The Missionaries (v1.0), page 22
“I beg you, William. Remember the sacred—”
“It’s too late. Old chap.”
Dacre felt the air move around him, and William’s eyes on the back of his head. He knew they were William’s, he could feel William’s mind. The pressure grew. It was as if his teeth were crowding and crumbling against each other, noisily, without pain, noisily crumbling into blunt unpleasant pieces without pain. He bowed his head and walked on, leading his father. Voices came to him, borne to him on rushing wind across horizonless sand.
“The necessary equipment is gone, William. You can’t do it, not without the necessary equipment”
“I don’t believe it”
“The M-ship is destroyed. I activated the self-destruct. Last night, when I finally knew there was no other way.” “You’re mad.”
“Cora’s word was innocent. From minds like yours I accept either. Sniggering behind your hands as I stood in front of you preaching good intent.”
“But it was good.” A woman’s voice—Cora’s? “The colonisation would be intelligent and merciful. Nobody need suffer.”
“If you believe that, then it’s you who’s the innocent. These people are completely vulnerable. They’d be destroyed. Can’t you see that? What little they had, what small intimations of the truth they possessed, would totally disappear. We’d leave them rootless, cultureless, uncomprehending, and angry. Endlessly angry. Ultimately they’d be no use, even as slaves.”
Dacre and his father reached the door. The boy had understood, had heard clearly so that it made sense, although very little. But he was alive. The noises in his head had stopped. And he was trembling so that he could scarcely stand. He paused with his hand on the bar of the door. He was afraid to open it and go through.
“Then you knew.”
“I knew that these people needed protecting. I knew that where four had come, others would follow.”
“And the Mission? What about that?” William was shouting, crying almost. “Without the necessary equipment the Mission is nothing.”
“That is not true. Ustiliath existed before the machines. It will exist after them.”
“And us—how long do you think we’ll exist?”
‘We’re not afraid.”
It was a statement of fact. Simple. Undeniable. Gordon wasn’t listening. He was impatient with his son, and pushed the bar on the door himself. It stuck, then jerked up with a clatter. The two doors swung open and he went through, Dacre following. He was going to find Sylvie. She was a stupid, angry, gloating woman, and she’d taunt him with his return. But she’d hold his arm so that he knew she was there.
They crossed the drab, maroon-painted foyer—smelly ladies on the right, smellier gents on the left, chipped table and chair for collecting tickets—and went out into the darkness, down the steps to the asphalt path. The street was steep and ill-lighted, and they walked along it carefully, down towards where they had left the car. Suddenly Dacre pulled him into a shadowed little tunnel between two buildings.
Gordon would have protested. But he saw in time that the street ahead was frill of people, all moving slowly up the hill towards the meeting hall. They walked quietly, not with the quietness of stealth but with the steady, wordless quietness of determination. He knew that bis first thought—that they were going to the meeting after all—had been wrong. As they drew near and passed, not looking to either side, not caring who observed their passing, he saw that they were carrying sticks, and pitchforks, and, curiously, bales of hay.
Their purpose was clear. He wanted to stop them. He wanted to step out into the street and speak to them, tell them to go back to their homes. But he was afraid. Gestures in dark alleys were for those with all their lives before them. Only they were rich enough to squander safety. The poor man hung on the one crust he had.
Behind the people came a line of cars, moving at the same slow, inexorable pace. As the first car passed him in the narrow street he saw, not six feet away, by the light from its instrument panel, the dim outline of its passenger’s face. It was Sylvie’s face.
He cried out weakly, and his son’s hand tightened on his arm. The cry was lost under the low-gear grinding of the cars.
“Later,” the boy whispered. “We’ll go up and see her later.”
The cars passed, fourteen of them. By now the walkers would have reached the meeting hall. Sylvia’s presence in the leading car confused him. She wouldn’t surely be there if the walkers intended…what he’d thought they intended. (Without a name his failure to prevent it was less blameworthy.) She was a stupid, angry woman, but she’d surely never agree to…He walked out into the middle of the now deserted street and watched the rear lights of the last car brighten as the driver braked, drew in to the side, and stopped. Then the lights went out. The hill wound up from where he stood, quiet and dark except for a single gas lamp on the wall of a building halfway up.
