Thimblewinter, page 2
Cal, who was driving, had a whispered conversation with the Constable beside him, as we saw a group of men in tattered blue uniforms swing open the gates and beckon us forward.
“Is it safe?” He asked. “Are they real police?”
“Most probably city militia,” the Constable answered, “we’ll have to negotiate a toll, but they should be alright.”
The Land Rover inched forward and one of the men, with sergeant’s stripes, came to talk to the Constable, while another two came to inspect the back of the vehicle. Close to I could see that their outfits were made up of various bits and pieces of clothing and equipment, though there had been some attempt to retain a semblance of uniformity with blue jackets and caps or berets predominant.
They had guns, of course; pistols at their belt and shotguns. Cal had told me afterwards that the pistols were mainly for show, as bullets were scarce, but everyone carried shotguns, as you could with precious little skill make your own loads.
I was too busy watching the two men who came to look at us, to catch what the other man, the sergeant, said to the Constable. Mrs. Sharma and I didn’t move and they didn’t ask us to get down. One of them was a young, thin man, with a sharp, bony face and a cleft lip. He muttered something as he poked around in the bundles on the floor, but it was hard to understand what he was saying, though I don’t think it was complimentary of Mrs. Sharma or me. The other one was bald-headed beneath his beret and fat, though how anybody got enough to eat these days to make them fat was a wonder to me. He moved me off what I was sitting on, but was not rough. Instead, he tried to joke with me.
“What have we here?” he said. “Little girl come to see the big city?”
Then he said something I didn’t understand:
“Turn again, turn again. No pavements made of gold here.”
I didn’t know what he meant, but in one way it was quite apt.
The Constable gave something to the sergeant and then we were through the barricade. The road here was better than the one we had come in on, though it was still holed and rutted. There were houses and other buildings lining the street, but there were still piles of rubbish and old cars rotting beside the road. There were women and children around, though few, and dogs that didn’t look feral. I wondered how Cal knew the way, but then I realised that all the roads led to the docks now.
And there were birds. Crows of course, on top of the rubbish heaps, but other big, white birds that were in conflict with them; gulls Cal called them and told me they were, from the sea.
Our journey had been decided on at the village meeting, though there had been much conversation before all was set. There was no-one to appeal to and no-one to help. We all knew this in our hearts.
The closest thing to government within a hundred miles, the Constable said, was the city council and their writ hardly ran beyond the city perimeter. We had not seen army soldiers for years and those had mainly been small bands of deserters and scavengers, more trouble than use. But just as everyone became despondent, the Constable told us his plan. If we wanted help, he told us, we would have to pay, either in food, or some other commodity.
“People still use gold,” the Constable said, “paper money is worthless, but in the city they still trade in gold. Or silver and precious stones.”
I’d never known a time when trade was done by anything other than barter and perhaps some of the people really had forgotten this, almost. But now the villagers remembered and recalled also that we had gold and that this was yet another story, another secret of the village.
What had occurred no-one was telling. But I knew - or at least had guessed some facts and learnt some others - that when things had started getting bad, during the sickness and in the fighting, there were all kinds of people on the road and all kinds of things with them. And the villagers, on their scavenging trips, hadn’t only taken food and petrol, but also these other things; rings and jewellery and even coins and plate.
Cal had once shown me our hoard of things, one wet day when he was stripping an engine in the lean-to next to the warehouse. He had let us into the dark, cave-like space with his key and shown me the sacks and cartons of a pirate treasure; watches that no-longer worked, rings and bracelets. It had seemed wondrous to be, awesomely pretty, but I had not thought it of any real use. Pirates, though, always had treasure and it occurred to me that perhaps we were, after all, somehow akin to pirates.
There were two things we needed, according to the Constable, weapons and people to show us how to use them. He would go to the city, he said, and see what he could find. He had no argument to win, as no-one put forward any other ideas. There was some discussion, though, on who should go with him.
We couldn’t spare many people and, besides, a big party of people on the road was probably more likely to attract attention than a little one. Cal had to go, that was sure, because if they were going to take one of the vehicles, there was a pressing need for a mechanic to keep it going.
Mrs. Sharma had volunteered to go and that made sense too, as she still had family in the city, or at least she thought so, and they were merchants, business-men, and could be useful to us. Lastly, it was decided that the Constable would go; though the people were loath to risk his safety, he insisted that it was his plan and he should follow it through.
Cal had decided to take the old Land Rover, as he reckoned he could find enough bio-diesel to power it there and back. They would take some trade goods, but that would be just to give the illusion we were traders, the gold would be hidden in the chassis. Not that any ordinary bandit you might meet on the road would find any use for it, but we are all magpies at heart, as grandmother used to say, and can still dream and wonder.
The Constable had decided that the best plan was to cut along some of the old mountain tracks and descend to the valley that way. Though there was more risk of the road washing-out or subsiding, the party would avoid the risk of ambush on the main road and would have less chance of striking up against our late visitors or other bands like them. Down in the Cwm, where one of those big highways had run, it would be best to join a road-train, the only safe way to travel. Though nothing was really safe these days, as the men who organised the trains were not much distanced from the bandits they were supposed to protect you against.
