The World in Winter

by John Christopher

  ‘The War comes first. Don’t forget the War.’

  ‘One must take a longer view,’ Abonitu said seriously. ‘But, to come back to these ports: they are controlled by the Council, and they control Europe. It will be difficult for any individual country to make a claim outside the Council. The operation and the responsibility are joint, and will remain so.’

  ‘Until you fall out.’

  ‘Not you, we.’ He smiled. ‘Remember you are an African now, Andrew. I do not think we will fall out over Europe, even when the South African problem has been settled. It would not be worth it. Europe will stay under joint administration. But the British Isles – are they part of Europe?’

  ‘We never did settle that question. I beg your pardon: they never did. It’s a bit late now.’

  ‘It is important,’ Abonitu insisted. ‘The ports represent a claim on continental Europe, but there is no foothold in Britain. There has been no sovereignty there since the Government left the country.’

  ‘Pack-ice all round the coast – five miles of it in places.’

  ‘Exactly. But, as I have said, one requires to take the long view. And it is being taken, in more than one quarter.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Ghana is preparing an expedition to England next year. They hope to find a southern port ice-free in late April or May. It is believed that there will be a competitive expedition from Egypt. There are even rumours of an expedition from South Africa, though that seems unlikely.’

  ‘But you can’t hold a base there.’

  ‘That remains to be seen. We know very little of the conditions. There are ways in which the difficulties may have lessened.’

  ‘The natives, you mean, will have killed each other off? I suppose you’re right. I take it what you are driving at is that Nigeria plans to join in the race to plant the flag. Let’s hope the various expeditions don’t get too tangled up.’

  ‘The difference,’ Abonitu said, ‘is that the others are planning for the late spring. We are going now, in winter.’

  ‘Across that pack-ice? Or by air? You couldn’t risk those landing fields with ordinary planes. Helicopters?’

  ‘There is an impermanence about air expeditions. There would be many difficulties. We have another possibility.’

  The smallest of the red-heads, while one of the others gripped her hands behind her back, was using her teeth to pull articles of clothing off the third. The Africans near the front were making cries of excitement and encouragement that drowned the piano. Andrew’s head was throbbing heavily now.

  ‘Britain,’ Abonitu said, ‘had the world’s only Hovercraft squadron.’

  Andrew remembered the headlines; the squadron had been stationed in the south, outside the Pale, and their Commander had taken them out of the country in advance of the break-up. They had headed for Ghana, but there had been some trouble there and they had come on to Nigeria. The story of the trek had been blazoned for a short time, and then dropped.

  ‘They would never make it,’ Andrew said. ‘God knows how they got here in the first place. You can’t launch a five-thousand-mile expedition with twelve Hovercraft.’

  ‘Eleven,’ Abonitu said. ‘One of them cannot be salvaged. But not five thousand miles. A few hundred only. They will be shipped to St Nazaire. After that there is only Brittany and the Channel.’

  It began to make sense.

  ‘St Nazaire is under joint control. Aren’t the representatives of the other states going to object?’

  ‘If they had warning, there might be objections. But by the time they can think of objections the expedition will be well out of the joint control area. They can wrangle then, but it will be too late to do anything.’

  ‘Fuel? Food? I doubt if they could carry both.’

  ‘Not so much fuel. Enough to reach Southampton. We have information of a fuel dump there which was never used: things collapsed too quickly in that part. They can carry enough food for two months. After that the idea will be to pick supplies up from a ship which will get as far north as there is open water.’

  ‘It sounds risky.’

  ‘Yes. Will you go, Andrew?’

  ‘In what capacity?’

  ‘An expedition needs documentation. I am quite a good camera-man. You will pass as one, with my help. And my uncle is the Minister of Finance. I think it can be arranged.’

  Andrew was silent. He felt suddenly sober, and torn between excitement and despair: it was possible, it was fantastic, and it could lead to nothing. His eyes smarted. In the centre circle two of the girls were in mock-battle with the third, one sprawled on the floor clutching her feet, the other locking her arms and tearing at what was left of her clothes.