Then, suddenly, a cheer and a light growing against the night sky. A cheer and a man’s loud voice, every word clear down the hill to where Gordon stood, and Dacre, and beyond.
“Do ’ee know what us do’s to witches down these parts, maister?” The bumpkin voice exaggerated, cruelly mocking. “Us bums witches down these parts, maister. Bums they right up.”
Gordon started to ran, his fears named and unavoidable. Once again Dacre held him back.
“There’s nothing you can do, father. Only get yourself hurt.”
“But we can’t let them—”
“We can’t stop them.”
Neither of them suggested going for the police. None of it was real enough. The glow was magical, bright and steady against the black sky. There were noises too, unreal shouts and screams, and the increasing, dreamlike roar of the fire. Half of Dacre’s mind was still in the meeting hall, in the smell of dust, in the yellow lights.
It was the nature of the fire that drew him: not a wish to help, not curiosity, not morbidity, simply the elemental pull of flames in a dark night He had to see them, be near to them, feel their warmth, see the paleness of his hands in their light. At first he walked slowly, leading his father as before. Then he lost patience and went on ahead. The old man could come up at his own pace.
The crowd in the street, and in the open ground around the meeting hall, had fallen quiet. A man was shouting instructions—Dacre saw it was O’Hara—and people ran, frightened now, to do what he said. The hall was well alight, burning with the reckless enthusiasm of old, much varnished wood. The heat was already enough to make the surrounding grass, sodden with weeks of autumn rain, stream and begin to blacken. The night was still, and the hall burnt in a great mountain of flame, sending sparks high into the sky. O’Hara’s helpers were keeping the onlookers back, gathering buckets of water from the houses around in case the hedge should catch, and loading empty petrol cans into the back of a car which quickly drove away.
Dacre elbowed his way through the crowd to the front. The fire brigade had been sent for. Not a sight or sound of movement had come from the hall since the fire had begun.
His informant was a stout old soul in a bright flowered pinny. “How do you know anyone was still in there?” he asked her.
“Sent young Gavin to peek through the window. They was there, alright. Looked like they was prayin’ to their mister somebody. Rapin’, murderin’ bloody ’ypocrites.”
And suddenly the missionaries were real again. They were flesh that binned, bones that calcinated, and minds that felt pain. They had wanted to bring about his own death, and he had done nothing to save them from theirs. George, who was innocent, was also the most guilty, with a martyr’s eye, and would certainly have gone to the flames praying. The other three, notwithstanding young Gavin’s information, would have been less grateful: to them Dacre offered all he had—regret, and dreams of their agony that would haunt him all his life.
He shielded his eyes and forced himself to look up, into the burning building. Behind the windows an unimaginable white river of flame ran ceaselessly upwards. As he watched, the last of the roof ties parted, and a long section of wooden wall canted slowly inwards, leaning blackly against the fire until the heat burst through. It seemed to melt, like a sheet of wax, and disappeared. His imagination peopled the furnace beyond with figures, still erect, the flesh running from them in streams as it burned. He saw their tongues. He heard their screams.
Sylvia stood quietly at the back of the crowd. She thought the burning had gone very well indeed. O’Hara, though no gentleman, was a finely unobtrusive organiser. She’d been quite right, of course; once away from the vicar’s inhibiting presence and she’d had him eating out of her hand in no time at all. His advice had been invaluable. It was really very hard indeed to believe that he hadn’t had previous experience of these matters.
