by Hilary Green
He grunted and turned away to put three pieces of fish on plates. Then he put the plates down, gave the pan of chips a cursory shake and put it back into the hot fat and then disappeared into the back of the shop. I thought I heard the faint ding of a telephone being picked up. I looked round, wondering whether I should gather up the children and disappear into the night. No, that would look very suspicious. Better to wait. But who was he ringing? When he came back I said,
“Look, I’m sorry. I think we’d better take it with us after all. I hadn’t realized how late it is.”
He looked at me and raised his eyebrows.“Oh ah?” Then he turned away, muttering something about ‘want to make up your mind’ and shovelled fish and chips into bags. I paid him and went quickly to the children. They protested miserably at being dragged away from the television and out into the streets again. Tim began to cry, saying, “I hate this. I wish we’d never come. We ought to have stayed at home.”
Eventually we found a bench in a little public garden and sat huddled together, eating the food with our fingers. While the boys were quiet I struggled with the problem of where we should spend the night. Travelling like this it could take days to reach Dolgelly but I shrank from the risk of going to a hotel, or even of presenting our ration books again. It occurred to me sickeningly that I had made myself into a homeless vagrant whose children might well be taken into care, and with some justification. Added to this it would soon be completely dark and we were violating the curfew.
Desperately I looked around me. A short distance away stood a church. Recollections of the law of sanctuary flickered through my head. Could we spend the night in there? Cold comfort for my weary children! But if there was a church, there must be a vicar or a rector, or a minister of some sort, living nearby. Was it too trite and romantic an idea to believe that a man of religion could not refuse us hospitality? I made a decision born out of sheer desperation.
“Come on, kids. We’re going to find somewhere to stay now.”
They dragged themselves to their feet and followed me. I walked as far as the church. Outside was a board giving times of services and, underneath, the name of the minister, the Rev. Philip Woodstock. We found the house next to the church. I marched straight up to it and rang the doorbell.
It was answered by an attractive, untidy woman perhaps a little older than myself. As soon as the door opened I said, “I’m very sorry to bother you, but I need help. Could I possibly speak to the vicar?”
She took us in with a quick glance and stood back with a lack of hesitation which surprised me, saying “Come in, please,” and at once closed the door quietly behind us. Then she crossed the hall and opened another door into a lighted room.
“This way, please.” She smiled at me, then turning into the room added, “Someone needs help, Philip.”
I went in, feeling Tim’s hand slipped into mine. The room was furnished with old, well-worn furniture and fabrics with William Morris prints; a room of warm colours and gleaming polished wood, which reflected the glow of a log fire. The Rev. Woodstock, his dog-collar protruding above the neck of an equally well-worn sweater, was just rising from an armchair.
“Come in, come in. Come and sit down. I’m Philip Woodstock, and this is my wife, Jenny.”
There was no surprise in his voice. I shook hands with him, feeling suddenly as if I had stepped outside my body and was watching myself from a distance.
“My name is Eleanor Fairing. These are my children, Simon and Tim. I’m sorry to intrude on you like this.”
“Not at all,” he exclaimed. “Do sit down. Jenny, could we have some tea, do you think? And some warm milk for the boys? Have you had anything to eat?”
“Yes, thank you,” I answered, and Tim, who was as instinctive as a dog in his reactions to people, said, “We’ve just had some fish and chips.”
“Well, that’s splendid, isn’t it,” Philip Woodstock grinned. “You come and have a warm by the fire then.”
He was in his middle thirties, I guessed, dark haired and round faced, with clear blue eyes behind large, dark- rimmed glasses. We seated ourselves and he dropped back into his chair and leaned towards me, clasping his hands between his knees.
“Now, where have you come from?” he inquired.
I blinked at him. “You seem to know why we have come to you. . . .”
He looked puzzled. “I’m sorry. I’d assumed . . . You were directed here, weren’t you?”
“No.” I shook my head. “I came—well, out of desperation, I suppose.”
“Let’s call it inspiration,” he said cheerfully. “But you are looking for shelter for the night. Am I right?”
‘Yes, you are,” I said. “But I don’t know how you guessed.”
“Never mind that for the moment. Just tell me your story.”
So I told it, without reservation, feeling that anything less than total frankness would break the spell and have us cast out again into the darkness. By the time I had finished Jenny Woodstock had returned and the boys were growing heavy-eyed over their hot milk.
“Right. First things first,” said the vicar. “You are very welcome to spend the night here and you will be perfectly safe, so please don’t have any worries on that score. Now, it looks as if these two young men are about ready for bed, so shall we get them settled first?”
Jenny took us upstairs and helped me to settle the boys in a big double bed, then left me to say goodnight to them. I gave them both a long hug.
“I’m sorry it’s been such a nasty day, loves. Let’s hope tomorrow will be better.”
Simon looked up at me, snug among white sheets.
“You can’t help it, Mum,” he said. “I expect you wish Daddy was here to look after us, don’t you?”
I hugged him again to hide my face and then escaped quickly into my own room.
