The Death of Grass

by John Christopher

  The block had been well sited – far enough round the bend to be invisible from the other side, but near enough to prevent a car getting up any speed again. The road was not wide enough to permit a turn. He had to brake to a stop, and before he could put the car into reverse he found a rifle pointing in at his side window. A stocky man in tweeds was holding it. He said to John:

  ‘All right, then. Come on out.’

  John said: ‘What’s the idea?’

  The man stepped back as Pirrie’s Ford swept round in its turn, but he kept his rifle steady on the Vauxhall. There were others, John saw, behind him. They covered the Ford and finally the Citroen when it, too, came to a halt in front of the block.

  The man in tweeds said: ‘What’s this – a convoy? Any more of you?’

  He had a jovial Yorkshire voice; the inflection did not seem at all threatening.

  John pushed the door open. ‘We’re travelling west,’ he said, ‘across the moors. My brother’s a farmer in Westmorland. We’re heading for his place.’

  ‘Where are you heading from, mister?’ another voice asked.

  ‘London.’

  ‘You got out quick, did you?’ The man laughed. ‘Not a very ’ealthy place just now, London, I don’t reckon.’

  Roger and Pirrie had both alighted – John was relieved to see that they had left their arms in the cars. Roger pointed to the roadblock.

  ‘What’s the idea of the tank trap?’ he asked. ‘Getting ready for an invasion?’

  The man in tweeds said: ‘That’s clever.’ His voice had a note of approval. ‘You’ve got it in one. When they come tearing up from the West Riding, the way you’ve done, they’re not going to find it so easy to pillage this little town.’

  ‘I get your point,’ Roger said.

  There was something artificial about the situation. John was able to see more clearly now; there were more than a dozen men in the road, watching them.

  He said: ‘We might as well get things straight. Do I take it you want us to back-track and find a road round the town? It’s a nuisance, but I see your point.’

  Another of the men laughed. ‘Not yet you don’t, mister!’

  John made no reply. For a moment he weighed the possibilities of their getting back into the cars and fighting it out. But even if they were to succeed in getting back, the women and children would be in the line of fire. He waited.

  It was fairly clear that the man in tweeds was the leader. One of the small Napoleons the new chaos would throw up; it was their bad luck that Masham had thrown him up so promptly. It had not been unreasonable to hope for another twelve hours’ grace.

  ‘You see,’ the man in tweeds said, ‘you’ve got to look at it from our point of view. If we didn’t protect ourselves, a place like this would be buried in the first rush. I’m telling you so you will understand we’re not doing anything that’s not sensible and necessary. You see, as well as being a target, you might say we’re a honeypot. All the flies – trying to get away from the famine and the atom bombs – they’ll all be travelling along the main roads. We catch them, and then we live on them – that’s the idea.’

  ‘Bit early for cannibalism,’ Roger commented. ‘Or is it a habit to eat human flesh in these parts?’

  The man in tweeds laughed. ‘Glad to see you’ve got a sense of humour. All’s not lost while we can find something to laugh at, eh? It’s not their flesh we want – not yet, anyway. But most of ’em will be carrying something, if it’s only half a bar of chocolate. You might say this is a toll-gate combined with a customs house. We inspect the luggage, and take what we want.’

  John said sharply: ‘Do you let us through after that?’

  ‘Well, not through, like. But round, anyway.’ His eyes – small and intent in a square well-fleshed face – fastened on John’s. ‘You can see what it looks like from our point of view, can’t you?’

  ‘I should say it looks like theft,’ John said, ‘from any point of view.’

  ‘Ay,’ the man said, ‘maybe as it does. If you’ve travelled all the way up here from London with nought worst than theft to your names, you’ve been luckier than the next lot will be. All right, mister. Ask the women to bring the kids out. We’ll do the searching. Come on, now. Soonest out, soonest ended.’

  John glanced at the other two; he read anger in Roger’s face, but acquiescence. Pirrie looked his usual polite and blank self.

  ‘O.K.,’ John said. ‘Ann, you will have to wake Mary, I’m afraid. Bring her out for a moment.’

