The World in Winter

by John Christopher

  Dear Andy,

  By the time this reaches you, the boys and I will be in Africa. I’m sorry to have to let you down again, but it’s the best thing for everybody. David is quite right: things are going to get worse. If you have any sense at all you’ll get out yourself while there’s time. I may say I’ve sold the house, forging your signature on the contract. You won’t have expected me to draw a line at that, will you? I only got £3,200, and was lucky to get it. I’ve also cleared out my account and cashed the Savings certificates. My total capital is just under £4,000. On David’s advice, I’ve chosen Lagos as our best bet. I’ll send you an address as soon as I have one. I really think you ought to come out yourself.

  Yours,

  Carol

  ‘You’ve read it, I expect,’ Andrew said. David shook his head, and Andrew gave him the letter. ‘You’ll know what’s in it. It was your idea, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Basically,’ David said. He handed back the letter. ‘Will you go out there?’

  ‘To Lagos? And find she’s taken them to Cairo, or Salisbury, or Johannesburg? I’d be a fool to trust anything she writes or you say, wouldn’t I?’

  ‘They’ve gone to Lagos, all right,’ David said. ‘The idea in your going out would be to bring them back?’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Things are a bit chaotic there. It would take you some time to get a court order. By the time you got one, I don’t think you would want to use it.’

  ‘Why not?’ David nodded towards the soldier with an automatic rifle, patrolling a few feet away from them. ‘Because someone has called out the military?’

  ‘Glasgow,’ David said, ‘has been in the hands of a mob for the past two days. By some accounts a communist mob, by others just a mob. I don’t think it’s an important point.’

  Andrew looked at him. ‘I would have heard that – through the news room …’

  ‘Security is now very tight. But you probably will hear it soon. And a few other items. If you do leave the country, you’ll be surprised how different things look from out there. I know a bit about it. I’ve had access to the foreign press.’

  ‘More propaganda for emigration?’

  Andrew was a little surprised at the mildness of his own reaction; he would have expected to feel anger at David’s part in this new betrayal. It made him realize how greatly things had changed, how his own apprehensions about the situation had unconsciously sharpened. There was relief in his mind as well as resentment. He thought of the children in the strong safe sunshine of Africa, and was not altogether unhappy about it.

  ‘I think you should go,’ David said. ‘The insolation figure, by the way, is down to 1.74.’

  ‘That’s a slower rate of decline. It was 1.75 at the beginning of the month.’

  ‘Yes, it is slower.’

  ‘So it looks as though it’s bottoming out. We may be over the worst.’

  David shook his head, in a gesture of negation and certainty.

  ‘We’re not over the worst. We haven’t reached it yet.’

  The London mob erupted on Easter Monday. The morning was bright and by midday one could hear small trickles and gurgles of water as ice and snow melted from roofs and gutters. In the afternoon, Andrew and Madeleine walked to Knightsbridge and the Park. They were not alone in seeking this outing; the streets suddenly were full of people, and so was the Park itself. Children snowballed each other along Rotten Row. Young men and women skated under the Serpentine bridge.

  As they came in sight of Marble Arch, Andrew said:

  ‘It’s even thicker up this way. Shall we turn back?’

  Madeleine looked at the crowd ahead of them.

  ‘The orators,’ she said. ‘It might be fun to go and listen.’

  He objected: ‘We’d never get near the speakers. There must be thousands there.’

  ‘If we can’t hear them, we’ll come away.’

  ‘All right.’ Andrew nodded towards the sky. ‘It’s clouding over.’

  A cloud took the sun and, as though this were a signal, things changed in front of them. It was confusing at first, a formless whirl, a savage ripple in a hitherto motionless pool. Madeleine clutched his arm.

  ‘What is it? Are they running away?’

  ‘Towards us.’ He looked behind them to see if there was any obvious focus for the movement, but saw nothing. ‘Trouble with the police, perhaps?’

