When he next looked, someone was sitting at the table: a spare, elderly man, white-haired, with glasses, wearing a blue cardigan with leather-clad buttons. His paler blue shirt lay open at the collar. As Suter watched, he conveyed a forkful of food to his mouth. He seemed to be concentrating on something out of sight, perhaps an open book.
Suter let him swallow before he tapped twice on the glass with the middle finger of his left hand.
The man jumped in his seat, dropping his knife and fork. Shrinking back, he stared with undisguised terror at the apparition in his window. In a desperate, inadequate attempt at reassurance, Suter raised the palm of his left hand, then held the index finger across his lips. He pointed with urgent motion along the house wall, towards the back door.
For a moment Suter thought the poor old chap was going to collapse, but no. Evidently he was made of stronger stuff. He pushed back his chair, turned away from the table and headed across the room.
Suter moved to the rear porch and the old man’s distorted image appeared in the figured glass of the door.
∗ ∗ ∗
‘There’s nothing else for it, Mel,’ Fernihough said, yet again. He was sitting at his kitchen table, leaning on one elbow and regarding without appetite his evening meal.
He looked up. His wife was in no mood for eating either. She had just bathed their two small daughters and put them to bed, while he had finished the cooking and served the casserole. The oil lamp at one end of the table was burning steadily. He noticed as if for the first time the peculiar ruby-red refractions it produced in the bottle of claret that he had set out but failed to open.
Even in the worst days of the plague, Fernihough could not remember having felt so weary, so heartsick, so impotent. He could no longer even think properly. Lack of sleep had left him exhausted mentally as well as physically. He had gone over the logic again and again and again. It was irrefutable. He and his family had to get out of the village or die.
For the past seventeen days, the whole population had had to assemble in the church each morning at nine, to be counted. Bex or Danzo would usually be there, with several others. Sometimes Bex would mount the pulpit and deliver a mock sermon. Today, at noon, there had been a second and unexpected convocation, at which Bex had summarily announced that, as from one o’clock, no one was to be allowed outdoors. Anybody seen outside without his permission would be shot. With that, Bex had made arrangements for milking the herd and dismissed the congregation.
The Council had done nothing to defend the village. It was ironic that the autocratic Philip Davies, who alone had been responsible not only for the ethos of the Council but also for the decision to keep open the lane to Watford and hence precipitate the arrival of Bex; it was ironic and also apposite that Philip should now be the victim of his councillors’ pusillanimity.
Ever since his arrival here, twelve years and more ago, Fernihough had felt himself squeezed out. Despite his best efforts, he now saw that he had been unable to disguise his lack of belief. He had worked hard, done whatever they asked, and shown only kindness to his neighbours, yet it was not enough: it could never be enough.
‘Fuck them, that’s what I say.’
Melissa said, ‘They’re not all like Goddard.’
‘If they side with him, then they are.’
Later, she said, ‘What have you decided, Leigh?’
During the afternoon they had discussed at length the chances of escape. If they travelled at night, carrying the girls in papooses, they might get far enough away by morning to evade the coming massacre.
Throughout Monday, Fernihough had tried to enlist help. He had expended all his powers of persuasion to no effect. He had spoken jointly or severally with James Semple, Trevor Grady, Mick Brice, Bryan Hockaday, Alan Fenwick, Jason Matcham, Paul Aziz, Mike Wallace, George Abercrombie. Only Matcham and Aziz had declared a willingness to resist. Semple had actually threatened to report the conversation to the Council, on which he served.
Fernihough said, ‘We’re going.’
‘What time shall we start?’
‘As soon as we can.’ He clasped her left hand.
She said, ‘You’d better eat your supper, whether you want it or not.’
If anyone tried to escape, Bex would shoot Philip. That was the threat. But Fernihough believed Philip was already dead. When the final massacre came, everyone would be killed anyway.
‘Yes,’ he said, as if speaking to himself. ‘As soon as we can.’
