The community developed in other ways. Three more lots of poultry were found, so that altogether they had fifteen hens and—an even greater blessing—a couple of roosters. One of these was a poor specimen and apathetic, but the other trod his subjects with great vigor. Two of the hens went broody, and sat on clutches of eggs. Everyone was delighted by this. The tinned foods, on which they chiefly lived, were a dwindling asset; the chick embryos growing inside the warm eggs were an earnest of the future.
They had a feast of celebration, and drank canned beer on Miller’s dispensation; a few crates had been found, their contents battered but in most cases not actually leaking, and in a moment of largesse he shared them out. (A few more unbroken bottles of spirits had turned up, which he was holding onto.) It was from the general noise and confusion and cheerfulness of the feast that Hilda looked up and saw the stranger. She called out in wonder, and they followed her pointing hand.
At first Matthew thought it was the madman, who had not been seen since the storm. But this man was younger and taller and red-haired. He had obviously been living hard—harder even than they had. He was painfully thin, and dirty, and his clothes hung in tatters. They made a place for him near the fire, and gave him some of the stew which had been left over, and between gulps he answered.
He was not from Guernsey at all, but Sark. His name was Le Perre. He had wandered about that island after the catastrophe, searching for some other survivor without success. Then for some time he had lived a stuporous, almost vegetable existence, eating and drinking and sleeping, hoping vaguely that help would come from outside. On the previous day, though, he had woken to a sudden clarity of understanding that this was not going to happen. He had survived out of a few hundred on Sark; it was reasonable to believe that more had survived from the much larger population of the parent island. The sea had gone; there was nothing to stop him walking the nine miles to Guernsey.
He had set his course in the first place for the smaller islands of Jethou and Herm. Reaching them, he had seen, in the clear level light of late afternoon, the devastation of the Guernsey east coast, the naked scar where St. Peter Port and St. Sampson had once been. This ruin, on so much larger a scale than the things he had seen on the other islands, had upset and depressed him. He had stayed the night on Herm, and not until late in the morning of the present day had he nerved himself for the final three-mile stretch. He had reached Guernsey, made his way up the stinking ragged slopes of earth and rock which had been the capital of the bailiwick, and come out at last onto the southern plateau, all hope abandoned. It was then, in contemplation of his state as perhaps the last man left alive, that he had heard their voices in the distance, and staggered unbelievingly toward them.
He thawed as he talked from a frozen caricature into humanity. He was, Matthew thought, a naturally garrulous man, and it must have been hard for him to have no one to listen to him. As with several of the others, his sense of perspective was wildly out of true. He had been one of the Sarkees engaged in the carriage business, and he continually reverted to the fact that he had recently acquired an extra equipage for a season which was now going to be completely devoid of tourists.
“What about the winter, eh?” he asked. The winter was the lying-up time, in which the Sarkees lived on the fat of the previous summer. “What will we do in the winter?”
When the novelty of his arrival had worn off, Matthew got the newcomer to himself, and asked him questions which had been in his mind since he became aware of his origin.
“What’s it like, crossing the seabed? Is the going very rough?”
“It varies. Good where there’s sand, and where the reefs are not too spiky. Some nasty mud flats, but they’re drying up. And the weed, eh? God, how it stinks! Worse than corpses, I reckon.”
“What sort of time did you make?”
“Time?”
“In getting across. A mile an hour? Less?”
“More. I got to Jethou in about four hours, I reckon. That’s guessing by the sun. I picked up a watch, but a day or so later I threw it away. Didn’t seem to make any sense to know what time it was.”
“There’s some water left out there, isn’t there? One can see stretches of it.”
The Sarkee shrugged. “Pools. You could call the big ones lakes, maybe.”
“How big?”
“One about a quarter of a mile long. She had mackerel in her. But they’re drying up, eh? You can see where they’re drying up—rings along the sides where they’re shrinking.”
“So all together you didn’t find it too difficult?”
“Not once I’d got started. It was starting that was hard. Even after looking out and seeing it dry all that time, it still seemed wrong to be walking out there. Like I was frightened, eh? Of the sea coming back. I kept looking over my shoulder for it, and I was glad to climb up on Jethou. Though there’s nothing there now except a bit of grass at the top. The big wave cleaned everything else off. The same with the harbor buildings in Herm… .”
He went on talking, and Matthew let him ramble on, nodding from time to time as seemed appropriate. He was thinking of Jane, with a resurgence of hope he knew to be irrational but which he nurtured as the most precious thing that had happened since he had known the full extent of the disaster. Bemused by the holocaust of death and destruction in which he found himself, all he had been conscious of was the fact that no help had come from the world outside, from the mainland. The possibility of similar survivors out there had been beyond imagining. And even with the sea gone, the ingrained sense of insularity had remained. One thought of leaving the island in terms of the mail boat or the morning Viscount. The shock of someone coming from outside was twofold—other communities might, almost certainly must, exist on the mainland … and might be reached. Sark was only nine miles distant, Southampton over a hundred, but the possibility was there.
