As it was, the racket woke only the drunk. Startled by the sudden and unexpected intrusion, Nigel’s four sons staggered to their feet, blinking at the mêlée of figures fighting over the scraps, a mêlée which now included everyone except Aunt Margaret, who was confined to her wheelchair.
‘What are you doing?’ Damian yelled. ‘You’re not allowed here!’ However, his relations were impervious to his yells; they were too busy fighting with one another over the scraps of food.
‘We’re here,’ Aunt Margaret said firmly from her wheelchair. ‘Where’s your father?’
‘Sleeping it off; he had a heavy night last night,’ Jasper sniggered.
‘Isn’t so good at handling his liquor these days,’ Damian said.
‘Well, we want to see him,’ Aunt Margaret said. Not a crumb or scrap of the food remained.
‘He won’t want to be woken up this early,’ Greg, one of the younger Chatfield brothers, slurred. He staggered as he spoke; it was obvious he was drunk.
‘What are you doing letting those two young boys drink?’
‘You can’t speak to me like that!’ shrieked Damian.
‘They’re not armed,’ Duncan whispered to his son Fergus. ‘Their rifles are down at the other end of the hall.’
As the argument continued between Aunt Margaret and the older Chatfield brothers, Fergus and Duncan began walking slowly down the hall towards the rifles. As they reached the halfway point, a shot rang out and plaster showered down on their heads.
Duncan and Fergus stopped and turned round. All noise ceased in the Great Hall and everyone turned in the direction of the gunshot. Standing in the doorway, rifle held menacingly to his shoulder, stood Nigel Chatfield.
‘What are you doing in my house?’ he bellowed.
‘We’ve come to talk to you,’ Duncan said. He’d been elected spokesman the night before. ‘We haven’t come to make trouble, we’re unarmed.’
By declaring his position as spokesman, Duncan had drawn attention to the fact that he and Fergus were halfway down the hall, away from the rest of the community.
Nigel looked past them and saw his sons’ rifles on the refectory table. He smiled. ‘And you’re going to stay unarmed.’ He laughed briefly, then barked, ‘Boys, get your weapons!’
Fergus looked at his father, wondering if he should make a dash for the rifles. Duncan shook his head; Nigel would likely shoot Fergus dead if he took a single step towards them. The Chatfield brothers, pulling themselves together hastily, retrieved their rifles. ‘There’s no need for guns,’ Duncan said walking slowly back to join the rest of the community. ‘We only want to talk.’
‘Well, I don’t want to talk to you. Now get out of my park, or you’ll be shot for trespassing.’
‘Are you going to shoot everyone?’ Aunt Margaret asked. ‘The children as well?’
‘If necessary.’
‘We’re too weak to leave,’ Aunt Margaret said firmly. ‘Look at everyone, they’re starving.’
‘We’ve got some suggestions to make,’ Duncan added. ‘We want to help you.’
‘Help me!’ Nigel laughed. ‘A rabble like you lot? Look at the state you’re in. You’re going to help me! What do you think of that, boys?’ he said, turning to his sons. His sons laughed.
‘Let’s shoot them,’ Damian said, pointing his gun directly at Duncan.
Allison stepped forward. ‘Uncle Nigel, we’ve got a plan,’ she said. ‘Now instead of this big public argument, why don’t a couple of us sit down with you and quietly discuss what we’ve got in mind?’
‘I think we should chuck them out of the park,’ Jasper said. ‘They’re only after our food.’
‘I think we should shoot them,’ Damian repeated.
‘I think we should listen to what they have to say,’ Miles said.
For a few seconds, the future of the community — and the lives of its members — hung in the balance. Eviction from the park would almost certainly condemn them to death by starvation. Fortunately for those thirty-nine souls, Miles was Nigel’s golden boy.
‘All right,’ Nigel said. The opportunity to exert authority over his relatives, together with the wishes of his favourite son, had won the day. He drew himself up and added pompously, ‘You may elect one person from each family to meet with me. We’ll meet in the Ballroom when I’m dressed. Jasper and Miles, bring the representatives there in half an hour. Damian and Greg, you stay here and guard the rest of the rabble. Any trouble, shoot them.’ He turned to leave.