He heard the knocking on the glass pane of the kitchen door, but did not realise what it meant. The idea that anyone could be outside, that anyone could have defied Bex and his curfew, lay so far out of the realm of the possible that Fernihough at first attributed it to some inanimate cause. But Melissa was already crossing the room. She opened the door. As he got to his feet, Fernihough recognised the soft voice of old Sidney Pellew, who lived alone on the other side of the village.
Sidney came fully inside and Melissa shut the door behind him.
‘What is it?’ Fernihough said.
‘He’s here.’
‘Who?’
‘He’s at my house, man. Come and see.’
4
Through the rain and gloom, Fernihough saw the front elevation of Sidney Pellew’s cottage, clad in dark-leafed creeper, materialising on the left. The rear garden looked out towards Frith Wood, which was where Sidney had said the man had told him he had spent the afternoon.
The front door swung open at Sidney’s touch. He parked his umbrella. ‘He’s in the kitchen,’ he told Fernihough, over his shoulder.
Fernihough had visited this house before. He knew the layout of the downstairs rooms. He knew their characteristic smell: not unpleasant, but musty and old-fashioned, the smell of a house occupied by an elderly man of frugal habits. As the front door closed, Fernihough recognised in addition the odour of cooked Brussels sprouts. Light from the half-open door ahead threw shadows towards him down the hallway.
Worry and exhaustion had left him delirious. He was unprepared for the shock of seeing, seated at the pine table in the cosy, lamplit kitchen, the imposing form of a large and well-built man with the aspect of a guerilla, a partisan, a commando comprising a force of one. The man exuded independence. His presence at Sidney’s table was inexplicable: he belonged outdoors, doing whatever he did out in the weather, out among the trees.
His lucent, intelligent grey eyes looked up from pale orbits in an otherwise darkened face. His beard, shaggy and dark blond like his unkempt hair, had also been deliberately dirtied. Thorn or bramble scratches covered his face and hands. Fernihough’s gaze became momentarily lost in the disruptive pattern of his jacket, camouflaged in grey and mauve and brown and buff. It looked three-dimensional, mimicking natural vegetation so cleverly that the man sitting there seemed for an instant not a man at all. Then Fernihough saw the assault rifle lying on the table in front of him.
He was rising to his feet. He was at least a head taller than Fernihough. His trousers matched the jacket, and were furnished with large, flap-topped pockets on the thighs. A webbing belt encircled his waist and bore, on his right hip, a pistol in a chrome leather holster.
‘John,’ Sidney said, ‘this is Leigh Fernihough. I’ve already told him what you told me. Leigh, this is John Suter.’
Fernihough took the man’s outstretched hand. The grip felt warm and dry. He gave an impression of strength and calm, and suddenly Fernihough allowed himself a glimmer of hope. It had happened: after all the speculation, the mysterious gunman, the supposed saviour of the village, heaven sent, had returned. For it was this man who had given the Glock to Muriel, and he who had shot the two on Sunday. And according to what he had already told Sidney, he had disposed of four more of them yesterday.
That meant that only seven remained. He had also told Sidney that he had been led here by the discovery of Martin Wilton’s body in the river. Had he not found it, he would never have known about Shanley at all.
He had liv
ed alone ever since the plague. Except for finding Martin’s body, he had had no prior contact with Bex, which made his actions on Sunday even harder to understand. Unless, as many of the villagers believed, he really had been sent in answer to their prayers.
Fernihough asked Sidney whether they might all sit down. Sidney showed them both into his living room, where the curtains had already been drawn and a fire was burning in the grate. He offered drinks, which both refused.
‘My boots,’ said the man in camouflage, with absurd incongruity, as he settled at one end of the sofa. They were muddy.
‘Forget it,’ Sidney said.
Fernihough knew then that he must be dreaming. Ten minutes ago he had been sitting with his wife, planning their midnight escape. Now, it seemed, he had been catapulted here. In his delirium he hardly understood how or why. He had not even spoken directly to Sidney of resistance. Someone else must have told him. Paul Aziz, perhaps, or Jason.
