I said to Grinny, ‘You better tell them.’
She said, ‘But I can’t, I dare not.’
‘Tell them we are not suitable. Tell them we have weapons they can’t defend themselves against. Tell them our planet won’t be invaded.’
‘They will punish me –’
‘Do it.’
She spoke Grinnish for perhaps a second.
‘Again. Tell them again.’
She talked Grinnish again. Then she said, ‘Please take the wire off my finger. I have told them, I really have.’
‘How am I to know that?’
‘I could make the spacecraft appear again. That would prove I have been talking to them.’
‘Give them the message for the third time and make the spacecraft appear as well. But only for a short time. Make it appear for three seconds.’
‘Then will you take the wire off?’
I said yes, and she said words in Grinnish.
Almost at once, the spacecraft appeared. Mac and Beth ran to the window to look at it but I stayed by Grinny and said, ‘I want to ask you questions about your planet and what were you planning to do to us. And about the torch thing –’
She said, ‘Oh, I forgot it! Oh!’ She leapt to her feet and clumsily ran round the room, searching for the torch thing. She kept saying, ‘Oh! Oh!’ in a metallic squawk. It almost sounded like an electronic signal, not a human cry of fear. But then she said, in a human voice, ‘I can’t think! How can I control it if I can’t think?’ I understand what she meant. She meant that she had no control over the torch thing, her mind was too hysterical to give it orders.
She stopped darting about for a moment, to grip me with her terrible little steel hand and said, ‘You children! Think at it, stop it! Stop it, you must stop it, they will turn it on me!’
But even as she spoke, I saw the torch thing. It was behind her. It slid fast across the carpet then leapt at her hand. I saw it on her hand like a big metal leech – but only for a split second, for she started running, staggering, blundering round the room. She crashed into the standard lamp and it went down. There was a flash from the socket as something fused and the room was suddenly almost dark.
Then she was on the floor and there was the metal-cutting noise again and her screams, but they stopped just as they were becoming unbearable. I couldn’t see much of what was happening and what I could see I could hardly believe. She seemed to be tearing herself to pieces, you could see fragments of cloth and patches of her skin and the glinting metal of her bones. There was a sort of drumming noise. It was her heels and elbows on the floor.
Beth was screaming, ‘I don’t care, I’m glad,’ and sobbing and shuddering. Her eyes were completely round, she was staring at Grinny on the floor, still hating her. I thought she shouldn’t be watching and put my arm round her, trying to push her head into my chest so that she couldn’t see, but she just clawed my arm aside and went on looking. Mac was trying to get the lights to work. I am glad he failed.
And then all the noise and flailing motion stopped: there was just a small dragging, scraping sound. It was one of her arms. It was separated from her body. It was being pulled towards the French windows by the torch thing.
It went on like this, on and on. We three just stood there, cold with horror, while she was dismembered. The limbs and bits of machinery weren’t so bad – it was the clothing that made you feel sick. Old lady’s clothes, human clothes, with some busy, vile, alien machine inside them making them heave and twitch and bulge as it cut and ripped. The torch thing was as busy and unstoppable as a rat, never pausing from its nibblings and humped-up scurryings and lunges and tugs.
At last it had finished. What had been Great Aunt Emma was a pile of rubbish outside the French windows (it was Mac who opened them – I’d never have found the courage to get so near the horrors on the floor). Only one thing remained, gleaming on the carpet: a beautiful and elaborate metallic lattice-work cage about the size of a football, trailing filaments of metal thread like gold and silver hairs – spider-web hairs, like gossamer. No wonder she had been so frightened of our coarse electricity.
The torch thing arched its back and attacked the cage. There were sharp little clicks as the latticework was snapped or bitten through. A hole was made. The humped thing’s back heaved and tugged industriously and something was pulled out through the hole.
It was another torch thing.
The two things seized the remains of the cage and hustled them to the pile outside.
They did not come back. The sky lit up and the spacecraft came closer than it had ever done before. I suppose the craft picked up the two torch things.
And I suppose one of them was Great Aunt Emma.
THE ROLLERS
27 June, afternoon
The Roller Rally came down the street. The yobs were ready.