  They huddled together while some of the men began ransacking the insides of the cars and the boots. They were not long in unearthing the weapons. A little man with a stubble of beard held up John’s automatic rifle with a cry.

  The man in tweeds said: ‘Guns, eh? That’s a better haul than we expected for our first.’

  John said: ‘There are revolvers as well. I hope you will leave us those.’

  ‘Have some sense,’ the man said. ‘We’re the ones who’ve got a town to defend.’ He called to the searching men. ‘Stack all the arms over here.’

  ‘Just what do you propose to take off us?’ John asked.

  ‘That’s easy enough. The guns, for a start. Apart from that, food, as I said. And petrol, of course.’

  ‘Why petrol?’

  ‘Because we may need it, if only for our internal lines of communication.’ He grinned. ‘Sounds very military, doesn’t it? Bit like the old days, in some ways. But it’s on our own doorsteps now.’

  John said: ‘We’ve got another eighty or ninety miles to do. The Ford can do forty to the gallon, the other two around thirty. All the tanks are pretty full. Will you leave us nine gallons between us?’

  The man in tweeds said nothing. He grinned.

  John looked at him. ‘We’ll ditch one of the big cars. Will you leave us six gallons?’

  ‘Six gallons,’ the man in tweeds said ‘or one revolver – the sort of thing that might make the difference between our holding this town and seeing it go up in flames. Mister, we’re not leaving you anything that we can possibly make good use of.’

  ‘One car,’ John said, ‘and three gallons. So you don’t have three women and four children on your consciences.’

  ‘Nay,’ the man said, ‘it’s all very well talking about consciences, but we’ve got our own women and kids to think about.’

  Roger and Pirrie were standing by him. Roger said:

  ‘They’ll take your town, and they’ll burn it. I hope you live just long enough to see it.’

  The man stared at him. ‘You don’t want to start spoiling things, mister. We’ve been treating you fair enough, but we could turn nasty if we wanted to.’

  Roger was on the verge of saying something else. John said:

  ‘All right. That’s enough, Rodge.’ To the man in tweeds, he went on: ‘We’ll make you a present of the cars. Can we take our families through the town towards Wensley? And do you think we could have a couple of old perambulators you’ve finished with?’

  ‘I’m glad to see you’re more polite than your friend, but it’s no – to both. No one’s coming into this town. We’ve got our roads to guard, and the men who aren’t guarding them have got work to do and sleep to get. We can’t spare anyone to watch you, and it’s damn certain we’re not letting you go through the town unwatched.’

  John looked at Roger again, and checked him. Pirrie spoke:

  ‘Perhaps you will tell us what we can do. And what we can take, blankets?’

  ‘Ay, we’re well enough supplied with blankets.’

  ‘And our maps?’

  One of the searchers came up and reported to him:

  ‘Reckon we’ve got everything worth having, Mr Spruce. Food and stuff. And the guns. Willie’s syphoning the petrol.’

  ‘In that case,’ Mr Spruce said, ‘you can go and help yourselves to what you want. I shouldn’t carry too much, if I were you. You won’t find the going so easy. If you follow the river round’ – he pointed to the right
– ‘it’s your best way for getting round the town.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Roger said. ‘You’re a great help.’

  Mr Spruce regarded him with beady benevolence. ‘You’re lucky – getting here before the rush, like. We shan’t have time to gossip with ’em once they start coming in fast.’

  ‘You’ve got a great deal of confidence,’ John said. ‘But it isn’t going to be as easy as you think it is.’

  ‘I read somewhere once,’ Mr Spruce said, ‘how the Saxons laughed and chatted together before the Battle of Hastings. That was when they’d just had one big battle and were getting ready for the next.’

  ‘They lost that one,’ John said. ‘The Normans won.’

  ‘Maybe they did. But it was a couple of hundred years before they travelled easy in these parts. Good luck, mister.’

  John looked at the cars, stripped already of food and weapons and with Willy, a youth lean and gangling and intent, completing the syphoning of the petrol.

  ‘May you have the same luck,’ he said.