The burning had gone well, and she should have been pleased. Indeed, her joy at the first kindling had been acute, and had intensified as the flames encircled the building and those inside were inescapably contained. She imagined them die. The enemies of the Lord were punished. The task her angel had given her was done. She found herself screaming her pleasure, hoarse, with wildly beating heart. She’d been relieved that everybody seemed themselves too excited to notice. But now her joy had gone and she felt cold and slightly sick, jostled by sweating grubby people whose pleasure had likewise faded. Soon the fire brigade would come, and the police, and the lies would begin. Had she been on her own, she told herself, she would have acknowledged her responsibility proudly. But, she told herself, there were others who would suffer with her, and she had no right…
She noticed an old man standing a short distance off, trying to attract her attention. She shaded her eyes from the dying glare and saw that the old man was Gordon. She had forgotten how he would look, her memory of him fixed ten years, twenty years before. She smiled at him and he dared approach.
“Should you be here?” he said. “Dacre told me you were ill.”
“Not at all. Just lonely. Lately a friend of Mr. Dunbarton has taken me around once or twice. Not a particularly pleasant man, but it made a change.”
“Good…good, I’m glad.”
Glad? Glad that she’d been lonely? Glad that she’d found another man to take her around? The terrible thought occurred to her that perhaps Gordon wasn’t coming back to her.
“I’ve missed you, Gordon.” She leaned forward and kissed his cheek. “And I’m sorry about the cat. I was angry with you for inviting all those people. I wanted you to myself. Dacre and I, we wanted you to ourselves. But it wasn’t very nice.”
“Cat?” He was rubbing his ribs as if they pained him. “What cat?”
He stopped rubbing his ribs and reached out to take her hand. She let him, looking away at the people silhouetted against the last of the fire. Gordon was hers. Explanations would not be necessary.
She nodded in the direction of the fire. “What a horrible thing,” she said. “Was anybody inside?”
“The four missionaries.”
He said the words in an odd way, as if it was all terribly distant.
“Oh, Gordon. Oh, I am sorry.”
“Yes.” He sighed. He was an old man. “I had grown to like them. As people, I mean. I shall miss them…He trailed off. “I know you didn’t like them.”
She saw no point in denying it. “Do you think the hall was burned on purpose?” she said.
She caught his sideways glance. Perhaps he knew more than he was saying. She didn’t mind; whatever he knew, or thought he knew, he’d never say it. He was hers now.
“These people are savages,” she said, challenging him just the once. “They’re quite capable of it.”
They stood close together, not speaking. A police car siren blared distantly, approaching.
“Between you and me, Sylvie,” Gordon said, “the missionaries weren’t all they were cracked up to be.”
She smiled. The admission had been his, should it be needed later. It was not necessary to press the point. The siren grew louder.
“Do you have the car, Gordon? I happened to be passing with that friend of the vicar’s I told you about—” again she saw him glance at her but not speak “—and now he seems to have got himself far too involved. They’re like that, of course, the Irish.”
“Of course I’ll take you home, Sylvie. But I don’t think I should go just yet. In view of my position in the movement the police are sure to want to talk to me.”
“Your position?” It was not so much a question as a warning. “What position?”
He made a faint gesture with his free hand. “I was mistaken,” he said finally. Staring at him, making certain that he meant it, she noticed his clothes for the first time, his stupid moleskin clothes. “But I’m afraid I shall still have to talk to the police,” he said. “I was probably one of the last people to see the missionaries alive.”
“Please yourself.” She had no wish to appear anxious. After all, she had no need to be. She had done nothing. Nothing except stand at the back and watch, from where she could of course give a firsthand account of the public spiritedness of O’Hara.
A strong, manly hand grasped her elbow.
“My dear Sylvia. Thank God you’re safe.” It was the vicar, panting from the hill. He often used her Christian name these days. “I came as soon as I heard. What a shocking thing. I gather I’m too late.”
“Except to pray for their souls, vicar.” If they had any. “I blame myself, of course.” Of course. “If only I had got here sooner, then perhaps—”
“Nobody would have listened to you.” Now that she had Gordon back she was feeling benevolent. “They were quite hysterical. They’d never have listened to you.” “Nevertheless, I should have tried. I should have made my protest known.”