The Rollers carried nothing but banners – big, simple, well-printed banners in Dayglow yellow with plain black lettering.
The yobs carried bricks, rotten fruit and vegetables, bottles, chains, knives and stinkbombs.
The Roller banners each carried a different message. The first read:
R.O.L. R.O.L.
RULE OF LAW
JOIN US!
That banner always led a Roller Rally. Rule of Law – R.O.L. – ‘Rollers’. The whole nation knew the words, the initials and the nickname.
The second banner read:
R.O.L. R.O.L.
PROTECT
THE THINGS THAT MATTER
JOIN US!
Other banners read:
R.O.L. R.O.L.
ACTION!
DECENCY
DISCIPLINE
DEDICATION
R.O.L. R.O.L.
BRITISH
– AND PROUD OF IT!
There were eleven banners, three hundred Rollers and one six-piece Dixieland-style jazz band. The musicians wore Union Jack blazers and straw boaters with ribbons boldly patterned with R.O.L. R.O.L. R.O.L. They played cheerful tunes, like ‘When the Saints Come Marching In’ and ‘I Want to be Happy’.
They played very well. The Roller Rallies were always well organized.
The yobs waited until the band struck up ‘Side by Side’ – a favourite with the Rollers because it contained the lines, ‘Rolling along, singing a song, side … by … side’. On the word ‘Rolling’ the musicians made a dipping, sideways, rolling motion and smiled; and everyone in the Roller Rally shouted the word, very loudly, all at once. It sounded like a good-natured battle cry.
‘Rolling along, singing a song,’ they began to sing – and the yobs moved forward, yelling.
Between the yobs and the Rollers walked policemen. The police were spaced at fairly wide intervals. Their faces were blank. They gave no impression of power: they did not wish to. Their orders were to accompany a public procession for which permission had been granted by the Authorities. The marchers had a right to march and the police were there simply to see that they marched unmolested.
Nevertheless, the first casualty of the Roller Rally was a young policeman. A bottle hurled by someone in the yelling crowd hit him in the side of the face and broke his cheekbone. If he made a sound, no one heard it above the yells and catcalls and the music of the band. The policeman put a hand to his face and fell to his knees. Blood jumped out between his fingers.
Two other policemen half carried and half dragged him into the crowd. The injured man tried to help them by walking but his legs were gone, they made awkward, gangling movements. A knot of yobs, in the place where the bottle had come from, set up a chorus of hooting jeers.
One of the yobs had his head shaven bald but for a central ridge of hair ending in a pigtail with a ribbon. The pigtail stuck out behind. A big woman with a shopping bag reached forward and grabbed it. She pulled. The yob yelled but she would not let go, her plump fingers were locked in the hair and her red face was set like a mask with protruding eyes.
The yob yelled and jerked. His mates reached over each ot
her, trying to land downward punches on the woman’s face. Some punches reached her but they had no force. Besides, there was another sound, a sort of surly growl, all around the group. It was the sound of the crowd.
The growl grew. The crowd closed in on the yobs. Men, women and even children hit out at them. The shopping woman never let go of the pigtail, though her lower lip was puffed and bleeding.
The yob’s face was soon in a worse condition than the woman’s. Fingers, nails and fists from the surrounding crowd had managed to reach it. Already, he was pouring blood from his nose.
His mates tried to break free, scatter and lose themselves in the crowd. Their progress was marked by a moving pattern of rising and falling arms. The yobs had to run the gauntlet. Those who got through no longer ran: they limped and staggered. One even collapsed.
The Roller Rally kept moving. In the early days of the Roller movement, the yobs had won hands down. Even five weeks ago, in a seaside town, the yobs had beaten the Rollers to their knees and stopped the Rally. There had been fifty-three casualties, forty-four of them Rollers and three of them policemen. But that was five weeks ago.
Since then, there had been Roller Rallies all over the place. In a London suburb, three hundred Rollers had set out – but the Rally ended with three thousand or more marchers. JOIN US!, the posters said; hundreds and thousands of people accepted the invitation at every Rally. They fell in behind the marchers. Sometimes they linked arms. Always they roared out the chorus, ‘Rolling along, singing a song, side … by … side!’ Always, the word ‘Rolling’ crashed out like a great wave breaking.