After a while I washed and tidied myself and went down again to the sitting room. The relief of having found shelter was like the gentle onset of some pain-killing drug and I felt lethargic and slightly shaky. The vicar and his wife fussed over me, seating me by the fire and pressing me to accept more food or another hot drink. I knew well enough the strain on the rations of feeding extra mouths and refused but when Philip Woodstock produced a bottle of brandy and insisted I must have some ‘for medicinal purposes’ I weakened.
After I had taken a sip or two he said, “So you really happened to knock at our door quite by chance?”
“Yes,” I replied. “I was afraid to try a hotel. I just took a gamble that a minister wouldn’t turn me over to the authorities. But I take it I’m not the first.”
The husband and wife glanced at each other briefly, their faces sombre.
“Far from it,” Philip said. “I take it you know what has been going on in this area.”
“You mean the riots and street fighting in Oxford and Reading? I only found out when I tried to drive through today. We had no idea where I live how bad it was elsewhere.”
He nodded. “No-one knows much about the rest of the country, but we have become a kind of staging post for people getting out of Oxford. It’s been quiet here. Everyone has obeyed the regulations and more or less accepted the situation. Besides which the local KBG are pretty active and well supported. Anyone trying to raise a protest has been dealt with in a fairly summary fashion.”
“I’ve had some experience of that in my area,” I put in.
He went on. “We heard about the riots in Oxford, and then we saw the troops moving in. It was after that we had our first —refugee is the only word for it, I suppose. I found him in the church one evening. He was a lecturer from the University —quite a prominent man. I won’t tell you his name, but it is one that you would probably recognize. He had been instrumental in organizing the resistance and when it was clear that they couldn’t hold out much longer his students persuaded him to get out. He would have been a marked man once the authorities took over and they felt he could be more useful free than in prison. We gave him a bed fo
r the night and sent him on his way. He must have somehow got word back into the city, because a night or two later we had another lecturer on our doorstep, with his whole family—wife and two very small children.”
“Where did they go, after leaving here?” I asked.
“West,” he answered, “the way fugitives have always headed in Britain—west and north, into the mountains. Our communications are not much better than in your part of the country but we do hear rumours from time to time. Also there’s a pirate radio station I can sometimes pick up, when it’s not being jammed. Apparently the industrial Midlands are in a state of virtual rebellion, mostly in the hands of workers’ revolutionary councils and such like, with pockets where the KBG are holding out. The Cotswolds are crawling with army units and Cheltenham is a KBG strong-hold with Civil Militia patrols on every street comer. But, according to what we hear, and I must stress it is only rumour, on the other side of the Severn, round the forest of Dean, they have made what amounts to a UDI. They are refusing to accept any orders from the present government and have raised a force to hold all the river crossings from the Severn Tunnel up to Gloucester. Of course, they couldn’t hold out for long if the government sent in troops, but I get the impression that the army has got too much on its plate just now to worry over much about such a relatively unimportant area. Anyway, that’s where the others were headed for, hoping to find a temporary sanctuary, if nothing more. But I must emphasize again that these are only rumours.”
“I can confirm some of them,” I told him, and related my interview with Clare. He listened intently, nodding from time to time.
“So things really are that bad,” he said when I had finished. He leant back in his chair and stared into the fire and I saw on his face the same weary disbelief that I had seen on so many others that day. He shook his head. “The economists and the political observers have been warning us for two years that this could happen, but even up to a couple of months ago I never believed it would. Hardship, yes —but not this choice between a totalitarian government and anarchy.”
“None of us did,” I replied quietly.
He returned his attention to me. “Anyway, the best suggestion I can give you is to head in the same direction. If you can get across the Severn you should find people who will help you on your way. Now, I know a young chap who drives a lorry for a local market gardener. He goes to Gloucester pretty well every day and he’s willing to help people like you. If we put you in the back, behind some crates and under a tarpaulin, can you be sure that your boys won’t give themselves away if you’re stopped?”
I remembered the petrified silence in the back of the car on one or two occasions that day and said, “Yes, I can be pretty confident about that.’
“Very well, then,” he continued. “I’ll get in touch with this lad and see if he can take you on tomorrow.”
He fetched an ordnance survey map and spread it out on the table.
“He’ll drop you —here, where the Cheltenham-Stroud road crosses the A436 into Gloucester. After that I’m afraid you’ll have to go on on foot. I should head for here if I were you.” His finger indicated a broad loop of the river. “There’s a ferry marked across to Newnham. Obviously it won’t still be running normally, but you might be able to persuade someone to take you across, or get a message over to the other side.”
He straightened up and looked at me. “It’s not a very encouraging prospect, I’m afraid, but it’s the best I can do.”
I looked again at the map. By the tortuous side-roads which I would have to follow it must be all of sixteen or twenty miles to the ferry from the main road. Could the children walk that far? One did hear of them doing remarkable distances on sponsored walks —but under these circumstances? Well, we should just have to see.
Philip said, “I can’t give you the map, but I’ll make a tracing of that part for you. Then at least you’ll be able to find your way.”
I shook my head. “There’s no need, thanks. I brought some maps with me. I’ve got this one in my case.”
“Well,” he gave me a small, approving smile, “you obviously came prepared for a round about journey.”
