Refuge

by Richard Herley

  The rain had stopped half an hour ago. Suter’s feet passed over the crossing and he quickened his pace. The time was six thirty-seven, well past sunset, and though the light was failing rapidly he allowed himself a momentary sense of triumph. He had reached the built-up zone within schedule and still had some time and strength left. After Sarratt, after the pub, he had got his second wind. Twelve years of constant walking, swimming, wood-cutting, burden-carrying, had put him in his prime. Perhaps he was not too old for this, after all.

  ‘You’re wilier than they are, too,’ he whispered. ‘More advanced.’

  ‘What the hell are you on about now?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘And what are you whispering for? They’re miles away. Probably given up already.’

  ‘Yeah. Sure they have.’

  The road here was lined entirely with pairs of semi-detached houses, pretty much as he remembered. A former grass verge, varying in width from three feet to about fifteen, divided the kerb from the footway, next to which ran the old line of low garden walls and fences. The front gardens were not deep: thirty feet at most.

  He began looking out for two houses having certain characteristics. They needed to be within sight of one another, unobstructed by trees or overgrown shrubs, and staggered on opposite sides of the road.

  ‘What about those?’

  The nearer of the two, on the right, looked ideal. From this angle it appeared to have remained entirely sealed, somehow escaping the attentions of looters and weather and wildlife. Laying his shotgun flat on the road, Suter used both hands to raise his binoculars and study the upper floor. The bedroom curtains were closely drawn. They showed no sign of rot.

  ‘Yes,’ he whispered. ‘Good. Very good.’

  It was just the sort of place where they would expect him to spend the night.

  The house on the left, thirty yards on, looked much less inviting. Although the roof was intact, one of the big windows in the ground-floor bay had been smashed, losing about a quarter of its glass. He arrived at a point opposite the broken window and again laid down the gun.

  Now Suter’s Dialyt came into its own, mopping up every spare photon and channelling it to his brain. His vision began to adapt and penetrate the dank, derelict darkness of the room. Almost impossibly, stretching the laws of optics to their utmost limits, after a few moments he resolved peeling floral wallpaper, a white plastic lightswitch. A high-handled interior door.

  ‘Yes!’

  It was shut!

  The house was the left-hand one of the pair, another auspicious sign.

  ‘It’ll do.

  ‘More than do.’

  ‘Whatever you say.’

  He retrieved the shotgun and went back to the first house. No one was coming: he confirmed it, one-handed, with the binoculars before stepping up from the roadbed and into the wet, rank vegetation of the verge.

  Leaving behind a wide swathe of damaged stems, he forced a path into what had been the front garden. A prefabricated concrete garage stood next to the house. The metal up-and-over door, painted maroon and firmly shut, confined for ever a white Toyota which Suter saw through the rear garage window. The people living here had not fled by car, not unless they’d had another. The drawn curtains upstairs suggested they had been abroad when the plague had struck, on holiday perhaps, stranded in Majorca by the embargo on air-travel, turfed out of their hotel and left to fend for themselves until the disease got them too.

  ‘What, in November?’

  ‘They might have been pensioners. On a cut-price break.’

  ‘Too much imagination, that’s your trouble.’

  The back garden was a jungle. By the French window Suter found a concrete squirrel, life size, almost hidden by weeds. He examined it in the twilight, acknowledged what it was, then averted his face and smashed the glass. The noise seemed appallingly loud: a nearby blackbird shrilled its cry of alarm.

  His groping hand found no key in the lock, so he broke more panes and enough glazing-bars to let him step inside. Before doing so, he shed his pack and extricated his flashlight.

  The beam revealed domestic details unseen for twelve years or more: a tiled mantelpiece with clock and dust-furred knick-knacks, a gas fire with imitation coals, a huge TV on a stand, a three-piece suite in striped moquette, all set upon a swirl-patterned carpet. Extravagant cobwebs festooned the walls and furniture. A musty smell, far from healthy, pervaded the air, becoming stronger as he crossed the reception hall towards the kitchen. If a house contained no bodies, this smell usually had its origin in the freezer cabinet. He had detected it many times, in many dwellings, large and small.

