Grazing The Long Acre

by Gwyneth Jones

  “You’re after the Major? Yeah, I worked it out for myself. He wants some dirt: Reds in the swamp. And I reckon our friend Krua’s already made sure he won’t be disappointed. The bastards, they’d take us all to hell with them if they got the chance. What are we going to do about it?”

  Her smile was mocking.

  “Oh, no Johnny. The truth is better than that.”

  The lake was kidney shaped, about a kilo across and five long, the long axis aligned roughly north-south under a natural plateau in the surrounding hills. The landing site was supposed to be somewhere around here. The local warzone was up beyond, cutting off air and road access. The water was completely opaque. It stank. The soldiers had investigated its depths and found nothing:

  I didn’t envy them the experience.

  There was a well established camp on shore, out of bounds to us. Derek and Krua vanished into the jungle every day with a line of laden, sweating squaddies. We were left behind, supposedly under guard. But the soldiers were friendly and venal. There was the dinghy with its outboard, and the old rowing boat, Other Ranks, For The Use Of. Taxi rates were soon established.

  I tramped up the winding path, Sackey, the civilian cook, agreeably silent beside me.

  I was thinking about Braemar, the way she was when I was teaching a welfare course in media technology, to help pay my way through college. She was years older than me, but so young: so abject, with her constant childcare hassles and her meanly obstructive husband. I became her confidante. She told me about her childhood in East Africa: Asian mother, white daddy. Things had gone sour when the family came back to England, the usual bloody mess of domestic violence. Brae had escaped—but then, casebook style, married a carbon copy of the father. Those two beauties had left her with a bitter shame about her ‘mixed blood,’ which came out in twisted ways. How embarrassing it would be if Johnny guessed her secret—after he’d learned to grin at her dirty jokes. Of course I wasn’t going to give her away. I’m on Brae’s side, I really am. I just hate what the world has made of her.

  We climbed through open woodland to the plateau. The day was hot but not sweltering, the country very beautiful. From above Lake Gerard was peacock green, like a piece of glass stamped down by a hard heel into the plushy treetops. The African Queen was a dozing waterbeetle. I was worried. Braemar had always used her feminine wiles with ruthless skill, (and thought I was a fool to have dumped my ‘natural’ armaments). But now she’d become doubly artificial: ultrafemininity as a conscious construct. The way she made him laugh at her racist jokes. The way she seemed to watch with satisfaction while my good American experimented with the vicious old games. It scared me, the cold way she set herself up to be at once despised and enjoyed.

  “It’s down here, Mrs Anna—”

  I clambered after Sackey into the dry bed of a stream. It had dried out very quickly. Crusts of stiffened algae clung to the smooth rocks. The banks were coated, in a narrow swathe on either side, with scum and debris. I saw something shining and picked up what seemed to be half a crumpled can. The metal was a brilliant translucent blue. I rubbed the bright bloom, it didn’t come off. I put it down. Sackey came up and looked: he delved the pockets of his tattered cut-offs.

  “Look, I found these. You want to buy?” He laughed. “No, only joking. We are selling, both of us. Did you pay your airfare?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Good, excellent. All sheer profit for you.”

  I didn’t get a good look at the things Sackey held out. He stowed them away quickly.

  Then we came to it. The bed of the boiled off stream ran into an open depression, wide as a motorway junction and roughly oval. It was bare red and yellow clay, it had sides about two metres high. There was no sign of burning, nothing charred or withered. Above the rim all around flattened trees and bushes were masked in a veil of dried mud.

  “Monsieur Sackey, why would nobody down river talk to us about what happened?”

  He shrugged. “Jealousy,” he suggested.

  “Where are the aliens now?”

  “Hiding.” He looked sly. “Sightings may be rare.”

  I walked into the centre. Sackey stayed where he was. I suppose he thought he’d see enough of the place when the tourists started pouring in. I felt a prickling of adrenalin in my uneasy belly. Supposing, after all, something awesome was about to happen to me: a conversion experience? This was the brink. No sane person had ever crossed it.