  ‘We will make a documentary,’ Abonitu said. ‘Think of it. Black and white for the streets festooned with ice, weighted down with snow. And colour for the sunsets, the dying crimson glow over the frozen Thames. And a story, perhaps. You will find your lost love in the land of eternal winter.’

  Andrew stared at him, blinking his eyes. ‘Can you do it?’

  Abonitu nodded his head. ‘I can do it.’

  ‘We’ll drink to it, then.’ He picked up his glass. ‘Except that we seem to be out of drink.’

  ‘We can fix that, too,’ Abonitu said.

  He flicked a finger, and the waiter came towards them at the trot.

  The hangover with which Andrew woke the following morning was not the worst he could remember, but it was bad enough. He took four codeine tablets and made himself black coffee. He was drinking this when the telephone rang. It was Abonitu.

  ‘The idea I suggested last night,’ he said. ‘What do you think of it now?’

  ‘In the first place,’ Andrew said, ‘nothing planned by Nigerians is likely even to get off the ground. If it does, I can think of a dozen or more ways in which it’s likely to crack up. The whole thing will be a fiasco. We would be risking our necks to no purpose at all. The city of your dreams is dead, Abo, and probably Madeleine is, too. If she isn’t, I could never hope to find her in that wilderness.’

  ‘Yes,’ Abonitu said. ‘I thought of all this, too.’ He paused. ‘Afterwards I saw my uncle, and fixed things. We leave for St Nazaire in two weeks. Is that O.K.?’

  ‘Yes,’ Andrew said wearily. ‘That’s O.K.’

  Part Three

  * * *

  1

  The Yoruba Diadem docked late in the morning, and the eleven Hovercraft were off-loaded two hours after that. The savage whine of the turbines being tested split the cold quiet air of the port, and brought Council Control Officers hurrying to the quay. Andrew stood to one side watching while they argued among themselves and with General Mutalli, the leader of the expedition. There was dismay, and some anger, demonstrated in gesticulation and shouted protests: the shouting was not merely emotional for the noise of the engines was deafening. The Egyptian and Algerian Officers, it appeared, wanted the Hovercraft force impounded, pending a general Council decision. Mutalli outrode the storm with smiling courtesy. An hour later, the protests were still being made as the first Hovercraft slid forward, snow powdering into the air behind it, and made for the checkpoint. The barrier swung away as they approached it. Before four o’clock, Lagos time, the squadron was clear of the town and moving north across the frozen fields of Brittany.

  Apart from Andrew, there were two other whites in the expedition force, two engineer-mechanics from the original Hovercraft squadron. Their names were Carlow and Prentice. Carlow was a thin young man with a continual sneer and a small greasy moustache. Prentice was shorter and heavier, a man about thirty who looked stupid and talked little. They kept to themselves, ignoring Andrew. On the voyage they had seemed to be drunk, most of the time, on Nigerian ersatz-gin. This relief would no longer be open to them, and Andrew wondered how they would take the deprivation. He neither liked nor trusted them.

  There were just over a hundred Nigerians, the great majority of them picked officers and sergeants from the Nigerian Ar
my. All were younger than Andrew; even Mutalli, a genial Ibo warrior, impressively tall and broad, was in his middle thirties. Discipline was easy and the general atmosphere cheerful and optimistic; there was no abating of this as the ship had steamed into colder waters. They laughed at each other as they paraded in Arctic kit, and went on laughing. When plans were talked over, although the final decision lay with Mutalli, all joined in with suggestions and criticisms.

