A Wrinkle in the Skin

by John Christopher

  It was getting late. The sky was darkening, and it would not be long before they had to stop for the night. If they carried on as they were, they had a good chance of getting off the seabed that day. The thought was tempting. There was more chance of there being some kind of shelter there, and first thing in the morning, if the sun was out, they might find wood and make a fire. The smell of the sausages out of the past haunted him again.

  But to head west was to head away from Jane, and he could not do it knowingly. He told Billy they were going the wrong way, and they turned again toward the north. They saw the mainland there eventually, but by that time the light was draining from the sky, and a little while later they were forced to halt. They slept in sand again, and during the night it rained. Not much, but enough to awaken them and to soak them. It seemed a long time till morning.

  They came up from the seabed, Matthew calculated, at roughly the point where Bournemouth would have been. There was no trace of it now; the great wave had scoured as fiercely here as in the Channel Isles, ripping away all the marks of man. What was left was the basic contour of the land. Were these bare hills, he wondered, the ridges which had supported hotels and boardinghouses and rows of shops? In the early morning light there was a faint air of familiarity about them. But nothing moved, nothing lived here. They climbed over scree, slipping and struggling for a footing. It was a discouraging landfall.

  The rain was holding off, but the sky was cloudy. At the moment, though, the coastline gave them bearings. They headed in a generally northwestern direction, which should take them to the somewhat higher ground of the New Forest. Their clothes were still damp from their drenching, and the morning did not seem to bring much warmth. Even walking they were cold, and when they stopped to rest they found themselves shivering. It was surprising, Matthew thought, that they had escaped illness; but one could be wretched enough without being ill. He looked at Billy with compassion. He himself had a purpose, at least, an end in view. The boy struggled on through a wrecked and meaningless world with no objective.

  The high-water mark ran clear along the side of a hill; above it, abruptly, there were grass, bushes, a few trees. The sight was wonderful after the days of nothing but barrenness. Automatically they sat down in the grass, touching and touched by its soft dampness. Matthew caught blades in his fingers, pulled them out, crushed them for the smell. Now at last he was back in England. The scents of summer were intoxicating. Farther up there was a cluster of high-stemmed marguerites, with a pair of red-and-brown butterflies dancing above them. And in the distance he heard a blackbird calling.

  He gave Billy one of the two remaining chocolate biscuits, and they set off again, up the slope. From the crest of the hill they looked down at a land superficially scarred but intrinsically unchanged—trees were down in places, and a brown weal showed where there had been an earth slip, but in essence it was an ordinary rural scene. Except, of course, for the lack of husbandry. The shapes of fields and hedges were there, but the fields were overgrown and untended. Matthew saw wheat below them and, over to the right, something that was very much worth a detour: potatoes.

  They found the first signs of men at the potato field. The whole of one corner had been taken up, the plants thrown down between the furrows. Matthew pulled up the next couple along the row. The potatoes were small still, the biggest no more than a couple of inches long. But there were quite a lot on each plant. They brushed as much of the dirt off as possible, and ate them raw.

  Before moving on, they pulled up several more plants and filled the spaces in their packs with potatoes. In a clump of trees nearby they found twigs and branches which could have been broken to make fuel for a fire, but there was no sign of the sun coming out to enable the glass to be used. Matthew was annoyed by his own lack of forethought. He could have taken matches from Millers store, or found matches or something similar on the tanker. His attention had been concentrated on the crossing of the seabed, with too little thought of what would come after.

  A few hundred yards from the potato field, they had a sight of human habitation, or the remains of it. The jumble of bricks and wood had presumably been a farmhouse; outlying rubble followed a pattern of farm buildings. There was the usual smell of death, though it was less pervading than it had been. Time was passing, flesh rotting down into the purifying earth.

  Something else had happened here, too. The rubble had been turned over by human hands; the evidence for it was unmistakable. Rescue work? Or foraging? The latter, presumably—the disturbances had a recent look. A band of nomads wandering through the country, picking up what they could— potatoes, or a few tins from the ruins of the farmers larder. It was depressing, and something of a shock, to have to think in those terms. He had had no clear idea of what might have happened to survivors in the wider reaches of England, but he had taken for granted that there would be organization at least on a level comparable with that which they had left behind in Guernsey. Now he saw that this supposition might be quite wide of the mark. Where confines were narrow, discipline was stricter, and the chance of order so much greater. Like string quartets or the Elizabethan sonnet. Chaos could be more complete here, and longer-lasting.

  The last indications of humanity that day were the most welcome. They passed from agricultural to common land—the wooded spaces of the New Forest itself—and reached a main road which Matthew guessed was either the A.31 or the A.35; traveling with neither sun nor compass, he could not know how far they had strayed from their original course. It made sense, he decided, to follow the road, which was buckled and tree-strewn, beginning to be encroached on by grass, but more passable than the land around it; though only if one knew which road it was. To turn right along the A.31 would take them to Southampton, but a similar maneuver on the A.35 would return them the way they had come. The day was declining, but the cloud cover was so thick that he could not even guess at the west. The only safe thing, he decided, was an early halt, in the hope that the sky might be clearer in the morning. He felt tired enough, and Billy looked dead beat.