  After a while, all these places began to look the same, whatever their size, whatever their erstwhile value, whatever the pretensions of the people who had furnished them. At one time Suter had derived voyeuristic interest from unfettered study of abandoned houses. He had read letters and diaries, poked into cupboards, examined photo albums and collections of books. Much of his library derived from this source. Occasionally he had fired a house or block of flats, just to see it burn; once an office building, a district headquarters of the Inland Revenue. Watching it disintegrate, Suter had finally accepted, emotionally as well as intellectually, that there would be no more government to coerce and constrain, to order him about and waste his time and energy. That had been one of the better days of his first year alone.

  He started up the stairs. In households such as this, which had obviously included a female inhabitant of middle age or above, the lack of a sewing box in the living room often indicated the presence of a spare bedroom adapted, or entirely dedicated, to needlework and the like. It was usually the smallest of the three.

  The sewing machine had been set up by the window. Its yellowing PVC cover bore a brand name: Bernina. He owned a Bernina himself, though he rarely needed to use it.

  The table drawer held a collection of cottons. He pocketed one reel of navy blue and another of black and hurried back downstairs. In the dining room he rummaged in the sideboard, looking for candles, but found none. This drove him into the kitchen, where, wrinkling his nose, he unearthed a packet of birthday-cake candles at the top of a larder-cupboard.

  ‘I hate baked beans,’ he said, eyeing a medium-sized tin.

  ‘Take them anyway. And the peaches.’

  He was glad to get out in the open air and resume the familiar weight of his pack. Exactly following the blatant trail he had made earlier, and being very careful not to fall over, he proceeded backwards along his course between the garage and the side of the house. When he reached the road he turned to his right, back towards Sarratt, and took half a dozen steps.

  The anticipation of difficulty had become so much a part of his nature that he was not in the least surprised to find there was too little of the black thread to span the road. Aided now by his torch, he knotted the end of the black to the blue and continued across to the other verge. Here he tied the cotton part-way up a young blackthorn bush, at about knee height, then snapped off the rest. The line was taut as well as reasonably level, fixed on the far side to an elder stem.

  ‘Good. Sehr gut.’

  The daylight had almost gone. Just enough remained for him to see the silhouettes of the roofs and chimneys. Having checked the map and walked down the road some three hundred yards past the second house, Suter took the first turning on the left. He picked a way among the clumps of grass and ragwort growing through the road-surface, avoiding as far as possible any disturbance of the humus of fallen leaves, twigs and branches.

  According to the map, the next road ran parallel to Baldwin’s Lane. He was greatly tempted to take it, for he was almost out of stamina and did not relish the idea of breasting the width of twenty-two rear gardens, still less that of having to kick down or climb over twenty-one wooden fences. However, the map gave only a stylised summary of the boundaries between the houses, and he could not tell whether the two sets of gardens backed one another precisely, nor could he well affor
d to lose count.

  ‘There’s nothing else for it.’

  Using all his skill to minimise and generalise his trail, he entered the driveway of the house on his left. Presently he came to the bottom of the rear garden and, kicking down a rotten panel of larchlap fencing, drew one obstacle nearer to his lodgings for the night.

  2

  ‘What will you have to drink?’ Fernihough said, once Goddard had removed his gumboots and relinquished his raincoat, which Melissa had hung up in the hall.

  ‘Whisky?’

  ‘With water?’

  ‘Please.’

  Wearing the sheepskin slippers Fernihough had supplied, Goddard crossed to the hearth-rug and stood warming his back at the fire. He looked round the room.

  ‘Cosy place you’ve got here.’

  As they both knew, the cosiness was an illusion. At any moment one or more of the gang might choose to enter and perpetrate some outrage. That they had not yet done so in his house was to Fernihough a continuing source of surprise.

