as yet, no one awake but there is dew on the grass. She picks handfuls and sucks them dry. There are also rows of vegetables in the garden, some gone to seed, others overgrown with weeds. This matters little to Susie. Once it is dark she can steal out and pick them. She can also see, up against the house, a water barrel into which a pipe empties rainwater from the roof but she dare not cross the garden in daylight. She waits in the shed, listening to the sound of a waking town, windows opening and closing, doors banging, people talking. No one disturbs her and from time to time she falls asleep, wakes, then falls asleep again. It is a glorious luxury and she wishes all the children were there to share it; but she must not indulge herself, forget the purpose for which she is there.

Only when it is dark does she peer out. She can see lights seeping out of shutters from rooms either side of number twenty-two. The house itself remains in darkness. She thinks and hopes it is empty. She waits until all the neighbours’ lamps have been extinguished and then, using trees and the many overgrown bushes as camouflage, creeps to the house. First she drinks out of the barrel and splashes refreshing water on her face. Then she tries the backdoor. It is locked. Braver now, she tries to open a window. This too fails to yield.

She does not know that the man living in number twenty is standing by his partially opened shutters. He watches Susie’s movements with interest.

She is dismayed because she cannot get into the house. She dare not break a window pane. She is uncertain what to do and goes back into the shed to work out a plan.

The man at number twenty closes his shutters.

Susie has to get a signal to the others. This means returning to the sewer entrance, the other side of the town. She now realises that they have made an arrangement that she does not know how to fulfil. She spends another day and another night in the shed. She learns not to eat too much at a time and begins to feel stronger and more confident. Certain now that the house is empty, she comes to the conclusion that, rather than risk being caught in the shed where she feels vulnerable, she should gain entry. Perhaps when she is used to being free she will find a way of sending her signal. For the time being it is more important to establish a base.

THE man at number twenty is keeping a close eye on Susie. This he cannot do during the day because he works as a minor official for the junta but he watches her movements in the evenings and at night.

He knows he should be reporting her presence but he decides to hold back for the time being. He persuades himself that he is waiting for her to lead him to other children. That way he will be able to prove his loyalty to the state.

Although Susie does not know that she is under surveillance, she is only too well aware that her situation is precarious and that she is in constant danger of discovery. She dare not leave the shed during daylight hours but by looking through a knot-hole in the shed’s walls she has learned that a man and wife live at number twenty four and, as far as she can tell, only a man at number twenty. All leave for work in the morning and come back in the evening. They do not go out again. The town at night settles into silence as though it were uninhabited with only the occasional footsteps echoing down the streets. These usually mean guards are patrolling.

So far Susie has been lucky. Nothing disturbs her except wild animals, foxes who come nosing round the shed, rabbits nibbling at the vegetation, a veritable wildlife park, a fascinating novelty to Susie who has spent all her life indoors. It is a great thrill for her.

Susie soon adapts to her new conditions and keeps herself alive by pulling vegetables from the garden at night and drinking water from the rain tub.

The days are frustrating, lonely and boring. Susie makes another doll with a stick and a piece of sacking. She calls her Susie Three. She is not as satisfying as Susie Two because there is no flat surface on which to draw a face but Susie imagines Susie Three’s different expressions. These vary from day to day. Sometimes Susie Three cries and Susie has to comfort her and wipe away her tears, but she is told quite firmly that crying does no good.

*

‘What if you’d taken the drug and your world took you back? You’d be the only one to stay young.’

Kathryn and Joe were inside the cascading wall of a willow tree. It was the last night of their holiday.

‘Methuselah.’

‘Who’s that?’

‘An old, old man, He’s supposed to have lived until he was nine hundred and sixty nine.’

‘Quite young really,’ she teased.

‘But even if the drug worked in my world, I wouldn’t be old, would I, not so that anybody would notice. Not for a time, anyway.’

But it was a daunting prospect that had not occurred to him. As his friends and contemporaries grew older, as they died, he’d still be there, forever young. He would be looked on as a freak. He held her in a tight grip.

‘It’s not going to happen anyway. I’m here for good, d’you understand!’

But he knew, as Kathryn knew, that he was trying to fool them both, clinging to a hope that had no basis. He could at any moment be pulled back to a life he no longer wished to own. His present happiness plummeted at this untimely reminder of the fragility of their situation. No matter how often he said that he loved her forever, that his life was linked to hers for all eternity, the same question hovered in the shadows. Eternity in whose time, his or hers? They were aeons apart, two minuscule dots who, due to a cosmic accident, had touched and were clinging to a permanent state in the monstrous panorama of impermanence.

‘Maybe that’s our fate.’

‘Being parted?’

‘Yes.’