And from that possibility his mind went irresistibly to others. He could have had no hope if she had been in London, a speck in the biggest ant heap of all. But at Mary’s, in Sussex … It was an old staunchly timbered house, on high ground, and she would have been sleeping, as she always did, in the gabled room under the rooftree. She could have come through it. The odds against might still be measured in hundreds, but he could visualize it now, could see her being helped out of the ruins as the two girls here had been. She came alive to him again, and the grief which had surrounded his thoughts and actions ebbed away. To be replaced by an anxiety and impatience. Once it was conceivable, reaching her became the one thing worth while. Matthew checked himself deliberately. There would have to be preparations. It was a long journey, through a land made unknown by total change. He must make his plans carefully.
Matthew thought about it during the night, lying awake for a long time and watching the stars through the tent opening. In the morning he spoke to Miller. Miller was inattentive at first; De Porthos had come back from milking with the idea that the cow might be in calf, and he was wrapped in visions of the herds of the future. Matthew had been talking for some while before he snapped into a response.
‘“What was that? Go to the mainland? Have some sense, Matty! You’d never bloody well make it, and if you did, what good would it do?”
“Its my daughter,” Matthew explained again. “She may be alive. I know the chances are small, but I want to make sure.” Miller stared at him. “You’re off your nut.”
Matthew shrugged. “Perhaps.”
Miller put an arm on his shoulder. “I don’t mean to be nasty. We’ve all been a bit off our nuts since it happened. We don’t all rave like Mother Lutron and that silly old sod up by the Val de Terres, but we rave inside. I know I do. All the same, you’ve got to see the sense of this. You wouldn’t do any good, on a crazy thing like that. Le Perre … it was different, him coming from Sark. He was on his own there, going crackers, running short of food probably—and only nine miles to go. You see what I mean?”
“Yes, I see. But it makes no difference.”
“That’s a matter of opinion. At least, it doesn’t concern anyone else.”
“Doesn’t it, by God! A little group like this, we need every pair of hands. We can’t spare anyone. You least of all. You’re my right-hand man, Matty. I depend on you to keep tilings running, help organize them. You know I depend on you.”
“You don’t need anyone now. It may have been different at the beginning, but it’s all running smoothly enough.”
“Because you’re here, it is.”
“I can’t accept that.”
Matthew did not put his thoughts into words: that while it might be true that Miller was that kind of strong man who must have someone to lean on, the replacement was already present in the person of Irene. Miller did not see this because, although he acknowledged strength in a woman, he did not understand either the strength or his own deference to it.
Miller said, blustering, “I don’t give a bugger if you accept it or not, Matty. I’m telling you that’s the way it is. I need you here.”
“You’ll learn to manage without me.” He smiled. “You won’t find it very difficult.”
“No!”
He had the forced, nervous, in a way desperate look that Matthew remembered from the time he had half pleaded with, half bullied, Irene into accepting him as her protector. That situation could have gone badly if the girl had thwarted him, and so, Matthew saw, could this. He said, trying to keep it light, “Are you telling me I shan’t be able to get an exit permit?”
Miller said heavily, “You’re not leaving, Matty. It’s for your own good as well as ours. We’re all a bit rocky still—you’ll feel different in a few weeks. But get it in your head that you’re not going away. If we have to, we’ll tie you up to stop you.”
Matthew wondered if the others would follow him in such an enterprise. Perhaps, perhaps not. But it would do no good to provoke conflict, which would either leave him frustrated of his one objective, or leave Miller defeated and the group disorganized. He saw that some of them, attracted by Miller’s raising his voice, were listening—De Porthos, Hilda, little Billy. He said submissively, “You’re the boss. But I hope you’ll change your mind. We’ll talk about it again sometime.”
Miller squeezed his arm, nervously laughing. “Talking does no harm, Matty! As long as you realize that we can’t spare you. Come on, then. Let’s have a look at that bloody cow. How do you tell when a cow’s pregnant? You got any ideas about that?”
Matthew did nothing for a couple of days, in case Miller was watching him, and thereafter went about his preparations carefully and in secret. In the store of things which had been accumulating, he found a camper’s rucksack. He took this to a cache—one of the old German bunkers farther along the cliffs. It had been shifted by the earthquake, so that the vertical well leading down to the bottom level tilted at something like seventy degrees, but the steel ladder was still in place. It was unlikely that anyone from the camp would go there, and it was dark at the bottom, but he fixed up a rough screen of old brushwood as an extra precaution. After that, as the opportunity offered, he took along the things he had decided he would need for his journey.
This was food for the most part, in as concentrated a form as he could find—chiefly bully beef and ham and beans. His biggest problem, of course, was a supply of fresh water. Say, a hundred miles to Wight at fifteen miles a day—that meant a week’s traveling. He had found, in the crumpled boot of a car, a plastic jerrican which held a gallon. A pint of water a day—not unreasonable in this climate and there must, by now, be rainwater pools among the rocks. And Alderney, of course. There were freshwater springs there where he could replenish his supply. That cut a quarter off the distance. Seventy-five miles—he should do it comfortably in five days.