  He and Melissa rarely entertained anyone, let alone the village deputy, who, as far as Fernihough could remember, had never before so much as deigned to put a foot across the threshold. Tonight she had made a special effort to make the house welcoming. The children were in bed; enticing smells from the kitchen were finding their way along the passage; and the sitting-room fire had been lit over an hour earlier, laid with seasoned beech and scented with the cones of larch and Norway spruce.

  ‘Please, Peter. Sit down.’

  ‘Isn’t your wife joining us?’

  ‘Not for the minute. Important business in the kitchen.’

  Goddard took the seat Fernihough had indicated, a loose-covered armchair pleasantly close to the fire.

  As he prepared the drinks, Fernihough felt his misgivings grow. Besides the obvious consequences of the arrival, a fortnight earlier, of Ian Bexley and his followers, the catastrophe had brought nearer to the surface an undercurrent of dissent that previously had remained hidden. For years, the village had been divided in two. There was the minority with children, and the rest.

  Thanks to the industry of the villagers, and to the hoard of goods available in the nearby town, the community was materially self-sufficient. It needed no outside help, no trade. All the same, the question of making contact with the other settlements which, somewhere, somehow, surely existed, of allowing expression of the human urge for communication, had been repeatedly raised at meetings of the Council, for if the children of the village were ever to flourish, some at least would have to marry outside Shanley.

  While acknowledging the strength of this argument, the leadership had always opposed it. So many years had passed since the plague that it was impossible to say how other settlements might have developed. There was no need to go looking for trouble. As long as Shanley remained isolated it would remain safe. If there were God-fearing communities elsewhere, and if it were God’s will that they make contact, then such contact was sooner or later inevitable.

  The pronouncements of the Council, no matter how wrong-headed, were usually couched in such terms. The piety of anyone who disagreed was automatically suspect. Lack of piety caused a reduction in social status. Those of lower status – and their children – enjoyed fewer privileges. Thus people like Fernihough, even had they been allowed an effective voice on the Council, could not risk expressing themselves too emphatically.

  The elderly Goddard lived alone. He had, apparently, never been married. The contrast between his bachelor household and this one might strike unpleasantly. Except for the usual courtesies of the village, Goddard had never shown much sign of friendship towards Fernihough; and indeed, Fernihough now remembered, at a couple of gatherings he had made little effort to conceal his sense of superiority.

  His face, weathered from long exposure to the open air, had already taken on a redder hue. What was left of his hair was pure white, hastily brushed. As he reached up for the whisky glass, his blue eyes fixed themselves on Fernihough. ‘I don’t feel much like offering a toast to anyone, do you?’

  ‘No, not really.’

  Goddard took a sip. After a moment, he said, ‘What’s this all about? Bexley?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Goddard leaned forward and accepted a small dish of salted savoury biscuits. ‘Are these Paul’s?’

  ‘Yes,’ Fernihough said. Paul Aziz was the best baker in the village.

  ‘The Council position is quite clear,’ Goddard said, and took a few of the glazed biscuits, which he thoroughly crunched before swallowing. Fernihough caught a glimpse of false teeth. ‘We must do nothing while Philip is being held.’

  ‘But your sermon. I got the impression —’

  ‘That I was inciting the village to take up arms against the strangers?’

  ‘Well, hardly.’

  The words of the sermon, and the atmosphere in which they had been received, had persuaded Fernihough that Goddard was just as angry as he: that Goddard and the rest of the Council, having, like him, considered and reconsidered all the options, had at last accepted that a direct attack, no matter how costly, was the only chance of salvation for the whole village.

  Goddard said, ‘It was all I could do this afternoon to convince Bexley that Muriel had been working alone.’

  ‘You told him that?’

  ‘I did.’ Goddard’s gaze became even chillier. ‘I’d no idea she’d got hold of that gun. If I’d known, I’d have stopped her.’

