The Green Drift

by John Lymington

  ‘It means.’ Griswold interrupted. ‘It more than means. I’m here because it means. I’ve come a long way, from a high post. It wasn’t because we didn’t think you meant anything. You do. It’s my belief you know the lot somewhere in that dark box of yours, and if we can put our finger on that trigger and get it out of you, we might do a great Hen 1, even though the time is short. You know if they’re coming. You know if it’s a feint, or a patrol, or a full-rate descent.’

  ‘Yes, but if I do know, what can you do?’

  ‘That depends on what you know.’ Griswold looked out of the window for the hundredth time. ‘Can we reconstruct… ?

  ‘You are at the pub. It is ten-fifteen, say. Suddenly it is ten-fifteen tonight. You have disappeared from Wednesday, are no longer visible to the people you were with. You see this raid begin. You ring the News. At some time after that you jump back to Wednesday, and you are back where you were, in the pub. But time—Wednesday time—has gone on. The place is shut. You are very shocked mentally. One cannot jump like that and remain comparatively sane. You shout out. Barbara Baynes hears you, and she, too, is alarmed. She has locked up. She knows there was no one there when she did it. Now she comes down and you are there. You are in a bad way from shock. She is alarmed. Perhaps she gives you a brandy or something. She has a great affection for you— This concern overcomes her normal fear of being seen with you. (She still wants her husband back, you know, and is frightened to spoil the chances.) She decides to see you home. Obviously you are acting very strangely. You walk back together. There are lots of fireflies about, but neither of you notice them because they have an hypnotic effect.

  ‘You get back here to the house. It is in silence and darkness. The juice has broken down, but you don’t know that. You assume your wife has gone to bed and turned everything off. In the back of your mind perhaps

  you remember she said she had a headache and would go to bed early. You ask Barbara in. Now—instead of refusing because of her natural fear of spoiling things for herself. she comes in. There are no lights on. The circuit was not restored till daybreak, three thirty a.m. She does not go, but at some time thinks herself at home and goes into the cupboard, thinking it her bedroom and goes to bed. You fall out on the sofa. You know nothing about the woman in the cupboard until you find her there much later…. Is everything about this room normal for you?’ Richard looked around.

  ‘Normal for me,’ he said.

  ‘The television was on,’ Griswold said.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I assume it was on before the power failure. Your wife turned it off this morning.’

  ‘But it couldn’t have been on. I snapped it off when I went out yesterday evening.’

  ‘Perhaps when you came back?”

  ‘Why? There was a cut on. And probably it was after programme time. Why the hell would I put it on?’

  ‘Yes, why? Your wife isn’t mistaken, she remembers coming in, drawing the curtains and switching off the set.’

  ‘The curtains?’ Richard said. ‘Were they closed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve never drawn them since I’ve been here.’

  ‘And why draw them if there are no lights?’ Griswold said. ‘I see no candles, oil lamps. Are there any means of illumination outside the mains?’

  ‘There’s a battery hand-lantern, but everybody forgets to buy a battery. Every time I put it out to remind myself, my wife or Ellen tidies it up and puts it away again. No, it wouldn’t have been used last night. A cigarette would be brighter.’

  ‘Two odd points,’ Griswold said. ‘Any others? Look around. Think.’

  ‘You do realise that I’m not a tidy man. I often wonder

  how the hell things got where I put them— Look, wouldn’t it be wise to get out of here? My wife, I mean.’

  Griswold pushed his head forward.

  ‘Not you?’ he snapped.

  ‘As long as she’s safe, I don’t mind—if it did any good, I mean—to stay—’

  ‘You are curiously indefinite!’ Griswold said between his teeth.

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning you don’t want to go,’ Griswold said, and grinned.

  ‘I’m scared, but I don’t want to miss anything. It might be the experience of a life-time—or it might be nothing at all.’

  ‘Which is it going to be?’

  ‘I don’t know! ’

  ‘If you screwed up that nitwit brain of yours and made it give we would know.’

  Suddenly he rounded the table and came close to Richard.