  Later he learned what had happened. The mob had collected, chiefly from Paddington and North Kensington, and had been harangued by its leaders. Men had a right to food, and there was food in the shops. It was there for the rich, who could buy on the black market:

  ‘My week’s ration!’ shouted one speaker. He waved in the air a single rasher of bacon. ‘There’s the Dorchester down the road. Do you think they’re living on one rasher of bacon in the Dorchester?’

  There were now two authorities – the police and the military. The officer commanding troops had wanted to move in and break up the meeting from the start, but the police chief had overruled him. He preferred defensive to offensive action. Machine-gun posts had been set up at the Arch and along Park Lane and Oxford Street, and he did not think the mob was desperate enough to rush the defences, or strong enough to break through if they did. He was right in the first conclusion and may have been right in the second, but he had failed to anticipate what actually happened. There were no defences in the open spaces of the park itself. This was something the mob’s temporary leader and spokesman had realized.

  ‘They’ve put the police on to stop us,’ he yelled, ‘– the police and the bloody soldiers. If we go to the Dorchester, or the Ritz, or Fortnum and Friggin Mason’s, to take what’s our due, they’ll shoot us down. But we don’t have to go that way, brothers! What about a little run across the Park? What about Harrods, say? The rich buy their food there, too. You don’t pay cash in Harrods. You give them a cheque, and to hell with the coupons! Let’s go and give them a cheque, then. We’ll write one out on the Bank of England. What do you say?’

  As the crowd moved and surged forward, there was a moment when it might have been scattered by a few shots, but the movement had taken place too quickly, and in the wrong direction. It was a different matter ordering men to fire on their unarmed fellow citizens when they were, to all intents, running away, than it would have been if they had been advancing against the guns. A minute or two later an order was given, and a few shots were fired over their heads, but the only effect then was to quicken the charge.

  Andrew took hold of Madeleine’s arm as it burst over them.

  ‘Go with it!’ he said. ‘Whatever’s happening, don’t try to stand against it. You would be knocked over and trampled.’

  They were swept several hundred yards before they succeeded in easing their way to the edge and, finally, out of the stampede. They watched the mob move on towards Knightsbridge, leaving fallen figures in its wake. A boy about seven sat in the snow, weeping. He would not be comforted when Madeleine spoke to him and at last, still sobbing, picked himself up and ran after the others.

  ‘Should we stop him?’ Madeleine asked.

  ‘No.’ He had a sense of helplessness. ‘I don’t think it would do any good.’

  They made their way back through the side streets. They heard shots, and distant shouting, and at one point, seeing Harrods in the distance, had a glimpse also of the rioting crowd round it and heard the crash of glass. The sun was still hidden by clouds and there was a cold wind. In these parts the streets were empty, apart from occasional figures who came to their doors to look and listen, but did not stay long in the open. Andrew and Madeleine did not say much until they reached her house.

  Then he said: ‘I’m going to move in with you, Madeleine. It’s the safest thing.’

  She nodded. ‘Yes. Please do.’

  8

  McKay said: ‘I’ve forgotten – were you with us in the Ally Pally days?’

  ‘No,’ Andrew said. ‘I was still in Steam.’

  �
�The moving finger writes,’ said McKay, ‘and having writ, turns back. We’re moving up there at once.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘In two words, compactness and defensibility. All under one roof, and we shall only need a company or two of soldiers to look after us. It’s not as though we’re worth looting.’

  ‘And how do we get there and back – armoured car? Or are we expected to sleep there?’

  ‘Not yet. You’ll get escort between Alexandra Palace and the tube station.’

  ‘That’s something.’

  ‘Yes. Anything strike you about it?’

  ‘Needing escort? I’m not surprised. I nearly got caught up in the Harrods riot.’

  McKay looked at him thoughtfully. ‘If I were you,’ he said, ‘it might occur to me to wonder how long one could rely on the Underground keeping going. Yes, ask me how long you can rely on the Underground.’

  ‘All right. I’m asking.’

  ‘And I’m not supposed to tell you, but it’s being prepared for tonight’s News, so it would be a trifle ridiculous to stand on the niceties. The Underground is being closed tonight apart from the Piccadilly line. And that will have three stops only: Piccadilly in the centre, Wood Green, for Alexandra Palace, in the north, and Heathrow Central in the west.’