  I saw a small figure hunkered down and poking at the ground. It was Johnny. He smiled as I came up, a wide stretching mouth made meaningless by the black lenses above. He removed his sunglasses and looked at me quizzically.

  “Hi. It’s Johnny. Johnny Guglioli, remember?”

  “I’m sorry Johnny I was—”

  “Impressed. Mmm.” He rubbed yellow earth between his fingers.

  “What d’you reckon, Anna? Roadworks?”

  I remembered Major Derek’s version.

  “Have you a Geiger counter on you?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  Suddenly I felt very sick. I squatted, my head in my hands.

  “Anna, what’s wrong?”

  “I think I’m pregnant.”

  “Oh, shit. The snip didn’t take, you mean?” He looked embarrassed. “Um, sorry. Unwarrrantable assumption, and none of my business. What are you going to do?”

  I knew what I’d promised. One each is what we’d agreed. There are simply too many people. Why should the Bangladeshis give up their children if we wouldn’t?

  “I suppose I’ll have to face up to my marriage vows.”

  The nausea passed. I heaved a sigh.

  “We don’t believe in this thing, do we Johnny?”

  “Not me. You know, it probably is roadworks. If we carry on over the hill we’ll find a big corral of Jap civil engineering plant. We’ve stumbled upon an illicit hardwood logging operation. We’ll probably all get shot and dumped in the swamp.”

  “And what people saw in the sky?”

  “Aurora.” He put the glasses back on, and smiled without his eyes again. “We have no neighbours, Anna. No one here but us chickens. Maybe we’ll set off one day in a relative way and come back and visit ourselves. That’s the only hope.”

  His manner was very odd, I couldn’t make it out.

  “Let’s get back. It makes sense to get home before the Major. Those tantrums aren’t good for the poor guy.”

  At dead of night, Johnny sneaked into the deckhouse. He found the box that Braemar had marked without difficulty, his pencil of light picking out the smudge of Murasaki Rose on a white MOD Supplies docket. She’d had one of the soldiers identify it—by making him want to frighten her, she said. Dangerous little kitten! He suckered a tiny processor that he called his ‘skeleton key’ beside the lock—in a few seconds it had the combination.

  Such are the legitimate tools of investigative journalism: for the people have a right to know. Tough luck on the Major if he didn’t understand the rules.

  All was quiet. Giggling silently, Johnny opened Major Derek’s smart briefcase with his skeleton, raised the sliver of a screen and loaded a disc that was helpfully labelled (when will they ever learn) with the dates of the snark hunt. He glanced at some of the files: the maps and notes, and shook his head over them a little. Then did things to the disc that were not good for its long term memory. He checked the rest of the contents of the case. But Braemar had assured him there was no hard copy, not yet. No paper- written notes. And she seemed to know her business.

  How wonderful to be Johnny Guglioli, rightful heir of the greatest civilisation the world has ever known. How wonderful to enjoy all the old adventures, with all the new virtues intact.

  Out on deck again he stood by the rail and stared, at his own hands which were actually shaking. But only his body was afraid and excited. Johnny’s mind rode above, perfectly cool.

  He gazed into Africa, in no hurry to get out of sight (I couldn’t sleep): planning the rest of the
coup, while tremors of some emotion that his mind did not care to name ran through and through his limbs].

  We were in the kitchen at home. David was trying to get Directory Inquiries to give him the number of some chicken-expert. (Oh, those tiresome birds and their diseases). The woman on the phone explained that she couldn’t because of the attack. “What ‘attack’?” asked David. WHAM. The kitchen windows went white with a blinding, silent flash.

  Then it was afterwards. There was a big room in which people were huddled in little family groups. People kept doing stupid things: wanting to open the door, to uncover the windows. I was running around trying to stop them, I was making Jacko hide under some cardboard. I was amazed at myself. I’d always been sure that only an idiot would try to survive the end of the world.

  All the while, dreaming, I knew that ‘Nuclear War’ was only a label, only the mask of some different catastrophe.

