by Andrew Tudor
“The lassie’s right,” she said. “As many of ye know, I’m ninety-one and I’ve lived in these parts all my life. I grew up at a time when the only way we could manage was by helping each other. Back then my family were crofters, like many of yours. We’d been thrown off our land to make way for the sheep and the deer and the forestry, left to eke out a living along the coast here. My grandad used to tell me about the old days, about the coming of the big landowners, about our betrayal by the lairds. He was proud that we had stayed here and survived, and he always said that the only way we managed to do it was by sharing the load with each other. They were hard times. I wouldnae want them back. But he was right about the sharing. And so is yon lassie.”
This quiet speech seemed to put the seal on the afternoon’s events for most of those present. It remained only to arrange the work of the small groups and agree to return in a week to pool the fruits of their discussions. As they left, many of the participants stopped to thank Ali for her efforts and to compliment her on the success of the meeting. But she was less sanguine about it given the confrontation with Fleming, and also worried that the intensity of her response to Conrad would sow divisions among the Coveys. To calm herself she arranged with Douglas that he would pick her up later in the ATV. In the meantime she was going to take a walk around what remained of Inverewe Gardens.
The grounds were still impressive even though they could no longer be cared for as once they were. Beyond the area now given over to vegetables she found herself in among a thriving riot of exotic shrubs and trees. The paths were partly overgrown but still negotiable, and finally she found her way to a tiny jetty in a sheltered bay. There she sat down, looking across the loch to the headland which was now her home. It’s an awful long way from Forrest Road, she thought, as she drifted into contemplating all that she had left behind. Minutes went by and then her melancholic reflections were interrupted by the sound of someone coming down the path. Turning, she saw that it was Jimmy.
“May I?” he asked, indicating the space beside her.
“Yes, of course,” she smiled. “I’m just recovering from the stresses of the afternoon.”
“You did great,” he said, settling himself next to her. “Couldn’t have gone better really.” Then he grinned. “Did I mebbe hear a bit of Kropotkin there? Mutual aid? All is for all? Sounds familiar.”
Ali turned to him, beaming. “You know Kropotkin, then. My dad got me reading him when I was in my teens. He was determined to educate me in all kinds of political theory, including anarchism.”
“Aye, I’ve read Kropotkin. And all the rest of them radicals too. I’d a grandad who’d been in the Party, one of the Red Clydesiders. He didn’t much approve of the anarchists, mind. He’d have wanted you quoting ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’ rather than ‘All is for all’. But the spirit’s much the same. And right enough for us.”
They stayed there for a while sharing memories of parents, grandparents and radical politics until it was time to walk back through the gardens to find Douglas and the ATV. As they passed the now deserted café, Ali nodded towards it saying, “Let’s hope it works, then.”
Jimmy smiled at her. “Don’t worry,” he said, “we’ll make it work.”
That night, after a hastily prepared meal, Ali and Douglas fell exhausted into bed. They had spent much of the evening going over the afternoon’s events until Ali felt that she could no longer think clearly about any of it. It was with relief that she finally fell asleep, curled around Douglas’s back.
It was still dark when she awoke, uncertain as to what had disturbed her until she heard a low growl from Pike whom she could just make out standing by the window, his nose in the air and his ears erect.
“Whisht Pike,” she whispered. “You’ll wake Douglas.”
But Pike continued to growl until she got up to calm him. As she did so she realised that there was a faint glimmer visible through the curtains which, when she opened them a crack, resolved itself into the flicker of a fire. In haste she woke Douglas, threw on some clothes, and rushed outside just in time to see the faint shape of two figures, one very tall and one short, disappearing into the darkness. She cried out to Douglas who was immediately behind her.
“It’s Sarah’s house.”
“Yes, I can see,” he replied. “Go and wake them while I get the water pump.”
