The Penal Colony

by Richard Herley

  “Really?” That would certainly explain why Martinson had not pursued Routledge to get the crossbow back.

  “You know about the fighting? Yes?”

  “Mr Sibley told me yesterday.”

  “It seems Martinson was hurt pretty serious. Mr Foster’s gone to find out how serious. Totally serious, we hope. That’s an evil steel-plated bastard if ever I saw one.”

  A man who had been approaching across the shale-covered precinct now reached the steps and began to climb them. “Who’s an evil steel-plated bastard?” he said. “Are you talking about me again, Mr Talbot?” Like Talbot, he was dark and bearded, but was considerably older, wearing fawn twill jeans and a black teeshirt whose sleeves had been removed. Routledge noticed that Talbot did not stand up: his rank was evidently greater than the newcomer’s.

  “Hullo, Mr Daniels. Met Mr Routledge yet? He got in last night.”

  “Yes, I heard. How do you do.” Daniels extended his hand; Routledge, returning the greeting, also returned the calculated firmness of the grip.

  “We was just talking about Martinson,” Talbot said. “They reckon he may have checked out at last.” Talbot suddenly put his feet down on the boards and sat upright, allowing his eye to range over the shacks opposite, where two more men had just arrived from the direction of the fields. The younger was dressed in ragged shorts and a loose out-at-elbows blue sweater; his companion was wearing blue jeans and a white short-sleeved shirt. They waved and entered a doorway. Talbot’s vigilance relaxed.

  “Of course, you met our friend Martinson, didn’t you?” Daniels said to Routledge. “What happened? And more to the point, how did you get the crossbow away from him?”

  Talbot interjected. “You just asked, didn’t you, Mr Routledge? You said: ‘May I kindly borrow your most prized weapon, Jim, the one what you took personally from your most hated foes?’ To which Jim, with his customary olde worlde charm, at once replied, ‘By all means, Mr Routledge, be my guest, why don’t you?’”

  Talbot’s impersonation of Martinson’s Birmingham accent was deadly accurate and Routledge found himself smiling. He did not know what to make of Talbot, or of Daniels for that matter. To judge by his speaking voice, Daniels came from a much better background than Talbot, whose normal utterances were littered with glottal stops and elongated vowels; but everything else, from Talbot’s clothes to his confident mien, proclaimed his superiority over the older man. His vocabulary, too, was unusually rich and varied for one who spoke with such an accent. It was as if this, like his own opinion of himself, had been allowed to blossom now that he was free of the artificial constraints of mainland society.

  Talbot turned amiably to Daniels. “What do you want?”

  Daniels took a piece of paper from his back pocket. “Yesterday’s beach collection. Mr Stamper’s copy.”

  “Leave it with me.” To Routledge he said, “Mr Daniels is in charge of beachcombing.” He turned back to Daniels. “Where next? Outside again?”

  “This afternoon. We’ve got up quite a big group. We’re doing Fossett’s Rock and Porth Thomas. With this wind we’re hoping for quite a bit. Mr Skinner saw some drums coming in there yesterday.”

  “Many?”

  “Three, for sure. Aniline, they looked like.”

  “Great.”

  “Did you hear about the light-bulbs at Trellick Cove? Dozens of them. And oranges.”

  “Just loose?”

  “I’m afraid so. They’re quite inedible.”

  “The best we had recently,” Talbot said, addressing Routledge, “was this crate of Swiss cakes. The theory is a deck container broke open, else they got chucked overboard in a storm. They must have been in the sea for six months. Marzipankuchen, Kirschtorte, all that, sealed in foil. Bloody ace, they was.”

  “For those who got any,” Daniels said. “For those with a winning raffle ticket.”

  “You win some, you lose some,” Talbot said, smugly. “See if you can find us another lot this afternoon.” He raised the piece of paper. “I’ll make sure Mr Stamper gets this.”