She tightened her fingers on Gordon’s hand and drew him nearer to her. “I hope you’ll come and visit us, Vicar,” she said. “You’ll be very welcome up at the farm any time you care to call.”
She understood now, with total certainty, that he too knew more than he was saying. He’d expected her to be there, and he hadn’t even questioned that the burning was intentional. She felt sorry for him. Obviously he was aware, now that it was too late, of how he had been used. In the future she thought this might worry him. So she smiled at him, and patted his arm.
With the approach of the police the crowd had thinned and was rapidly disappearing. The first police car drew up, closely followed by a second, and then the fire engine. Their blue lights revolved angrily. Men in uniform ran neatly, and hoses were laid out. The ruin of the meeting hall still flamed, but only intermittently. By its uneven light, as the people were drifting away, Dacre had seen his lads, Rocky and Crud, standing with buckets of water in their hands, prominently well-meaning, prominently innocent. But he’d seen them earlier, carrying bales of straw, on their way up the hill. He’d lowered his head and moved away into die shadow, denying them. Having failed them, he had no alternative.
A jet of water curved and fell, hissing, leaving a black stripe across the indolent embers. Dacre edged away, deeper into the surrounding darkness. Policemen were gathering the few remaining members of the crowd, those few eager for the immortality of having their names and addresses taken. He found a narrow gap in the hedge and forced his way through it. In the total darkness on the other side, between the hedge and various garden walls, he moved quickly away.
He stopped abruptly when he reached the comer of the hedge by the street. His father and mother and Mr. Dunbarton were standing not twenty feet away, talking to a police sergeant. Their faces were illuminated rhythmically, arrogantly, with harsh blue light. Dacre couldn’t hear what was being said, but the police sergeant was asking questions and taking notes of their answers.
A fireman ran by, tearing the breathing mask from his face as he ran. “We’ve found the bodies,” he shouted. ‘We’ve found the bodies.” People glanced in his direction, then looked away. His news was nothing to do with them.
Dacre waited, watching from die shadows. Later there ought to be things he should say to his father. The policeman finished his questions and went away. Mr. Dunbarton stayed for a moment longer, talking to the two old people. He took their hands, pressed them together and— the reconciliation effected—he too then went away, quickly on to other parish business. It was, Dacre thought, the most painful sight he had ever seen: his father and mother standing hand-in-hand, held together by that gesture of lovers, and smiling.
His mother said something and they turned, looking briefly in the crowd for someone, possibly their son. Dacre stayed where he was and shuddered. The duty of their search performed—he was, after all, nineteen and well able to look after himself—they walked away down the street to the car, their hands still interlocked. He knew it was not for him to interfere. They needed each other. Their sickness was shared, and terminal.
He got away unobserved, up the hill, round by back streets and down again to the main road. After waiting nearly two hours he got a lift in a lorry taking cabbages up to Covent Carden. The driver had a radio, which he played till the BBC went off the air at two. The lonely sound lulled Dacre, and he slept. When it stopped he woke abruptly and for four hours, without speaking, scarcely thinking, he watched the lorry’s headlights create and consume. Road, hedgerow, fence, wall, spun out of darkness and fed upon. Beyond the coming day, and the one task left to him, there was nothing.
Dawn was breaking as he left the lorry and walked slowly away from the market, up through Leicester Square to Piccadilly. He went into a bright cafe, lit with alternate strips of red and white and green, and had a sort of breakfast He found he had very little money. But the cup of coffee and the shiney bun bought him warmth and somewhere to sit and he stayed in the cafe for nearly two hours. Then, judging Mr. Wilcox to be an early riser, he thought it reasonable to make a move.
Russell Square was grey and windy, its ranks of empty parking spaces strangely depressing. Rain spattered for a few seconds, and gave up. Dacre rang the doorbell at the Ustiliath Centre, identified himself over the intercom, and was quickly admitted. On his way up to the third floor he was met by a tall, pale young man.