  ‘You don’t remember, do you?’ His face was very close. ‘It is genuine, this amnesia?’

  Richard stared, and suddenly was afraid.

  ‘Why the devil should I lie about that? What’s the

  sense?’

  Griswold stared closely at him, watching his eyes. Then he turned away as abruptly as he had come.

  ‘The people are changing,’ he said. ‘Have you noticed?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Let me show you.’ Griswold strode to the door and opened it. ‘Porch! ’ He came back into the room leaving the door wide. Outside, Barbara remained sitting on the stairs, but she glared into the study through the banisters. Hayles stood on the far side, staring in the same direction. Both might have expected something important to have happened.

  Porch came in and closed the door. He was hot and heavy, tired in appearance. He had lost the smartness which Richard remembered of him.

  ‘Any change in the crowd?’ Griswold said.

  Porch just stared.

  ‘No,’ he said, after a while.

  Griswold pointed out of the window.

  ‘But it’s growing smaller. Also I see a winking blue light up amongst them on the road. Your people are shifting them, as well as some going of their own accord.’ ‘I didn’t notice,’ said Porch. ‘I was waiting.’

  ‘What for?’

  Porch hesitated and wiped round his collar. ‘For you, I suppose.’

  ‘Nothing to report?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nothing at all unusual in the garden?’

  ‘Nothing at all.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Griswold grinned as Porch went out and closed the door. ‘You notice a change? Now see the others.’ He went to the door, opened it, and called out, ‘Mr Hayles if you please.’

  Hayles came in quickly, his jaw struck aggressively. He held his glass to his chest and kicked the door shut with his heel.

  ‘Have you found something?’ he asked directly. ‘Nothing at all,’ said Griswold. ‘Do you know if your people got in touch with any expert’s—’ his face twisted ironically as he mouthed the word, ‘—during the night?’ ‘We have one or two scientific journalists. They usually write about smoking and new material for stitches, or petrol. Things like that. I believe they get it straight out of the library downstairs.’

  ‘Did you hear any sort of speculation at the office before you left?’

  ‘There was chatter, of course.’ Hayles began to walk up and down. ‘Comparison with a million-year-old fish. The sort of thing where you argue that this fish couldn’t have lasted, so it must be being created again. The argument goes that matter is constantly entering our atmosphere in one way or the other and in this matter there are eggs of such fish. They fall into the ocean, and after a while, appear fully grown.’

  Griswold looked at Richard.

  ‘I’ve used that in stories,’ Richard said. ‘It’s an easy get- out. You don’t have to explain. Things appearing from the sea which have fallen in from outer space. You have a good argument in that the vast mass of the surface is sea and can’t possibly be watched.’

  ‘It’s very close to die sea here,’ Griswold said.

  ‘A half-mile that way.’ Richard pointed towards the back of the house.

  Griswold looked out of the window. The people were in the fields now, and there was only a thin line of stragglers in the lane.

  ‘I suppose,’
said Griswold, very distinctly, ‘that those beings are people?’ He pointed to the lane and around the fields.

  Porch stood regarding Barbara. She returned his stare with some uneasiness. He looked odd.

  He went to the table, opened a bottle of tonic water and floured it out. He lifted it, then put it down again and added a lot of gin. He drank some. His face was shiny with the heat.

  ‘Let him go,’ he said gruffly. ‘Kick his arse out of the front door. She’s a bag. She’s had every man in the village, but she’s good at it, too. That’s how she gets ’em. She broke up two before you came. Never been the same since. She gets so you can’t turn it down. I took her to the town one day off, just a lift. What a lift that was! We never got there. Me! But I couldn’t turn it down. It’d have gone bad for me if she hadn’t gone for Arthur Wales and let me go. I’d have been out on my neck. She’s got something. She’s got it all right, but she gets tired of ’em. He’ll come crawling back. They all do, after her. Let me tell you. I know. I’ve seen too many. Don’t have him back. It won’t be the same. Let me tell you. It never comes the same after. All right for a bit, and then—phut. No.’

  He drank. She stared up from the stairs, startled into silence. What he suggested couldn’t be true.

