A Wrinkle in the Skin

by John Christopher

  The dog, aware of the tone of disapproval, growled more loudly. Matthew started walking. For some time he could hear the growling, and the laughter.

  Billy said feebly, “I didn’t want any milk, Mr. Cotter.”

  “We’ll soon be there,” he said. “When we get to the grotto, Lawrence and April will look after you.”

  “I could try walking again.”

  “You stay where you are. We’ll soon be there, Billy.”

  He lost his way at one point, but the sun gave him a general direction and he arrived at last at what he was sure must be the A.31. But he was not sure whether he had reached it west or east of the place where he had met April and the others. The decision whether to go left or right was an agonizing one; the fatigue of the previous day had set in earlier, and the thought of traveling in the wrong direction was unbearable. Matthew lay in the grass at the edge of the road, on his side with Billy in the harness behind him. The sun was hot and he was sweating, his muscles aching from the strain. To go on lying there was a physical imperative, but he knew he had to resist it. The grotto could not be more than three or four miles away. He struggled back to his feet and, with a gambler’s fatalism, walked toward the west.

  He reached the mound that had been the village about half an hour later. He had a great sense of achievement, a feeling that though the grotto still lay a couple of miles to the north, he might at any moment see one of them. April, in particular, he visualized as part of each unfolding scene—across that field, past those trees … she would be there, and he would call to her and see her look, the quick recognition, her smile.

  Billy said, “I remember that pond.”

  “So do I. Are you feeling better, Billy?”

  “A bit better.”

  “We’re nearly there.”

  He said, to the April who might be on the far side of the copse:

  —I was a fool. I’ve not learned wisdom, but I’ve learned that. I suppose it’s a start. Help me. Help me.

  The chatter of the stream was the same, and beyond it the sun gleamed on the glossy green of the rhododendrons. Matthew walked past them and saw the grotto. It was empty; there was no one there. The anticipation had been absurd, of course: During the day they would be, as usual, out foraging. They would come back toward sundown.

  He freed Billy from the harness and eased him down to lie in the grass. He was immensely tired but no longer painfully so. He had made it, and all they had to do was wait.

  18

  HEAT SEEMED to grow through the afternoon. Billy slept a good deal of the time. When Matthew had recovered some of his strength, he went down to the stream and stripped and washed himself. He had nothing to dry himself with, but he sat in a patch of sunlight until most of the dampness had evaporated. His clothes ought to be washed, too, but that would have to wait. There was a thickening of white clouds in the sky. The sun went in, but it was still hot, and in the distance he heard the rumble of thunder. He hoped the storm, if it were to come, would not break before April and the others got back.

  As the day ended, Billy woke up. He was sweating, peaked and querulous. He said, “Where are they? Where’s Lawrence?” “They’ll be here soon.”

  “How soon?”

  “Soon.”

  Billy said restlessly, “I’m so hot.”

  “I’ll get something to cool you.”

  He tore a strip off the boy’s shirt, rubbed it as clean as he could in the stream, and brought it back dripping. He mopped Billy’s face and neck with it, and it seemed to ease him. But he had gone back again; he was once more running a high fever. When Lawrence came … Matthew strained his eyes to see through the bushes and the more distant trees. The sun was long gone, and evening was shading into night. He knew they would not be coming back that day.

  The explanation followed convincingly on the realization. They had been finding foraging more and more difficult in the area within reach. They must have gone so far afield that they could not return to the grotto the same day. They would come back tomorrow. He told Billy this, and the boy stared at him apathetically.

  “We can manage on our own for another night, Billy, can’t we?”

  He nodded slightly.

  “How are you feeling, son?”

  “All right.”

  But the tone was flat, the voice a whisper. Matthew had a moment’s anger with Lawrence for not being there, but saw the unreasonableness of that and checked himself. He thought of something else: the extra store of food in the old well. He told Billy to lie quiet, that he would not be gone long, and went over there. He felt apprehension, a sick anticipation of disappointment as he saw the boards that marked the place, indistinct in the dusk. Then he was there, and pulling them to one side. The well shaft gaped blackly. Matthew put his arm down and felt for the spike. The rope was there. As he hauled it up, the weight at the end of it was a relief.

  He heaved out the net, selected one or two tins from it, and dropped the rest back. Then he returned to where Billy was. He was sitting up, looking anxiously for his return.

  Matthew said, “I’ve found some milk. You’ll have a little, won’t you?”

  “I thought you’d gone.”

  “Not for long. I told you. Here you are. I’ve punched holes in the top.”

  “You won’t go, will you, Mr. Cotter?”

  Matthew shook his head. “I won’t go.”

  The storm broke fairly early in the night, with drenching rain and thunder and lightning chasing each other across the sky. Matthew did his best to keep Billy dry, keeping him under the grotto’s overhang and covering him with his own mackintosh. He himself got soaked at the beginning, but scarcely noticed his wetness in his concern for the boy. The fever raged in the small body as tumultuously as the storm; he threshed about restlessly, calling out for his parents and for the dog Captain. Matthew sat beside him, talking to him and trying to comfort him. He felt a great despair at his inability to do anything to help him. The boy was desperately ill, perhaps dying. It would be a bitter irony if, after the struggle to get him back here, he should die before Lawrence returned.

