Figures in a Landscape

by Barry England

  MacConnachie, too, had come to understand that they were in danger of drowning. The ferocity of the downpour had thrown up a heavy, vaporous mist of spray thick as a curtain and many feet high; he was having to work his way downwards with painful and frightening slowness, and every time he took a gasp he swallowed as much water as he did air. He felt that his lungs were heavy with moisture and that he was, in reality, under water.

  He struggled to keep going, wrenched and skidding often, every movement made rawly laborious by the weight of water with which he had to contend. But he could see nothing and he was tiring rapidly, as though the flowing streams drew the strength out of his old man’s body and ran it useless down the mountain­side.

  Then his feet made contact with a ledge and for a moment he rested, his body racked by a ruinous and chilling ague.

  And there was Ansell beside him, not six inches away, clinging to a minute promontory, his feet dangling less than an inch above the security of the ledge. Why doesn’t he let go and stand? he thought. Then he took hold of Ansell and caught him as he fell. He pressed the trembling body into the rock wall, covering it with his own, trying to warm and comfort it, trying to shelter his friend from the rain.

  We must find shelter.

  The sheer weight and volume of water was stunning, crushing and overwhelming them. A vast, wide, shallow river of rain poured down the face of the mountain, slashing into and over and through them as though it had no end and they were not there; wherever the fissures and splits in the rock formed any sort of line, wild, spurting jets had leapt into being, spouting up through the smaller crannies and roiling and bubbling and churning along until they lost themselves in the larger wash. The roaring of the tumult deafened them.

  We must find shelter.

  Ansell was sufficiently recovered to raise his face to MacConnachie who, head bent against the violence of the storm, pointed upwards. Open-mouthed, Ansell nodded, and they set out; there was no point in wasting energy on a futile attempt to speak.

  MacConnachie’s first concern was to recover the suitcase. They could get no wetter, and the rain would not ease for a week; they could not afford to abandon their food for so long, assuming that it was still there, and that they could find it again.

  It took an hour and forty-seven minutes to find it: one hundred and seven minutes of half-blind scrabbling about the treacherous slopes; and when they got there, more had gone. The tins re­mained, the knife, and the jars of paste and the bottle of oil; the blanket, fortunately, had snagged on a jagged edge so that, although it flared out beneath the mouth of the crack, it had not been carried away down the mountain. Everything else was lost to them: the razor, the kitchen knife, the tin of grease; the rem­nants of the suitcase and the piece of rope. The matches and candles, all were gone.

  Between them, fumbling with cold fingers against the wet intractable material, they stuffed their remaining supplies into the pockets of their jackets and slacks. MacConnachie wrapped the sodden blanket round his neck, reaching under his native coat and pulling the ends down through the open top, and then tightening the belt to make sure that it couldn’t escape.

  Ansell followed MacConnachie in a wretched state of misery and confusion. He couldn’t understand what had happened to the suitcase, or why they should make their desperate, scrambling ascent more difficult by burdening their pockets with hard-edged objects that bruised their thighs and chests. He remembered now the gun leaping from his grasp, and set to wondering how he might explain its loss. And then he thought, Mac has gone mad; he is rooting for truffles in the rain.

  MacConnachie had found what he sought. If they went farther up the mountain-side they might find a better place, but he was now so cold and so tired that this would have to do.

  It was a fissure large enough to accommodate both of them in some discomfort, with a gully at its mouth. Its upper edge pro­truded for about four feet, thus forming the roof of a small cavern in the rock. Where the roof ended the water poured over, but it was under sufficient pressure to be thrown clear of the cavern into the gully which, running down the angle of the slope, received the torrent and carried it away.

  MacConnachie seized Ansell’s coat and pushed him down into the fissure. Ansell ducked under the waterfall and disappeared from view; MacConnachie followed him into the protection of the rock.

  Both were so exhausted that for some time they lay motionless, huddled together, neither thinking nor speaking, waiting for their increasingly sluggish recuperative powers to take effect.