  ‘It was you! ’

  Barbara sat quite still at the sound of Ellen’s voice. Ellen stood in the kitchen doorway and could not see Barbara on the stairs. Her eyes were round as she pointed at Porch, his glass to his mouth in a big gulp.

  ‘It was you. In the pub! I remember now! ’

  ‘You remember what?’ Porch asked, blankly.

  ‘It was the middle of the night. I woke up feeling funny. I felt I had to have some air. I went over to the window, and those fireflies was all about. Very pretty they were. But I can see down into that bar window across the road and you were in there, drinking. There was a candle on the counter, and it was you. The way you put your head back like that. Yes, it was you! ’

  ‘You can’t mean it! ’ Porch said.

  “Yes, I do mean it. It was right, that. You in the bar there drinking. Funny I didn’t remember it before. It was seeing you like that, then.’

  ‘You must have been dreaming,- Porch said, putting his glass on the table.

  ‘How did you get in?’ Barbara asked suddenly.

  There was no question about whether he had got in: from the point of Ellen’s revelation all three accepted that he had got in.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Porch said. ‘You must have left the door undone when you went off. I don’t remember trying it.’

  ‘But why did you go in?’ Barbara said.

  I don’t remember it,” he said. ‘It was very hot when I saw you. Very close. I remember feeling very thirsty. But I thought I went home.’

  Barbara’s eyes were staring, fixed, almost holding him still.

  ‘No.’ she said. ‘You went to find me.’

  He said nothing. His eyes drifted warily from Barbara

  to Ellen.

  ‘But I knew you had gone,’ Porch said. ‘I knew.’

  ‘Bui you thought I’d come back.’

  ‘I don’t see how you know,’ he said.

  ‘You didn’t have your uniform on,’ Ellen said. ‘That’s why I didn’t know yon right away.’

  ‘I wasn’t on last night,’ Porch said, and wiped his face. ‘I just went for a walk. It was so hot.’ He looked at Barbara with a strange steadfastness. ‘I thought you’d conic back. Yes. That was it. Perhaps I went in to wait. Yes, that’s what I must have done.’

  There was no trace of surprise in his scandalous surmise. Ellen leant against the kitchen door, one arm upraised against the jamb, statuesquely, and smiled as she watched the policeman.

  Barbara got up, suddenly surprised.

  ‘This is crazy! ’ she said, and went quickly to the open front door.

  Porch went to Ellen and pushed her back into the kitchen.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ he said.

  ‘What should be?’ She laughed scornfully.

  ‘What do you think you know, then?’

  ‘Everything! ’ She laughed outright.

  ‘Oh?’ He grabbed her wrist and twisted it. ‘Yes?’

  She kicked him in the shins and laughed again, even when he twisted harder.

  ‘You can’t hide it, you! ’ she said and stuck her tongue out. ‘I’ve seen you hanging round her, then, I have! Ow! You stinker! ’ Without caring for what it might do to her wrist, she slapped his face with her free hand. He did not use any of his training to defend himself, but let it come.

  ‘What on earth—?’ Jennifer stopped at the back stairs door.

  The strugglers stopped still a moment, then broke apart almost reluctantly. Porch looked at Jennifer with a strange kind of defiance. Ellen went back to the sink.

  wiping her palms on her thighs. Porch turned, wiped round his neck with his dirtying handkerchief and went out into die hall.

  Jennifer came into the kitchen, back to the salad mixing. It was done already, but she stirred again with a fork, as if she found the mechanics soothing. Ellen stared ahead at the bright blind slats.

  ‘Don’t go on about it, then!’ she said suddenly, without looking round.

  ‘Is that lettuce cleaned?’

  Ellen hesitated, taken aback in her turn. She relaxed.

  ‘Yes. I’ll shake it out.’ She went to the back door.

  ‘Are you afraid?’ Jennifer asked, quickly.

  Ellen looked back. There was coldness in her eyes.

  ‘Let them go to hell,’ she said. She opened the door and went out.

  Jennifer heard her swishing the lettuce in the cage and calling out some kind of imprecations in time with each swing.