  He took the boy’s hand, and held it. “Hang on, Billy.” The fingers were dry and hot against his cold wet palm. “You must hang on.”

  Toward morning the thunder rolled away toward the west, the rain stopped, and the air grew still. But the boy showed no sign of improving. The mental and physical agitation remained, but the physical movements, Matthew thought, were weaker. His voice was weaker, too. He seemed to be speaking to Matthew sometimes, as well as to his parents; but in the same terms, Matthew felt—as though he were not there. Yet when Matthew took his hand away, he cried out pitifully until Matthew grasped him again.

  Matthew stayed, cold and wet and cramped, while the sky brightened. It had been an ordinary summer storm, violent but short-lived, and the sky above the grotto changed from indigo to a clear clean blue. The blue was quite pale, the sunlight bright on the tops of the trees, before Billy fell asleep and Matthew was able to let go his hold. Asleep, Matthew thought, but no better. He had no idea when April and the others would be back; apart from anything else, the storm might have delayed them. Billy needed Lawrence’s skill, but there might be something among the medical supplies which would help for the time being.

  On the way to the cellar he went past the rose garden. The four graves were there, with their wooden crosses, and on each grave a rose had been laid, blown now and battered by the rain. Matthew stood and looked at them for a moment before going on to the ruins of the house.

  The early part—getting the covering rubbish away—was easy enough but time-consuming. He was out of sight of the grotto, but in earshot if Billy should call for him. He got down to the upturned table and, with his fingertips under the edge, heaved to lift it. It did not budge.

  Trying again, he remembered that this was a job normally done by three of them—George, Charley and Archie. If he could get more leverage, it would be a help, but he saw no way of doing that. He bent
over, straining with all his might, and felt it lift, but not enough for him to be able to wedge something under it. He straightened up, wiping sweat from his brow. It might be necessary to leave it until the others came back.

  As a last resort, he tried sliding the table. He cleared a space at one end of it, and then went back to the other. He braced himself against a tangle of beams and stone, dug his heels in against the table edge, and pushed out with his feet. The first time nothing happened. With his second effort, though, the table moved along an inch or two. Matthew readjusted his position and pushed again. This time it moved perhaps six inches and revealed a little of the stairwell. Only the narrowest of gaps, but enough to encourage him to try once more.

  Eventually he had to go and clear more debris from the far end, but by that time there was room to stand on the top stair and shove the slab of wood forward. It went relatively easily. Matthew did not bother getting it completely clear of the well.

  It was enough that he could squeeze through the space and force Iris way, lying on his back, down the stairs.

  It was very dark, with only the tiny slit of light behind him. Matthew flicked on the butane lighter, and peered around.

  At first he thought that nothing had changed. The trestle tables were there, and the shelves, and as he moved his arm, he saw tins and clothing and the metal ladder and the roll of roofing felt. It was true that the candles were not in their usual place on the tables, but they did not seem important. The stores, too, were not as neatly arranged as they had been, in places were in disorder. Perhaps April had been supervising things less closely. But he was more interested in the room beyond—the medical supplies, and the brandy. He went to the door and pushed it open.

  The little cellar, he saw at once, had been stripped. The shelves that had held Lawrence’s medical supplies were empty, as was the rack with the few precious bottles of wine and the brandy. There was nothing in the room but dust.

  His immediate reaction was that for some reason they had moved everything out into the larger room. He went back to it and walked round with the lighter, checking everything. He did not find the brandy, but he discovered something else. There was more to it than disorder: A good deal of the stuff that had been here was missing, too. Had they made yet another cache, somewhere else, for the really important material? It was possible, but it was difficult to understand why. Or where. There could hardly be any other place within reach as well concealed and secure as this.

  Unless … He remembered the graves first, a thought apparently random but seen with a new significance. April had put no flowers on them before—perhaps because she had not felt she needed to, with the rose garden blooming beside them. And now, the rose left on each grave. A token. Of goodbye?

  Lawrence had wanted them to leave, to go up into the hills where they could defend themselves better, find animals, eventually start farming. It had been a sensible and obvious course. The reason they had not gone before was that April would not leave her dead, and the rest were helpless without her. If she had changed her mind … And he saw all too clearly how it could have happened. Her contempt for his own obsessive fantasy, for his refusal to adapt to the realities of life, was something she might well have turned on herself. Her link with the past, like his, was a crippling one, both for her and for others. Once she saw this, she would have rejected it. It only needed courage, and she had that in ample measure.

  Matthew examined the stores again, trying to remember what had been there. The matches and candles had gone, he saw, the small hammer, the lightweight saw, the scissors … all sorts of things that combined usefulness with portability. He had the impression that as far as the tinned foods were concerned, it was the proteins that were in shorter supply now. They would have taken what they needed and could carry. The rest they had left here, sealing it up in case, perhaps, at some future time, they could come back for the other things.

  Did that mean they had not gone far? He checked the quick dart of hope. They were looking for no particular place but a refuge, a defensible home. They would go on until they found it. And when they found it, they would stay there.