  John said: ‘The important thing is to get away from here. After that we can decide the best plan to follow. As far as our things are concerned, I suggest we take three small cases for the present. Rucksacks would have been better, but we haven’t got them. I shouldn’t bother with blankets. Fortunately, it’s summer. If it’s chilly, we shall have to huddle together for warmth.’

  ‘I shall take my blanket roll,’ Pirrie said.

  ‘I don’t advise it,’ John told him.

  Pirrie smiled, but made no reply.

  The Masham men, having removed their booty, had faded back into the shadows that lined the road, and were watching them with impassive disinterest. The children, sleepy-eyed and unsteady, watched also as their elders sorted out what they needed from what had been left. John realized that he no longer counted Mary as one of the children; she was helping Ann.

  They got away at last. Looking back, John saw that the Masham men were pulling the abandoned cars round to reinforce the barrier they had already set up. He wondered what would happen when the cars really began to pile up there – probably they would shove them into the river.

  They toiled up rising ground, until they could look down, from a bare field, on the starlit roofs of the town lying between them and the moors. The night was very quiet.

  ‘We’ll rest here for a while,’ John said. ‘We can consider our plans.’

  Pirrie dropped the blanket roll; he had been carrying it, at first awkwardly under his arm and then more sensibly balanced on his shoulder.

  ‘In that case, I can get rid of these blankets,’ he said.

  Roger said: ‘I wondered how long it would be before you realized you were carrying dead weight.’

  Pirrie was busy undoing the string that tied the roll; it was arranged in a series of complicated knots. He said:

  ‘Those people down there… excellent surface efficiency, but I suspect the minor details are going to trip them up. I rather think the man who went through my car wasn’t even carrying a knife. If he was, then his negligence is quite inexcusable.’

  Roger asked curiously: ‘What have you got in there?’

  Pirrie looked up. In the dim starlight, he appeared to be blinking. ‘When I was considerably younger,’ he said, ‘I used to travel in the Middle East – Trans-Jordan, Irak, Saudi Arabia. I was looking for minerals – without much success, I must add. I learned the trick there of hiding a rifle in a blanket roll. The Arabs stole everything, but they preferred rifles.’

  Pirrie completed his unravelling. From the middle of the blankets, he drew out his sporting rifle; the telescopic sight was still attached.

  Roger laughed, loudly and suddenly. ‘Well, I’m damned! Things don’t look quite so bad after all. Good old Pirrie.’

  Pirrie lifted out a small box in addition. ‘Only a couple of dozen rounds, unfortunately,’ he said, ‘but it’s better than nothing.’

  ‘I should say it is,’ said Roger. ‘If we can’t find a farmhouse with a car and petrol, we don’t deserve to get away with it. A gun makes the difference.’

  John said: ‘No. No more cars.’

  There was a moment’s silence. Then Roger said:

  ‘You’re not starting to develop scruples, are you, Johnny? Because if you are, then the best thing you can do with Pirrie’s rifle is shoot yourself. I didn’t like the way those bastards down there treated us, but I have to admit they had the right idea. It’s force that counts now. Anybody who doesn’t understand that has got as much chance as a rabbit in a cage full of ferrets.’

  Only this morning, John thought, his reasons might have been based on scruples; and along with those scruples would have gone uncertainty and reluctance to impose his own decision on the others. Now he said sharply:

  ‘We’re not taking another car, because cars are too dangerous now. We were lucky down there. They could easily have riddled us with bullets first and stripped the cars afterwards. They will have to do that eventually. If we try to make it to the valley by car, we’re asking for something like that to happen. In a car, you’re always in a potential ambush.’

  ‘Reasonable,’ Pirrie murmured. ‘Very reasonable.’

  ‘Eighty odd miles,’ Roger said. ‘On foot? You weren’t expecting to find horses, were you?’

  John gazed at the weed-chequered ground on which they stood; it looked as though it might once have been pasture.

  ‘No. We’re going to have to do it on foot. Probably it means three days, instead of a few hours. But if we do it slowly, it’s odds on our making it. The other way, it’s odds against.’