  I opened my eyes. Braemar knelt beside me, but she’d turned into a glistening creature with gills and goggle eyes. I sat up and pushed aside my net. We all slept on deck, it was only luck that Johnny or the Major hadn’t woken too. The glistening stuff was wetwear: the bulbous head a mask and some kind of soft bag-like air supply.

  “Brae? What are you doing?”

  The bag pumped. She pulled off her mask.

  “The Creature From The Black Lagoon. I’m sorry, Anna. Don’t be scared. I turn out to be a kind of goodie in the last reel.”

  She looked, as they say, as if she’d seen a ghost.

  “Do you believe in the law, Anna?”

  She sounded drunk. Maybe that was the explanation. She’d stolen some fancy diving gear from Derek’s boxes, swum ashore and located a disco somewhere.

  “I suppose I do. Not anything more than you could put in two sentences: but the law, yes, I do.”

  “Thou shalt not kill, and so forth? So do I.” She shuddered. “But there’s the agrapta nomima. That’s what Antigone said to Creon in the play: Sophocles. She could disobey the king’s edicts because the unwritten law, agrapta nomima, was greater.”

  “Braemar! You haven’t been chucking Major Derek’s stuff into the lake?”

  She shook her head. She looked awfully strange. I almost demanded what have you done with the real Braemar? But I’d have felt such a fool.

  “I was horrified when I saw you at the airport. You knew me well Anna: and you’ll wonder, and you’ll suspect. But I think I can trust you. In the end, I think you’ll understand.”

  I lay there trying to read these omens until another dream engulfed me. Black water parted under the swampy trees. Figures rose to their feet. Standing waist high they seemed human as shadows, or spirits: smooth, ungendered bodies. They looked out at the empty lake and mugged relief and excitement. One of them lifted cupped hands with reverence and solemn delight. As the drops fell a voice whispered in my mind.

  Water of life…

  They all made the same gesture, bowed their faces and drank as if taking a sacrament. Shipwrecked but undismayed, they stood triumphant in Eldorado.

  We have come home.

  Next morning Johnny had vanished. Apparently he’d swum for it, because both boats were where they should be. Of course I remembered my dream, but I said nothing. Derek was absolutely livid. He sent out a search party. He stamped around glowering like an outraged father. I will be master in my own house! It says something for the effectiveness of the military regime, that while the row was going on Brae and I didn’t speak. We didn’t risk exchanging so much a glance.

  About an hour before noon something came roaring out of the trees on the lake shore. It was a motorbike. Johnny jumped off the back, and hailed us cheerfully.

  “Ahoy, African Queen! Anyone want a cold beer?”

  He’d been to town. Walked out to the trail and hitched a ride

  to the local cosmopolis. He had brought back a sack of bottled beer and a lump of ice wrapped up in sodden straw. He was inordinately pleased with himself.

  Major Derek recalled the search party and, controlling himself violently, announced that he could no longer be responsible for us. He had radioed for assistance. We’d be leaving as soon as our transport arrived.

  The heat settled. Major Derek sulked in the deckhouse. Johnny wavered along the African Queen’s rail clutching a beer bottle, in shorts and a singlet: right foot in a wetwear ankleboot, left foot bare. This improved his balance, he claimed.

  “A trick I learned on the rat-ridden wharves of New Byzantium.”

  My dreams had dissipated. It was only Johnny and Brae, up to their eyes in some stupid scheme of revenge. And I was sick as a dog. I didn’t want to vomit, only to die. I crawled under my net and let the voices fade.

  Johnny shook me gently awake. I felt as if I’d been asleep for days, but was aware that only an hour or two had passed.

  I sat up.

  “Where?”

  The African Queen was eerily silent. Johnny’s backpack and camera bag were standing on the deck beside him, all strapped up. My kit was there too.

  “What’s happened?”

  “Major Whynton and Lieutenant Krua have been called away.”

  “Where’s Brae?”

  “She’ll join us.”

  Sackey rowed us to the shore. We took a different path from the one that went up to the plateau, and soon stood on a red dirt road. A couple of other people joined us, and then a jeep with an open back full of passengers came rattling along.

