The Penal Colony

by Richard Herley

  “What?” Routledge had fondly been imagining that he need have nothing more to do with the outsiders.

  “We all take our turn.”

  “Are there many incidents?”

  “Enough. There was one last night. A man was caught near the piggery. He repeatedly refused to stop when challenged.”

  “And?”

  “Dead, I’m afraid.”

  Routledge looked round. He had just become aware that no one else was in sight. “Are we safe here?” he said. “It’s not very far from the border.”

  “They haven’t started attacking in daylight. Yet. I’m not criticizing the Father, but there’s a certain amount of pressure in Council to change the intake procedure. The present arrangement merely tends to increase the number of outsiders. Some people are saying it would be safer to weed them out straight after the interview. The same people advocate going outside to reduce the numbers of those already here.”

  “Do you mean kill them?”

  “Of course. We’re not in Rickmansworth now, Mr Routledge.”

  “So I’d noticed.”

  King gestured at the two handles of the canister. “Ready?”

  When they reached the bungalow they found Appleton on the veranda, handing out the last of the mail and requisitions. For King there was a single letter, which he retired to his shack to read. For Routledge there was a brown envelope from Exeter Prison, containing his wristwatch, his wedding ring, and his photographs.

  “I see they came, Mr Routledge. Mr Appleton here said you were anxious.”

  Franks had silently appeared on the veranda and was leaning on the rail, watching Routledge rip open the envelope and examine its contents. Behind him, Appleton observed from the shadows. In the presence of the Father, Talbot was standing, almost to attention, by his chair.

  “Yes,” Routledge said. “Thank you. Would you like to … see them?”

  Franks studied the snapshots briefly but appreciatively before handing them back. “A pretty wife, Mr Routledge. And a fine-looking boy.”

  “Christopher. That’s his name.”

  “What can we say about this island of ours?” He stood upright. “I want you to come and meet someone. Mr Appleton, will you accompany us?” To Talbot he said, “We’re going to see Mr Godwin.”

  6

  After supper that evening, King took Routledge to the recreation hut. Quite a few men were seated outside, talking and playing cards or dice in the last of the sunshine. As he approached, Routledge detected the smell of marijuana smoke.

  It was even stronger inside: the hut was crammed full, with every chair occupied and a number of men sitting on the floor. No one arose when King entered, even though a number of those present were his inferiors. King had already explained that the usual rules were relaxed here, and here only.

  Under King’s supervision, Routledge was served with a glass of tepid beer. No payment of any kind was demanded at the bar, but the man officiating there seemed to know precisely who was entitled to what, refusing some requests while acceding to others, occasionally keeping tally in a notebook.

  Again Routledge felt his isolation. He had nothing in common with these people; he would never belong. Despite the fact that the Village had attracted an undue share of the more educated and intelligent convicts, the majority were just like those he had been forced to live with at Exeter. King, Godwin, Stamper, Appleton, Sibley, Daniels, Franks himself: these were very much the exception.

  At Exeter, blacks had constituted about a quarter of the population. At Old Town it had seemed more like half. Here, it was about a third. Most were young, in their twenties. All, black and white, belonged to the worst and most dangerous stratum of the criminal class.

  Yet more introductions were made, yet more hands shaken, yet more names mentioned which Routledge instantly forgot. Until ten o’clock he was still technically a guest of the Community, and that was how he was being treated. A chair was vacated for him. He was offered a reefer, which he declined. The fumes alone, a few sips of the unexpectedly powerful beer, the crush and noise of the place, his own deep sense of exhaustion and unreality, were already combining to make him intoxicated.

  “Where does the jang come from?” he asked, moving closer to King’s ear and raising his voice to make himself heard.

  “We grow it.”

  “Yes, but how did you get the seed?”

  “Don’t know. It’s supposed to be pretty potent.”

  “Do you smoke it?”

  “No. Bad for the brain.”

  Smoking cannabis went contrary to the work ethic. Routledge was surprised that Franks allowed it. But then, considering, he saw how little else the villagers had in the way of comfort or entertainment. And probably the supply was controlled to Franks’s advantage. And further, any deviation in behaviour caused by the drug would lead to expulsion, thus keeping its use under control. Nonetheless, Routledge was surprised.

  He applied himself to his beer. The glass was again a cut-down jar, this time a marmalade jar decorated with a motif of leaves and lemons. “Is the place always this full?” he said.

  “Sometimes it’s fuller. There’s a darts match later. Then you’ll see it fill up. Mr Gunter is playing.”

  “He’s the champion?”

  “Defending, yes.”

  With marijuana replacing tobacco, and the drinkers dressed in ragged work clothes and a motley assortment of leather and sheepskin jerkins, waistcoats, jackets, trousers, and shorts, wearing boots or trainers or barefoot, the atmosphere in the hut was otherwise that of a popular pub on pay night. It was almost the last thing Routledge had anticipated finding on a penal colony. Indeed, he had been totally unprepared for almost everything he had encountered so far. He was still in a state of shock.