The man on the sofa started speaking. His voice sounded educated and reasonable, if rather loud and unmodulated, perhaps because he was no longer used to addressing others.
He was asking questions which Sidney answered one by one. What was Bex’s routine, if any? Was there a daily roll-call? How many able-bodied men remained? How many villagers had been wounded?
Fernihough saw that this odd, intense person had been turned by the past twelve years into a being never anticipated by God or Darwin. Humans were social creatures, tied by innumerable threads of convention, by others’ expectations. For this man there had been no others. He had lived in isolation, so much so that he had almost ceased to be human at all. His personality had been distilled, made transparent. He was the ultimate product of the plague.
He retained full control of himself, yet he was also lost. The real John Suter was elsewhere: he was stuck in the plague, in the last months of 2016 and the first of 2017. Before his independence, before his survival-guilt, he might have been diffident, self-critical, perhaps even shy.
Suter now expressed the view that Bex was probably waiting for Steve and the other two to return from Watford. Since Bex would be supposing that they still had the lorry, he would not wait very long. ‘Noon tomorrow. Something like that. Maybe sooner. In any event, we can’t hang about.’ He turned to Sidney. ‘About your head man. Are you sure he’s still alive?’
‘No,’ Fernihough said, before Sidney could reply. ‘I think they’ve already shot him.’
‘And his daughter? Helen?’
‘No one’s seen her since Sunday.’
‘Where does Bex usually sleep?’
‘In the Manor House.’
‘How many of the others sleep there?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Who else is in the Manor House? Which of the villagers?’
‘Just Helen.’
Suter contemplated the fire. Then he looked at Fernihough. ‘Sidney tells me you’re one of the few brave men in the village. Can you use a shotgun?’
‘Just about.’
‘Is there anyone else who might help us?’
Fernihough thought at once of Jason Matcham and Paul Aziz. ‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Can we count on them?’
‘Yes.’
∗ ∗ ∗
Danzo was sitting in a soft, white armchair in the music room, alone with Bex, listening to dreary motets by Bach, poured at low volume from the studio monitors on either side of the fireplace.
Bex liked this stuff. He said he found it soothing. Danzo preferred rock, though the system here didn’t much lend itself to that.
Dinner was nearly ready. Danzo could detect the aroma of chateaubriant wafting along the corridor. Ten days ago they had ordered the slaughter of Shanley’s prize bull.
He lit another Marlboro and drew its calming smoke deep into his lungs. Ever since running away from that house by the river, he had been growing increasingly anxious. He knew he ought not to have returned to Shanley, for that would only have drawn St Michael, or whatever he was, straight back to Bex. But what had been the alternative? To remain on his own?
He had related everything to Bex: what he had found and what had happened at the house, the true appearance of Pinch’s killer, his own perfunctory resistance and the way he had fled. So far, for the benefit of the others, Danzo had managed to keep up a front. He was not sure why he had described Suter to Seumas as ‘all in white, with wings’. There had been no opportunity afterwards to set the irony straight and, far from disabusing his disciples, Bex had encouraged them in this vision. Danzo could not work out why. Seumas, especially, was becoming increasingly fearful, and his fear was beginning to affect the rest. And even Bex, Bex himself, seemed to prefer this depiction of their enemy.
Danzo had been drinking for much of the afternoon, but he was by no means drunk. Indeed, his mind seemed to be working with unusual clarity. The alcohol was helping to hold his anxieties at bay. It was allowing him to savour the pleasurable sensations of the moment, of sitting here in comfort, of sharing Bex with no one.
Among other novel drinks, Stolly had found a crate of porter at the mill. He and Coco had brought it over to the Manor. Danzo had never tasted it before: black, rather bitter, with a foamy head the colour of hay.
Bex held his bottle up to the light.
Danzo studied him ambivalently. Trudging back this morning alone and wet, he had realised that he hated Bex almost as much as he craved him.
Still looking at the bottle, Bex said, ‘It’s coming. Can you feel it?’
‘Feel what?’
‘The absolute.’ He turned to Danzo. ‘You’ve got no idea what I’m talking about, have you?’