As she ran shouting out a warning, she half registered the crackling noise of the fire and saw that flames were licking up the end wall of the house. When she reached the door and flung it open there was already movement within. Sarah, Hugh, Irene and a very sleepy Charley emerged, just as Jimmy and Kenny arrived running.
“We heard the shouting,” Jimmy called out. “Is everyone OK?”
“Yes,” Ali replied. “Douglas is fetching the pump. Can you go and help him?”
Fortunately, they were able to get the pump working before the flames had reached the timber of the gable end so it was a simple enough job to douse the fire. Although the stonework of the building was blackened, there was no serious damage other than to the group’s sense of their own security. By now everyone had gathered around.
“I saw two people running away,” Ali told them. “One tall, one small. It’s obvious who it was.”
Kenny was inspecting some charred material at the foot of the burned wall.
“There’s a pile of flammable stuff here,” he said, lifting a fragment and sniffing it. “It’s been soaked in something. Paraffin maybe. Hard to tell. It’s as well you spotted it before it properly took hold.”
“It was Pike, not me,” she said. “He woke me up. Must have heard or scented them.”
Charley, who was next to the dog, bent down and put her arms around him. “Thank you Pike,” she said, “you’re a clever dog.”
The sight of the little girl embracing the animal raised some smiles among the disconsolate group, and, as dawn began to steal into the eastern sky, they assembled in Ali’s house to consider their next move. Obviously something had to be done, and quickly, or they would never sleep safely again. They were now effectively at war with Fleming, and with some reluctance all agreed that the fight had to be taken to him. Jimmy, Kenny, and Douglas volunteered themselves for this task as the three most accustomed to using weapons, planning to set out as soon as they could. Nobody was going to sleep now other than perhaps the children, so it was a tired and chastened set of adults who watched the three men drive off down the track towards Poolewe. Fleming’s house lay in the woodlands close to Loch Maree, and this was where they intended to confront him.
All morning Ali restlessly switched from one job to another, unable to concentrate on any of them. She was worried about Douglas, of course, although having seen him and Jimmy deal with the lorry hijackers she had no doubt about their competence. She was also troubled that so early in their attempt to foster a harmonious community they found themselves caught up in violence. Would this always be the way of it? Had Zeno left them with nothing more than a desperate struggle to survive at any cost? Her hard-won optimism of the previous day dissolved minute by minute as she watched and waited for their return.
It was past eleven when she heard the sound of the ATV approaching. Jimmy was not driving with his usual bravado and, when they came to a gentle stop, it became apparent why. He and Kenny carefully helped Douglas out of the vehicle and, one on either side, supported him across to the house where they settled him on the sofa.
“He’s been shot,” Kenny explained. “We think it’s only a flesh wound in the upper arm – the bullet went straight through. He’s lost some blood though.”
Ali called to Charley: “Run up and fetch Eleanor. Tell her to bring her first aid kit. Quickly!”
Charley sprinted off to find Eleanor who was the nearest thing to a doctor that they had. A few minutes later she arrived, careering down the track on her bike, emergency bag
flapping around behind her. While she examined and cleaned up Douglas’s wound, Kenny explained what had happened.
“We parked well out of sight of the house. Jimmy worked his way closer in the woodland and once he was in a position to cover us, me and Douglas walked up the driveway as if we were coming to have a peaceful discussion. We got about fifty metres away when the bastard opened fire with a rifle. No warning, no nothing. Douglas was hit and went down from the impact, so I grabbed him and dragged him in among the trees. I could hear shooting as we went, and it was only once both of us were under cover that I realised that what I’d heard was a burst of automatic fire from Jimmy. Then it was quiet for a while until there came a shout from inside the house. It was Carter. He said Fleming was dead and he was coming out unarmed with his hands up. I figured he was telling the truth since we would be in a position to kill him if it was a trap.”