  Jennifer felt horrified. It added to the mounting insanity of the morning, this .switching from fear to defiance, and from reticence to an openly sensual encounter with the policeman.

  She left the table and went out into the hall. Barbara had backed from the door. Porch had gone right out into the garden.

  ‘Where’s he gone? Porch?’ Jennifer said quietly.

  ‘He went tearing out in a fury.’ Barbara gripped her teeth together. ‘I think he’s gone mad. He makes me feel I’m going, too! He—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter.’ Barbara turned away. ‘It must be this day. Everything’s mad. You just can’t get away from it. It’s all round. It’s as i£ everybody is slowly going bonkers—’ She looked round at Jennifer with wide eyes. ‘Not me as well, is it?’

  Jennifer let her feelings go in a sudden giggle.

  ‘Like you say, it’s everybody,’ she said, and fanned her face with her hand. ‘Yet it’s a beautiful day. It’s a spell.’

  She looked directly at Barbara, challenging.

  ‘Yes,’ Barbara said. ‘But who’s the witch?’

  ‘Well, you were naked.’

  Barbara’s eyes became fixed, but they saw something far beyond the walls of the house.

  ‘Did you?’ Jennifer asked.

  ‘A bit. It was after he went with her. There is a woman in the village, Mrs Herrick. She does. She gave me things to do that would hurt them both.’ She grimaced as if it was painful to remember, then grew strong again. ‘I wanted to hurt them. I still do. Little wax dolls all dressed up like her, and you stick in pins and knives. I thought I was crazy at first, but I got to believe in it. They seem to have some sort of power over you, those sort of things, once you start playing with them they sort of get hold of you. Sometimes you get the feeling they’ll never let you go again. Like drugs.’

  ‘Suppose you heard that he’d died when you stuck the pins in?’

  ‘Oh no! ’ She shook her head. ‘I was afraid of that, but it made it more acute sometimes. Wanting to hurt them, I mean. Then I used to sit down and cry and think it was just all spite and I must be rotten. I kept changing, one way and the other, like that. I reckon I’m just all over the place anyway. Today’s just worse, but it’s
only what I’ve been expecting. I thought my nerves would give before now. It isn’t so bad as I thought it would be. That’s all….’ She stared suddenly. ‘How did you know about me?’

  ‘Just being naked in the cupboard, I suppose. I didn’t know about you. I suddenly thought of it then and said it. I didn’t mean to say it.’ She stared at nothing a moment, wondering, then she turned her head and looked up the stairs. The feeling that there was something upstairs she should have seen rose strongly in her. She made a step to go to the stairs, then turned her back on them.

  The study door opened. Griswold came out. He ignored the women and looked round for the ashtray into which he had put the dead spider. He found it and took it back into the study, as if bearing an important prize. Both women watched him in silence. When the door shut, Barbara shivered.

  ‘He gives me the creeps,’ she said. ‘He knows everything without being told.’

  ‘He’s some kind of a detective, I think,’ Jennifer said. ‘But why does it matter so much? If we had a bit of midsummer madness during the night, why does the Government need to find out about it?’

  ‘It’s the fireflies,’ Barbara said. ‘It’s the fireflies, I know. I had a funny feeling about diem.’

  ‘You mean they’ve been here before last night?’

  ‘Yes. Two or three nights. All of a sudden you saw them. It didn’t seem natural, such a lot. I kept meaning to ask about it—you know—if they were dangerous or anything, but I never remembered. You don’t seem to remember them till you see them again the next night, and then they look pretty and you don’t mind, and then suddenly you get a bit frightened of them—’ She frowned. ‘And that’s when you forget. It’s funny—that you should forget them and don’t speak of them and—’ ‘And that we forget everything in the night,’ Jennifer said. ‘I didn’t know there’d been a plague of them. I was away a few days.’ She looked at Barbara and her china blue eyes froze over. ‘But of course, you know that!’

  For a moment they were back to normal. It was a relief to feel anger and jealousy again.

  ‘I did hear something,’ Barbara said, offhandedly.