  Ansell had no idea how long he remained comatose but sud­denly, to his surprise, he found his brain sharply alert. He was distressingly uncomfortable. The cavern was far smaller than he had thought and although, when he entered, he had coiled him­self as tightly as he could against the back wall, the further entry of MacConnachie had squeezed him tighter yet. He wanted to move but the older man was breathing heavily and if he slept, he did not want to wake him. He found that, despite the raging of his wet burns, the condition that aggravated him most was the horrible, clammy embrace of his soaked clothing, and the juddering shivers it induced. With each onset of shaking a curious, low-pitched, quavering moan escaped from him, which he did nothing to produce and was powerless to arrest; in fact, it struck him as rather a funny sound and cheered him. So he lay back, the contents of a sandwich between MacConnachie and the rock, suspended between amusement and suffering, taking a long view of their predicament.

  Time passed and, the state of suspension fading, he began to take note of their shelter. There was a fair degree of light made flickering by the steady passage of water outside, and he bent to look at MacConnachie. The eyes were open, but without intelli­gence. He looked again towards the curtain of water in the door­way and, by virtue of this, perhaps, and the spattering and gurgling in the gully, he was seized by an urgent desire to urinate.

  ‘Christ!’

  In a panic he tried to rise, knocked his head, and vomited on to MacConnachie’s legs; at the same moment, he peed into his trousers. Then a spasm shook his whole body and he became once more still. He saw that MacConnachie’s eyes were on him.

  ‘Sorry about that.’

  He brushed vaguely at the mess which, difficult to distinguish from the general sogginess, seemed far less than it had felt.

  ‘Doesn’t matter.’

  ‘I peed in my trousers.’

  MacConnachie took his hand.

  ‘Not wet enough already?’

  Ansell put his other hand on to MacConnachie’s, holding Mac’s one hand with both of his. He said,

  ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘A hundred years old.’

  ‘You don’t look a day over ninety-nine.’

  The faintest smile appeared on MacConnachie’s face. Ansell touched his lips.

  ‘We ought to take these damned helmets off.’

  ‘Yes.’

  MacConnachie looked so uncomfortable with the strap under his chin, his head canted to one side by the lower steel rim, that Ansell inserted his fingers under the canvas and began to ease it over MacConnachie’s jaw. Then he stopped.

  ‘Mac.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s stuck.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘In the gug under your chin.’

  A slight frown.

  ‘But it’s wet.’

  ‘It’s still stuck.’ Ansell reached up. ‘So’s mine.’

  ‘You’d better pull it off.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Ansell took hold of the chin-strap again and gave it a sharp jerk. There was a slight tearing feeling but MacConnachie’s expression didn’t change; it was as though he hadn’t felt it. Then Ansell eased his other hand under the spongy roll of blanket about MacConnachie’s neck, raised his head, took the helmet off and lay it crown down under the back of MacConnachie’s head as a pillow. MacConnachie shut his eyes, relaxing:

  ‘Ah, that’s better.’

  ‘Good.’

  MacConnachie’s hand still lay
in his lap as Ansell reached up again, ungummed his own strap and removed his helmet. He rubbed the top of his head.

  ‘If we still had hair, it would be dry.’

  ‘That’s a thought.’

  The rain pounded down outside. Another spasm of shivering passed through Ansell.

  ‘What happened to the case?’

  ‘It came apart.’

  ‘I lost my gun.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  Ansell had taken hold of MacConnachie’s hand again.

  ‘What are we going to do, Mac?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ MacConnachie stared at the roof a few feet above his head. ‘I’d meant to move during the rain, while the chopper couldn’t get up. Now, I don’t know.’

  ‘How long will it last?’

  ‘Three weeks.’

  ‘We can’t wait that long.’

  ‘It’ll ease after a week.’

  ‘We can’t wait that long either.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Excreta Avenue.’

  ‘Excreta Avenue it is.’