He would wear the boots he had been keeping, and take his strongest pair of shoes as well. A couple of guernseys, and extra socks, for night wear; he would manage without a blanket. The mackintosh he had hidden up the Val de Terres went into store and the box of cartridges which had been wrapped in it. He left the shotgun in his tent to prevent any suspicion of his intentions. It was one of a number of things which he would have to take at the last minute.
His preparations, since they had to be made without attracting attention, occupied the better part of two weeks. There was another spell of bad weather toward the end, but they all crowded into the main tents, which stood up effectively, even to a fairly substantial earth tremor which occurred at the height of the storm. The tent poles went askew and one of them broke, but it happened during the day and the men were able to put things right without much difficulty. There was a palpable sense of communal triumph over this which contrasted markedly with the misery of the earlier time.
Something else of importance happened—whether because of this, or the experience of mass living, or for some more obscure reason, Matthew did not know. But when the skies cleared and the small tents were put back in order, Irene did not go with Hilda but took her place in Millers tent. He seemed a little dazed by this, but took it with boisterous good humor. Matthew thought that the others paid more respect to Irene as a result. She would run things well—coldly and efficiently and without much imagination. He wondered whether she would favor her sons or her daughters as her successors. Was that how patterns of society were formed, from the ur-context of particular people at a particular moment of crisis? The speculation held him only briefly. It was more important that Miller, in his new happiness, was relaxed and unwary. Matthew spent more time away from the camp, organizing his departure.
He was awakened by an earth tremor in the night. It was a common occurrence; they had grown sufficiently used to them to be able to turn over and go back to sleep. This time Matthew stayed awake. He had no idea of the hour, but there was the first faint glimmer of daybreak in the sky. He waited what seemed a long time—perhaps ten minutes—and then, as quietly as possible, slipped on his clothes. To check, he whispered “Billy?” but there was no answer. He could just see the outline of the boy’s figure under the blankets. He picked up the shotgun from beside his mattress and went out into the night. There was no sign of anyone else stirring.
It was difficult at first, picking his way over rough ground toward the bunker, but his eyes grew accustomed to the dimness which itself brightened as night shaded into day. He had brought with him a tiny pocket torch, which was too weak to be of any help in the open but provided a glimmer in the blacker depths of the bunker. The rucksack was already packed and he had filled the jerrican with water. He got them both out into the open, fastened the can securely across the straps of the rucksack, and the shotgun transversely above that, and hauled the whole thing onto his back. It was heavy, but the weight was well distributed, and he himself was tougher than he had been in the old days. He was confident he could manage it easily enough.
His most direct route to the seabed, since he was traveling north, would lie in cutting across the base of Jerbourg and heading for Fermain Bay. But that meant traversing the nauseatingly familiar wreckage of St Martin’s, and he headed for the Divette instead. The Monument, broken off a little below halfway, jutted at a crazy angle across the lightening sky. The Divette had been scoured by the tidal wave: There was not even a stump left of what had been grandiloquently called the Pine Forest. But the headland had collapsed outwards to some extent, and it was not too hard to pick a way down. Matthew reached the bottom, looked back briefly, and walked on into the valley which had once been the bed of the Russell.
It was, as Le Perre had said, the sense of unease which was worse. Matthew had walked out occasionally, on an ormering tide, and been conscious of the strangeness, the altogether alien quality, of the underwater world exposed to the harsh light of day. This was much more disturbing. In the gray predawn light, reefs and shoulders of rock stood up, improbable in shade and contour. Here, for long centuries, the sea had rolled; and its presence lingered in the pervading rotting smell, in th
e pools trapped among the rocks, occasionally in the dead shells of crab or lobster. It seemed incredible that it should not come rushing back. He found himself listening for the tiny distant roar which would swell into a thunder of returning vengeful waves.
In the greater lucency the outlines changed, the somber mystery of the rocks giving place to a jagged richness of silhouette and color, with outcroppings of pink and yellow granite and dazzling streaks of marble across the gray. His disquiet remained; it was an even stranger land and he walked through it as a trespasser. He began to find familiar objects, part of the debris spilled as the town was carried away in the embrace of the retreating waters—broken china, part of a chair, a twisted bicycle frame, a canvas which might have been a work of art but was now a rotting smear of cloth and paint. These did not reassure him; on the contrary, they made things worse. Their incongruity pointed up his own. Where the shattered tower of Brehon dominated the skyline on his right, he found a gas cooker, apparently having suffered no damage other than through being wrenched from its pipes and brackets, standing impeccably upright on a sandbank. The sight of it sent a prickle of fear along his skin.
He was at the narrowest point of the Russell, the channel between Bordeaux and Shell Beach on Herm, when he first heard a cry. It was thin and distant but, he was sure, human. The sun was up—its rays warmed him as he climbed a spur of rock and looked back the way he had come. There was only the waste of rock and sand, mud flats and puddled water, but he heard the cry again. A child’s voice and, surely, familiar… .
A Wrinkle in the Skin Page 8