At this point Jimmy took up the story. “I shouted to Carter to keep walking down the drive until he was level with those two, then told him to get down on his knees and shuffle towards where they were hiding. Then we waited. Finally I decided it was probably safe to make it into the house and, right enough, Fleming was dead. I’d seen where his second shot had come from while Kenny was dragging Douglas into the woods, and I’d hit him with that first burst of fire. Lucky, really. Then we brought the ATV up to get Douglas back here.”
“What did you do with Carter?” Sarah asked.
“We took him with us, dumped him in Poolewe, told him to leave and that if we ever came across him again he’d be dead, no questions asked.” Jimmy grinned. “And we told everybody we met in the village what had happened and where Carter was. Last we saw of him he was running away as fast as his long legs would carry him.”
Ali looked up from where she was holding Douglas’s good hand while Eleanor worked on his other arm. “Won’t he come back?” she asked.
“No chance,” Kenny said. “He’s a complete coward and I gave him some graphic details of what I’d do to him. We’ll go over there tomorrow and check out the house. He won’t be there, and there’s an ATV to be had and likely quite a lot of food stashed away. I think we can say that the Fleming problem is solved.”
For the remainder of the day Ali insisted that Douglas rested on the sofa, much to his initial disgust, although he had to concede that she was right when he stood up and immediately felt dizzy. Eleanor was sure that there was no bone fracture, although the bullet had caught some muscle as well as tearing flesh. She strapped his arm to minimise movement and left him with a supply of powerful painkillers. Around nine o’clock, Ali persuaded him to retreat to bed where, after taking several of the pills, he fell asleep.
The sun had dropped behind the hills when Ali took herself outside to keep company with Pike in the garden. She sat looking across the loch at The Cormorant riding at anchor, Stuart visible in the stern longlining for haddock. Ali was troubled. The satisfaction that she had felt after yesterday’s meeting had given way to a diffuse sense of hopelessness, a conviction that it was all far too difficult and that their good intentions were doomed to fail. She was desperately aware that she could have lost Douglas today; a few inches to the side and the shot would have taken his heart. His support had become so important to her since those first hesitant encounters in Edinburgh. She couldn’t begin to imagine how she might have dealt with his death. This was love, she conceded to herself, for the first time in her adult life.
She mused on that as the light faded, trying to raise her spirits by – what was the line from the old song? – yes, accentuating the positive. But the positive kept slipping away, leaving only dark thoughts of loss and failure. Then, her ruminations were interrupted by the sound of a door closing and footsteps coming towards her. It was Irene.
“I saw you sitting out here so thought I’d join you if that’s OK?”
“That’s fine,” Ali said. “I was just thinking about everything that’s happened over the past few weeks.”
“Mmmmn. Been eventful hasn’t it,” Irene observed. “How’s Douglas?”
“He seems to be all right. Asleep and dosed with painkillers. I’m only just taking in how close that was to killing him. I don’t know what I would have done.”
Irene reached across and squeezed her arm. “But it didn’t, did it. So be happy about that and stop entertaining terrible what-ifs.”
Ali nodded. “I know,” she said. Then, after a pause, “Do you ever think of how all this began for us? That day when we met at the National Gallery and you gave me the message for Sarah. Seems so long ago.”
“Sometimes. Mostly to recognise that if we had known then what we know now we might have acted very differently.”
Ali sighed. “But I don’t suppose it would have had much effect,” she said. “We’d still be caught in this impossible situation with so little to hope for. We failed. Well, I certainly did. If I’d gone public back at the beginning at least the Scottish government would have been obliged to do something earlier than they did.”
Irene looked at her quizzically. “You think you’re a failure?” she asked.
Ali nodded mutely.
“No, I’m not having that, Ali,” Irene said firmly. “You couldn’t have done anything to stop Zeno and does it occur to you that none of us would be here were it not for you? You got all these people together and organised them, first to go to your father’s place and then to move on to here. It’s you that kept them going. Without you this settlement wouldn’t exist. Me and the others on The Cormorant would have had no safe haven to flee to. And now, after what you did yesterday and over the past weeks, we’re going to be able to build a bigger community, make ourselves safer, create something worth having in the midst of all the death and destruction. If that’s failure, I don’t know what success would look like.”