  A silence.

  ‘What have we left?’

  ‘Soup, two tins. Paste, two jars.’

  ‘And water.’

  ‘There’s plenty of that.’

  ‘That’s all.’

  ‘That’s all.’

  Ansell thought. The whole adventure had begun to take on a curious unreality now, as though the sharpness of apprehension occupied, after all, only the surface of the mind; and just below, in unhurried patience, lay the realities of confusion and absurdity, waiting their turn. It would come. Time was with them. He said,

  ‘Just down the slope—about a hundred feet—there’s a group of Goons in ambush. With food.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘We can steal their food.’

  ‘In this?’

  ‘When it eases up.’

  ‘It won’t ease up for long enough. Anyway, we haven’t the strength or the fire power. They’re fit and armed.’

  ‘We can’t last long on what we’ve got.’

  ‘So it’s a question of whether we die up here, or down there.’

  ‘We can try.’

  ‘What’s the point?’

  ‘Come to that, what’s the point of any of it?’

  A faint smile on MacConnachie’s face.

  ‘Damned if I know.’

  Silence.

  ‘Why don’t we give ourselves up?’

  ‘I suppose I’d sooner be here than there.’

  Silence.

  ‘We’ve got to do something.’

  ‘It must be something we can do.’

  ‘All the time we get weaker.’

  ‘Then what we do must be easier.’

  A silence.

  ‘I could go.’

  MacConnachie’s eyes flickered towards him, then back to the roof.

  ‘Kid, when the times comes, do as you like. I’ll go or stay, whatever you want.’

  Silence.

  ‘Can we do nothing?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘It seems a pity after—all this.’

  ‘It is.’

  Silence.

  ‘It’s cold in here.’

  ‘It’ll get colder.’

  Ansell sat abstractedly. Then,

  ‘They’re sitting down there. Not more than thirty yards away. They can’t move, and we can’t. It’s funny. They don’t even know we’re here.’

  ‘I hope the bastards forgot their tents.’

  The rain stopped, and started again. Night fell. Ansell said,

  ‘When I was a child, I used to dream about being safe from the rain, in a hole, under the bedclothes, crouched down. It isn’t like that.’

  *

  When dawn came the rain was still falling, on the eighth day. MacConnachie felt stronger, but he was very cold and wet, and couldn’t detect the warmth in his own body. Ansell, who lay slumped against his right arm and side, felt warmer; but it may simply have been that, where their bodies touched, they were able to generate between them sufficient heat for one. He tried to extricate himself without waking Ansell, but Ansell said, ‘What’s the time?’

  ‘Just after dawn.’

  ‘It’s still raining.’

  MacConnachie, hunching himself round in the gloomy enclosure, said,

  ‘I know. This may sound stupid, but I’m going to have a pee.’

  Ansell, disposing his body to accommodate MacConnachie’s new position, said,

  ‘Good idea. I’ll have one after you.’

  MacConnachie raised his native coat, opened his trousers, and hobbled forward on his knees until he was within a few inches of the falling water to add his quota to it. As his bladder emptied, a crippling pain rose from his loins into his stomach so that he had to bend forward to master it, but at length it passed and the flow ended. Ansell said,

  ‘That was a long one.’

  MacConnachie said,

  ‘God, that hurt, but I feel better for it.’

  Clambering over one another they exchanged positions and Ansell, too, relieved himself. He said,

  ‘I wonder if we’ll ever do the other again.’

  ‘Not through over-eating we won’t.’

  Rather than change positions yet again, they settled as they were.

  There was a silence.

  Then Ansell looked at MacConnachie.

  ‘Do I smell?’

  ‘I don’t know, kid. I can’t smell a thing.’

  ‘We must smell, Mac. We must smell awful. I peed myself yesterday.’

  ‘I shouldn’t worry. You can’t smell any worse than I do.’