  He was still walking round aimlessly, trying to cope with the realization, and he found himself in the small cellar again. The tiny light he was carrying gleamed on something lying on the corner of the shelf against the wall, and he reached up to get it. A small squat bottle, of aspirins. It must have been overlooked when the other things were taken. Well, it was something. A bottle of aspirins to treat a boy who was possibly dying.

  He realized something else, then—that down here he would not be able to hear Billy if he called for him. He went quickly to the stairs and, lying on his back, heaved himself out into the open. Billy was not calling, but he headed for the grotto all the same. He had been away long enough.

  Billy woke a short while later, in delirium. He tried to get up and, when Matthew restrained’ him, fought against him. He struggled with all the strength he could summon, but it was not very much. There was about half an hour of this before he relaxed, slumping back so heavily and helplessly that Matthew put his ear to the boy’s chest to reassure himself that the heart was still beating. He crushed a couple of aspirins into the tinned milk, and fed him with a spoon. It was difficult getting it into his mouth, even more difficult persuading him to swallow. He was not sure that any milk went down, but at least it did not come out.

  For the rest of the day, and the night that followed, the boy was alternately febrile and comatose. Matthew used the latter intervals to get various things from the cellar—blankets and clean clothes for him and eventually the poles and canvas which made up the awning. He came back from that trip to find Billy awake again, on his knees and crying. He forced him gently back and gave him some water with more crushed aspirin. This was in the afternoon, and he himself had had nothing but a tin of meat and some cold tinned tomatoes. He had no means, anyway, of starting a fire since there was no dry wood.

  He got the awning up before dark, but in fact the night stayed clear. It was quite warm, and the stars were bright but very far away. Matthew watched them revolve through the long hours, between nursing Billy and talking to him. Twice he fell asleep for short spells; the second time he was wakened by Billy feebly trying to climb over him to get away. He felt leaden, and his head and eyes were aching. What would happen to Billy if he got it, too—whatever it was? He shook his head to clear it, despite the pain. He was not going to be ill.

  Dawn came, and there was no change in the boy except that he seemed still weaker. His strength was draining away almost visibly, and when he cried out now, it was in a voice so feeble that it was almost a whisper. Matthew himself was still feeling unwell and exhausted. He could not be bothered to eat anything. All he wanted to do was sleep, and he could not sleep while the boy needed him. The morning passed in a kind of nightmare. It was a clear day, hot at the outset and growing hotter. He went to bathe in the stream to refresh himself and, coming in sight of it, thought for a moment that he saw April again, kneeling there. The air seemed thick, oppressive, and he heard a cuckoo, its duotone beating mockingly against his ears. He washed, only half aware of what he was doing, and took back a wet cloth to cool Billy.

  In the middle of the day there was another burst of fever. The boys body arched against Matthew’s restraining arms; his pulse hammered frighteningly fast. His mouth gaped and his tongue was swollen and white against dry cracked lips. At the same time, sweat was pouring off his body. Matthew managed to get a little more aspirin in water down his throat; apart from that there was nothing he could do but hold him, and wipe his face with the cloth. He was sure now that the boy was dying. He thought of the morning when he had first heard him call, from under the rubble of his home, and felt an enraging sense of futility. The boy was dying, the time and hardships between pointless.

  The boy had followed him, he told himself, and there was nothing he could have done about that except what he had done. He had looked after him as well as he could. It w
ould have been better if he had been willing to stay with Miller, or later with Lawrence and April, but that was nothing he could help.

  Except by giving up his own fantasy. He stared at Billy’s face, the skin drawn tight over sharp and delicate bone, and knew that the worst charge against him was that he had never even thought of doing so. He had given him some care. There had been no question of giving him love.

  He held Billy’s hand. The pulse was very fast still and seemed to be irregular. A waste, and of his own doing. He lay down beside the boy and gathered him in his arms… .

  He was in Hyde Park, on a cold ragged day, and was looking for something. Not something, someone. Someone who mattered, whom he loved but had let down. The grass was yellow and scrubby from a long arid summer, and the autumn wind bent the branches of trees and blew paper wrappers about. The terrible thing was that he did not know where to look; whichever way he turned, he was conscious of the great spaces behind him, the vistas which could hide the lonely missing figure. Then it came quite simply to him: the Serpentine. He could see its gray waters in the distance, and he went toward it, hurrying, almost running. But however fast he went, it was no nearer. Despite his anxiety and unhappiness, this struck him as ludicrous—Alice in Wonderland. And April, beside him, said, “You’ve been going the wrong way. I despise you for that, Matthew.” He clutched at her arm. “You can help me find her! You can, if you want to.” She shook her head. “You can!” “It’s only a matter,” she told him, “of facing reality. Look.” And they were by the lake, looking along it toward the bridge. The boat was there in the distance, with one small figure at the oars. Going away, irretrievably going away. He shouted after it, against the wind, “Jane! I’m here. Come back. Don’t leave me, Jane.” But the boat, with Billy in it, went on under the arch of the bridge and was lost to him. And he turned to April in his anguish, and she was no longer there.