“Yes, I have been away from England for a long time!” I told him stridently. “And I must say I am utterly bewildered to find that even enthusiasm is a crime! The apathy! The lack of spirit for any cause that is not an angry one! The horrible way so many people demand that everyone else should be buried as deep in the shit as they are!”
“That’s socialism for you,” he said, giving me a bleary eye.
“Socialism, sir? No, it is nothing of the sort!”
“Then it must be the immigrants!”
Of course I had to take him seriously.
“Sir, I think not! They may be the only hope of this jaded isle! I have been back only a week, but to my eyes the old Anglo-Saxon stock is utterly exhausted! If anything good happened here, sir, people would immediately tear it apart to find something bad! The new blood is the only hope of a zestful future!”
“Y’don’t understand, old boy,” my companion slurred, “Dunkirk Spirit! Dunkirk Spirit!”
“Dunkirk Spirit?” He had me. I thought as quick as I could. Dunkirk Spirit? Someone—Coningham?—once told me of it. But what was it? Of soul, or of bottle? For the life of me I couldn’t remember. Did it matter? “Yes, exactly!” I went on recklessly, “All the drink and drugs, and defeatism and immorality and television! The moral fibre of your Anglo-Saxon has gone rotten, sir!”
The commercial traveler winged the grizzled barman a wink that I caught as he turned to me. He grinned as he said:
“Not the same since we lost the Empire, is it?”
At this a sobering shock ran through me, to remember Dee’s prophecy of the empire that would rise, then decay and fall. Excusing myself I left, and spent a restless night daring to hope I might find better outside the city, and that under this frigid modern English exterior some fire might remain. Yes, it took me time to understand.
In the morning, with a dread on me, I took train to Devon.
Well, well. Much nasty business here.
A telephone call, a would-be lynch mob, and for myself, I do believe, departure tomorrow, meaning work between now and then.
An hour ago Grace rang me from Brynafan with a warning: “Mr. Loomiss? John? There’s a bunch of the boys coming out to see you.” By the sound of her voice she was almost in tears. “Their mood’s ugly. You should go, now! If you like I’ll meet you somewhere and drive you clear of the area.”
I found myself calm, and not surprised.
“What do they want with me?”
“It… it got about… you know… about…”
“I know!” I felt a fire stirring in me. “I’ve had visitors already! I thought it was straightened out! I’m truly very sorry to be such trouble to you, but… what’s the matter now?”
“They’re scared and angry,” she said simply.
“Good God! What about?”
“Everything! What do you think? The Lorry People, and that Rex Fisher taking over the country, and the soldiers…”
“Rex Who?”
“Don’t you listen to the News, man?”
“Haven’t had the time,” I said.
“Well, you’d better wake up! You’re a mystery, they don’t like you, they want to think you raped me! Do you want me to meet you and drive you out? You must decide now!”
I marvelled at the goodhearted lass. I said:
“Grace, you’re very brave, but you’re in enough mess already. I won’t run. I’ll meet them here.”
“But they’ll tear you apart!”
“No, they won’t. I’ll be all right.”
She heard the assurance in my voice. I thanked her, then went out into the yard and waited, arms folded and feet well-planted.
Several minutes later four cars came lurching through the gate. They stopped in a row in front of me where I stood and disgorged twelve angry men. Griffith’s son (I still don’t know his name) was there with his two friends from the other night, but it was another man, balding and powerful in middleage, built like a wrestler, who took the initiative against me. Stamping up through the mire of last night’s rain he stuck his choleric face in mine.
“We’ve had enough of you,” he growled, “It’s time you learned a lesson! Okay, boys?”
“Twelve against one,” I said quietly as they ringed me, my arms still folded. “Good odds, for brave men!” It stopped them a bit, and I turned to Griffith’s son. “I gave my word I’d be gone by the weekend,” I said, “and so I will be. And you agreed to that.”
“Well, so I was wrong!” His anger hid a sheepishness. “Taking up with our girls and causing trouble and making everyone nervous with this work you won’t speak about! What are you doing here?”