The preparations took some days. Cal had to cut out and weld a hidden compartment for the gold and other supplies and trade goods had to be brought together, but they were keen to be on their way, as the morning chill in the air and the low sun and the deep blue of the sky told us all that winter would not be long in coming.
The morning of the departure came and I was up before dawn, as I had planned to climb up the hills to our windmills, so I could watch them go. But as I sat there waiting in the half-light, I took to thinking of the journey they were going to make, and how it was like one of those old adventures I had read of. I thought of Captain Cook and Vasco da Gama, and suddenly I knew that I had to go and how I could make them take me. So I ran down the other side of windmill hill and picked my way over the boggy slopes and down into the woods.
I knew the route and where to put my feet in the bog; I had been this way before, but never alone always with shepherds or hunters. So it wasn’t until I was well into the woods, where no dawn light had managed to seep in, that I started being afraid and listening for the sounds of dogs, or a human footfall, or looking for the silky darkness of a big cat amongst the trees.
If there was anything in the woods, it probably thought I was a ghost, some sort of phantom and kept its distance. It was a pine forest, so it was easy going, no trailing brambles or undergrowth to trip you or snag you. I came out of the woods to a grey morning of low, heavy cloud and kept on downhill until I came to the tumble of rocks that they would have to pass on their way down the mountain, as the track snaked around the outcrop.
By the time I got to the rocks I was exhausted and my boots and trousers were wet from the dew, so I was cold too. I had just settled into a place between two boulders, where I could be comfortable but still see out, when I heard a sound like an animal screaming, but somehow I knew it was a human voice. I scanned the land around and then saw, somewhere below me, in broken ground before another band of woodland, some human figures moving about.
Even from this distance I could see that they looked almost like animals, with clothing of fur and hides, but I didn’t see too much, as I had tucked my head down and hid as best I could. I was regretting what I’d done and worrying. What would happen if, by some bad fortune, they didn’t take this track, or I fell asleep, which was likely, and missed them?
Sometime later, though, they did turn up. I heard the Land Rover’s engine labouring around the bend in the track and I appeared like some forlorn thing at the side of the road. Cal was angry, though Mrs. Sharma fussed over me and the Constable just seemed to accept my presence there. It was too late to go back, he said, it would take far too long to get the Land Rover up the track and they couldn’t spare anyone to walk me up the mountain. So we carried on looping around the ridge track and, as we went, I could still hear the call of the strange human animals down below in the woods.
By evening we were down in the Cwm and we crossed the river on the old railway bridge heading for the nearest way-station. We came up to a big, old building, burnt-out and in ruins, an old supermarket Mrs Sharma told me, in front of which was a vast flat space on which a road-train was being put together. There was another building there also; an old inn, Cal said, which was now the way-station.
“The inn is called ‘The Rock and Fountain’,” the Constable told me, as we parked amongst the other vehicles, “and it’s been here for at least four hundred years, since the days of stage coaches.”
But some of the vehicles were not that far removed from those stage coaches. I looked around me and saw various contraptions, some horse-drawn carts and trailers, some cars or vans powered by all sorts of fuel, with chimneys and tanks at odd angles all over the bodies and truck-beds. The centre pieces of this assembly were the two ancient steam tractors that would pull two vast trailers for goods and people afoot, but there were also some there with handcarts and wheel-barrows, who would follow the convoy for safety, being too poor to afford a ride.
“God help them if they fall behind,” said Mrs. Sharma looking at some of these unfortunate wretches.
The road-train agent did all his business in the inn, so the Constable set off there, though Cal, Mrs. Sharma and I stayed with the Land Rover. People seemed friendly. Some had fires going and were brewing tea; hedge tea of course, nothing special. But Mrs. Sharma told me to be wary of people, not all were as they seemed and things were harder for young girls; there were always those looking to take advantage of you. But you couldn’t live your life looking over your shoulder, as grandmother used to say, so I took little notice of her.
The next dawn we set out, after a night spent sleeping where we could in and around the Land Rover. And it was all such a spectacle, the big steam tractors at the front pulling the trailers and any other vehicles which could tag onto them. The ramshackle procession of wagons, cars and trucks was in the middle of the convoy and the people on foot and with all sorts of handcarts were bringing up the rear. All proceeding at a stately pace of about two miles an hour over the ragged strands of tarmac and pitted, muddy fissures of what had once been a mighty highway. And all around us the outriders, the road-train guards, like shepherds with a flock of sheep or more like sheep dogs worrying at stragglers.
There was one thing, which I will always remember, that occurred on the second day towards evening, in the half-light, at the time when the scouts were usually ahead looking for somewhere to camp. It inevitably happened that, by this time, some of the people who were walking fell behind and often, but not always, the guards would hurry these people up and try and get them back to the main body of the train.
Because it was getting late, the light was going, and people were getting weary, no-one had noticed that an old man with a hand-cart and two girls - daughters or grand-daughters, who could tell - had fallen behind, by half a mile or so. The old man seemed unwell, but had insisted on pushing his cart, an old pram. The girls, one a teenager the other a child, had helped, but the younger one seemed to tire easily and had a bad chest.
