The Children of Men (26 page)

Rolf gave a short laugh, harsh as a shout. “That’s safe enough. No one can argue with that. What does he believe, the Warden of England?”

“I don’t know. We never discussed it.”

Miriam came over and, sitting with her back against a trunk, stretched out her legs wide, closed her eyes and lifted her face, gently smiling, to the sky, listening but not speaking.

Rolf said: “I used to believe in God and the Devil and then one morning, when I was twelve, I lost my faith. I woke up and found that I didn’t believe in any of the things the Christian Brothers had taught me. I thought if that ever happened I’d be too frightened to go on living, but it didn’t make any difference. One night I went to bed believing and the next morning I woke up unbelieving. I couldn’t even tell God I was sorry, because He wasn’t there any more. And yet it didn’t really matter. It hasn’t mattered ever since.”

Miriam said without opening her eyes: “What did you put in His empty place?”

“There wasn’t any empty place. That’s what I’m telling you.”

“What about the Devil?”

“I believe in the Warden of England. He exists. He’s Devil enough for me to be going on with.”

Theo walked away from them and made his way down the narrow path between the trees. He was still uneasy about Julian’s absence, uneasy and angry. She ought to know that they must keep together, ought to realize that someone, a rambler, a woodman, an estate worker, might come along the lane and see them. It wasn’t only the State Security Police or the Grenadiers they needed to fear. He knew that he was feeding irritation with irrational anxieties. Who in this deserted place and at this hour was likely to surprise them? Anger welled up in him, disturbing in its vehemence.

And then he saw them. They were only fifty yards away from the clearing and the car, kneeling in a small green patch of moss. They were totally absorbed. Luke had set up his altar—one of the tin boxes upturned and spread with a tea-towel. On it was a single candle stuck in a saucer. Beside it was another saucer with two crumbs of bread and, beside that, a small mug. He was wearing a cream stole. Theo wondered if he had been carrying it rolled in his pocket. They were unaware of his presence and they reminded him of two children totally absorbed in some primitive game; their faces grave and dappled by the shadow of the leaves. He watched as Luke lifted the saucer with the two crumbs in his left hand, placing his right palm above it. Julian bent her head lower so that she seemed to crouch into the ground.

The words, half-remembered from his distant childhood, were spoken very quietly but came to Theo clearly. “Hear us, O merciful Father, we most humbly beseech thee; and grant that we receiving these thy creatures of bread and wine, according to thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ’s holy institution, in remembrance of his death and passion, may be partakers of his most blessed Body and Blood: who, in the same night that he was betrayed, took Bread; and, when he had given thanks, he brake it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, Take, eat; this is my Body which is given for you; Do this in remembrance of me.”

He stood back in the shelter of the trees and watched. In memory he was back in that dull little church in Surrey in his Sunday dark-blue suit, Mr. Greenstreet, his self-importance carefully controlled, ushering the congregation pew by pew to the communion rail. He remembered his mother’s bent head. He had felt excluded then and he felt excluded now.

Slipping away from the trees he went back to the clearing. He said: “They’ve nearly finished. They won’t be long now.”

Rolf said: “They never are long. We may as well wait breakfast for them. I suppose we should be grateful Luke doesn’t feel the need to preach her a sermon.”

His voice and smile were indulgent. Theo wondered abut his relationship with Luke, whom he seemed to tolerate as he might a well-meaning child who couldn’t be expected to make a full adult contribution but who was doing his best to be useful and was no trouble. Was Rolf merely indulging what he saw as the whim of a pregnant woman? If Julian wanted the services of a personal chaplain, then he was prepared to include Luke in the Five Fishes even though he had no practical skills to offer. Or had Rolf in that single and complete rejection of his childhood religion retained an unacknowledged vestige of superstition? Did he with part of his mind see Luke as the miracle-worker who could turn dry crumbs into flesh, the bringer of luck, the possessor of mystic powers and ancient charms, whose very presence among them could propitiate the dangerous gods of the forest and the night?