“He’s on the run!” said another man. “You can see it in his eyes! He’s hiding from something!”
They were about to seize me. A beating I could probably take, but I did not want them finding and destroying this work. Time to throw caution to the winds! “Yes,” I said quickly, but still quiet and not moving, “you’re right! I’m on the run, and have been, for five years, and through no fault of mine. And what I am doing here is seeking peace to write the story of my life and the ills done against me so that I might hope for some human justice at last!”
Yes, my voice was quiet, but had some fire in it. They looked at each other, and the wrestler-type cocked his head. “Well, and what sort of story is it?”
I met him in the eyes.
“You will have heard of Project Vulcan,” I said. “You will have heard of the DTIs. I am one of them. My name is Humfrey Gylberte. I was born in the year 1539, and snatched from the year 1583. It is two years since I got here from America, where I escaped the place they held us.”
Griffith’s son started laughing, but his laugh broke off into a silence. They stared at me as the wrestler-type backed off, giving me that cautious look the caretaker at Compton gave me when I went there with Michael. “Bloody loony!” he muttered, looking away, but I did not care, I waited confidently with folded arms as the seconds passed with nobody making a move, so their uneasiness increased and their gumption drained out. I knew it had to.
“Listen now, we don’t care who you are, but you’d best be gone quick!” Griffith’s son blurted at length, a sort of desperation in the rising note of his voice. “I’m not one who likes breaking his word, but for your own safety, see?”
“Thank you,” I said. “I am also anxious to be gone. Come by this time tomorrow and you’ll not find me here, or anywhere near.”
“Well, and we hope not!” he said fiercely, suddenly turning on his heel back to his car, where he stopped and faced his friends. “I don’t know about you lot, but I’m going!”
And that was it, because, though with much shaking of heads and angry looks, they followed him, even the wrestler-type. I was a hair tense as they reversed their cars about me where I stood, but it was only to get out of the gate, they did nothing to me. And as I watched them drive away, something made me look up, and I saw the hawk, high on the wind. And back inside I came with a confidence I have not known since my youth! The fire’s in the heart again! New gates, new doors! Tomorrow in good faith I start on the road again—but first, now, to be done and reconciled with the past, to tie the final knot so I may cut it and be free to set out!
So. With my traveler’s cheques and Loomiss papers and a guidebook to Devon, I returned at last to the land of my birth. I expected nothing, but I had to walk that earth again. Walk it? Why, at one point I got down on my hands and knees and ate it.
At Exeter I was heartened by the Cathedral and by the greater calm of the local folk. I took bus to Dartmouth, where I took the shocks and discrepancies as they struck me, but as quick as possible I walked out past housing projects on the road to Greenway.
The house where I grew up was gone. The woods were much reduced, the river lower and of different colour than I remembered—only the shape of the land was the same, for which I thanked God, and soon I turned away through the woods towards Compton, finding trouble with barbed wire and el
ectric cattle-fences. When at last I reached the well-restored Castle and found I would have to pay, I did not go in. Instead I turned aside and spent time at the place where once I buried my soul… and it was an hour or so later, in pensive melancholy, that I walked a winding sunset road until I came to an inn called, inevitably, the Sir Walter Raleigh. I quaffed two pints of ale, ate a slice of shepherd’s pie, and guardedly questioned the folk in there. Rich Devon lingered in their accent, though much diminished. They assumed me to be some strange American cousin, assured me that Walter had lived at Greenway, and though the woman at the bar had heard of contemporary local Gilberts, when I asked her what she knew of Sir Humfrey, Raleigh’s half-brother, she said, “Oh, he was the one that got drowned.” And when it came to pay five pound thirty for my fare, I found that I was almost out of cash, and asked her if she would take a traveler’s cheque.
“No, sir,” she said firmly, “afraid I can’t do that!”
“But it’s American Express! Very reliable!”
“Sorry, sir, you’ll have to leave your bag here and go to the bank in Dartmouth tomorrow. Or, if you prefer, you can wash up here and save me the bother. But we can’t cash dollar cheques here. Brewery policy. Sorry sir, but that’s the regulation.”