‘What about some food?’ Aunt Margaret asked.
‘Food?’
‘Look at them. You can see what a state they’re in.’
‘They’re not my problem.’
‘For pity’s sake, look at the condition of these little children.’
‘All right,’ he said dismissively, and then turned to Damian and added, ‘Give them some dog rolls.’
‘Oh, dog roll, my favourite!’ Mary-Claire exclaimed. ‘Thank you, Uncle Nigel.’
Nigel stared at Mary-Claire in disbelief. Surely one so young couldn’t have learned sarcasm? The rest of the community stood in stony silence; only Aunt Margaret, her spirit undaunted, managed a smile.
33
Mark climbed the treadmill, sweat dripping from his forehead. ‘At least Nigel agreed to see you,’ he said.
‘Maybe it would have been better if he hadn’t,’ Paul sighed.
‘If he’d turned you out of the park, would you have survived?’
‘Not all of us.’
‘Well, then. You did the right thing.’
‘Some days it doesn’t seem like it.’
‘Things will get better, I promise,’ Mark said. Seeing his brother’s spirit broken filled him with anguish. ‘Now tell me — what happened at your meeting with Nigel?’
Paul explained how each family had elected a representative to meet with Nigel. Duncan, representing the Steed family, remained chairman. Diana acted for the Morgans; she had a sharp mind to match her sharp features and a gift for debating — skills honed by her experience as a barrister. Paul was elected to represent his own family. Allison was to speak for the Dalton family.
While Nigel dressed and prepared for the meeting, the starving members of the community shared the five dog rolls provided by Damian. Nigel’s four sons ate as well. Each opened a tin of baked beans, which they ate cold, spooning the beans from the tin into their mouths. Their cousins looked on enviously. Not long ago baked beans had been an inferior snack, but now they had all the allure of a hot roast dinner.
Diana’s youngest daughter, Theresa, a fine-featured girl of eighteen, was among the younger cousins watching every spoonful shovelled from tin to mouth. Jasper and Greg finished their meal and threw the empty tins into the flames. Smiling cruelly, Damian emptied half his beans onto the fire. The children looked on longingly as the beans bubbled and were consumed. But when his brothers weren’t looking, Miles handed his tin to Theresa. She smiled at him, took the can and quickly gulped down the remaining three spoonfuls.
Eventually Jasper called for the family representatives to follow Miles and himself to the Ballroom. Damian, peeved at not being included in the negotiating team, amused himself by pointing his rifle at any child who wandered too far from their parents. Anxious mothers were forever calling children to their sides.
The Ballroom was on the first floor. It was immense, with panelled walls and a patterned ceiling. The great carved marble fireplace stretched from floor to ceiling, dominating the room. The committee members were quite deliberately being made to feel insignificant.
Paul could see that Nigel was a man who enjoyed power. Three enormous gilt chairs stood behind a table in the centre of the room. In front of the table were four low stools. ‘Sit,’ Nigel snapped, pointing to the stools. He was already seated in the centre chair. Jasper and Miles sat down on either side of him, placing their rifles on the tabletop.
Paul, Duncan, Diana and Allison stared up at Nigel and his sons.
&
nbsp; ‘I haven’t got all day. Exactly what are you offering me?’ Nigel asked gruffly.
Paul and the two women looked at Duncan. He coughed nervously, smoothed his unruly red hair and began his carefully rehearsed presentation. ‘Obviously,’ he said, ‘you have a stockpile of food.’
‘How do you know what I’ve got?’ Nigel demanded, thrusting his head forwards and breaking Duncan’s flow.
‘We know you did the armed robbery at the distribution depot in the Otford Road,’ Diana said.
‘The point is,’ Duncan continued, trying to pick up the thread of his presentation, ‘your stockpile isn’t going to last forever.’
‘It’s a big stockpile,’ boasted Nigel.
‘It doesn’t matter how big it is now,’ Diana said, hoping Nigel wasn’t exaggerating. ‘Sooner or later it’s going to run out.’
‘Then we’ll go and rob somewhere else,’ Jasper laughed.