Danzo knew very well what he was talking about. Bex had in the past voiced grandiose, incomprehensible theories about the ‘absolute’. According to himself, he was in the process of metamorphosing into a ‘superior being’, the superior being, the first and only.
‘The Antichrist,’ Bex said. ‘That’s me. At least, they think so.’
‘Who?’
‘Steve. Carl. Gil. I just felt it in the air. The chilly breath of the absolute. Those three won’t be coming back. And I’ve got the blame.’ He fixed Danzo with a curious gaze. ‘Because now,’ he said, ‘I’ve become Belial himself.’
Belial was one of the principal demons, Bex had said, in Paradise Lost, but by transference, and in his normal conversation, Bex used ‘Belial’ as another name for Satan.
It was true, then, what Danzo had suspected. Bex had swallowed his own propaganda. The New Order was no longer an invention. In his own head, at least, the Golden Dawn had been realised. Bex and Satan had merged, become one being, with a single goal.
Bex said, ‘Are you ready to cross swords with the Big G?’
He meant it. He meant every word.
‘Speak to me, Daniel.’
Bex never called him that. Danzo’s mouth felt dry. He lifted his own bottle and took a gulp.
Bex said, ‘Will you take your machete to an archangel, if I ask you to?’
‘Are you talking about him? Is he the absolute, like what you said?’
‘Who is “he”?’
‘Suter. The bloke.’
‘The bloke. Ah yes.’
They had posted watch for a stranger and would shoot on sight. That was the reason for the curfew.
‘I meant God, as a matter of fact, not his poxy emissary. The God who created existence and holds it in his sway. The God of Boredom. That one.’
Danzo remembered again his thoughts in the moonlit drawing room, the sensation that everything was an illusion projected by God. ‘Are you saying this bloke’s really St Michael?’
‘What else?’
‘This is me you’re talking to, Bex.’
Bex gave a dreamy smile. ‘You mustn’t take life so literally, my dear Danzo. That way you’ll never see the wood for the trees. Old Muriel, now, she saw it. Crossing the bar. In extremis. She told us he was an angel. And she was right. She divined the essence of what’s happen
ing here. Extraordinary, I’d say. If we hadn’t kicked her about like that she’d never have twigged it.’
‘What … what’s happening here, then?’
‘Can’t you see? Even now?’
Danzo shook his head.
‘We’ve almost brought him out of hiding. The absolute. God. Whatever you want to call him. He’s on his way to us. Tonight. To do battle. If he wins, we fry below. If he loses, everything up here changes. Whatever happens, it means no more boredom. No more … Helen.’
Now Danzo began to understand, and, understanding, saw his uncertainty resolved. The question had been simple. Was he prepared to follow Bex, even down there?
‘He’ll get through,’ Bex said. ‘He might already have. He’s clever, you know. But not quite clever enough. My guess is we’ll be leaving tomorrow, as planned. Once he’s dead, that is. Once we’ve killed him for good and all. You can do the honours, if you like, with your gleaming blade. Are you up for it?’
Danzo did not answer.
‘Are you up for it or not? All the way?’
Yes. Danzo would follow. Wherever he went. Even unto Acheron.
Bex smiled again. He had read Danzo’s face.
‘What about the villagers?’
‘Oh, I think I’ll start that off myself. We’ll line them up in the pews as if for the count. I’ll have this little beauty in the pulpit with me.’ He indicated the Calico, lying beside him on the sofa. ‘It’ll do wonders for the sermon. You and the others’d better stand in the north aisle, so you don’t shoot each other.’ He exaggeratedly clenched his fists, stretched out his arms, and yawned.
Danzo said, quite evenly now, ‘And Helen?’
‘She can watch.’
‘Then what?’
‘Who knows? Who cares? Or, to adopt your idiom, Danzo, my fine fellow, who the fuck gives a flying shit?’
‘She ain’t planning to recant, then.’
‘That she ain’t.’ Bex raised his bottle to his mouth and drained what was left. Then he said, ‘You could be right.’
‘About what?’
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