by Nigel Kneale
THE CLEARING
Sir Timothy pauses only to grab the loaded blunderbuss before running after Sam and the others. Jethro glances at Cobb, picks up a lantern and goes too.
Lavinia looks at Cobb. He is breathing fast, all complacency gone.
THE ROPED TREES
A long shot across a different section of the rope barrier. Sir Timothy and Jethro join the other searchers. The rope in the foreground is undisturbed. But now something creeps towards it from outside. A pitchfork.
It tweaks the rope deftly and sharply, then whips out of sight. The cowbell and scraps of harness on the rope are set jangling.
JETHRO (pointing): There!
The men come running, Sir Timothy in the lead with his blunderbuss. The others have their staffs and rakes at the ready. As they peer about, there is growing alarm in their faces.
From the silhouetted shape of a tree in the foreground outside the rope—something projects. The end of a pitchfork. A man’s head follows it, watching them go.
Jethro suddenly turns, flashing the lantern round. Before the head can withdraw, he has seen it.
JETHRO (shouting): It’s Jeff! Behind that tree.
They turn quickly back. The big man springs out into the lamplight, roaring with laughter.
BIG JEFF: How’s that for a spook? You should’a seen your faces!
His wild laughter is cut off by a thunderous boom from the blunderbuss.
Sir Timothy has fired over his head. Jeff cringes, white and silent before the suddenly fierce figure glaring at him across the rope. Smoke drifts from the guns wide muzzle. Leaves and twigs scatter down.
SIR TIMOTHY: Throw your fork down. (Jeff does so) Now get back to the village and stay there. If I see you again, you’ll get this through your middle.
Big Jeff stands a moment more, then twists round and bolts, crashing and blundering through the bushes. As they turn back, Lavinia comes running.
LAVINIA: What was it?
SIR TIMOTHY: Big Jeff. I frightened him off home.
LAVINIA: Oh. I thought you’d—killed—
She breaks off. He watches her.
JETHRO: Why should he do it, sir?
SIR TIMOTHY: He’s a simpleton.
LAVINIA: Did he cause—the other?
SIR TIMOTHY (after a moment): No.
JETHRO: D’you still think it was a shot?
He gets no reply.
THE CLEARING
Cobb is standing with a staff in his hand, close to Tetsy as if ready to defend the girl. He feels obliged to explain the weapon as the others return. He tosses it down.
COBB: She was frightened.
Sir Timothy passes the gun to Sam.
SIR TIMOTHY: Reload this.
And while Sam finds the powder horn, he returns to his observations.
Tetsy has not moved. Her eyes go to Cobb again.
TETSY (quietly): You seen it like I did.
Cobb gives her an odd look, as if she is mad. He takes out his snuffbox with deliberation, turning to Lavinia.
COBB: How much longer—are we to share this midnight party for the yokels?
Lavinia’s eyes are on his hands. They are trembling. He forces himself to open the silver box without spilling the contents. He clicks it shut and takes a great sniff.
Sir Timothy frowns at one of his thermometers. He checks the previous reading in his notebook, then notes the new one with his crayon. He hurries to the next lighted plank with its jars and instruments. What he sees there leaves him in no doubt.
He turns to find Jethro at his elbow.
SIR TIMOTHY: The thermometers—they’ve gone down by seven Fahrenheit degrees! In these last few minutes. (He makes for his wife and Cobb) Have you noticed the air temperature? It’s dropped.
LAVINIA: Yes.
She shivers and pulls her cloak round her.
COBB: Normal at this time of night, surely? Out here in the open—
SIR TIMOTHY: It’s not normal.
He darts across the clearing to where another thermometer is set up. The results are the same. He scribbles in his notebook. Cobb stays close behind him.
COBB: Sir—are you bent on spreading alarm? Not only to the women—
SIR TIMOTHY: The barometer’s down too. All in the past five minutes.
COBB: You’ll have these simple men in terror. I appeal to you, squire, not to submit to superstition—
SIR TIMOTHY: Quiet!
He makes for the planks where the electrical apparatus is set out.
COBB (staying with him): I don’t think you’ve the smallest idea what you’re doing!