Ali looked at her friend, her eyes moist with held-back tears. “You really think so?” she asked.
“Of course. And you have to think so too because we all need you. You’re our inspiration, Ali, and I’m afraid you’re stuck with it.”
She reached across and took Ali’s hand in her own. Darkness was edging its way over the loch in front of them, broken only by a solitary riding light on the anchored boat rising and falling in the gentle swell. Hold onto the light in the dark, Ali told herself, hold onto the promise of a future. And sharing that hope, the two women gazed off into the still of the Highland night.
12
Some five hundred miles to the south, England is burning. The PeePees have discovered the cleansing joy of flames and they are leaving a trail of fire in their wake. Also in their wake is Jonathan Hart, tracking them by the terrible destruction that they are wreaking across the land. He sees the burnt-out buildings, the bodies, the PeePee symbols roughly painted on doors to mark their passing and to signal the forcible conversion of yet another poor soul. Hart is all but overwhelmed by despair at the horrors of which human beings are capable. ‘Man’s inhumanity to man’ doesn’t even begin to cover it, he thinks. But he knows what he has to do. Perhaps he has always known.
Remaining hidden in an empty house near Kings Langley, he waits until he is certain that the PeePee army has swept by to his north. Only then does he emerge, first working his way back to Whipsnade. The park is deserted. The buildings around the main entrance have been burned, but most of the rest – including his chalet – have been ransacked but left standing. He finds no bodies so presumes that Rowlands and the others have gone into hiding. Nor does he find the yaks. No doubt slaughtered for food, he thinks sadly, hoping that his yak might at least have met a speedy end. His hidden caches are still intact, allowing him to replenish supplies before moving on in pursuit of the marching hordes. After resting for a night in Whipsnade, he continues west.
This takes him not too far to the north of Oxford and, for reasons that are not entirely clear to him, he diverts a little from his cross-country route to visit the
city. A kind of sentimental journey, he thinks, a farewell, an opportunity to recall a happier past. In the event it proves anything but a nostalgic encounter. Oxford is laid waste, now resembling one of those famous war photographs where the crazily leaning remains of buildings look like so many broken teeth. The ancient colleges have been razed, burnt out, and, in some cases, blown up, while over everything hangs the putrid odour of death. There are occasional movements among the ruins but Hart does not stay to discover who or what causes them. If there are survivors then, like him, they are doing their best to avoid each other.
From Oxford he turns north-west, knowing that sooner or later the core of the PeePee army will target Birmingham as the largest city in the region, and there he will find the Prophet. Along the way he picks up snippets of information from the few people that he meets who are willing to talk. In Banbury he strikes lucky, coming across a man who has succeeded in hiding himself and his family and who, after the uniformed main force had continued on its way, had seen the Prophet pass through in a horse-drawn carriage surrounded by a band of brown-robed Guardians. Feigning loyalty to the cause, the man had asked one of the ragtag band of converts in their train where they were headed and had been told that there is to be a great rally, addressed by the Prophet, in the grounds of Warwick Castle.
Hart covers the intervening twenty miles as quickly as he can, determined to reach the castle well before the rally. Once in the area he makes a surreptitious reconnaissance late one evening. Preparations are under way. A huge banner hangs across the entrance to the grounds announcing ‘My God is a Consuming Fire’, while a large open space close to the river is evidently to be the location for the rally itself, scheduled for two days hence. Hart goes into hiding then, and on the day of the rally dresses himself in Lionel’s robe and hangs the PeePee pendant around his neck. Beneath the robe he is wearing the explosive belt and a holster for his pistol. He has cut through the robe’s voluminous pockets so that when, monk-like, he thrusts his hands into them, as he has seen so many of the Guardians do, he can reach his weapon on one side and the dead man’s switch on the other. Thus prepared, he sets out for the castle grounds.