Larry was on his feet, peering through the trees, hands spread for silence. Helen remained where she was, legs drawn up, chin on her knees. Soon Douglas was on his feet also, straining to see what Larry was seeing.
Banners and emblems, dominating patches of red and white and yellow and blue, were approaching up the road as though it was they who were bringing the marchers rather than the other way round. When the head of the march drew level with the copse, there seemed for an instant to be a profound silence, as of something seen suddenly in dumb show. Then noise burst out again, shouts and snatches of song above the tramping of feet, laughter, cries.
What struck Douglas most as the march went by – beside the fact that he was not yet on it – was its variety, groups, phalanxes, contingents of all kinds, some murmurous, some raucous, some singing, some appearing to have embraced silence. So relentlessly did it come on, streaming past as they sheltered in the copse, that Douglas wondered if Larry had been wrong in thinking there would be gaps between the groups, during one of which he would launch his raft.
“There are always more people at the head of a march than in the middle or at the back. It’s always denser here. Terribly dense sometimes, dangerously so. It thins out the further back you go. You come upon gaps then – like firebreaks really. They save the contingents for one another; they give definition. All we have to do is wait for these to appear. Yes. Another law of marches is that the further back you go, the bigger the firebreaks are. Not that I’ll be waiting too long. What would be the point of having my explosion when most of the march is past? Talk about performing to an empty house!”
Unseen among the trees, they watched as a contingent from Dundee went by, then one from Bradford, then one from Inverness. Then there was a large one from Aberdeen, seeming to sway as it went, its yellow banners swaying too.
Larry was right. The gaps between the groups were getting larger, though the numbers in the groups were about the same. Their time was approaching, the time for the well ordered afternoon to be stopped in its tracks. Larry looked from Helen to Douglas and back again. Then he put an arm round his father, his grin as he surveyed the march at once edgy and proprietorial. This was his audience and he would command it.
The gesture should have been his, Douglas thought. He couldn’t think of anything to say even. Neither to Larry nor Helen. Not a word. If it was not fear exactly, it was some kind of sympathetic trepidation on his son’s behalf that bore most of the marks of it. He forced himself to smile, held the smile in the hope of encouraging his companions.
Larry said it was time to carry the raft to its launching place, checking his watch as he said it, as if everything today had been planned to the last second and he, Larry, had planned it.
This time they bore it solemnly, with an air almost of ritual, Helen going in front to clear the way. By the bush on the promontory they lowered it to the water, holding it there for a moment, feeling the water accept it, buoy it up. Larry knelt, smiling, checking it, Douglas and Helen looking on, looking for a sign that all was well. All seemed to be, for Larry stood up and looked proudly across the water.
When Helen slipped her arm through his, Douglas closed his eyes. He would not be marching now. Next year perhaps but not this. It had been decided. Necessities closer to hand had got the better of him. The heroic ingenuity of his son’s project.
He didn’t feel defeated though, weak and in thrall to other wills. His sense was of a gracious welcome rather from these companions who had stepped into the shadows before him.
He was sorry Edith didn’t know. Probably she did though, having foreseen it. A good wife foresaw much, what came from the good in you as well as what came from the bad.
“Anytime you’re ready,” Larry said quietly. “No-one out there has a clue what’s going to happen. You realise that?”
For a moment it seemed a tremendous advantage, the secrecy of it, they, not the Americans, commanding the loch, the future. Douglas felt suddenly very proud, not just of Larry, author of the spectacular defiance, but of Helen also and even himself, late convert though he was. And of his wife, Edith, superbly watchful on her high hill, intensely proud of herself yet by now surely very agitated and alone.
“Good luck,” he said, at once darkened and quickened by the image of Edith. “Good luck!”
“I appreciate it very much,” Larry said simply, “your staying on here to help. All our energies are going in the one direction now. We can’t fail.”
“Good luck, Larry,” Helen said, touching his arm.
“I’ll meet the two of you afterwards, in the march somewhere. Yes, somewhere along the road in the march we’ll meet again. See you.”
He stooped again to the raft, which was bobbing slightly on the water. His hands as he touched and steadied it were slow and affectionate. He might have been discovering it for the first time.
“It’s like one of his childhood projects,” Douglas said as they made their way over the rocks to the copse. “A childhood project that’s entered adulthood. It’s as if all those early years were just preparation. You never think it at the time; you think it’s just childhood, dreams, play.”
He was pleased as he spoke, however, smiling.
“It throws a long shadow,” Helen said, “childhood.”
Dust had been raised by the march so that some walked with hands to their eyes and some were coughing. “Mothers Against The Bomb” was passing, but there were fathers too, a few with children on their shoulders. One in a kilt was playing a mouth organ with one hand and doing a little jig, creating a space about him as he did so, guarding the space jealously, gesturing others away from it. Two little boys were imitating him, vying with each other, close to mockery. Then in a wheelchair came a little girl with a hump, the hump higher and bigger than her head, which was lolling to one side. The man pushing her was very tall and bore himself proudly, seeming to stare over the heads of the marchers to some distant kingdom. Douglas wondered how many marches the girl had been on, whether she had any freedom at all. Borne forwards through dust and noise under banners towards sunset. What contact with others? Little. None. A sightless traveller.