  Roger said: ‘I’m for getting hold of a car, and making a run for it. There’s a chance we shan’t meet any trouble at all; there won’t be many towns will have organized as quickly as Masham did – there won’t be many that will have the sense to organize anyway. If we’re making a trek across country with the kids, we’re bound to have trouble.’

  ‘That’s what we’re going to do, though,’ John said.

  Roger asked: ‘What do you think, Pirrie?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what he thinks,’ John said. ‘I’ve told you what we’re going to do.’

  Roger nodded at the silent watchful figure of Pirrie. ‘He’s got the gun,’ he said.

  John said: ‘That means he can take over running the show, if he has the inclination. But until he does, I make the decisions.’ He glanced at Pirrie. ‘Well?’

  ‘Admirably put,’ Pirrie remarked. ‘Am I allowed to keep the rifle? I hardly think I am being particularly vain in pointing out that I happen to have the greatest degree of skill in its use. And I am not likely to develop ambitions towards leadership. You will have to take that on trust, of course.’

  John said: ‘Of course you keep the rifle.’

  Roger said: ‘So democracy’s out. That’s something I ought to have realized for myself. Where do we go from here?’

  ‘Nowhere until the morning,’ John said. ‘In the first place, we all need a night’s sleep; and in a second, there’s no sense in stumbling about in the dark in country we don’t know. Everybody stands an hour’s watch. I’ll take first; then you, Roger, Pirrie, Millicent, Olivia’ – he hesitated – ‘and Ann. Six hours will be as much as we can afford. Then we shall go and look for breakfast.’

  The air was warm, with hardly any breeze.

  ‘Once again,’ Roger said, ‘thank God it’s not winter.’ He called to the three boys: ‘Come on, you lot. You can snuggle round me and keep me cosy.’

  The field lay just under the crest of a hill. John sat above the little group of reclining figures, and looked over them to the vista of moorland that stretched away westwards. The moon would soon be up; already its radiance had begun to reinforce the starlight.

  The question of whether the weather held fair would make a lot of difference to them. How easy it would be, he thought, to pray – to sacrifice, even – to the moorland gods, in the hope of turning away their wrath. He glanced at where the three
boys lay curled up between Roger and Olivia. They would come to it, perhaps, or their children.

  And thinking that, he felt a great weariness of spirit, as though out of the past his old self, his civilized self, challenged him to an accounting. When it sank below a certain level, was life itself worth the having any longer? They had lived in a world of morality whose lineage could be traced back nearly four thousand years. In a day, it had been swept from under them.

  But were there some who still held on, still speaking the grammar of love while Babel rose all round them? If they did, he thought, they must die, and their children with them – as their predecessors had died, long ago, in the Roman arenas. For a moment, he thought that he would be glad to have the faith to die like that, but then he looked again at the little sleeping group whose head he now was, and knew their lives meant more to him than their deaths ever could.

  He stood up, and walked quietly to where Ann lay with Mary in her arms. Mary was asleep, but in the growing moonlight he could see that Ann’s eyes were open.

  He called softly to her: ‘Ann!’

  She made no reply. She did not even look up. After a time he walked away again and took up his old position.

  There were some who would choose to die well rather than to live. He was sure of that, and the assurance comforted him.

  8

  During her watch, Millicent had seen distant flashes towards the south, twice or three times, and had heard a rumble of noise long afterwards. They might have been atom-bomb explosions. The question seemed irrelevant. It was unlikely that they would ever know the full story of whatever was taking place in the thickly populated parts of the country; and, in any case, it no longer interested them.

  They began their march on a bright morning; it was cool but promised heat. The objective John had set them was a crossing of the northern part of Masham Moor into Coverdale. After that, they would take a minor road across Carlton Moor and then strike north to Wensleydale and the pass into Westmorland. They found a farmhouse not very far away from where they had slept, and Roger wanted to raid it for food. John vetoed the idea, on the grounds that it was too near Masham. It was uncertain how far the Mashamites proposed to protect their outlying districts. The sound of shots might easily bring a protecting party up from the town.