‘You won’t find any more food,’ Duncan said. ‘We’ve searched every house, shop and warehouse in the area. There’s nothing left. When your stockpile runs out you’ll have the same problem as the rest of us.’
‘We’ve got the deer,’ Jasper bragged.
‘Deer meat will soon get pretty monotonous,’ Diana said.
Nigel appeared to particularly dislike Diana. Perhaps he couldn’t help being aware that her brain was keener than his. ‘Then we’ll grow vegetables, you silly cow.’
‘Who’s going to grow them? Who’s going to do the cooking, and washing, and all the other work that needs to be done?’
‘I’ve got four sons. I’ve got plenty of labour.’
Diana was able to see that Jasper, at least, was not pleased at the prospect of the duties outlined. She pressed home the advantage. ‘And are your four sons going to be happy skivvying for you? It’s all very well for you now, collecting a few logs from the wood store and throwing them on the fire, but like your food, your logs are going to run out.
‘Next winter it’s going to be a full-time job for someone to cut down trees, cart in and stack wood. It’s going to take a colossal amount of firewood to keep a place like this warm. How much of your firewood store have you used already?’
Nigel didn’t answer the question. It was difficult enough to persuade his sons to collect the wood carefully piled in the wood store by the Saville family who used to own the estate. It was even more difficult to persuade them to do any of the domestic chores. In fact they did very little work at all. They didn’t wash their clothes, simply replacing them with new clothing. The stockpile of new clothes needed to be replenished, but rather than go foraging, his sons were simply changing their clothing more infrequently.
‘The point is,’ Duncan said, tugging nervously at his ginger beard, ‘you’re going to have a much better quality of life with us to share the work.’
Nigel was clearly wavering. Duncan pressed home the advantage, adding a bit of flattery to lubricate his case. ‘Look, Nigel, as a director of a large organisation, you know it’s all about economies of scale. If we can get through the winter — and we can with your stockpile of food — we’ll have the spring, summer and autumn to sow and harvest crops.’
‘If you kill too many deer, you’ll wipe out the herd,’ said Diana. ‘We’ve got the numbers to produce cheese, bake bread, grow vegetables, and run a farm.’
‘If you don’t eat us out of house and home first! How many of you are there, by the way?’
‘Thirty-nine.’
‘Thirty-nine!’
‘Keep the women, chuck out the rest,’ Jasper suggested.
‘And who’s going to do all the heavy work?’ Diana asked angrily. ‘You?’
Jasper laughed. ‘Keep the adults. Chuck out all the children.’
‘The fact of the matter is that we all need one another,’ Allison said. ‘We need one another in order to survive.’
‘What are you five guys going to do, play with yourselves?’ Diana asked bluntly, her head jerking forward in anger. ‘Sooner or later, Nigel, your boys will want women, and the only women available are with us.’
‘Keep the young women and chuck the rest out,’ Jasper suggested.
Duncan opened his mouth to continue his prepared list of benefits. Before he could speak, Diana stood up. ‘I’ve had enough of this nonsense,’ she said sharply. ‘Nigel, you claim to be a smart guy, now’s your time to prove it. You have no grandchildren so your family has no future. You need us if your family is going to survive beyond the next generation. If you want the chance to build a sustainable future, then you need us, too. If you can’t see that, then we’ll leave the park and take our chances outside. Come on you three,’ she said, turning and hurrying out of the room.
Shocked by Diana’s outburst, Allison, Duncan and Paul rose and meekly followed her.
‘I’ll give you our answer in an hour,’ Nigel called after them.
As the committee walked back into the Great Hall, Damian lifted his rifle to his shoulder. ‘Well, do I get to shoot you, or just escort you out of the park?’ he asked.
‘You’ll have to wait and see,’ Diana replied defiantly. ‘The decision-makers in your family are having a meeting.’
Damian went red. Implying that he wasn’t one of the decision-makers must have brought Diana within a whisker of receiving a bullet between her eyes.
34
The first hour passed, and the second. Miles replaced his brothers on guard duty. Damian made a great show of the fact his father had called him for consultation, running his finger across his throat to indicate that he was going to vote for their execution.