“Mothers Against The Bomb” seemed to mark the end of one stage of the march. Over a hundred yards away they could see another approaching, creeping over the rim of a low hill.
They emerged quietly from the trees and went down the road to their positions, Helen at the first corner, Douglas at the second, exactly as in their rehearsal.
They might have been rehearsing it once a day for a year, Douglas felt, so lightly and gladly did he move, so clearly see. It was the same for Helen, he was sure, going – as he seemed to be – quite soundlessly to her position, as though woven into the world somehow, into the spring sunshine, the great stillness over loch and hills, the road, even, the contours of the land.
They held their positions with an air of noble patience, Douglas looking behind him, in the direction of the march, Helen looking at Douglas, very intently.
When the head of the march dipped out of sight for a moment, Douglas dropped his arm, Helen hers too. Running forwards, he saw Larry emerge from a crouching position – try to rather, for it seemed for an instant that his son was moving heavily, as if the long wait had confused him. He recovered quickly, though, was soon crouched again, a few yards away, where the bush was.
The sound that broke the silence then didn’t seem to Douglas to augur well. Too loud. Much too loud. A high-powered lawnmower or a chainsaw. He hadn’t imagined the raft’s engine would sound like this; he had thought of something gentler. It was surely a miscalculation. It wouldn’t do.
He grabbed Helen’s hand and ran with her back to the copse, a particular spot there from which he had calculated that, unseen from the road, they would be able to watch whatever happened.
In the copse the roar of the engine seemed to have got caught up with the echoes, creating and destroying them alternately. Blue smoke was drifting among the trees, and there was a smell of petrol.
Larry had said that he would join them on the march afterwards, but here he was, dodging through the trees, grinning, pointing.
“Perfect speed! Straight as an arrow! Look!”
When Douglas caught sight of the raft, however, it wasn’t like this at all. It didn’t appear to be going in a straight line and its speed didn’t appear to be regular. It was moving in a wide arc, first towards the middle of the loch, then, faltering slightly, towards the base. It was also bouncing a little, from side to side and from back to front, making a screaming noise now rather than a roar.
Douglas’ hope was that it would explode before it sank, before his son was humiliated, before he heard him boast again that all was well. All his enthusiasms, he realised, had at some point bordered on the crazy.
“Marvellous!” he heard him declare.
When it came, about fifty yards from the base, the explosion was terrific. At first a crack, then a boom, then a roar which became roaring. Terrific too were the violent echoes which were thrown back immediately from the surrounding hills. An extraordinary outpouring of dense black smoke, then, convulsively spinning and rolling its way across the water and upwards. The mushroom cloud over which Larry had been brooding for months, however, had not appeared. Suddenly, though, like features out of darkness, a face upon the waters, it manifested itself, holding its shape remarkably as the convulsions of smoke and fire continued underneath – seemed to be feeding it actually, helping it to a kind of perfection.
In full dignity then it was before them, entirely itself over the barely visible base from which now came cries of alarm and distress.
As if it was a shape as natural as any under the sun. The most violent of reactions creating stillness. Stillness at the heart of chaos.
At last the echoes ceased, leaving panic and uproar on the base and along the coast.
Douglas found that he had gripped Helen with one hand, Larry with the other. To support or be supported, he did not know. Larry was laughing, Helen silent. The copse was rocking and cracking and the light was strange. He was reaching for words, it seemed, unsure which awed him the more, the violence of the explosion or Larry’s stage-managing of it. Ardent congratulations seemed in order, but when he spoke it was in fear, his voice raised against the wail of sirens, against clamour.
“We’d better get into the march as quickly as possible,” he said. “Anyone caught outside is bound to be questioned.”
“Let them question us!” Larry laughed. “We’ve nothing to hide, less to fear. They can’t touch us!”
“You smell of smoke and fire,” Helen said, “and I don’t think you’re making sense.”
“Oh I’m making sense all right!” Larry replied angrily.
“Come on, for Christ’s sake!” Douglas said.
He urged them, the one silent, the other cackling, out of the copse and into a field of tall grasses. There, bent double, they went towards the town. The shadow of a hedge was on the grasses and the light under the mushroom cloud was murky. Moving through the grasses was difficult, like being in a dark green sea with unconscionable currents. Larry was shouting and cackling still, indiscriminate curses and praises, it seemed, as if the mounting clamour had freed him from all prudence and decorum.
“That’s done for them! Bloody Yanks, stuffed at last! Ever met a Yank, Helen? Forget it. Stick to me and your man here! Now you’re talking! Quality is quality! Mother too! Here’s to mother! Mother!”
Coughing stopped him, seeds from the grasses most probably, for which Douglas was thankful, for otherwise he would have had to do it himself, he or Helen or both, standing up in the grasses, to tell him to shut up, waist deep, shouting.
The ground was heavy but it was not so much this and the thick grasses that stopped them as the realisation that they had drawn level with a large contingent. Its red banners could be seen over the hedge, some moving jerkily, some stationary. Fugitives, supporting each other again, they huddled under the hedge. They could clearly hear voices, men’s mainly, a mood of consternation and alarm, though with the odd, high burst of laughter.