  Parrying remarks made at him by more of King’s friends, he suddenly remembered that, ten minutes’ walk away, one lying spreadeagled on a ledge, another on the beach below, were two cadavers, with a third, impaled by a steel crossbow bolt, almost as near in the other direction. Unless they had been moved or already picked clean by the birds, each would now be an inferno of flies. He had done that: and here he was, drinking beer as if nothing had happened.

  “Fill up?” King said.

  “Well … is there something else? Fruit juice, perhaps?”

  While King was at the bar, Godwin’s assistant, Fitzmaurice, came in. He acknowledged Routledge with no great enthusiasm and ignored him thereafter.

  Before Franks had taken him to Godwin’s workshop, Routledge had been thinking almost continuously about this morning’s interview with Appleton and the mysterious project it implied. Here was a way, he had immediately realized, to advance himself in the Village hierarchy; but he had had no idea what to expect, and his introduction to the pudgy, sarcastic Godwin had enlightened him hardly at all.

  With Franks watching, Godwin had given Routledge a test in arithmetic, in algebra, calculus, and various simple statistical techniques. He had tested him too on his knowledge of electronics and acoustics, and had asked him to draw a circuit diagram to show how a dimmer switch worked. Routledge had completed the tests satisfactorily, at which Godwin had signified his grudging approval.

  And now Routledge had landed himself a job doing he knew not what: for the purpose of all the wiring, the soldering, the bits and pieces of apparatus on Godwin’s bench, had not been explained to him. When he had asked, Franks had said that Godwin would tell him whatever he needed to know, at the time he needed to know it. Meanwhile, Routledge was forbidden to divulge details of the work to anyone, King included.

  He would be starting tomorrow afternoon. His working arrangements were to be flexible, depending on what Godwin wanted. In any case he need put in no more than eight hours a day, Franks had said, not, at least, while he was building his house, although the work with Godwin was to take absolute priority. Extra labour would if necessary be supplied to finish the house on time, by the autumn.

  Almost without doubt the project had somet
hing to do with the Magic Circle. That could only mean one thing. An escape attempt, a boat. The Community clearly had the technical ability to build one: the problem was launching it undetected and then getting clear away. Where would it go? The Devon or Cornish coast. Who would be on it? Franks, of course, probably Appleton, Godwin, and Fitzmaurice too. Plainly they were having trouble with designing or testing the electronics. There was no other reason they would have involved him, a newcomer, without giving themselves time properly to assess his personality and abilities. That meant they were running against some sort of deadline. Why? And most important of all, what were the chances of a place on the boat for himself?

  Nil.

  Even so, mental work, indoors, was vastly preferable to carting compost or scavenging along the tideline. When, eventually, he was able to begin making sense of this welter of initial impressions, he knew he would regard with satisfaction his appointment to Godwin’s project.

  Routledge did not stay for the darts match. Making his excuses, he left as early as he could and went to bed; but he was so tired and miserable that he again had difficulty in getting to sleep.

  He lit a lamp and for a long time lay looking into his favourite picture of Louise, taken on the Thames, on a hired motorboat. She had been three months pregnant then, wearing a blue sundress and sandals, one of which she had removed in order to trail the toes of her right foot in the water.

  The picnic had been her idea. He remembered everything about that afternoon: the dank, shady smell of the river, the glimpses of white houses and their lawns sloping down to the water, the island temple at Remenham, the bankside mud eroded and exposed by the wash of cabin cruisers and steamers. The Thames at Henley Reach was already a river to be reckoned with, gathering force from the heart of England as it moved towards London and the sea. Its valley was broad and rich, on the grand scale, rising northwards to the wooded Chiltern Hills, but it was in the small things that the essence of the river was to be found. The furniture of the riverbank – the gates and railings and signboards – had a peculiarly apt and English flavour. Henley the town still retained remnants of its former self. Downstream they had watched a rowing eight at practice, and seen a grebe, and heard the breeze turning the sallow leaves, and moored at some unnamed place to eat and rest. He had loved her more on that day than ever before.

  Eventually he put the photograph back in its place, propped up on his makeshift bedside shelf. He turned on his side and shut his eyes, but was still awake an hour later when King returned.

  King stole to the table, where Routledge had left the oil lamp burning low, and, shielding the light from Routledge’s end of the room, turned up the wick and began to carry the lamp towards his own pallet bed.

  “It’s all right, Mr King,” Routledge said.

  “Did I disturb you?”

  “No. Not at all.” Routledge sat up. “Who won the darts?”

  “Mr Gunter.”

  “Did you get your whisky?”

  “Not yet. That only comes if he wins the cup.” King removed his sweater and began unbuttoning his shirt. “Can’t you sleep?”

  “Well. There’s a lot to think about.”

  “It’s best not to do too much of that.”

  “Yes. I’m sure.”

  “If you get too pissed off, let me know. That’s what I’m here for. It’s a cliché, but it really does help to talk.”

  “And you? Have you adjusted to it yet?”

  “No. I don’t think you ever can.”

  “Does it get easier?”

  “In some ways. I’ve been here for three years. From the point of view of material comfort, the further you get from your former life the better.” He poured water into the bowl and began washing himself. “I dimly remember having a bathroom with a fitted carpet. But this seems quite normal and adequate now. It’s surprising what you can do without. The other things are harder to give up. The mental things.” Having dried himself, King turned away, took off his trousers and climbed into bed.