  But Billy, to his surprise, begged that they should go on for a little.

  “Why?” he asked. “Aren’t you tired? And I’m not sure which is our right way.”

  “I thought I saw …”

  “What?”

  “Smoke.”

  “Where?”

  He pointed up the road—west, if it were the A.31. “Past those trees.”

  Matthew looked, but could see nothing. But Billy had seen land first, and the chance was worth taking. He nodded.

  “All right. We’ll go and look round the bend.”

  Round the bend there were the ruins of houses, diese too showing signs of having recently been worked over. Matthew looked round for people and saw no one. But the smoke was there. A few stones had been put together by the side of the road and it rose from them. Chaired wood smoldered, and a few embers glowed.

  Matthew put his hands to his mouth, hallooed, and listened for a reply. None came. He tried twice more, with the same result. The fire might have been abandoned hours ago. They had not bothered to douse it and might well have left it fully blazing.

  The important thing was that it was still alight, though only just. Some wood—broken laths from the houses—was scattered a couple of yards away. He and Billy collected them and he set them carefully above the charred pieces and, bending down over them, blew gently and steadily. It took time, but at last the glow brightened into small tongues of flame and the new wood caught. Billy, meanwhile, had brought in more wood. The fire blazed up and soon they were sitting on either side of it, warming their hands.

  They had a good supper that night. They heated sardines in the tin, in their oil, and shared them, and after that warmed up a concoction of wild boar with mushrooms and olives—one of the tins they had picked up on Alderney. But the best was last: potatoes roasted in the embers as the fire died down again. They had their fill of these, and settled for the night after Matthew had banked up the fire wit
h thick pieces of wood and covered it over with clods.

  They were doing well, he thought. Their bellies were full, the ground they were lying on was the solid and ancient earth of England, and with luck the fire would still be renewable in the morning. It was a pity they had met no one yet, but they obviously would, quite soon.

  Billy woke him, clutching his arm and saying, “Look!”

  Matthew moved his cramped body, and did as he was bidden. It was early morning, light enough to see fifty yards or so. And they stood at the very edge of vision—wraithlike, almost melting into the shadows. But clear enough to see. Two at first, and then, as one of them moved, he saw a third grazing behind it. New Forest ponies. A brown, a dun, and a smaller sorrel. Matthew thought with delight: They survived the motorists who massacred them summer after summer on the unfenced roads of the Forest, and now the motorcars are gone and they still crop the grass as they did in the days of William Rufus. It was a wonderful sight.

  That was the first thought; the second was acquisitive. They were not pack animals in the way that donkeys or mules were, but they could carry some goods, and they could carry a boy. He motioned to Billy to be silent, rose quietly to his feet, and walked toward them. As he approached, he talked to them easily in a low voice. One of them looked up, seemingly saw no danger, and put its head down again to the grass. They waited until he was a few feet from them before jerking round and cantering away. Their hoofs drummed the earth, more and more faintly, as they disappeared among the trees.

  Billy, as he came back, said, “Bad luck, Mr. Cotter. I think they were pretty wild, though.”

  He said, I’d forgotten that. They’re probably unbroken, and I believe they take some breaking in. Even if I’d been able to get one, it wouldn’t have done us much good.”

  “It was nice seeing them.”

  “Yes,” he said. “It was nice.”

  Matthew succeeded in coaxing the fire back to life, and they started the day with warmed-up corned beef and the rest of the potatoes. Stores were beginning to get low and would need replenishing. He wondered how many people there were ransacking the ruins of the houses by the roadside. The point was, of course, that survival was more probable in the country districts, and so was the exhaustion of supplies of tinned foods. Towns and cities would offer much more scope in that respect. If they could reach Southampton … The estuary should have protected it from the full effects of the tidal wave.

  He looked up at the sky. There was cloud still, but it was broken, and a patch of brightness showed the east. Which meant that this was the A.31, after all. They had their direction now, and could follow the road.

  They saw people about an hour after they had started on their way. There were two of them, some distance from the road. Their clothes were the usual assortment of bits and pieces, and their general appearance unkempt. Matthew could tell only from the lack of beards that they were women, one in her twenties, one a good deal older. They had not seen him, and he called to them.

  “Hello, there!”

  Their reaction was immediate. They stared at him for a moment, and began to run away. The older one stumbled, and the other paused to help her. Matthew called after them again, trying to be reassuring, but they ran on. There was a thicket a couple of hundred yards away. They went in, not looking back, and disappeared among the bushes.

  Billy said, “Were they frightened?”

  “It seems like it.”

  “Why, Mr. Cotter?”

  The women’s fear communicated to him an apprehension. Could this be the pattern of things—small isolated groups of two or three people, grubbing for food in the fields and the ruins, running from the sight of their fellowmen? Surely there must be some who could impose order, as Miller had done?

  He said, “I don’t know, Billy.” He began to walk on. “People do funny things these days.”