  Johnny paid our fares. A teenage girl’s personal stereo buzzed by my ear. A very weary young boy swayed opposite me, hugging an assault rifle as if it was a teddy bear. After an hour or so little bungalows in swept, bare yards began to line the road.

  “What about the war?” I asked, bemused.

  Johnny shrugged. “Oh, wars. People learn to live with them.”

  We sat outside a cafe in the market place of the small town. Johnny explained everything. Simon Krua and Major Derek had been planting evidence of illict weapons testing. Johnny and Brae had found out, and had been secretly undoing the evil work. This morning was the climax. When Johnny sneaked into town he had suborned the staff of the local radio station—not hard, the man hadn’t been paid for months—and consequently Major Derek had learned of an exciting development in the local war. He and the soldiers had rushed off to join in. By the time they discovered there was no excitement, their plans here would be in ruins and the three of us would have got clean away.

  The story was a little garbled: and I felt like a child left out of secrets. But mostly it went right past me. I just wanted to be at home, safe with Syb and David and the kids.

  “Where’s Brae?” I asked again.

  “She’s tying up a few loose ends.”

  The market place was surrounded by crude breezeblock buildings with red iron roofs. A few women, one or two men, listlessly guarded the pitiful goods: childrens’ nylon underwear, little blackened corpes of smoked monkey, piles of ancient French magazines. Johnny had ordered beer for us. It came warm, with tumblers full of dirty ice.

  “Pity there’s no story.”

  “No chance,” he agreed. “In war-mongering, even to expose a fake amounts to an ugly rumour.” He frowned, staring towards the road we’d come in by. “I hope she’s okay back there…Well, she ought to be. She’s an African, after all.”

  I started. “You knew that?”

  Johnny shrugged. “Yeah, well. I read up some bios when I got the passenger list, before we left London.”

  He sounded a little ashamed of himself, as well he might. I got the feeling that this small confession signalled some kind of breakdown between them, and I was glad. I wanted to welcome him back into our haven of shared assumptions. But I felt too ill, and his mood seemed bleaker by the moment.

  “Johnny, don’t fall in love with her. It’ll be bad for both of you. She hates men, you know.”

  “I know,” he said. “I know she does.”

  Above the cinema a hand painted poster featured a giant, sn
arling white woman in a bikini. Our getaway car, a big old Mercedes, was hunkered by the storm drain below. Children in grimy old western clothes were playing (what riches!) with a bright plastic toy. I felt very low. I couldn’t think of anything to say to Johnny. I was glad when he got up and went to talk to our driver.

  So there were no aliens. I drank beer, and let myself acknowledge the disappointment, for the first time. How sad. To have hiked out into the desert, to the burning bush, knees knocking, ready to meet God: and found there was nothing but the sun on an old plastic bag. Of course that was why Johnny seemed so odd, and Braemar too. The embarrassment of having almost been believers…It was going to take us three days to drive to Maiduguri and the airport, right through this war that ‘people had got used to’. (My blood ran cold—to think of my Johnny expressing such a hard and commonplace opinion). I would pull myself together. I would record the trip. That and the river journey should make a saleable item.

  The toy that the children were playing with caught my eye. I tried to look away: but found that I could not. I called to the children in French: “May I see that thing?”

  A little boy came over, put it on the table. It was like a kind of—millipede? It was the same blue as the metal I had found. I couldn’t for the life of me tell whether it was alive, or a machine. I reached out to touch. He giggled, and grabbed it. In a moment the group of children had scampered out of sight.

  A cold prickling of excitement burst out like sweat…With a sudden dire premonition, I grabbed my camera bag.

  I use the simplest stock and hardware. I want to be able to edit my own work, cheaply. I don’t have the might of a big company behind me. The cassettes looked all right. When I took the seals off, they fell apart. It was gone, every scrap of my forward echoes.

  Johnny came back. He stood looking at the wreckage with his blacked out eyes.

  I stared up at him, having the most ridiculous nightmares.

  “Johnny, what’s going on? Where’s Braemar?”

  “She’s blowing up a kind of plane,” he said, with the air of someone abandoning all pretence. He took off his glasses. He was Johnny Guglioli still. It was everything else that had changed.