SIR TIMOTHY: I’m setting down facts! Even if I don’t know what I’m doing—if I make these readings for all the wrong reasons—there’s no doubt about them! If I don’t find out their meaning, someone else will. They’ll take this notebook as I’ve taken other men’s—and they’ll read it and use it! It will be there to use!
He crouches over the Leyden Jars. Cobb stares at him, momentarily baffled.
COBB: That—humility again. (As the implications begin to reach him, he draws back, suddenly and strangely appalled) Selfless. Aimless. Mindless. Why do I suddenly find danger in it? (He starts back towards the middle of the clearing) Yes, danger—danger—!
The camera pans from him to a couple of men on watch by the rope. They turn back to look out into the darkness.
COBB (joining Lavinia): Make sure you despise him for the right reasons. (She frowns) He is ruthless in his way.
LAVINIA: Timothy!
COBB (seized with insight): One of a blind, mad pack! They will do things!
LAVINIA: What do you mean?
COBB (coming to himself): Let us leave this place. (She shakes her head, watching him) Why not? (She says nothing) I’m afraid now. You know that.
LAVINIA: Yes.
COBB: And you want to watch it.
She says nothing. The camera pans from them to where Sam is wiping down the reloaded blunderbuss with a greasy rag. Tetsy is at his side. Jethro sits without expression. In the tree above, Lukey is cramped and watchful. He stretches.
At the rope barrier, a man joins two of the others and they crouch, listening.
The camera pans to Sir Timothy. He is just rising from his observations when he freezes at a small, sharp sound. It lasts perhaps two seconds, distant and uncanny, a fragment of a shrill wail.
Sam is instantly on his feet, the gun raised.
Above in the tree, Lukey stares about in alarm, grabbing at the trunk.
Lavinia is looking to Cobb when her husband hurries across and grabs Sam by the arm.
SIR TIMOTHY: Was that like the sounds you heard?
SAM: Yes, I—think so—
Cobb steps forward, fighting to maintain his composure. His voice has a shake in it.
COBB: This is where we must take a grip on our senses. Whatever this be, it is of the world we inhabit. We can understand it if we seek a profoundly natural—
This time the distant wail lasts a fraction longer, three or four seconds. And there are other, more staccato, sounds superimposed on it.
SAM (pointing): Far away yonder! That’s where it started before—
COBB: Quiet, lad.
There is a blast of sound in the very clearing. Again it cuts in sharply, but this is a terrible medley of noises, of deafening loudness. It lasts only a second or so. Then it cuts again.
Lavinia clings to Cobb in terror. All round the clearing the men are shouting out their alarm. The lad comes tumbling down from his tree almost at Sir Timothy’s feet.
The squire brushes aside the shuddering lad and crouches by his precious apparatus on the nearest plank. Sweat is streaming down his face.
Cobb looks jerkily about, his heavy face loose. Sam has dropped the gun. One arm is round Tetsy, his other hand creeps to the hidden talisman within his jerkin.
In the tree, Lukey has stuck to his post.
LUKEY (shouting down): Squire! Squire!
Below, Sir Timothy is at the e
lectrical apparatus. He yells back.
SIR TIMOTHY: Stay where you are!
The tiny gold leaves of the electroscope are moving, opening and closing as a charge reaches them through the wire. Sparks flicker between two brass knobs.
The distant sounds come again—and again—in short, irregular bursts. From now on they do not cease.
Sir Timothy sits back on his haunches, watched by fearful men nearby. He wipes his sleeve across his streaming face and turns again to his notes.
Lavinia looks to Cobb with a desperate trustfulness.
LAVINIA: Say what this is! I know you can! You must.
But he has no comfort for her. He shakes his head, looking vaguely about—and encounters Tetsy’s eyes fixed on him across Sam’s shoulder. He frees himself from Lavinia and calls to her.
COBB: Do you see anything?
TETSY: No—not now.
COBB: Nor I.
Sam turns.
SAM: Now you believe me!
Cobb looks round the clearing in a wave of demoralisation. The distant sounds go on—and for the first time it is possible to read some meaning into them.
Nothing that Cobb can understand, as his expression shows—but to listeners of two centuries later, the sounds would be hideously significant.