Now, today, people were already leaving the crowd to join the Rollers; housewives, men of all types and ages, girls in jeans, pensioners – anyone.
A girl with a hairstyle like a cockatoo’s deserted a group of yobs and joined the marchers. The yobs howled at her and thrust through the crowd, trying to grab her and pull her back. Furious-faced, she yelled, ‘You can stuff it! I’ve had enough!’ One of the yobs threw a Coke can at her.
The can missed her and hit a man who looked like a pensioner. The can must have been full, the man staggered and clutched his shoulder. The girl picked up the can, flung herself into the crowd and jammed the can into the face of the punk who had thrown it. He ducked, jeered and hit the girl with his fist.
Again, there came that growling, snarling sound from the mass of the crowd. Then the mass heaved and swarmed in on the yobs. They were submerged.
Missiles still occasionally arced out of the crowd to hit the marchers, and sometimes the police escorting them. But the storm had died down. At first, the escorting police had waded into the crowd to pull out the throwers. Now they did not have to, the crowd itself seemed in control. Constantly, more people broke from the crowd to join the Rollers.
At the rear of the procession, a new noise came from the crowd. It was a cheerful, roaring ‘hooray!’, the sort of noise you hear when royalty passes. The sound followed the movement of a Rolls-Royce. It was an open, silver-grey convertible. Union Jack pennants flew from its front wings and a big Union Jack flapped over the boot lid.
When this car passed before you, you could hear what the waving, smiling crowd shouted – ‘Good old Mona Lisa!’ ‘We’re behind you, gal!’ And the hissing ‘s’ of the name Lisa. For standing by the driver, one hand holding the windscreen and the other waving, was Lisa Treadgold. She looked marvellous.
Like the band, she wore a boater with R.O.L. ribbon round it. The boater was perched right at the back of her golden head. It did not hide her face. Her Union Jack blazer was not buttoned up. You could see her I’M A ROLLER! T-shirt and the curves of her figure. She smiled and waved vigorously. You could just hear her voice, sometimes: ‘It’s only hired!’ she shouted, jabbing a finger at the Rolls-Royce, ‘Honest! It’s hired!’ The crowd laughed and shouted back.
‘Come on,’ she shouted. ‘Join us! Fall in and march!’ Many people obeyed. They laid their hands on the Rolls-Royce and pushed. Lisa Treadgold shouted, ‘That’s right, save fuel!’ and said something to the driver. He made a pantomime of removing a bunch of keys from the dash of the car and holding them up. The crowd laughed and kept pushing. Lisa Treadgold laughed delightedly and waved her arms to encourage the pushers.
It was a triumphal procession.
Now no missiles came from the crowd and the voices of the yobs could no longer be heard. Even the policemen looked relaxed. They sauntered and smiled. This Roller Rally was going to be a no-trouble affair. This Roller Rally was going to be a pushover for Lisa Treadgold and R.O.L., the Rule of Law.
Timothy Carpenter, standing near a senior police officer with silver braid round the peak of his cap, heard the man say, ‘That woman … You’ve got to hand it to her. She’s got power.’
Timothy wrote the words down in his reporter’s notebook.
CELEBRITY
That was in high summer. Later, much later, when everything went wrong and the dark days came, Timothy spoke to his cassette recorder. Using the machine always cheered him up. Typewriter, tape, notebooks, even a smattering of shorthand – they were all tools of the writer’s trade. Timothy liked using them.
But now he frowned. He had to choose his words carefully, it was important to get everything right. He’d probably send a copy of the tape to Mr Fisk, who was his friend and a friend of the family. Mr Fisk was a real author, a man who earned his living by writing. He had encouraged Timothy’s ambition to become some sort of writer. Timothy remembered how Mr Fisk had helped in another time of trouble (but what time? – and what had been the trouble? Why couldn’t he remember?).
‘Get on with it!’ Timothy told himself: and pushed the microphone’s little button to On. He began talking.