None of us had realised how far they were in the rear until we heard the shotgun blast, then most of us in the middle part of the convoy stopped. Nobody had seen the small band of riders who had stalked the three stragglers. And all I saw, as I stood on the wagon bed of the Land Rover, was the figure of the old man slumped by the up-turned pram and the two girls, the older one struggling, taken up on the horses and borne away.
The road-train guards set off in pursuit, but without much zeal. They soon faltered in the failing light and returned without the captives. So it was that I spent a sleepless night and decided to heed Mrs. Sharma from then on. The next day, truth to tell, the incident on the road was almost forgotten, because we came to the place they called The Services, where the road-train stopped and broke into its many parts. We were on the outskirts of the city and, though not safe, were safe enough to complete the last few miles alone, though sleep caught up with me for the last leg of the journey.
As we drove on down to the harbour, the sea came on me suddenly and, though I had read about it and seen pictures, I was little prepared for the otherness of it. It filled up the bay and beyond the horizon I could see faint smudges of dark colour, a band between sky and sea. I thought they were clouds at first, but the Constable told me it was Devon, which I admit that, at the time, I took to be the name of some strange, exotic place.
Like the gull birds I had seen earlier, the sails that filled the harbour put me in mind of white ghosts hovering on the surface of that water. As we drove on down the hill, the town was laid out in front of us like an illustration in a child’s picture book, but it was a strange sort of skeletal presence. Much of it was ruined, with the occasional finger of an old church spire or the shell of a tall office or apartment block pointing to the sky.
The place had contracted, shrunk in on itself, between new walls, new defences, it seemed. A hectic mixture of shelters and shanties had crowded the spaces between the older buildings in the centre of town and here it was all hustle and bustle, while outside the ramparts and barricades the quiet ruins were mostly silent and haunted by scavenging creatures.
The market place was by the dock-side, through another gate and a set of ramparts and out onto the pitted tarmac of some sort of former car park. Because to all intents and purposes we had come to trade, that was what we intended to do, so as not to cast suspicion on ourselves. There were always militia and watchmen around the place, and people saw spies and thieves everywhere, so we had to act as we were supposed to.
It had not always been like this, Cal had told me, but in the days of the first big cold, when the hunger and the fighting came, there had been so many people on the roads - refugees from the big cities which were emptying out - that those who could had dug their ditches and built their walls to keep what was theirs and keep the others out. There was so little to go around, Cal said, that there wasn’t enough for everyone; so those that had it, guarded it jealously.
The Constable had found us a pitch and paid the market tax, which was more of our goods gone. It seemed to me that we had little to spread out on the old tarpaulin we had brought, but as I looked around I could see that may of the pitches had much less. One old man sat not far from us with precious little in front of him; an old watch, a pair of shoes and some broken children’s toys. He looked as if he would sit there all day, silent and unmoved, but later the market watch-men chased him off for not paying the tax.
We had not had room for much, so we had brought dried meat and cheeses, dried fruit and some honey; though the latter was a luxury as bees were rare creatures nowadays even in our mountain. There was some barter, but much of the trade was done in the city tokens that were currency here; these were flattish discs of recycled metal, from old cans mostly dredged up from rubbish heaps, and stamped with a value and the town crest. Cal was loath to take these, but the Constable though it best and besides we could use them while we were in the place. We were to find out later that they were not always sound, but that was a lesson people like us would always have to learn in such a place.
That day to me was a cup full to the brim of new sights and sounds, so it passed quickly by. If the Constable had some plan it was not clear to me, though he left most of trade, the little of it there was, to Cal, as he moved about getting the lie of the land as he put it.
Mrs. Sharma stayed close to our pitch and told me stories of the markets and shops when she was a girl, the stalls set up in rows under one great roof, the supermarkets with their electric lights and rows and rows of shelves, all the fruits and vegetables from all over the world. Names of things I did not recognise and, indeed, at times I found it hard to believe that she wasn’t exaggerating.
By late afternoon the sun, which had made the day so fine and warm and had taken my thoughts away from other things, was ranged low over the sea and I started to feel the cold. The Constable returned just then with a long face and Cal brewed tea up on the storm kettle, which was his pride and joy.
He meant to surprise and please the Constable with the twist of tea a sailor had traded for a piece of honey comb. It was all the way from India, the man had said, though I did not know and somehow doubted that he told the truth. It did go some way to lifting the Constable’s mood, the cup that cheers he called it, but his actual cup was an ancient thing of tin and chipped enamel.
He told us that we should be off the streets before dusk, as there was a curfew in the town. He had been told it was not safe after dark; though the militia enforced the curfew, there were too few of them to keep off the bandits and cut-throats and just plain desperate people who would rob you if you weren’t behind closed doors. The market inspector had told him of a place we could stay, where many traders and sailors spent their nights. It was a tall old building, once a big hotel, now a warren of filthy cribs run by the watch as a side line.