As they blend more and more it is just possible to discern the rising and falling of numerous air-attack sirens at a considerable distance. Unsynchronised, they tend to merge into a single wavering throb, but even that is unmistakably evocative. Superimposed on it are small, sharper sounds—distant car horns in frantic chorus.
Two men on watch suddenly throw down their staffs and run across the clearing past Cobb. One ducks under the ropes and is away. The other gets tangled. Bells ring and clatter.
SIR TIMOTHY: Stop them! You there—come back! I need you—
But the men are gone, and the others are on the brink of doing the same.
The second, far louder, type of sound breaks out again—at first in half a dozen rapid, fragmentary blips, then slowing to irregular bursts that last three or four seconds each. The sheer volume of sound is terrifying. It shatters those in the clearing. More men run off.
Glass jars are kicked aside, smashed by running feet. The rope itself is trampled down. A man stumbles through Sir Timothy’s electrical apparatus, dragging wires, scattering Leyden Jars.
Lukey Chase lets go his toasting forks and slithers down through the branches.
Below, Sir Timothy runs from hopelessly trampled apparatus to the next position. There is dread in his face, but he manages to concentrate enough to get the lids on to the jars.
Lukey tumbles to the ground behind him and is about to run after the other men when he sees the squire. He rushes across and grabs him by the shoulder.
LUKEY: Quick, sir—get out of this!
But Sir Timothy shakes him off wildly. Lukey shrinks as another clap of sound strikes, and runs for his life.
He bolts past Sam, on his knees now and still holding on to the terrified Tetsy.
SAM: Hear the road now! Hear them running there!
The intermittent bursts of the louder sound are blending into a single roar. And picked out in it, as if close at hand, is the particular sound of running feet on concrete, of many feet, moving fast.
Sam suddenly makes a plunge for the gun and stands up facing the unseen runners.
SAM: Stop, you—devils or whatever you be! Hold or I’ll shoot! Hold, will ye!
But the noises crash on, and in another moment Sam’s gesture is over. He drops to the ground in abandonment to mortal terror. Tetsy crawls over to him, looking to the others in desperate appeal.
Lavinia is crouching by the fallen tree. Her cloak has slipped off and she is shaking with cold and terror, her arms crossed across her breasts. Cobb is on his feet but seems to be supporting himself against the shattered trunk as if he has lost the power to move.
Suddenly Lavinia starts forward, hands over her ears to keep the battering noises out until she reaches safety. She runs only a few paces before tumbling, tripped by a root. As if the fall frees some paralysed mechanism in her, she starts to scream.
She finds herself lifted, turned about, and looks into the face of the negro.
LAVINIA: Save me! Oh, save me!
But he glances round at the others who are equally helpless. He tugs off his livery coat and throws it over the shuddering woman—
Cobb stands rigid, hypnotised by the experience.
The running footsteps seem to have passed. And the huge formless roaring that lay behind them has sharpened in its turn—to the engines of innumerable cars. It is as if they are roaring through this very clearing in hundreds. A burst of angry hooting in the distance is echoed by horns close at hand as they scream by.
Jethro is tugging at Cobb’s arm.
COBB (resisting): No—
JETHRO: Come quick, sir—
COBB: Listen! It’s machines!
JETHRO: Please—
COBB: Machines, Jethro, great machines! This can be nothing of the past!
JETHRO: Master—
COBB: I must hear! Leave me!
He shakes off the servant’s grip, clings again to the trunk for support as Jethro goes.
The noises are almost continuous now, and changing their nature. Brakes scream, horns blare close at hand. A rending crash is followed by a rapid series of metallic crunches, as if cars have piled together. Women scream, men shout. There is a brutal revving of engines as if in the worst, most frantic traffic jam of all time. More and more voices are shouting, at first unintelligibly. Car doors are slammed. There are more footsteps ringing out on the concrete.
Sir Timothy totters to the middle of the clearing with his notebook still in his hand. Cobb has not moved.
Sam, flat on the ground with Tetsy at his side, draws the twig cross out of his jerkin and holds it before the shaking girl.