‘When Lisa Treadgold first came on the scene – the national scene – everyone was beginning to talk about her and the Rollers. And I’d just got my job as a cub reporter on the local newspaper. It wasn’t a real job, it was a “Work Experience” scheme. For schoolboys and schoolgirls. A local employer takes you on for a limited period so that you can learn something about Work and the Real World and all that …’
Timothy pulled a face and operated the Off button. He did not like the sound of his own voice, trying to be funny. He sat on the edge of his bed, staring at the microphone, frowning. ‘Think!’ he told himself. ‘Think!’
But that was the trouble. Whenever he tried to concentrate on Lisa Treadgold, the mind seemed to slip sideways. You had to fight to remember. A fog rolled in and blurred the brain. A fog that blurred, smothered, dulled. A fog that clung, grey and damp, inside his head.
‘Think!’ he told himself. ‘Remember!’
Painfully, he began to remember. He forgot the microphone and recorder. He remembered that sunny day in the little town near the village where he lived: the day of the Roller Rally. Taking notes, proud of himself for being a real, genuine, teenage newspaper reporter with a real, genuine reporter’s notebook.
Lisa in the Rolls-Royce. The crowd, becoming more and more cheerful once the trouble with the yobs was over. The warmth of the crowd, the family feeling – ‘We’re all together in this.’ And Lisa, lovely Lisa, sailing by in the Rolls. Lisa smiling, thousands of faces smiling back.
Then, when the parade was over, he got on his bike and took what he’d written back to the Gazette. Back to Len Sturgeon – gingery eyebrows, ferocious pale eyes, beer-drinker’s complexion, fifty-ish, threatening, always on about ‘knowing the trade’. ‘What’s this typeface, boy? Give it a name! Come on then!’ Or, ‘When you make up copy, you use the correct printers’ marks. You don’t roll your own. This is how you tell the compositors that you want a transposition. Like this.’
‘Yes, Len.’
‘Mr Sturgeon to you. Don’t look bored. Look keen, willing, attentive, able, eager.’
‘OK, Len. I mean, Mister Sturgeon.’
‘One day, you’ll bless me for teaching you your trade. In fact, you can bless me now. Say “Bless you, Mr Sturgeon!”’
‘That’s better. And don’t smirk like an ape.’
Timothy smiled at his memories; then thought of the other reporter. Fanny Bishop. About thirty. Plain. Tried to be tough but cried at funerals and christenings. A good writer, far too good to stay on for ever with a local rag like the Gazette. The sort of writer you have to keep reading …
‘Wish I knew the trick,’ Timothy murmured, out loud. He shrugged, switched the microphone to On and spoke into it.
‘I met Lisa Treadgold face to face when I went with Fanny Bishop of the Gazette to interview her,’ he began. ‘Lisa Treadgold! The Celebrity! It was a big day for me. And for Fanny, of course. Because Lisa was already a household name. She happened to live in the Vicarage, the big Georgian house on the edge of our village. Enormous grounds and the second biggest monkey-puzzle tree in Britain. I suppose she chose it because it’s isolated, private – yet close to the motorway leading to London.
‘Len Sturgeon was jealous but tried not to show it. He was the senior reporter, but Fanny was female and got the job. Len pretended to hate Lisa. “That damn woman,” he’d say, “always grinning. Like a Cheshire cat.” But he’d still stare at photographs of her, waggling his eyebrows and chewing at his pipe. I’d catch him at it sometimes … “Thought you didn’t fancy her, Len!”
‘‘‘Get on with your work, boy.”
‘‘‘This one’s nice, Len. Where she’s leaning back. Or do you prefer this one with the smile? But it only shows her face –”
‘“Watch it, boy!”
‘“Oh, I thought you were watching it –”
‘Then he’d try and put me head first into the wastepaper basket.’
Suddenly disgusted with himself, Timothy yet again switched off the microphone. ‘You’re talking drivel!’ he said aloud. ‘Get down to the real story.’ Yet his mind rebelled. He sat back and went on remembering, remembering …
He had tried to get Len to discuss Lisa seriously. ‘What have you got against her, Len?’
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