Some thought a submarine had blown up and that they would be done for soon themselves. Some that it was an accident on the base, not as serious as it seemed. Some an attack by Russia. Some a plane crash, out of the blue and into the Holy Loch. Some a terrorist attack, someone an earthquake. A woman with a sing-song voice said it would be like this with the real thing: they would be away from their homes and families, there would be this kind of premature dusk …
The cloud had strayed to the west a little, still expanding, losing its shape only at the top. Just from considering it, Douglas thought, you couldn’t tell what had caused it. Many would be looking up. All probably. Eyes to heaven. It would give them a chance to slip through the hedge, be marching before anyone noticed them.
Eventually the contingent got under way again, in thrall to the cloud but defiant, making a lot of noise. When it was almost past, Douglas helped his companions through a gap in the hedge, hoping to find some stragglers they could join and finding them, the elderly mostly, walking as though speculatively, eyes raised to the cloud which, as it slid westwards, was beginning to flatten.
They were tired now, Douglas saw, very tired, barely responsible for their movements, weak and wandering ones. Even here though he made as if to guide them, as if he alone was walking well and strongly. Neither were the stragglers walking well, he noticed, in this grainy light of premature dusk with the road going slightly uphill.
Putting his arms through theirs, he walked with Larry and Helen down the centre of the road. It got even darker. There was excited birdsong, gatherings of birds in the hedges and bushes.
Not to be overtaken by the contingent behind, Douglas increased the pace a little. He could hear it approaching, could feel it in the road even, young feet, vigorous feet, keen to be part of the action, history’s extras.
“All we need to do is keep going,” Douglas said. “Eventually we’ll reach the town and eventually there will be speeches.”
“Speeches, speeches,” Larry muttered.
“What’s wrong with speeches?” Helen asked.
“Suit yourself,” Larry said.
Larry’s confused gait on the one hand, Helen’s weakening one on the other, Douglas pressed on, round a corner, through the damaged light. A breeze had got up, moving the cloud further to the west and threatening its dispersal. It also brought what had escaped them so far, the smell of the explosion, a most unpleasant one, mean, acrid, gritty. Something irritated their eyes and caught at their throats.
“Sorry about this,” Larry said proudly. “I hadn’t anticipated a smell. Really I hadn’t.”
Douglas could tell, from little feelings of irritation – at the contingent in front for going too slowly, at the one behind for seeming to bear down on them, at Larry for acting as if, the explosion accomplished, there was now nothing left to say or do – that he was worrying about Edith. He had been away from her for over two hours. How had she been when the explosion took place, as the cloud formed and later passed over her? How did you cope with such excitement if you couldn’t move, were probably in pain, had no-one to share it with? She would have wet or fouled herself, he feared, as she had done a few times before, when badly overwrought.
Saying that she wanted to find out what other marchers were thinking, Helen left them for a while.
Larry had no such concerns. He was stumbling along beside his father as if he was being led, taken to a point from which the next stage of his life would be explained to him. Whether he wanted such an explanation was unclear. The hell of anti-climax, Edith might have said. That was her state too perhaps, wet and fouled up there on the hilltop, abandoned by the gods of energy and design. They should make haste to go to her, Douglas thought. They should skip the speeches. Why had he ever thought he would stay for them?
“How are you?” Douglas asked.
“Strange. They’re like the days of wrath.”
“The
y surely look like them. You’ve done well.”
“I’d like to drink a toast to mother.”
“We should go to her.”
“Yes.”
“As soon as we can. You first; you’ll be quicker.”
“Helen? Will she come too?” Larry grinned sideways.
“What do you think?” Douglas answered coldly.
“We could say we met her on the march, under the cloud, that she was hysterical and that we offered her comfort.”
“What have you made of it all?” Douglas asked after a pause. “How do you rate it?”
“Too soon to say,” Larry answered. “For a moment back there I feared it had been pointless, schoolboyish, not much more than a prank.”
“And now?”
“I like the darkness. That’s a bonus.”
Head rolling, hands fluttering like wounded birds, Larry was wandering all over the road. Even to his father he didn’t seem all there. If they wanted to arrest someone on suspicion of terrorism, Douglas thought, they could do worse than to start here.
“She’s very thorough, isn’t she?” Larry suddenly said. “Helen, I mean. Doesn’t leave a stone unturned. Such a passion for detail. Providential. I couldn’t have done without her today. Nor could you, I suspect. Where is she anyway?”
“Here she is.”
Ducking under drifting smoke and looking pleased with herself, Helen was coming briskly back to them.
“Larry!” she called, reaching out to him in one of his wanderings. “Come here! Listen!”
They heard again that some thought there had been a nuclear explosion and that what they were doing was wandering in a doomed twilight. Others were of the opinion that it was an attempt by the Americans to scare off the marchers, others a World War Two mine blowing up, others an I.R.A. initiative. Most however didn’t know but wanted to find out.
“You’ve certainly got them thinking, very agitated. Running scared, actually. I sense a lot of panic.”
Spring Manoeuvres Page 16