After washing dishes in the Sir Walter Raleigh I set grim foot to road that night (it is a joke now, yes), and so down to Dartmouth again, where I spent a night and day on the rocks, gazing out to sea just as did that child who dreamed of Golden Ships. Late in the afternoon as I watched the tide go out, a boy aged eight or nine came along the pools with a shrimp-net, and apparently found me odd.
“Hey, mister! Wotcher doin’?”
“Golden Ships,” I murmured, in my melancholic reverie.
“Yer wot?”
“Golden Ships,” I said more loudly, looking up, “Don’t you ever dream of other worlds, of… Golden… Starships, maybe?”
“Golden—bleedin’—starships?” His face screwed up and he pronounced each word as if he were picking up worms with his fingers. “Yer daft, mister! Out of yer nut!” And he turned and ran away.
In town I bought a tent and supplies. In sad fury I walked north, feeling no rest until I was deep on Dartmoor, far from anyone. For a week I camped before moving deeper into the wilds. Thus for three months I lived, wanting nothing to do with the human race. Sea, sky, the moors—not so changed I could find no comfort in them. But I was changed, and by night I gazed at the stars, trying to remember the Egyptian names for them which Tari had told me—and I could not. My memory was blank. I could not even clearly picture her face, far less recall what she’d told me. It was all gone, as was memory of Herbie, Utak, Coningham, and the rest. Denver was a blur, San Francisco a strange fantasy, my American journeys like a distant dream. On Dartmoor it were as if none of it had ever happened, and that if it had, it hardly mattered.
For a while I found some peace in this, but it was a fragile, cowardly peace, and so in time I broke it, and moved on, back into the human world.
That is how I met a group of the so-called Lorry People.
29. “…No Blame: You Must Go On…”
It must have been late September or early October, for the leaves had begun to fall and the damp cold nights were affecting my teeth and bones, when I met the tribe of traveling folk on the banks of the River Tavy.
They numbered over forty, being of all ages, with children and old folk, and dogs and chickens and a few goats. They. Had several battered old trucks, and half-a-dozen powerful motorbikes, and three dilapidated but brightly painted caravans. Also, erected in a clearing in the open woodland near the road, they had eight high-poled tents of the sort called tipis that the red people once used.
At first from my distance up on the moor I thought what I saw must be some sort of apparition caused by my tiredness.
I hadn’t realised that anyone in Britain chose to live like this.
I wavered, wondering if I should pass them by, but I saw faces turned up towards me, and curiosity as well as loneliness drew me closer. Dogs came barking out at me as I thrashed through the golden bracken; voices called them off as diffidently I approached these rough weatherbeaten folk and their encampment. Slowly I walked into the circle made by their tents; they all stood and watched alertly, even the children, only the dogs still chasing about. Nodding to them I came up to a fire, and felt the warmth and smelled the beans which had been cooking. Only then I realised how tired and hungry and cold I was, as a tall thin man came and steadied me.
“You look done in,” he said. “Sit down, take your pack off.”
I looked into his face. Lank black hair fell past his eyes almost to his dirty blue-denim shoulders. In one hand he held a greasy rag and spanners with which he’d been working on a black bike. He had a hook nose, and bright glinting eyes. He nodded to me.
“It’s okay,” he said, “you can relax. My name’s Archie.” He saw to it that I got a plate of eggs and a thick hunk of bread to go with a steaming cup of tea. I wolfed it all down, and was not disturbed or asked any questions until I was done. Yet, though as soon as I’d sat most of them had turned back to their work—they were taking down their tipis—I was aware of several of them watching me as I ate, particularly a dark, broad-shouldered girl who didn’t drop her intent gaze even when I looked up and met her eyes. As for Archie, he was back at work on the bike, and yes, I think I liked him from the start. He reminded me somewhat of George Gascoigne, who’d pirated the publication of my Discourse, having that same natural generosity and roguish eye. Smacking my lips and looking about as I finished, I saw how efficiently and quickly these people dismantled and bundled up their gear, stowing it away according to its sort in the back of different trucks. Quickly, yes, but without hurry or awkwardness, a raggedly cheerful crew who knew their parts, the old and young as well. So, I found myself suddenly feeling much happier than I had in a long time. “Thank you!” I said, putting down the bowl and going to shake Archie by the hand. “That makes a good deal of difference! My name, sir, is Humf, and I’m much obliged to you!”