‘Why haven’t we heard?’ Paul asked after Damian had left the room. ‘Why can’t they make up their minds?’
‘They’ve made up their minds,’ Diana said. ‘If they’d decided to evict us we would have been out of here by now.’
Fifteen minutes later, Damian returned to the room and treated them again to his throat-cutting charade.
‘I told you,’ Paul said. He was a born worrier.
‘Don’t worry,’ Diana said impatiently. ‘That sign’s more powerful.’ She nodded her head towards Miles, who was staring at Theresa.
Still they were not informed of Nigel’s decision. More dog rolls were produced early in the evening but they were supplemented with dog biscuits, which suggested Nigel’s food store was not limitless. They were provided with water, which tasted foul. That night everyone suffered from diarrhoea.
They slept on the floor of the Great Hall. Two of the four brothers were on guard duty at all times, supervising their numerous trips to the toilets. The toilets had no running water and stank. There was no toilet paper.
The Great Hall was bitterly cold. Damian had escorted the two young Dalton boys, Robert and Luke, and Paul’s son Mathew, out to the wood shed and ordered them to carry logs. The two slightly built Dalton boys, staggered under the load, and even the taller and stronger Mathew found it hard going, his strength compromised by the lack of food. Diana’s guess had been accurate; the stockpile of firewood was almost exhausted.
The fire provided little comfort to the community. If they got too close to it, they were kicked roughly back. Despite numerous requests, they had been given no blankets. Aunt Margaret dozed, cold and stiff in her wheelchair.
Eventually, at ten o’clock the following morning, Jasper and Damian escorted the committee back to the Ballroom.
‘I don’t like the look of this,’ Paul whispered to his cousins as they climbed the Great Staircase. ‘Damian will be there.’
‘Stop worrying,’ Diana assured him softly. ‘The decision’s already been made. Damian can’t influence anything now.’
They were led back into the Ballroom and ordered to sit on the stools. Jasper and Damian sat on either side of their father.
‘The first thing I want to say’, Nigel said, his voice pumped full of arrogance, ‘is that if there is another outburst like the one from Diana yesterday, this meeting will be terminated and you will be evicted from t
he park. Do you understand?’ He was talking to them as he had often spoken to his subordinates at the water company.
‘Yes,’ Paul said quickly. Duncan and Allison nodded their heads in agreement. Diana said nothing.
‘It’s my house and it’s my food. As for all your tripe about continuing my family, I could easily select a few young women and shoot the rest of you.’
‘That’s right,’ chipped in Damian.
‘You wouldn’t have a big enough gene pool,’ Diana said.
‘We’ll keep the two young Dalton boys and Mathew,’ said Damian quickly.
‘You need everybody,’ argued Diana.
‘Stop interrupting!’ Nigel yelled, his face red with rage. ‘If you keep interrupting I’ll march the lot of you out of the park.’
Diana threw up her hands in disgust. ‘I’m only telling you for your own good. Your rationale is flawed.’
Nigel’s face grew even redder.
‘If Diana interrupts you again,’ Duncan said quickly. ‘I will, as chairman of the committee, order her from the room.’
Diana cast him a look of thunder. She was seething with indignation at how she’d been treated by two of her male cousins. The two became three as Paul looked in her direction and put his finger to his lips.
Satisfied that he wouldn’t be interrupted again, Nigel continued. ‘You’re right, we could do with a couple of women to do the domestic work, the washing, the cooking, and to provide us with a little … shall we say … entertainment,’ he looked at Jasper and winked, ‘but the rest of you are hangers-on, unnecessary mouths to feed, so if you want to stay you’ve going to have to earn your keep. Do you understand?’
‘We do,’ Duncan said quickly.
‘We’ve drawn up our own plan,’ Nigel continued. Damian nodded solemnly, as if he’d had a major input. ‘It’s non-negotiable. You either take it or leave it. If you want to come to Haver you must submit to my authority and my rules.’
‘What rules?’ Diana asked.
Duncan shot her a glance and said quickly, ‘We accept your authority and rules, Nigel.’
Blood Line: What if your family was the last left alive? (The Blood Line Trilogy Book 1) Page 20