Friday 15 October 2021

I am writing this entry sitting in the glade of a beechwood, my back against a tree. It is late afternoon and the shadows are beginning to lengthen but, within the grove, the warmth of day still lingers. I have a conviction that this is the last diary entry I shall make, but even if neither I nor these words survive, I need to record this day. It has been one of extraordinary happiness and I have spent it with four strangers. In the years before Omega, at the beginning of each academic year, I used to write an assessment of the applicants I had selected for admission to college. This record, with a photograph from their application form, I kept in a private file. At the end of their three years it used to interest me to see how often my preliminary pen-portrait was accurate, how little they had changed, how powerless I was to alter their essential natures. I was seldom wrong about them. The exercise reinforced my natural confidence in my judgement; perhaps that was its purpose. I believed that I could know them and did know them. I can’t feel that about my fellow-fugitives. I still know practically nothing about them: their parents, their families, their education, their loves, their hopes and desires. Yet I have never felt so much at ease with other human beings as I have been today with these four strangers to whom I am now, still half-reluctantly, committed and one of whom I am learning to love.

It has been a perfect autumn day, the sky a clear azure blue, the sunlight mellow and gentle but strong as high June, the air sweet-scented, carrying the illusion of wood smoke, mown hay, the gathered sweets of summer. Perhaps because the beech grove is so remote, so enclosed, we have shared a sense of absolute safety. We have occupied
our time in dozing, talking, working, playing childish games with stones and twigs and pages torn from my diary. Rolf has checked and cleaned the car. Watching his meticulous attention to every inch, his energetic rubbing and polishing, I found it impossible to believe this innocently employed natural mechanic with his simple pleasure in the job was the same Rolf who yesterday had displayed such arrogance, such naked ambition.

Luke busied himself with the stores. Rolf showed some natural leadership in giving him this responsibility. Luke decided that we should eat the fresh food first and then the tins in their date-stamped order, discovering in this obviously sensible priority an unwonted confidence in his own administrative ability. He has sorted out the tins, made lists, devised menus. After we had eaten he would sit quietly with his prayer book or come to join Miriam and Julian while I read to them from
Emma
. Lying back on the beech leaves and gazing up at the glimpses of the strengthening blue sky, I felt as innocently joyous as if we were having a picnic. We were having a picnic. We didn’t discuss plans for the future or the dangers to come. Now that seems extraordinary to me, but I think it was less a conscious decision not to plan or argue or discuss than a wish to keep this day inviolate. And I haven’t spent time rereading the early entries in this diary. In my present euphoria I have no wish to encounter that self-regarding, sardonic and solitary man. The diary has lasted less than ten months and, after today, I shall no longer have need of it.

The light is failing now and I can hardly see the page. In another hour we shall begin the journey. The car, shining under Rolf’s ministrations, is packed and ready. Just as I feel confident that this will be the last entry in my diary, so I know that we shall face dangers and horrors at present unimaginable to me. I have never been superstitious, but this belief cannot be argued or reasoned away. Believing it, I am still at peace. And I am glad we have had this respite, these happy innocent hours stolen, it seems, out of inexorable time. During the afternoon, while rummaging in the back of the car, Miriam found a second torch, little larger than a pencil, wedged down the side of a seat. It would hardly have been adequate to replace the one which failed, but I am grateful we didn’t know it was there. We needed this day.

The dashboard clock showed five minutes to three, later than Theo had expected. The road, narrow and deserted, opened palely before them, then slid under the wheels like a strip of torn and soiled linen. The surface was deteriorating and from time to time the car jolted violently as they struck a pot-hole. It was impossible to drive fast on such a road; he dared not risk a second puncture. The night was dark but not totally black; the half-moon reeled between the scudding clouds, the stars were high pin-pricks of half-formed constellations, the Milky Way was a smudge of light. The car, handling easily, seemed to be a moving refuge, warmed by their breath, smelling faintly of familiar, unfrightening things which in his bemused state he tried to identify: petrol, human bodies, Jasper’s old dog, long since dead, even the faint aroma of peppermint. Rolf was beside him, silent but tense, staring ahead. In the back seat Julian sat squashed between Miriam and Luke. It was the least comfortable seat but the one she had wanted; perhaps being buttressed by the two bodies gave her an illusion of added safety. Her eyes were closed, her head rested on Miriam’s shoulder. Then, as he watched in the mirror, it jerked, slipped and lolled forward. Gently Miriam raised it to a more comfortable position. Luke, too, looked asleep, his head thrown back, his mouth a little open.