  ‘Heathrow Central?’

  ‘The nearest tube station to London Airport.’

  The significance did not penetrate. He said, conscious of his stupidity: ‘Why the tube?’

  There was a large-scale street map of central London on McKay’s desk. He picked up a thick blue pencil and began to draw a line northwards from a point on the river.

  ‘From the chilly plush of Cheyne Walk,’ he said, ‘up the Earl’s Court Road; then, in a long and nearly straight line, Holland Park Avenue, Bayswater Road, Oxford Street, and High Holborn. Up Clerkenwell and Old Street to take in the bulk of the City, down Bishopsgate, and a small diversion along Leadenhall Street to take in the Mint and the Tower and a few wharves in the Pool. And what does that give you, with the river as its southern boundary?’ McKay looked up, eyes sharp in his thin face. ‘It gives you the London Pale. The name isn’t official, but it’s apt. Inside those lines, order – outside, chaos and barbarism. Except for our little oasis at Alexandra Palace and, of course, the airport.’

  ‘Is this serious?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘You mean – they’re abandoning the whole of Greater London? What’s going to happen to the people outside the Pale? What about those who come in to the centre to work?’

  ‘Essential enterprises have already made their own quiet arrangements for essential personnel. The others will be turned back. What they do then is their own business.’

  ‘And in the rest of the country?’

  ‘Similar arrangements. Strongpoints will be held.’

  ‘They can’t abandon people like that.’

  ‘That was my own reaction. But they can’t protect them, either. If they try to stretch the armed forces over the country as a whole, the whole country will go under. This way, they can preserve order at the centre.’

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘I gather there’s another side to the calculation, also,’ McKay said. ‘When things get back to normal, it will be that much easier to go out and re-impose order. The ranks of Tuscany will have thinned in the meantime.’

  ‘My God.’

  ‘It would be appropriate to thank Him. You’re to be one of the lucky ones. Your digs are inside the Pale, aren’t they?’

  Andrew nodded. ‘South Ken.’

  ‘I’m bringing my lot down from Hampstead,’ McKay said. ‘We’re being billeted at the Savoy, I understand.’ He smiled, a cold unhappy smile. ‘I would never have imagined that. By the way, keep mum about this until after the News. It’s probably getting around fast, but there’s no need to make it faster.’

  ‘All right.’

  There was a knock at the door, and McKay called:

  ‘Come in!’

  A boy entered, carrying a framed print. It was the Utrillo snow scene. McKay said:

  ‘What the hell’s that?’

  ‘It’s after Easter, sir. You change the pictures over at Easter.’

  ‘Not this year, I don’t,’ McKay said. The boy stood uncertainly by the door, holding the picture. ‘Bring it over here. On the desk.’

  He stared for a moment at the bare white outline of the Parisian streets. To Andrew, he said:

  ‘Any offer for this inspiring study of winter? I thought not.’

  Leaning forward, he scrawled with his blue pencil across the canvas, dragging with such violence that the point finally tore it. He pulled the pencil down again, this time deliberately and obviously ripping. He tossed the pencil into the metal wastebox, and pushed the picture off his desk.

  ‘You take it, son,’ he said to the boy. ‘It will burn. Keep yourself warm on some cold spring evening.’

  Andrew took a couple of camera-men along on the north patrol three days after the Pale was established. McKay, in suggesting this, had been careful to stress that it was entirely voluntary.

  ‘I’m not sure whether we can use the stuff if you do bring it back,’ he said. ‘I rather feel it would be held to encourage alarm and despondency, even if it’s no worse than long shots of empty streets. But as documentary material for the future … all the same, don’t unless you feel keen yourself.’

  The patrol consisted of two armoured cars. Andrew and the camera-men went in the first. The officer in charge was a Captain Chisholm, a tall lean fair young man in his early twenties. He gave an impression of imperturbability and spoke with a slight Yorkshire accent. Andrew asked him what route was laid down.