  But MacConnachie had missed the tense solemnity of Ansell’s tone. Now Ansell said,

  ‘But we do smell, Mac. My hands . . . Look at us. We’re hor­rible!’ And suddenly his voice rose to a terrible, strangulated cry: ‘Christ, Jesus, we’re animals! We’re—monsters!’

  It was true. Ansell’s puffed eyeholes burned with supplication and grief. His wizened old head was cocked in simian anguish. So quickly had the crisis arisen that MacConnachie was unpre­pared. Then he reached forward and took hold of Ansell.

  ‘It’s all right, kid, it’s all right.’

  ‘What have we done?’

  ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘What have we done to ourselves?’

  ‘It’s all right, kid, don’t worry.’

  ‘Oh Christ, God, Jesus . . .’

  ‘It’s all right, it’s all right, it’s all right . . .’

  And MacConnachie rocked Ansell until he stopped crying.

  ‘Sorry. That was stupid.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter.’

  ‘It was the pee on my fingers, the thought of it.’

  ‘We do look pretty awful.’

  Ansell was staring at his finger-tips.

  ‘They look like an old tramp’s gloves. Only it isn’t ragged wool, it’s flesh.’

  ‘Our mothers wouldn’t know us.’

  ‘It was like seeing us as we are. For the first time.’

  ‘Yeah, well . . . We’ve got each other for a mirror.’

  Ansell looked surprised at so exact a remark from MacCon­nachie. Then he said,

  ‘I suppose we ought to eat something.’

  MacConnachie tried to smile encouragingly.

  ‘That’s it. Order of the day. Nosh.’

  While MacConnachie fumbled to open a soup tin with the fish knife, their only remaining knife, Ansell watched him. He thought, his fingers must be stinging like my own now that the rain has washed the crust away. He looked again at his finger­tips. They are so pinky-white, he thought, so bloodless, like sponge. Then, with the first shock and horror of their appearance now reduced to an enormity that quietly burned within, he fell to examining MacConnachie in confirmation of himself.

  The body was shapeless, squat in the cavern, wrapped about by the dank stiff folds of the native coat. The head hung lower than the shoulders, which were hunched. The arms sprouted incongruously from
the dark mass, the clumsy hands naked, claw-like and shredded. All over the face and pate dangled tiny strips of dead flesh that waved with each movement in imitation of a sea anemone. The surface covering was drawn tight against the bones and yet it displayed in texture a curious anomaly, seeming both stiff and soggy at the same time. There was no discernible colour; simply a dead white, bruised and riven with shadow. Where the eyes had been, there were deep black craters that might have been painted in. In places the skin appeared to have melted, travelling down towards and over the neck as the wax of a candle dribbles down its stem. The mouth was a hole drawn straight across; a crack; a mistake. The ears were ravaged beyond repair; only the nose was human, hooked and unmistakable.

  Is this what we come to? A nose? he thought. If only the brain could be damaged in concert with the body; if only their rates of deterioration could be synchronized, how much more bearable life would be.

  But then, perhaps they are.

  It may have been the lack of space, or the gloom, or the damage to his hands, but MacConnachie was having the utmost difficulty in piercing the top of the tin. Every time he raised the knife and brought it down it skidded off, or he missed the tin entirely, or caught its edge and drove it over on to its side; once he stabbed himself lightly in the thigh, but he withdrew the blade apparently unaware, and time and again he missed the hand that held the tin only by chance. All the while he swore persistently and des­pairingly. For some time Ansell watched this operation before, shocked at the lag in his reactions, he grasped the other side of the tin.

  ‘Let me help.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  The blade rose and fell three more times, skittering about the metal surface as MacConnachie’s wrist tired, and then the point penetrated with a small hiss.

  ‘Thank God for that.’

  MacConnachie threw the knife aside. Ansell said,

  ‘We need two holes, Mac.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Two holes.’

  ‘Oh Christ!’

  MacConnachie seized the knife again and drove it up and down in a frantic, cross tattoo until the metal buckled and split once more.