Lavinia is lying where she fell, hiding under the negro’s discarded livery with her hands clamped on her ears. Jethro is nearby. He is bare to the waist, on his knees facing the direction from which the noises first came. He has drawn two spindly saplings together across the track and is fumbling to tie them with a strip of livery braid. He mumbles to himself, half-remembered words from the past. His eyes are squeezed shut as if he is trying to close his mind against the noise.
The camera pans to the ground, to the raw, trodden leafmould.
The strangely blurred voices of the unseen people are clearer, sharp with fear.
VOICES: Get out of it! Get back there! Where’s the police? Get out of the way! Get back! Back up there! Drive into them! Go on, that’ll shift ’em! It’s a pile-up, can’t you see! It’s hopeless! They’re all shunted up! Dozens of ’em . . .
WOMAN ONE: Oh God, oh God, oh God—!
MAN ONE (almost sobbing): Clear it, make them clear it!
MAN TWO: All lanes blocked—it’s hopeless!
WOMAN TWO: More to the side there, quick! On to the hard shoulder—
MAN TWO: It’s no use!
WOMAN TWO: They’re all doing it!
MAN TWO: No bloody use—
WOMAN TWO: Quick, before he does!
MAN TWO: It’s all blocked solid.
MAN ONE: That crash did it. If it hadn’t been for that—
WOMAN ONE: Oh God, oh God, oh God—
MAN ONE (bellowing): Let us through! For Christ’s sake let us through!
MAN THREE: Out of the car—quick!
WOMAN THREE: What’s the use? It must be time—
MAN THREE: Come on, kids! All out, quick!
WOMAN THREE: They said four minutes! It must be about that—
MAN THREE: Quick, I said!
WOMAN THREE: Oh, Charlie—
MAN THREE: Now we’re going for a run—first to reach the signboard gets a shilling—
WOMAN ONE: Oh God, oh God, oh God—
MAN ONE: We can crawl across the bonnets!
MAN THREE: Run like hell! Run, damn you, run!
WOMAN ONE: Oh God, oh God—!
She slurs into helpless sobbing.
MAN TWO: Four minutes, it’s far more than that now—
MAN ONE: What’s the time, then?
MAN TWO: Far more than four minutes—
WOMAN TWO: P’raps it’s not going to—p’raps it won’t—p’raps it’s all a mistake—
She goes off into hysterical laughter.
The voices blur again, yelling, arguing and simply gibbering with helpless fright.
Close shot of Cobb. He gives a sudden moan, a curious formless cry at the impact of a sensation too great to bear.
COBB: Oh, there—
Tetsy, on the ground, covers her eyes even from the rough cross. As Sir Timothy drags himself towards the fallen tree:
COBB: I can see them! I can see the road!
Appalled, he stares along the leafy space of the clearing.
SIR TIMOTHY: What are they?
COBB (vaguely): People—
The voices sharpen again.
WOMAN TWO: Why don’t they come! I want them to come! I want the rockets!
CHILD: What rockets! Daddy, what rockets?
MAN FOUR: Shut up!
WOMAN TWO: Send them quick! Send the rockets quick! Get it over—get it over!
Cobb rubs a hand hard across his eyes.
COBB: I can’t see—it’s gone again—
SIR TIMOTHY: They said—“rockets”—
A wide shot of the clearing with its few crouching figures, as the sounds and voices go on. The traffic roar has died away. Instead, there is a huge, murmurous lull. A few voices, far off, are singing a hymn.
Car doors slam in increasing numbers and the walking feet move rapidly, between the unseen halted vehicles.
Close shot of the ground, all grass and earth, with Sam’s shaking hand in frame clutching his twig cross. The footsteps clatter only a few feet away, and voices are clear and close.
MAN FOUR: Quicker! Quicker, darling—gimme the baby!
WOMAN FOUR: Can you manage?
MAN FOUR: I can manage another! Now then—(Roars) Ronnie!
WOMAN FOUR: Ronnie, hold on to Sue’s hand! Keep together among the cars!
CHILD: We’re walking on the motorway!
WOMAN FOUR (with dreadful, anguished firmness): That’s right. Walking on the motorway. Isn’t that a funny thing? Because you’re not supposed ever—
Wide shot of clearing.
The individual voices are lost in an extraordinary human sound. A vast anguish that seems to start far off along the motorway and sweep it along, growing. A multitude in total desolation.