by John Eider
‘I don’t get this place,’ mused Wareing with curiosity, once resting back at the field behind the cliffs; neither of us having found our way back over the rocks without some part of us hurting. ‘All the beer they can drink, cars scooting around in convoy, bullets to waste shooting at trees.’
‘And where have they got the guns from?’
‘You tell me.’
‘They couldn’t be auxiliary Army, or civil authorities?’ I asked, knowing even as I said it how unlikely this was.
‘Arming civilians in a crisis isn’t unheard of, but they’d give them some kind of badge or marking, even if there weren’t uniforms available. Anyway, it’s too remote for anyone in authority to have reached here yet; which might be exactly what allows them to carry on like this…’
I could tell he was thinking, but for the next hour or so we were in silence, back on our feet and moving back inland. We went around the outskirts of the town in a broad arc, all the while looking for point where we might broach the town’s thoroughfares again to reach our target building.
The only problem was that this town wouldn’t stop being unusual; and where most places we had been had been deserted if not derelict, here house after house seemed unfearingly candlelit, shops on each corner still with glass in their windows – even if their doors looked boarded up and not opened these three months. Time and again we would reach a street end, only for us to pause, look at the bright uncurtained windows looking out along each side, and decide to find the next one rather than risk taking that road into the town centre.
And nor was life here contained indoors: on one road a lad flew out of an alleyway on his bike to nearly knock me flying, while elsewhere we kept our heads down and kept walking when a woman, emerging at her front door, went to the side of her house and tipped a pan of sweepings into a dustbin.
‘They can’t still be having their bins emptied too?’ I said once around the next corner.
‘Probably force of habit, leaving it outside before they take it away themselves. Now shush!’
After almost reaching the northern end of the town, during which time there might have been half a dozen sightings of us that could have found their way back to the men with guns, we hit the jackpot – a long straight road heading back into the heart of the town, lined all along one side by the unlit brick wall of a shut up factory or warehouse (it was hard to tell which in the dark). Trusting that someone moving along this dark wall would hardly be noticed even by anyone living along the other side of the street, like rats we scurried that hundred yards in twenty seconds.
And there, at the end of the dark road, seen over the wall of the garden we’d flung ourselves into, was an odd little unlit stump of a building that caused Wareing to reach for his torch and map to double check. Beside it was what I guessed at being a playing field, only the edge of which could be made out before darkness overcame it three feet past its green fringe.
‘Could be useful,’ said Wareing nodding at the void night brought above the field.
‘Is that it?’ I asked, looking instead at the small building.
‘You sound disappointed,’ he almost chuckled, before we both froze: there was a voice behind us, and a car engine idling. Turning to see, still a good way off were the headlights of the gold car – that then proceeded to move toward us along the dark road we had just jogged along.
For his actions at this moment I will again be forever in Wareing’s debt: grabbing my arm, he pulled me up and out from behind that garden wall before my legs were even working properly. In a flash he had us six yards past the threshold of that playing field; another six and he threw me down, himself alongside me, we not even yet at the centre circle,
‘Get flat, completely flat,’ he spat in harsh whispers. ‘Head turned away, face down!’
It was an amazing thing, an exercise in sensory perception, how even that town of candlelight and moonbeams was still lit, how you could still make things out – until you entered the playing field with its absence of distinguishing features and of anything reflective. What would be plain sight by day was invisibility at night. Lying completely flat, hands tucked under me, the damp grass filling my nostrils, I couldn’t even see three feet away; and neither could the occupants of the car when, pulling up across the road outside our future target building, we heard them get out and then presumably look around in all directions.
‘Don’t even breathe,’ my saviour whispered nearly below hearing. I didn’t need telling, even my lungs had gone rigid in fear.
As a child, when stuck in detention on sunny afternoons, or lying in bed wide awake waiting for Christmas Morning, I would tell my disbelieving self over and over that this time of waiting would, at some point, end. However, even such interminable episodes had nothing on this. After scanning the area (quite uselessly, with eyes adjusted to a car’s lit interior and with its headlights glaring away on full beam beside them) the men didn’t leave but instead stood around idly chatting, kicking at stones on the road (one skimming a few feet past my unflinching colleague), and generally passing the time of day; or rather night, as it was past one o’clock by then.
And then the worst and best thing happened: the worst thing that the second car was heard to arrive and park up, presumably with two more armed men; the best thing that with these other men’s arrival then their talk became more pointed and easier to follow.
Allowing myself to breathe easier now, for they would surely not hear us over their own voices, I listened (as Wareing was undoubtedly doing beside me), memorising what I could, though the individual speakers were impossible to pinpoint:
‘Any sign?’
‘Nah, nothing.’
‘She said she was sure she’d seen someone coming this way.’
‘Listen to him, he’s still jumpy after nearly running over those hunters earlier.’
‘I am not.’
‘So nothing’s been pinched?’
‘No, I’ve just checked.’
‘And how are the stores?’
‘We’ve about a week’s worth of food left.’
‘The generator’s running low though.’
‘Then we’ll send the truck for diesel.’
‘No, we all need to be here for the shipment in the evening.’
‘But the ships are guided in by the lights: if the Palais isn’t lit up…’
‘Then you can hold a candlelight vigil on the beach.’
‘He’s right, he’ll need to get diesel.’
‘Then get it done tomorrow, before nightfall.’
‘“When da boat comes in…”’
‘What is coming in?’
‘The usual: food, booze, ammunition. Eight boats’ worth this time!’
‘How does he afford it all?’
‘He can’t, it’s what he offers them in return.’
‘What does he need more guns for anyway?’
‘He said you can’t be too careful, that anytime you get a good thing going someone’ll be along to try and take it from you.’
‘They bringing any birds?’
‘We’ve got birds here.’
‘But he’s been through ‘em all.’
‘They’re not the same.’
‘You idiot! You want to find a wife.’
‘He’d have married Tanya.’
‘Why bring her up?’
‘He would’ve an’ all.’
‘I still don’t know why she had to go.’
‘We’ve been through this – one of the Dutch took a shine to her, Ashe was hardly in a position to say no.’
‘We’ll he should’ve!’
‘Now look what you’ve done.’
‘I was just saying, was all.’
‘I think the weather’s turning.’
‘Did you hear they were bringing Radio 1 back?’
‘Why bring the stuff in at night anyway?’
‘Old habits die hard I suppose.’
‘Ya daftie, they’ve still got police in Holland! They still have to leave at n
ight. They can’t change their “habits” just ‘cos we run things here…’
And then the heavens did open, the arrival of clouds across the starscape not noticed with my face in the dirt. The men cursed, returned to their cars, and left to go about their business.
We stayed there a full ten minutes, till no voice or sound of engine was heard; whereupon we squelched back to the road and dashed back along the factory wall, and from there on into the countryside and the woods that had sheltered us. As we slowed to a walk we passed a sign: ‘Remember Your Stay in the Pearl of the East!’
We were soaked by now, but it was warm rain, and bearable knowing that this was almost our last night there, that we were taking our target that next evening or the one after that… and knowing too that we had an awful lot still to work out.
Chapter 24 – A Sortie is Planned