  Opinions had differed over the best route they should follow to England. There was a group, a majority Andrew thought, which was anxious to keep the sea crossing as short as possible, and argued for going overland to Calais before striking out across the Channel. The opposition was more concerned with the danger from the bands of starving Frenchmen who were known to be roaming the territory and who attacked, from time to time, the defences at St Nazaire. Their suggestion was for putting directly to sea and continuing on water, with suitable night camps on remote beaches, as long as possible – an extreme view wanted the approach to London itself to be made by way of the Thames estuary. Mutalli, when they had argued each other to a standstill, elected for a compromise. They would go almost due north, reaching the sea between St Brieuc and Dinard, and continue northwards to England. They would thus miss the worst of the local tribes, who were thought to have largely abandoned the Brittany peninsula, and would thereafter face no human hazards before reaching the Dorset coast. It seemed reasonable. It also represented, Andrew reflected, the most direct route to England. He had already realized that impatience lay not far below Mutalli’s smiling surface. He hoped his judgement did not too much depend on it.

  The weather was good – cold but very clear – and they made fair progress. After a little over an hour’s journey, the leading Hovercraft, in which Mutalli himself was travelling, pulled away to a small piece of rising ground to their right, and the remainder followed. They halted in the prearranged close circle. Andrew and Abonitu were together in the last machine.

  ‘We halt for the night,’ Abonitu said. ‘It is early.’

  Andrew said, with some relief: ‘Better than leaving it too late. The dusk’s drawing in.’

  ‘We have headlights.’

  ‘Yes. I was afraid Mutalli would think of that.’

  ‘Mutalli,’ Abonitu said with quiet scorn, ‘fears the dark. The Ibo are primitive. They circumcise their women, and are afraid to make love by daylight, or on newly ploughed land. And the night, apart from being the time for lying with their women, who are hideous as well as unresponsive, is for the Leopard men. He probably fears the juju of the dead Frenchmen.’

  ‘You may be right,’ Andrew said. ‘But I’m in favour of an early halt myself. We’re not in so great a hurry as all that, and I prefer caution in strange territory.’

  Three guards were appointed for the night, on a three-shift basis of two hours on and four off. Andrew was missed off this roster, but both Carlow and Prentice were included – not, he noted, on the same shift. He overheard them talking to each other while the evening meal was being prepared, Prentice grousing and Carlow commenting, with a whining sarcasm, on what they claimed to be the unsoldierly qualities of the Nigerians.

  The night passed without incident, and the day dawned clear and cloudless. There was some confusion and consequent delay in breaking camp and the sun was fairly high by the time they resumed the progress north. Not long after they started, they had their first glimpse of the natives – a group of seven or eight who scattered away as the Hovercraft came up. Andrew thought they were all men, but it was difficult to be sure since they were voluminously swathed in clothes. One of them, possibly bolder than the others, halted some three hundred yards away and stood watching as the squadron passed. A few miles further on they saw smoke rising from a chimney in a village to the west of their path. These things apart, the landscape was empty of human life. Occasionally animals moved against the snow – dogs, a fox, an unfamiliar large bird that rose ungainly and flapped heavily away – and towards the end of the morning a flock of gulls wheeled down from the north and hovered round them. They reached the sea half an hour after that.

  Looking at the map with which he had been supplied – an old Michelin – Andrew concluded that they were probably some miles west of Cap Fréhel. The beach was as deserted as the land behind them. Ice stretched out in front of them, but some distance away there was the blue of open water. Nothing moved there. In the entire scene, the only living things were the men themselves and the circling gulls.

  They brewed up their midday meal on the spot. Andrew expected that they would push on as soon as it was over, but there was further delay, consequent this time on the re-emergence of the anti-sea party among the Nigerians. At the very least, these wanted a halt to be made here, and the journey across the Channel begun the following morning, when they would have a full day ahead. Those who favoured pressing on pointed out that there was close on four hours of daylight remaining, and that, with the cruising speed of the Hovercraft something like fifty knots over clear water, they would have at least an hour in hand. It was objected that there might be a breakdown. The reply was made that the Hovercraft could float indefinitely and that a night on the open water was preferable in many ways to a night in open country such as this. But the weather might break. Unlikely, argued the opposition: the barometer remained high, the sky itself was almost without cloud.