I sighed. “I hadn’t reckoned on doing most of it on foot. I really believed that by now we’d be safely in my parents’ house, you know.”
He touched my arm consolingly. “Come and sit down again.”
When we were seated I said, “Have you had any other people through here —since the professor and his family?”
His face darkened. “We had a young chap a few days ago. He was quite a harmless, mild-mannered lad —not the firebrand type at all. He’d been picked up by the police during a street battle and accused of being one of the ring-leaders. They wanted the names of the people who were organizing the resistance and where they could be found. After twenty-four hours they handed him over to an army interrogation unit. I won’t go into details about what they did to him. He told me that the unit had recently been recalled from Northern Ireland. He heard one of the officers say ‘Thank God we can get on with the job without some doddering government minister pussy-footing around because he’s afraid the press will get hold of it.’ When they were convinced he really didn’t know anything they drove him a few miles out of the city and pushed him out of the car. We had to keep him here three days before he was fit to go on.” He paused for a moment and then added, “I think it was the most shattering experience of my life — realising that such things can happen here. That the torturers are not a different breed of men. ...”
We were silent for a while. At length I said, “It must be difficult for you. Aren’t you afraid of what might happen, if you were found out?”
He got up and pushed a log back onto the fire with his foot and stood looking down at it, his hands thrust deep into his trouser pockets.
“Yes,” he said, without looking at me. “I am, sometimes, very afraid. Specially since that last incident. And very disturbed, too. It goes against all my instincts to oppose the rule of law, but how can I refuse to help people like yourself, like that boy? Sometimes I feel I should be standing up in my pulpit denouncing the Government and urging my flock to resistance. How can I be sure that it is prudence and not cowardice that stops me? And yet, what useful purpose would it serve?” He looked at me and gave a small, self-deprecating smile. “You see, I can’t offer you great certainties or —or religious guidance. I’m as confused as you are.”
By morning the sense of unreality, of existing in the dimension of dreams or of watching myself on film, which had repeatedly overtaken me on the previous day, had gone. As soon as we had eaten breakfast Philip led us through into the garage and opened the rear door of his elderly car.
“I hate to appear melodramatic,” he said apologetically, “But would you mind crouching on the floor with a rug over you? There aren’t any road blocks to pass but we do have the usual quota of nosey neighbours and I’m afraid the KBG like to encourage them.”
After a short drive the car stopped and Philip let us out into a yard surrounded by bams and outbuildings. The car was drawn up a few feet from the lowered tailboard of a lorry. A young man beckoned us quickly into its interior. The lorry was stacked with crates of vegetables and a space had been left in one place just large enough for us to sit in. We settled ourselves and Philip stacked our luggage at our feet. There were hasty goodbyes and an inadequate attempt at thanks and then the tailboard was fastened. A moment or two later we were on the move again.
It was not a pleasant journey. Our positions were cramped and the hard floor of the lorry jarred our bones, while the smell of cabbage grew quite sickening in the confined space. However, for me the sense of forward movement compensated for all the discomforts. Every two minutes was another mile of our journey behind us and I would quite happily have stayed where I was all day, if that would have got us to Wales and my parents’ house.
We were stopped once and I heard the driver being questioned about his load and his destination but it was obvious
that he was known and the questions took the form of friendly chaff. It never occurred to anyone to check the load. I thanked God, as we pulled away, that we were, as a nation, inexperienced in such matters.
Soon afterwards we stopped again and after a moment the driver’s voice spoke casually from outside the lorry.
“I’ll have to drop you here. We’ve just crossed the Cheltenham road. That’s where the check-point was. If you walk on from here and take the next on the left you can get back onto the main road to Stroud at Castle Hill.” A match rasped as he lit a cigarette. “There’s no-one about. I’ll come round and undo the tailboard. Then I want you to nip out as quick as you can. O.K.?”
“O.K.”
I squirmed round and gathered up our things and we squeezed between the crates to the rear of the lorry. A moment later we were outside on the verge in the bright March sunlight. The driver slammed the tailboard shut and said, without looking at us, “Cheer-oh, then. Good luck!”
A moment later the lorry had disappeared round a bend.
We began to walk. Tim said, “Is it going to be very far?”
“Yes,” I said firmly. “Further than you’ve ever walked in your life.”
He sighed. “You know I hate long walks!”
I said, with a touch of asperity, remembering all too well his moans and protests when he grew tired of walking, “Well, it won’t be any good saying ‘I can’t walk any further’ or ‘I want to go home’ because it will be a question of going on or spending the night in a field, probably. So you’d better make up your mind that you can walk —a lot further than you think.”
All day we plodded through the lanes which skirted the edge of the Cotswolds, heading always west towards the Severn. The weather began clear and sunny but by mid-afternoon it had clouded over and a steady drizzle began to fall. The suitcase which I carried was heavy and made me feel conspicuous. At a little village store I purchased two pounds of carrots and a paper carrier to put them in. In a field farther on I emptied out the carrots and crammed our most essential belongings into the carrier. Everything else went into a ditch to be covered with brambles and dead leaves.