The road curved and twisted but its surface became smoother. Theo was lulled into confidence by the hours of trouble-free motoring. Perhaps, after all, the journey need not be disastrous. Gascoigne would have talked, but he hadn’t known about the child. In Xan’s eyes the Five Fishes were surely a small and contemptible band of amateurs. He might
not even bother to have them hunted down. For the first time since the journey began there rose in him a spring of hope.

He saw the fallen trunk only just in time and braked violently a moment before the car bonnet scraped its jutting branches. Rolf jerked awake and swore. Theo switched off the engine. There was a moment of silence in which two thoughts, following so quickly they were almost instantaneous, shook him into full consciousness. The first was relief; the trunk didn’t look heavy despite its bush of autumn leaves. He and the other two men could probably drag it clear without much trouble. The second realization was horror. It couldn’t have fallen so inconveniently; there had been no recent strong winds. This was a deliberate obstruction.

And in that second the Omegas were upon them. Horribly, they came at first unheard, in total silence. At each car window the painted faces stared in, lit by the flames of torches. Miriam gave a short involuntary scream. Rolf yelled “Back! Reverse!” and tried to seize the wheel and gear-stick. Their hands locked. Theo thrust him aside and slammed the gears into reverse. The engine roared into life, the car shot back. They crashed to a stop with a violence which threw him forward. The Omegas must have moved quickly and silently, imprisoning them with a second obstruction. And now the faces were at the windows again. He stared into two expressionless eyes, gleaming, white-rimmed, in a mask of blue, red and yellow swirls. Above the painted forehead the hair was dragged back into a top-knot. In one hand the Omega held a flaming torch, in the other a club, like a policeman’s truncheon, decorated with thin pigtails of hair. Theo remembered with horror being told that when the Painted Faces killed they cut off the hair of the victim and braided it into a trophy, a rumour he had only half believed, part of the folklore of terror. Now he gazed in fascinated horror at the dangling plait and wondered whether it had come from the head of a man or a woman.

No one in the car spoke. The silence, which had seemed to last for minutes, could have been held for seconds only. And then the ritual dance began. With a great whoop the figures slowly pranced round the car, beating their truncheons on the sides and the roof, a rhythmic drumbeat to the high chanting voices. They were wearing shorts only but their bodies were unpainted. The naked chests looked white as milk in the flame of the torches, the rib-cages delicately vulnerable. The jerking legs, the ornate heads, the patterned faces slit by wide, yodelling
mouths, made it possible to see them as a gang of overgrown children playing their disruptive but essentially innocent games.

Was it possible, Theo wondered, to talk to them, to reason with them, establish at least a recognition of common humanity? He wasted no time on the thought. He remembered once meeting one of their victims and a snatch of their conversation came into his mind. “They’re said to kill the single sacrificial victim, but on this occasion, thank God, they were satisfied with the car.” He had added: “Just don’t meddle with them. Abandon your vehicle and get away.” For him, escape hadn’t been easy; for them, encumbered with a pregnant woman, it seemed impossible. But there was one fact which might divert them from murder, if they were capable of rational thought and believed it: Julian’s pregnancy. The evidence was now sufficient even for an Omega. But he had no need to ask himself what Julian’s reaction to that would be; they hadn’t fled from Xan and the Council to fall into the power of the Painted Faces. He looked back at Julian. She was sitting with her head bowed. Presumably she was praying. He wished her good luck with her god. Miriam’s eyes were wide and terrified. It was impossible to see Luke’s face, but from his seat Rolf poured out a stream of obscenities.

The dance continued, the whirling bodies moving ever faster, the chanting louder. It was difficult to see how many there were but he judged there couldn’t be fewer than a dozen. They were making no move to open the car doors but the locks, he knew, provided no real safety. There were enough of them to overturn the car. There were torches to set it alight. It was only a matter of time before they were forced out.