  The encounter in the afternoon was very different.

  They had been traveling across the open land of the New Forest, where apart from occasional bucklings of the road and fissures in the ground, and fallen trees, there was little to mark the change that had taken place. The sun was shining, and they had been able to build a fire at midday. They were making good progress, and Matthew was cheered by seeing quite a lot of birds: thrushes, a wren, a robin, and a pair of magpies as bright and noisy as ever. They had also seen, in the distance, another pony. He and Billy were talking about this as they approached a mound of rubble which signified what had once been a village. He looked up, his attention caught by a slight movement at the corner of his vision, and saw the woman watching them.

  She was standing by a large tree, at the edge of the mound and perhaps twenty yards from the road. She was dressed in brown—slacks and a jersey—which helped her to blend with the background. And she was standing still, watching their approach. She continued to do so in silence after Matthew had caught sight of her. Billy, sensing the distraction, looked and saw her also.

  He said, “She isn’t running away, Mr. Cotter.”

  “No,” Matthew said. “Not so far.”

  He studied her as they approached. She was in her middle thirties, he judged, of medium height and with a good figure. She was, by present standards, well groomed. Brown hair, cut fairly short, was drawn back from a face that had—his first thought told him—intelligence and courage but not beauty. It was lined about the mouth and eyes. She looked as though she had been through a good deal.

  Matthew stopped, a few feet away from her. He said quietly, “Hello. Billy was just saying that you weren’t running away.”

  She smiled, and it was a transforming act. To the other qualities it added warmth, in such measure that he was inclined to revise his opinion about beauty, too.

  She said, “No. I didn’t think you looked all that dangerous. Where are you from?”

  “Guernsey.” She looked blank. “The Channel Isles.”

  “I mean, since the Bust.”

  “So do I.”

  “How did you get here?”

  “We walked it.”

  “So the sea’s gone altogether?”

  Matthew nodded.

  “What’s it like out there?”

  “Pretty much the same as here, as far as I can see.” “Survivors?”

  “A few. Eleven or twelve, apart from us.”

  “Decent people?”

  “Averagely, I should think.”

  “Then why?” The question was pitched with an almost ferocious intensity. “Why come here? What did you expect to find?”

  Matthew said quietly, “I don’t know. My daughter was here. In Sussex, that is. I wanted to try to find her.”

  She gave a short unhappy laugh. “My God, you’re greedy!”

  “Greedy?”

  “I had three children. And a husband I was quite fond of. If I’d been left with one of them, I would have been contented. I wouldn’t have dragged a child on this sort of wild goose chase.”

  “Coming was his idea,” Matthew said. “I was out on the seabed when he caught up with me. I could hardly send him back.”

  “Hardly!”

  Belatedly, he caught her meaning. He said, “Billy’s not my son. I dug him out. As I say, he followed me without my knowing, until it was too late to do much about it. Jane was my only one.”

  He was conscious of the tense he had used, and thought that the woman was, too.

  There was a pause before she said, “I see. I’m sorry. I’m April. I had a second name, but …” She shrugged.

  “Matthew,” he said. “Matthew Cotter, but I agree it doesn’t matter. And this is Billy.”

  The warmth he had noticed before came back to her face. She said, “Come on. You might as well meet the others.”

  “You’re not alone, then?”

  “Who can afford to be?”

  “What were you watching for?”

  “Trouble,” she said. “What else?”

  From the road a path led round the edge of the rubble; others, presumably, had ma
de the detour. There were the marks of various foraging incursions into the ruins, and as they went on, Matthew could hear voices and sounds of activity. They found eventually a small group of people engaged in digging. There were five in all. They broke off at the sight of April and the others.

  April said, “Just the two of them, and I think they’re decent.” She had used the expression before, Matthew remembered; presumably it signified a necessary classification. “Sybil, go and take my post, will you?”

  Sybil was about twenty-eight, a cowed-looking, not very attractive girl, hiding a thin figure under badly fitting blue overall trousers and a man’s checked shirt. She nodded silently and went back the way they had come.

  April said, “Have you found anything worth while?”

  There were three men. One, his hair and beard so light in color that they looked white in the sunlight, seemed to be in his early twenties; and there was a runtish red-haired man of about forty. The third was still older—over fifty, Matthew guessed. He was large-framed and gave the impression of having been overweight before being hardened by privation and hard work. He wore a blue shirt and dark gray trousers, and, like April, seemed to have been making an effort to keep up appearances. His hair was combed, and his beard, black tinged with gray and white, was not as untidy as those of the two other men.

  When he spoke it was, like April, in an educated voice. He said, “Not much so far. Some food.” He pointed to a small pile of tins on the grass. “And we’ve reached a wardrobe which looks as though it might be worth digging out properly.” He looked at Matthew and Billy. “Are they traveling through?”

  “I think so.” She smiled. “They’ve come a long way. From Guernsey.”

  There was general surprise, and the last member of the group, a girl not much older than Billy, said excitedly, “We went to Guernsey on holiday last year! We was going to go again.”