  It was Abonitu finally who crystallized matters. He said, after being silent throughout the wrangle:

  ‘Time is going by. If we continue much longer talking, there will be no point in going on today.’

  Mutalli nodded his large head. ‘You are right. I think we will start at once.’ He brushed aside the beginning of a further protest. ‘We start. No more discussion.’

  Carlow and Prentice were sitting near Andrew, and he saw them exchange looks.

  ‘Proper bloody Karno’s mob,’ Prentice muttered.

  ‘Hope you can flogging well swim, china,’ Carlow said. ‘You may have to.’

  ‘Black bastards,’ Prentice said unemotionally.

  ‘Watch it.’

  ‘They’re too bloody busy gabbing to pay attention.’

  ‘Watch it, all the same.’

  Andrew caught the darting glance which Carlow gave him, and construed it: they had marked him down as possibly dangerous, presumably because of his friendship with Abonitu. He was surprised how little the realization affected him. Conscious as he was of his own whiteness of skin, he felt no sympathy with these two. They had probably, he reflected, picked that up, too.

  The ice was thick for about a mile offshore; after that it cracked under the pressure of the downward jets and the Hovercraft, fanning out in line, left broad splintered channels in their wake. These merged into the open sea, clear and untroubled and of a bright sharp blueness. But there was haze where sea and skyline met, and it was not long before the coast of France was lost behind them. There was only the sky and the sea and the eleven vessels scattering rainbow-edged spray. The chatter of voices dropped. This was a different loneliness, a different immensity, from anything the Africans had encountered before.

  Over the gently rippled contours of the sea, the Hovercraft made a better speed than they had done previously, and in this a relative weakness in the craft on which Andrew and Abonitu travelled became more evident. Gradually it slipped behind the other ten. They had fallen back, on leaving the ice, into column, and the distance separating the last Hovercraft from its next in line stretched out from fifty yards to a hundred and then to two hundred.

  Andrew said: ‘We ought not to lose touch.’

  Abonitu nodded. ‘They must see what is happening, and reduce speed.’

  ‘Igmintu’s craft is the only one that has a view of us. If they aren’t looking out …’

  ‘They will. It is quite light still.’

  ‘No means of signalling between craft,’ Andrew said. ‘Another little flaw in the advance planning.’

  The sea-mist seemed to rise quite suddenly out
of the level blue ahead of them. At first it was no more than a change of colour in the water, a muddy greyness where the two blues met, but it broadened and took on height. Andrew thought that the craft in front would check, perhaps come to a halt for consideration of the altered conditions, but they went on. Their driver had swung off course to the west, slipping out of column in the hope of becoming more conspicuous, and they could see all the remaining ten. They saw them slip, one by one, into the wall of mist, and disappear.

  Andrew said: ‘We ought to back-track. If we get into that lot …’

  Abonitu said urgently to the driver: ‘Cut the engines! We will wait here in the open. They will come back for us.’

  ‘We are a long way behind.’

  ‘Never mind that. There is no sense in going in there.’

  The man kept his hands on the control bar and made no attempt to slacken speed. Tendrils of mist swirled less than a hundred yards ahead of them.

  ‘We must halt,’ Abonitu said.

  The man made no answer. Looking at his face, Andrew read fear: the fear of being left behind in this strange cold world of the north. He whispered to Abonitu:

  ‘Get the controls away from him. It’s the only hope.’

  Abonitu hesitated. While he did so, the mist thickened, the tendrils, twisting and multiplying, sprang up behind and all round them, and the sky itself turned grey. Abonitu reached over and cut the engine, and the greyness seemed to be a silence, pressing in. They listened, and could hear the whine of the other craft, remote and fading.

  Abonitu turned to him. ‘And now?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what Mutalli’s thinking. He may be assuming the mist is patchy and that he can break through into clear water again.’

  ‘I think so. He will be anxious not to delay, here on the sea. And probably he does not know we have dropped behind.’

  The driver, his nerve somewhat recovered, said:

  ‘You had no right to stop the engine. I am in charge of the engine.’