  ‘Supposing she’d killed him?’

  ‘Then matters would now be quite different.’ Goddard took some more biscuits. The way he did it somehow bespoke the low regard in which he held his host. He knew everything; Fernihough knew nothing. Goddard was the village deputy, prominent on the Council; Fernihough was a digger of carrots, a man who walked home, alone and vulnerable, through the mud.

  Fernihough asked, ‘Does anyone know anything about the gun?’

  ‘It’s a complete mystery.’

  ‘You’ve seen it, I’m told.’

  ‘Yes. An automatic pistol. Austrian thing. Glock, I think it’s called.’

  Village law was strict on the question of firearms. Only breech-loading rifles and shotguns were allowed, for shooting vermin and game, and as defence against dogs. Every one of these weapons had been accounted for and confiscated by Bex on the day he had arrived.

  ‘Who could have given it to her?’ Fernihough said.

  ‘The same man who shot those two by the river.’

  ‘Yes, but who is he?’

  ‘We don’t know where else Bexley has been. Where he was before this.’ Goddard’s manner softened, as if he were explaining something to a child. ‘You mentioned my sermon. I’d hoped I’d made things clear. Violence never solves anything. It is our Lord who will bring Bexley’s branch low. Our Lord alone. That is the message of comfort in Isaiah. If Muriel had heeded her Scripture she would be with us now.’

  Fernihough was struggling to maintain the placid exterior he had so painstakingly constructed throughout his life here. ‘Alan says there was more shooting, inside the Manor House. Just after the gunfight in the grounds. Four shots, he says.’

  ‘Yes. Four.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Bexley told me he was trying out the pistol.’

  ‘Did you ask him?’

  ‘He volunteered the information. In a fashion.’

  ‘But suppose he actually shot someone. Suppose he shot Philip.’

  ‘I’ve already had this discussion several times today. Philip is Bexley’s main bargaining counter. If and when Philip is killed, they’ll start killing everyone else. Since that hasn’t happened yet, we must assume that he is still alive.’

  ‘Is that the Council’s view?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re just waiting for Bex to start shooting?’

  Fernihough at once regretted his words. He saw that any notion he might have had concerning Bex, when put to Goddard, let alone the whole Council, would meet
with rejection.

  ‘I didn’t come here for this,’ Goddard said. He reached out and placed his glass on the edge of the sofa-table. ‘Perhaps I’d better leave.’

  ‘No – please. I’m sorry. I’m pretty well beside myself. We all are. I just wanted to talk. Maybe there’s something we haven’t thought of. Some way of dealing with it all.’

  Goddard looked up as Melissa came into the room to join them and rose punctiliously to his feet, forcing Fernihough to do the same.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Despite his extreme fatigue, Suter lay awake, fretting and unable to sleep, until the early hours.

  He had encountered no bodies in this house, only the mummified remains of a terrier-like dog. Thanks to the broken bay window, the living room was quite uninhabitable, but the rest of the building had fared much better. Luckily the door of the back bedroom had stayed shut for all these years, so the dust there was not too bad. Suter had opened the fanlight and drawn the curtains, bundled up the bedclothes and dumped them in the bath. In the airing cupboard he had found enough linen and clean blankets to make up a bed of sorts. After a cold, grim supper of tinned luncheon-meat and sweetcorn, followed by rice pudding – all of which he had taken from the kitchen – he had sat for a while in the bedroom armchair, surrounded by birthday-cake candles and trying to browse through one of the household’s sparse stock of books: The Monument Builders, an illustrated account of the achievements of early man. He had been unable to read more than a few words together. More had happened to him during the preceding day than in the preceding decade, and tomorrow, as a direct result of his own foolishness, he would almost certainly be killed.

  At about half past seven he had laid the book aside and retired.

  Three hours later, or so it seemed, he became convinced that sleep was going to elude him entirely. Without it, he stood even less chance of survival.

  ‘Isn’t that the general idea?’