  Daniels turned to go. In Talbot’s expression Routledge detected the germ of his own dismissal, and perceived at once that he too was meant to leave: for if he were to stay chatting, that would be a presumption that his status was higher than Daniels’s. Talbot was trying to make him feel like a new boy at a public school, the lowest of the low, frightened of unwittingly transgressing complicated and ill-defined codes of dress and conduct. Indeed, Talbot had almost succeeded. The rules of etiquette here were a minefield which he must rapidly, for the sake of his own advancement, learn to negotiate.

  His glance at Talbot produced a farewell nod. Routledge’s summary of the situation had been correct.

  Routledge descended the steps just behind and to one side of Daniels, not certain whether it was his place to speak.

  “I’m recruiting for this afternoon’s beachcombing,” Daniels said. “Do you want to come along?”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t. Mr King is giving me a tour of the Community.”

  “Yes, of course, I did know that. New men always get one. What I ought to have said was, do you want to come along with me now and meet a few people?”

  “By all means. I’d like to.” Although the misunderstanding had not been his fault, Routledge had not failed to notice the lack of an apology. Daniels appeared to be testing him. Daniels also appeared to be a jerk. Routledge had taken as great a dislike to him as he had to Talbot.

  “It won’t be much good calling on any houses. Nearly everyone’s out. I think we’d better try the root fields first.”

  Beyond the precinct they joined a dirt track which passed directly south, through and beyond the main cluster of dwellings. At intervals, side tracks led off to join up with other tracks radiating from the bungalow, forming a grid system. There were no formal boundaries, but it seemed that each building stood on its own proportionately sized plot. Most of the houses were simple shacks, like King’s, with stone walls and roofs covered with spars and slate-like slices of rock, often with a covering of turf. The standard of workmanship varied greatly. The more elaborate edifices had polythene sheeting, transparent or coloured, plain or bearing the trademarks of fertilizer companies, tacked or otherwise stretched across the window apertures. Some even had little gardens with salads or vegetables. By one threshold a bright display of cornflowers and nasturtiums caught Routledge’s eye.

  “You didn’t say about the crossbow, Mr Routledge.”

  “Well, Martinson had one idea about my future, and I had another. They weren’t compatible.”

  “Did he catch you, then?”

  Routledge was about to improvise, but remembered that to lie would mean breaking one of the Community’s cardinal rules, and if he were to keep his place in the Village, still more achieve one with any rank, he could not afford the mental effort needed to sustain falsehood. It was safer and less trouble to tell the truth. “Yes, he caught me. But I got away, and here I am.” Routledge tried to convey by his tone that he did not wish to discuss his experiences outside, a message confirmed by the fact that he now changed the subject. “Do you use any special techniques for your beachcombing, Mr Daniels?”

  Daniels’s slight hesitation showed that he had understood: and almost imperceptibly, by one or two points, perhaps, Routledge felt his status had begun to rise. “Not really. The weather and tides are important, but mostly we just search.”

  “How many men?”

  “I have fifteen allocated, though you can usually get volunteers.”

  “What sort of things do you find?”

  “Rubbish, mainly. Deck waste. Waxed paper milk cartons: we find plenty of those. Plastic canisters, bottles, really anything that floats. Wood of course, sawn, planed, or as tree trunks and branches. Particle board, ply, polyboard. String, rope, lifebelts, lifejackets, buoyancy bags, expanded polystyrene. Carrier bags. Sacks. Wellington boots. You name it. We found a trombone last year. Everything is collected, even the milk carto
ns. Mr Varsani uses them as flowerpots. He’s our man for saplings.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “For hedges, especially the border hedge, and for growing trees. The Father plants as many as he can, for future timber. Currently we’re putting in about ten thousand thorn saplings a year, and a thousand trees. With milk cartons the pot can go straight into the ground. The paper rots away, so growth isn’t checked. That means the planting season is extended by several months.”

  “Clever,” Routledge said, trying to make the right response.

  “Not really. You know what they say about necessity. We must have something to enclose the pastures with. Dry stone walling is hard graft, as I expect you’ll find out. Hedges build themselves. All they need is an annual trim.”

  “What animals do you keep? I’ve seen sheep and goats.”

  “That’s it, pretty well. We’ve also got some donkeys, a few cows and pigs. Chickens. And two horses.”

  They had almost come to the edge of the Village, where the shacks looked the most recently built; ahead and to either side spread undulating gorse scrub, beyond which, a hundred metres along the road, the fields began.

  In the third field Daniels took him to, clearing potato haulms, bare to the waist and already sweating under the morning sun, Routledge found King.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Martinson dead. Franks prayed it was true. But there was nothing different about this morning. He had received no intuition of the other man’s death.

  When he was particularly troubled, when his head hurt so badly that he thought it would burst, when the ringing in his right ear grew unbearable, Franks sometimes came to sit here for half an hour, unguarded, alone on the low cliffs at Star Cove. Above him and to his left, across the water of the cove, rose the intimidating crags and bluffs of Pulpit Head. To his right the cliffs ran almost straight, due south-west to the end of the peninsula and the twin stacks called, on the perspex-covered map in the bungalow, Mare and Foal. This map had furnished him with all the island names, some of them darkly Celtic, making him think of Sert as almost part of the ancestral territory of his race. Illislig, Helly, Mencaro, Angara: what had these names signified in the old language of Sert? Most of the others were more easily understood. Spanish Ledges were doubtless the graveyard of a ship from the Armada. America Point faced west, towards that continent. Beacon Point, Crow Bay, Half Moon Bay, Pulpit Head: these too were self-explanatory. But who was Fossett, and why had that awesome, solitary rock been named after him?

  And this vantage on the cliffs, in other times, might even have come to bear the name of Franks. Or perhaps just the cave below. It lay directly beneath this spot, his mental solace when the pain grew too much to take.

  He had known about the cave for a long time. He had known it during the war with Barratt, long before the Village had been founded.

  As caves went it was nothing special, not even particularly large. There were others on the island of greater size or geological interest. But this one was uniquely, especially wonderful. In the first place, it was the biggest cave on the Village headland. And more important still, it was only a metre or two from the sea at high tide. And yet more important: the interior was entirely suitable for the project he had been nursing consciously for the past two years, and unconsciously for at least a similar period before that.

  “It’s perfect,” Thaine had said, complicating the echoes, shining his torch from ceiling to floor.

  The cave would indeed have been perfect, had it not been for the reefs guarding it for a kilometre out to sea. Much of the coast was like this: in places the reefs were even more jagged and treacherous, thrashed by the combers and creating complicated currents and undertows. Beyond the reefs there was the Magic Circle to contend with – the radar, the infrared detectors, the image intensifiers and computer-controlled pattern scanners, the network of electronics run from the two lightships and from the land station near Trevose Head. Protecting the Circle were the Prison Service helicopters and at least two hydrofoil patrol boats, and reinforcing the Prison Service were the combined resources of the Coastguard, the RAF, the Royal Marines, and Her Majesty’s Navy. Eighty per cent. Against. Those were the most optimistic odds Appleton had been able to calculate.

  The Village boundary ended at the mouth of Star Cove: outsiders had ready access to Pulpit Head and the cliffs opposite. They might well see the components being carried down the cliff path; they might hear, faintly from the mouth of the cave, the sounds of assembly and construction; and at night they might make an attempt at sabotage or, in the final stages, theft. But then again, the outsiders were idle and careless and none too observant. The nearest point in their territory was at least four hundred metres from the cave mouth. Furthermore, the anti-satellite precautions – taking the parts down only in bad light, under thick cloud, and, most of all, during fog – would equally reduce the risk of being seen by the outsiders.

  Franks grimaced as a new onslaught of pain sliced at his head. He snatched off his glasses and clutched his skull with both hands, gripping as hard as he possibly could, trying to force the pain downwards and back: a moment later the worst was over, leaving only a blaring new clangour of tinnitus. He was now virtually deaf in that ear. The hearing was going in the left ear too. Yet more disturbing, his vision was deteriorating also, although, mercifully, much more slowly. Sibley could tell him nothing, give no prognosis. All he could say was that, yes, it must have been caused by a blow on the back of the head that he had received from Martinson in the wars. And, yes, if he did not get mainland treatment he might end up blind as well as deaf.

  How curious that that new man, Routledge, should have retrieved the crossbow. Martinson had killed a border guard to get his hands on it.

  Whenever Franks’s thoughts turned to Martinson he felt a sense of transcendent mystery, of inevitability. A Buddhist, someone who believed in rebirth, would have said that the two of them had known each other in a previous incarnation, that unfinished business had remained to be settled. Their lives were linked: they had orbited one another, slowly drawing closer. The first time he had met Martinson, Franks had instantly recognized, not the outer man, but the personality within. And he was sure it had been the same with Martinson, that feeling of familiarity, of reacquaintance after an irrelevant gap of space and time.

  At Dartmoor Martinson and Franks had shared a cell. A sort of friendship had developed, superficially initiated and perpetuated by Martinson, who had seemed to fear and admire Franks in equal parts. Ostensibly, for the sake of peace, Franks had gone along with it; and yet he had also detected something dangerous and fascinating in Martinson he had found irresistible: independence, a tangential way of thinking. At its core lay whatever it was that had to be resolved. Franks was in his debt. Perhaps, a thousand years before – and Franks had an uncanny feeling that they had lived by the rugged western sea then too, had belonged to the same fierce tribe – Franks had let him down, deserted or betrayed him, sold him to the enemy, taken his woman.

  They had been two months at Dartmoor. Towards the end Franks, realizing too late that Martinson was insane, had tried to shake himself free. Then had come the boat, and the first appalling months on Sert. And then the wars, the division of the island, the present precarious state.

  The blow on the head and its consequences marked, Franks hoped, the resolution of his debt. It was price enough to pay. Apart from Sibley, only Appleton knew how much effort it cost him to keep his suffering hidden.

  The Village was his shelter from Martinson, possibly for ever. That depended on Godwin and on Randal Thaine. And on himself. He had wasted enough time here this morning. He replaced his spectacles, stood up, and started back along the path to the bungalow.

  As he walked he thought again of Ireland, of the wind and tides, and of the broad, peaceful estuary of Courtmacsherry, lined on the south by pastel-painted cottages and on the north by a quiet road and cornfields. He knew exactly where the ketch could be hidden and later dismantled and
burned; and at Timoleague, at the head of the estuary, in a Georgian house, there would be Siobhan and money and food and, eventually, safe conduct to Pittsburgh. For the others, for Appleton and Godwin and Thaine and eight more, there would be a forged passport and two thousand pounds apiece.

  The Village had been the only way for Franks to surround himself with the people capable of bringing his scheme to fruition and to enable them to work on it unimpeded. In Thaine, Godwin, and most of all in Appleton, he had found intact the English genius for improvisation and compromise; had found intact the blend of arrogance and imagination that had once painted most of the world’s map pink. His own imagination, of a different and Celtic sort, more lateral and inspired than theirs, had provided the motive power to make the whole thing work. He had long ago forgiven them for being British: they could not very well help that.

  He had grown to love these men. But sometimes they needed a spot of gentle manipulation. In the past few weeks he had begun to feel that Godwin was being over-cautious about his side of the work. This Franks could no longer afford. Sooner or later the outsiders would bury their differences and launch a concerted attack.

  “That new man,” Franks had said to Godwin, earlier this morning. “We have our doubts about him. But he’s good with figures and has a bit of science in his background. I’d rather you had your computer, but do you want to make use of him? He might speed things up.”

  Godwin had looked uneasy. “What sort of doubts do you mean?”

  “Thinks a lot of himself. Thinks he can go it alone.”

  “He’s trustworthy enough,” Appleton had said. “I’ll vouch for that.”

  “What was he before?”

  “A quantity surveyor.”

  Then Franks had said, “If you’re not happy about it, Godwin, we’ll go on as we are.”

  “It’s just that he’d have to do a hell of a lot to produce anything useful.”

  “Mr Routledge will work hard,” Franks had said, winning the point, as he had known he would. “We’ll see to that. You can meet him later today.”