  “Since we’ll be sharing the same roof till September,” he said, after a moment, “I think you ought to know what I’m here for. Multiple murder. I killed my next-door neighbours.”

  An image of a newspaper photograph, a lurid headline, vaguely returned to Routledge’s mind. “How many of them?”

  “Three.”

  Sitting up in bed, his mild features made even more lugubrious by the lamplight, King then recounted a story so horrific and grotesque that Routledge forgot for the moment his own troubles and could only marvel at the depths of feeling which existed behind anonymous front doors. King had lived in Basingstoke, working by day as a languages teacher in a comprehensive school and by night tending his disabled sister. Their bungalow was the subject of a compulsory purchase order to make way for a new road. The compensation was inadequate; they could afford only a much smaller, attached, house, on a recent development outside the town. The new house was badly built, with thin walls which transmitted every sound.

  From the start there was trouble from the people next door, a couple with a nine-year-old boy. The main problem was noise, keeping King’s sister awake, preventing him from concentrating on his marking and preparation. The television was left on almost permanently, at a high volume; at other times the stereo played pop music with a driving, insistent beat which penetrated every corner of the house. Requests to turn the sound down were at first complied with, then ignored, then met with abuse.

  The following Christmas the boy was given a puppy as a present, a terrier. As it grew older it learned to bark. Anything and everything set it off. Sometimes it barked for no reason at all. When the neighbours went out shopping or visiting relatives the dog was left locked in the house, and then it barked without cease. The woman used to let it out at five to six in the morning and again at a quarter past eleven at night, so that King’s hours of sleep were determined by the habits of the dog. His health began to suffer.

  In October the family bought a second terrier – to keep the first one company, as they explained. By the following spring King had tried to raise a petition among the other people living nearby, a prerequisite for legal action. No one had been willing to sign. The dogs did not disturb them, they said; some pretended they could not even hear them. King began to be regarded as an eccentric. He was ostracized. He tried to move house, but could find nowhere suitable.

  Matters came to a head during the ensuing summer, on a muggy Sunday afternoon in June, at the height of the lawn-mowing season. The neighbours had an electric rotary mower which emitted a high-pitched whine. King was trying to mark a heap of examination scripts on his desk. Eventually, when the neighbour had gone inside, he decided to cut his own tiny lawn. He took his push-mower from the garage. As he fitted the grass-box, both terriers came out as usual and began yapping at him. The gardens were separated only by a low, white plastic picket fence.

  He went back into the garage. He took a can of petrol, which was full, and poured the contents into a polythene bucket. Before leaving the garage he made sure he had some matches and a quantity of old newspaper.

  The dogs were still barking. They redoubled their efforts as he drew near. He flung the petrol at them. Both were drenched, the older one taking the brunt. With the newspaper alight, King jumped over the fence and set them on fire.

  In the few seconds left to them the dogs made instinctively for sanctuary – for the open French window – and ran indoors. Within a few minutes the whole house was blazing; all attempts by the family to put out the fire had failed.

  The three of them appeared at the kitchen door. The wife had seen everything; her husband was armed with a metal vegetable rack. Shouting incoherently, he rushed at King, who easily wrested the thing away from him. The scuffle proceeded to the garage. King punched him in the face. As the man went down, King snatched a spade and hit him over the head. The wife, who had been trying to assist her husband, also received a blow, as did the boy. After that, King’s mind went blank.

&nbs
p; “By the time the police and fire brigade got there, all three were dead.” He pushed a hand through his hair. “My defence tried to show provocation, but it didn’t wash. It was the dogs. No jury would forgive me that. Not in England.”

  Routledge remained silent for a while. Finally he said, “And your sister, Mr King?”

  “King. Call me King. The firemen got her out. She had to move away, of course. She’s in Milton Keynes now, in a home.”

  “You had a letter this afternoon.”

  “Yes. From her. She writes nearly every week. It’s censored, but she knows that, so we’ve evolved a sort of code.”

  “In what way censored?”

  “They black out whatever they feel you shouldn’t know. There aren’t any rules. Outgoing letters are censored more heavily still. Anything about conditions here is always expunged, anything about the Village or the outsiders. One or two men once put some messages in bottles, just to see what would happen. We didn’t get any feedback.”

  “Couldn’t you build a radio?”

  “They’d know. They’d pick up the transmissions immediately. Then there’d be no more helicopter till the radio stopped. Besides, the Father wouldn’t permit it. There’s no point in antagonizing them.”

  “He’s an interesting man,” Routledge said, experimentally.

  “The Father is more than that. Without him we’d have been lost.”

  “What was he before?”

  “I don’t know. He comes from County Cork, I think. Near Kinsale.”

  “Was he a terrorist?”

  King said nothing. He blew out the lamp. “You’ve an early start tomorrow. You know you’re seeing Mr Appleton to get a plot for your house, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re supposed to report to him at half-past five.”

  “Good night then, King. Sleep well.”

  “You too, Routledge.”