He eyed me. “You’ve been out and about a while, eh?”
“Three months on the moor,” I told him.
The dark girl joined us, hunkering down in her boots and jeans and smock and sheepskin jacket, her eyes still intent on me.
“I can’t place your accent,” she said bluntly.
“Mutatis mutandis,” said I, meeting her gaze and somehow having to grin like a monkey, as slowly she did too. “How can you place what no longer has a place? I have been through a lot of changes.”
But suddenly I wondered at and doubted this immediate sense of good communion, and anxiously looked at Archie.
He was grinning too. I heaved a great sigh as the warmth of it rushed through me, a flood of returning faith and memory. It was so strong that I shuddered physically, but could not stop grinning, for it was like rain to a desert, to walk so unexpectedly into family.
So I went with them, the others agreeing, so long as I should pull my weight, finding myself with Lorraine and her two young children perched on the gear in the back of a truck. Yes, that was her name. And again, it happened just like that. And again, consequences unimagined at the time.
“Where are we going?” I was still dazed as we started off.
“Wales.” Her gaze was so direct and steady. “Every winter we go to the valley. There’s no hurry. We take our time, and give no trouble if we’re given none.”
Her tight voice told me that recently there had been trouble, but she said no more, and it was not until that night at camp in Somerset I learned from Archie that her man, Jake, had lately been killed in a confrontation with police. “They wouldn’t let us into a filling-station,” he said, “so we blocked the motorway. Worked in the past, right? This time though they brought in an armoured high-speed bulldozer. Fucking thing charged right at us, and Jake got caught,” He eyed me sharply. “Take care of her.”
“You know, when I saw you coming down off the moor
,” she went on, suddenly reflective as we bounced and rattled along through the pleasant countryside, “I got this flash, this weird feeling, and I saw your colours…”—she took my hand in a sudden urgent grip—“I see peoples’ colours, you know, and for a moment when I looked at you I saw this really old colour, really old, as if you were walking out of the…” But there she stopped, letting go my hand and shaking her head in irritation. “Aw, but what am I saying?”
I, embarrassed and marvelling, turned to her children, Colum and Deirdre, two and three respectively, and tried to make small talk.
Colum reminded me of my own eldest son, John. It seemed incredible to remember that I too once had family.
So, on up the road we went, at our ease, but always a tension about the Law, and several confrontations too during the next two weeks as we passed by Taunton, Glastonbury (where we stopped three nights), Bristol, Abergavenny, Brecon, and finally Llandovery. But none of these confrontations came to much, for there was not only dislike between these people and the police, but a good deal of grudging mutual respect. “We can wait,” said Archie more than once at our camps after these meetings. “It’s coming. They know it, and so do we.” And I remembered Masanva, but did not yet speak of that.
Yes, much talk of the New Age, and after Glastonbury, where I was greatly moved in heart and memory by the raising of the Power there, we went through Bristol and over the beautiful Severn Bridge into Wales, stopping many places, meeting other travelers to party and trade, to discuss present purposes and future needs. My fog of disillusion began to lift and I began to remember Tari, finding her spirit in these people, especially in Lorraine. But I could not tell of it, nor of anything much at all. I worked my way, and listened, and tried to get my bearings. Lorraine sensed something deeply frozen in me but said nothing of it. Instead, despite her own sadness, or to forget it, along the way she would talk continually, naming everything we passed, reminiscing, explaining where we were going and how so many folk now lived like this. With tact she seemed to accept my tale of years in exile, but in private she soon began to speak to me as if truly she did believe I came from the past and knew little or nothing of the present state of things.
Fire in the Abyss Page 32