  ‘There’s nothing laid down precisely,’ he said. ‘It’s just a matter of making a sweep. My idea is north along Baker Street, up round the top of Regent’s Park, Camden Town, King’s Cross, and back along Pentonville and Aldersgate. We could vary that if there’s some place you’re particularly interested in. The only thing is, we try to stick to the main thoroughfares as far as possible. It’s too easy to get trapped in narrow streets.’

  ‘I can’t think of anything at present,’ Andrew said. ‘What’s the idea behind the patrols, anyway? They seem a bit of an unnecessary risk.’

  ‘Showing the flag, I suppose,’ Chisholm said. ‘And I suppose they think it may encourage the more dangerous mobs to move out rather than cluster round the Pale.’

  ‘Are people moving out?’

  ‘I doubt if the gangs are. There have been big treks out to the country, but my guess is that those are the more law-abiding citizens panicking. I should think the dangerous ones will stick around in the hope of getting into the Pale. There was a nasty attack from Fulham last night. We had quite a few casualties.’

  ‘Poor devils.’

  Chisholm looked at him. ‘Ours, or theirs?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘My folks are in the Leeds Pale,’ Chisholm said. ‘I hope they are, anyway. How long do you reckon it will be before things quieten down again?’

  Andrew shrugged. ‘A month or two. Maybe longer.’

  ‘I’ll tell you,’ Chisholm said, ‘– I’m glad this isn’t my city. I suppose I’d still do the job if it were, but I’m glad it’s not.’

  The cars rattled along Baker Street at rather better than thirty miles an hour. There were a few signs of life – some figures skulking away into doorways as the patrol reached them, others calling out in entreaty, in some cases running after them as they passed. One man, coming out into the street in front of them, stood in their path, both arms raised in appeal.

  ‘Don’t swerve,’ Chisholm said to the driver.

  The car plunged towards him; at the last moment he fell backwards. Looking back, Andrew saw him picking himself up out of the frozen snow. The second car ran past within a couple of feet of him, but he made no move or sign towards it.

  Just past the Marylebone Road intersection, Chisholm pointed up at a window. A black cat could b
e seen sitting on the ledge behind the glass. It looked content, and quite plump.

  ‘There’s a dinner someone’s overlooked,’ he said. ‘I doubt if they’ll go on overlooking it for long. Pussy’s living on borrowed time.’

  They had a glimpse of Regent’s Park on their right.

  Andrew said: ‘What about the Zoo animals?’

  ‘They killed them off the day before things were closed down. They brought the carcases of everything that was edible into the Pale.’

  ‘Who decided what was edible?’

  Chisholm laughed. ‘That’s a point, isn’t it? Standards are changing fast now. I suppose there will be a few chewing rattlesnake and porcupine – raw as like as not.’

  His brash insensitivity was probably enviable. In any case, for the job he was doing, it was essential. Andrew saw one of the photographers focus on a body that lay huddled in the gutter and swung the camera round to hold it as they drove past. It was the luxuries of illusion and self-deception that were enviable: there had never been a sensitive butcher, and very few vegetarians who did not wear leather shoes. Enviable, and lost forever.

  They passed the deserted terraces of the Zoo. From somewhere among the buildings, smoke rose – too thickly to be a small cooking fire. One of the buildings must have caught. Fires had sprung up, since the setting up of the Pale, in various parts of Greater London; at night one could see the distant smudges of red on the horizon. But none of them so far had turned into a major conflagration. Luck; or possibly the omnipresent snow and ice helped to douse them.

  Trouble came in the stretch of road facing King’s Cross station. Their car had reached the junction of the Caledonian Road and Pentonville when one of the men gave a shout. The second car, twenty-five or thirty yards behind them, had stopped. The lead car swung round in a tight circle and headed back. The driver drew up alongside.

  Chisholm called: ‘What’s up?’

  There was a Sergeant in charge of the second vehicle.

  He said: ‘She cut out, sir. Briggs is having a look.’

  The driver had the bonnet up and was busy underneath it.

  He called something about plugs without looking up from what he was doing. Chisholm said, to his own driver: