‘Now,’ said Father Jack, turning to Smiler and studying his partial nudity, ‘you appear to have been surprised in flagrante delicto. Have you any observations to make?’
‘Go stuff yourself,’ retorted Smiler bravely.
Father Jack sighed. ‘Ego te absolvo, my son.’ He shot Smiler neatly through the forehead.
Nibs looked at the body, then he looked at Greville and finally at Father Jack. He licked his lips. ‘Father, can I confess before …’ He looked at the gun and left the sentence unfinished.
‘Confess away, my son.’
‘It’s not that I believe any of the crap your lot hands out, you understand,’ went on Nibs calmly. ‘But my family was Catholic, see? It – it sort of brings us together a bit.’ He glanced once more at Greville. ‘If it’s not too much trouble, I’d like it a bit private.’
‘Go down on your knees,’ said Father Jack. He turned to Greville. ‘Perhaps you will excuse us?’
Greville said nothing. He went back to the car and spoke to Liz. She even managed to smile at him. Then she closed her eyes and leaned back as if she wanted to do nothing at all but sleep.
Greville watched Father Jack and Nibs. The boy was on his knees in the roadway. He was talking quickly and quietly. Evidently, thought Greville, he had quite a lot to confess.
It lasted about five minutes. Then Father Jack laid his hand on the boy’s forehead, and Nibs made the sign of the cross.
And almost immediately, he lunged at Father Jack’s legs. The priest went down heavily, with Nibs scrabbling for the gun. He didn’t get it.
‘Ego to absolvo, my son,’ said Father Jack in a loud voice. The gun could not be seen. The sound of the shot was flat and muffled.
But Nibs was suddenly transformed from a killer making his last attempt at killing into a small and oddly pathetic heap. He rolled convulsively on to his back and lay still in the roadway. Just another dead boy. A late and indirect casualty of ten years of Omega radiation.
Father Jack picked himself up and shook the dust off. His limp had completely disappeared. ‘Well, now,’ he said, ‘perhaps we ought to look to the lady.’
NINE
Father Jack was not a Catholic priest – in fact, he had not been ordained as any kind of priest. For nearly twenty years he had been head gardener at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, near Newmarket. Before that he had been a convict and before that he had been an unambitious and reasonably successful burglar. Before he became a burglar, he had served for five years as a paratrooper.
But now, as an almost natural result of all the years of Omega radiation and the Radiant Suicide, he had become simply Father Jack. ‘Father’ in the literal sense of the word, for he had polygamously married four of the oldest surviving girls at the convent and had already begotten half a dozen children.
At the beginning of the Radiant Suicide, the Convent of the Sacred Heart had a complement of one mother superior, eight teaching and working nuns, fifty girls, a head gardener, an assistant gardener and a general handyman. In the first two years, the assistant gardener, the handyman and two of the nuns committed suicide. Everyone else was enjoined to carry on as if nothing abnormal was happening; for there was still God’s work to be done. A few of the girls were taken away by their parents, but most remained and were rapidly orphaned.
For many years the convent had been growing most of its own food; and so its occupants were able to keep going in a reasonably normal fashion until early in 1977. The trouble came one day when Father Jack – who was then still plain Jack Rowbottom – was out hunting for meat. It came, as trouble usually came, in the shape of a truckload of men out on the scrounge.
Jack Rowbottom had already taken the precaution of acquiring firearms and instructing the nuns in their use; so that, despite the fact that they were outnumbered by an enemy with superior firepower, the nuns gave a fairly good account of themselves. Meanwhile most of the girls took advantage of the escape route that had been thoughtfully provided for such an occasion at the cost of much sustained labour by the head gardener. It was an incredibly small tunnel which he had dug from the cellars of the convent to the outer wall of the kitchen garden. Immediately outside the wall there was a few acres of shrubs and woodland. The girls were supposed to scatter and hide among the trees until any trouble that arose had either passed by or been dealt with effectively.
Jack Rowbottom did not get back from his hunting expedition until the attack on the convent had ended and the attackers had gone away laden with spoils. The nuns were all dead of either bullet wounds or knife-wounds gained in the hand-to-hand fighting. The mother superior had been hanged from a banister, although judging from what had already happened to her the hanging could have no more than a symbolic value. A few of the girls were unlucky enough to go back to the convent too soon. A few more had been caught. They were raped and/or abducted or killed.
So Jack Rowbottom, left by himself with more than thirty adolescent girls and an odd sense of responsibility, inescapably became Father Jack – father extraordinary of the Convent of the Sacred Heart.
Provided they were left in peace, he thought he could train the girls to be reasonably self-sufficient. For most of them had already learned to help in the kitchen gardens and they could look after pigs and poultry. Some could weave, some were passing fair at carpentry and some could even cure bacon.
But obviously they were not going to be left alone. So Father Jack set about training them for survival. First he selected the six strongest and least nervous of the girls and formed them into a commando. Then he took them out raiding for weapons. The girls, though young, made rather good fighters since they had been accustomed to a rigorous discipline. Father Jack underlined the lesson of discipline and added to it the training in surprise attack and hand-to-hand combat that he himself had acquired as a paratrooper. Before he had finished, the girls could shoot, bayonet, throw knives, garrotte, kick and gouge as good as most young soldiers and better than many.
They got their weapons. Then they set about converting the Convent of the Sacred Heart into a citadel. Then the commando was split up to train other commandos. And eventually Father Jack had nearly thirty girls, deceptively young, deceptively helpless, who were all trained fighters.
Occasionally he left the convent to go on scrounging expeditions, taking two or three of the girls with him. He was returning from one of these expeditions when Jim-Jim had blocked the road with his truck and had thus precipitated the fracas that had certainly saved Greville and Liz from being ultimately killed.
Greville learned all this about an hour after Nibs had been despatched and while they were taking a late lunch outside a solitary and deserted pub about half way between Ware and Royston. In return, he gave Father Jack a succinct account of his own activities during the last ten years. But for some reason he could not understand, he translated Pauline’s death into the death of a stranger. She became simply the driver of another fictitious car into which he had crashed while he was drunk. Father Jack accepted this version easily enough. There was no reason why he shouldn’t.
There was nothing on either side of the pub at which they had stopped except a long rolling ribbon of road, carpeted here and there with patches of dandelion, nettles and convolvulus. There was nothing behind the pub except a wide vacancy of overgrown fields and sprawling hedges. That was why they had chosen it – because it was free from the possibility of surprise attack.
After Greville had collected up all the spare guns, and had then made Liz as comfortable as he could, they had driven away from the scene of the ambush slowly and in convoy, with Father Jack’s battered Land Rover leading the way. Surprisingly, Liz did not appear to have suffered any lasting physical injury; but she was sore, pitifully sore and especially between her legs. Marilyn, the elder of Father Jack’s ‘children’, had examined Liz to the best of her limited ability. She arrived at the sensible conclusion that what Liz needed more than anything was a good hot bath and a long, lazy soak.
So her
e they were at the pub, whose cracked but still hanging signboard proclaimed it to be The Angler’s Rest. Somewhere in its interior, the girls had found an old zinc bath full of the dusty and accumulated household debris of years. They had cleaned it up while Greville used a spanner to make one of the taps in the kitchen work. Eventually he managed to turn it, and out came a trickle of red, muddy water that presently grew into quite a fast flow and became relatively clear.
Meanwhile, Father Jack had taken a couple of portable paraffin stoves from his Land Rover and began to heat the water in a large jamming pan and an old five-gallon oil drum that had been discovered in the pub.
While all these preparations were going on Liz lay slumped in her seat in the station wagon. She looked even worse than she had done when Greville took her out of the garden after she had endured the attentions of Big Ears and Smiler; but her spirits had improved. She managed to smile a little and even say a few words.
Liz took her bath in the pub’s best room. She couldn’t walk to it. Greville had to carry her. Father Jack, who seemed to be supplied with an amazing variety of goods, had given her a bar of soap and a bottle of baby cream. Then, while Liz tried to take the aches out of her body, the rest of them settled down to their late lunch. Occasionally one of the girls would take her some more hot water, and they even tried to get her to have some food. But Liz was not hungry.
Lunch consisted of cold chicken and warm champagne. The chicken had come from the Convent of the Sacred Heart: the champagne had come from a doctor’s house in Bayswater. Four bottles had been wrapped in rags and hidden in the cellar under a pile of coal and junk. But Father Jack was an indefatigable scrounger. When he searched a house he searched it thoroughly.
‘Try her with some of the champers,’ said Father Jack, regarding the small heap of chicken bones in front of him with some satisfaction. ‘It can’t do any harm.’ He grinned. ‘Tell her I blessed it.’
There was still some left in the second bottle they had opened. Greville took it in to Liz. She had rubbed soap all over her body in a desperate and futile attempt to reduce the bruises and teeth-marks. But the heat of the water only served to accentuate them.
Greville thought it would do no harm to try a light-hearted touch. ‘I hope it isn’t catching,’ he said. ‘You look as if you’ve suddenly developed measles or something all round your breasts and shoulders.’
Surprisingly, Liz giggled. ‘It’s not a disease, it’s an allergy,’ she retorted. ‘My doctor warned me, it was likely to develop if I had any intimate contact with members of the opposite sex.’
‘Father Jack has sent you some holy water. You’re supposed to drink it and say to yourself: “Whatever happens to me is for the best in this best of all possible worlds”.’
‘You know,’ said Liz, taking the bottle, ‘there are times when I could almost believe that – like now.’ She set the champagne bottle to her lips and drank greedily.
In one long draught, Greville noted with satisfaction, she drank nearly half a pint.
Liz hiccupped. ‘It’s a lovely feeling,’ she said, ‘when it’s all over. It’s like when you stop banging your head on the wall. It’s like waking up from a bad dream. You can see the sunlight, and you know it wasn’t for real, after all.’
‘You were thirsty,’ said Greville, eyeing the empty bottle. ‘I’ll get you some more.’
‘No, stay with me. Getting tight isn’t the answer … I’m all right, really, you know. I’m quite used to that sort of thing, but it’s usually less strenuous … I’ve wasted enough time in here. You can help me get out.’ She giggled again. ‘Then you can put some of that baby cream between my legs. I don’t think I can bend far enough myself.’
Greville dried her, then he applied the baby lotion. Then he helped her to dress. While he was putting her shoes and socks on, they heard the sound of a car starting. Greville dashed out of the pub just in time to see the Land Rover pulling away. One of the girls in the back waved cheerily to him, then the car picked up speed, carving a smooth double track through dandelions, foxgloves and the long high nettles of midsummer.
Greville stood there for a few moments, scratching his head and feeling perplexed and watching the Land Rover dwindling in the distance. The sound died: and then there was nothing but the sky and fields that had grown wild as the prairie and were rippling like a green inland sea under the light touch of a breeze.
Liz hobbled out of the pub. ‘See. I’m O.K. for walking … What happened?’
‘Father Jack took off,’ said Greville. ‘He seems to be in a hell of a hurry.’
When they went to the station wagon, they found one possible reason for Father Jack’s hurried departure. It had been stripped of everything – all the goods that Greville had scrounged in London, and the rifles and ammunition that he had taken from the late Nibs and his confederates – everything except two shotguns and twenty cartridges.
On the driver’s seat there was a slip of paper on which had been scribbled a short message:
For services rendered. I’m sure you wouldn’t have objected, but why risk disagreement? Kindest regards to your good lady. The Lord will provide.
Greville felt simultaneously extremely foolish and extremely angry. But Liz began to laugh.
‘Christ!’ she said helplessly. ‘Never trust the clergy … You know what, Greville? I think he’s my kind of transie.’
And suddenly Greville was laughing, too.
TEN
The delay caused by the encounter with the late Nibs and his companions together with the extra time needed to give Liz her bath made it impossible for Greville to get back to Ambergreave Lake and his cottage on the island before it was dark. After they had both recovered from Father Jack’s rapid departure, Greville made Liz comfortable in the station wagon, settled himself in the driver’s seat and started the engine.
‘No more stops,’ he said grimly. ‘Not for anyone or anything.’
‘What if someone else has the same idea as those other clever little bastards?’
‘We don’t stop. We drive round it or through it. If we can’t do either, we’ve had it anyway. A couple of shotguns aren’t much of an arsenal.’ He started the car, took a last vague glance at The Angler’s Rest, and then set off in the tracks that had been carved by Father Jack’s Land Rover along the weed-covered road. He thought that if he put his foot down he stood a very good chance of overtaking the Land Rover before long. But he had no desire to overtake it. Whatever Father Jack had taken, he had earned.
So Greville let the station wagon roll along at a reasonable pace, profoundly thankful that he and Liz were still alive. After a time, he was pleased to see that Liz was dozing. She lay huddled in her seat like a small child tired out after a big party.
Some party! thought Greville. It had been hilarious. He began to sweat as he recalled how near they had both been to a particularly stupid – and sordid – form of death. But then, he reflected, all death was sordid. You could die of cancer, accidents, old age, overeating, alcoholism (if you were lucky), hunger, appendicitis, rats, cats, dogs, disease and bullets. Whatever it was, it was stupid and sordid – about as stupid and sordid as staying alive.
The road slipped by. The sun began to sink low towards the western edge of the world. The station wagon passed unmolested through small, ribbon-like villages. Greville was past caring about precautions. He had been near enough to total disaster not to worry too much about what might happen next. Goddammit, if anything was going to happen it bloody well would! So why frighten hell out of one’s self by worrying about it. Que sera, sera …
Presently Liz woke.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘Don’t be. A bit of rest was what you needed.’
‘Not about that. About landing you with me. I’m more trouble than I’m worth. If I hadn’t wanted to see the Festival Hall and the British Museum everything might still have gone all right for you.’
‘If you hadn’t got yourself into a mess on Chelsea Bri
dge,’ pointed out Greville drily, ‘the day might have been a hell of a lot duller. On the other hand, I might be dead by now. Who the devil knows?’
‘Nevertheless,’ said Liz, stretching herself and wincing, ‘I want you to know that I’m sorry.’
‘Your sorrow is noted.’ He smiled. ‘It will probably be held against you.’
‘Where are we?’
‘About forty miles from salvation. There are a few more villages to get through and a small town called Thetford. If we survive those, we stand a reasonable chance of living till morning.’
‘I don’t even know whether I want to live till morning.’
‘You do. That’s the trouble. We all bloody well do. It’s part of the old genetic programming. When God created the world he filled it full of cretins and said: “Now look, chaps, the great thing is not to write great poetry, create symphonies or produce paintings that make people want to cry.” The great thing is to live till morning. And if you are still alive when morning comes, why then you must do your best to increase the odds against some other poor bastard. For if you don’t do unto him, as sure as I knocked together this old firmament out of nothing he’ll do his damnedest to do unto you.’
Liz began to laugh. ‘Greville,’ she said, ‘I think you’re practically the greatest. You pinched me from the dogs, you lick somebody’s shoes to give me a chance of living, you put baby lotion on my legs – and lose half your possessions while you’re doing it – and you still let me ride in your car and try to keep me happy. You realise you’re destroying my faith in human nature?’
‘That is the aim,’ retorted Greville. ‘Essentially, I’m a sadist.’
The sun slipped smoothly over the horizon. The twilight that followed was hardly light enough to drive by, but it suited Greville’s programme. He did not switch the car’s headlamps on. Instead he dropped speed to little more than twenty miles an hour and stayed in third gear. He was hoping to slip through Thetford – the last real danger point before Ambergreave – in as inconspicuous a manner as possible.
Cloud Walker, All Fools' Day, Far Sunset Page 27