The Last Day

by Andrew Hunter Murray

  This one folded open, and was designed to store bed linen. She opened it, its hinges groaning at the unaccustomed exercise. In the base, resting on a pile of cotton sheets—so, he had kept it—was a child’s mobile, now a tangle of wires and wood knotted almost past redemption. She pulled it out. It had birds dangling on it, studding each wire: little painted toucans and puffins carved from pine. He had bought it for her as a sort of joke when they had first talked about having children, and before she had said no. But the joke had had a little tang of meaning at its heart that reminded her of some supposed deficiency within herself, and she had been wounded.

  And later she had left him, had taken the job on the rig, formed a near-perfect barrier between herself and the world. That barrier felt pretty flimsy now.

  She found a towel beneath the sheets, replaced the mobile, and made her way into the bathroom. She tried the shower, standing gingerly to avoid putting weight on her twisted ankle. The water was warm—better than warm; hot. It scalded her bruised forehead, her bruised ribs, her scarlet ankle, unknotted her muscles.

  On her way back from the bathroom, she noticed that her bag had been placed outside the bedroom door as she slept. She changed her clothes, crammed the old ones into a corner of the bag, and made her way downstairs. David was standing in the kitchen in front of a pan. In the corner, a radio burbled at the edge of hearing.

  “You’ve had a decent rest. Hope the shower was warm enough. I heard it going, started some breakfast.” She felt a sudden prickle of self-consciousness at her wet hair, tangled and cold, and started to thumb the knots out of it.

  “What’s the time?”

  “Coming up to eleven.”

  “Shouldn’t we have left already?”

  “We can be in Oxford in a couple of hours. You need food.” He served up the contents of the pan, a hash of mushrooms and scrambled eggs and garlic. She realized she had missed a couple of meals yesterday, and ate, hungrily.

  As she finished, he jerked a thumb at the radio. “You should hear what’s started in your absence.”

  “The Americans?”

  “Yeah. Sounds like it’s an unconditional rolling-over. They want a pact based on recognized mutual interests.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Not much, bluntly. They need our food, that much is clear. We just didn’t realize how badly they need it. In return for the weapons, they’ll get access to our resources, a cut of the Breadbasket. It makes them much likelier to survive. And Davenport’s won the final thing he wanted. He’ll have the whole country restored, lots of new manpower, and all the military might of the last superpower. Albion is reborn.”

  “They can do that? Just give up?”

  “They’ve had a rough thirty years, El. If you ask me, it’s a miracle they lasted as long as they did.”

  “You don’t sound happy about it.”

  “Not especially. I always hoped they’d be all right or that their sector might survive if this one fell apart.” He paused. “I can’t believe Thorne sent up a satellite. I can’t stop thinking about why he did it.”

  “The warden will know. If anyone will know, she will.”

  His head bobbed. “Before we go, Ellie, is there anything else to it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  He sighed. “El, in all our time together”—he swallowed, suddenly nervous—“you mentioned Thorne a couple of times at most, and you were pretty strange about it when you did. Anyone else would talk about the fact that they had been tutored by practically the father of the nation. But whenever I asked about it, you shut down the conversation immediately. I always assumed something happened between you. Well, to be blunt, I thought you and he . . . had had an affair or something.”

  “Oh God, David, no. Nothing like that. I admired him for a long time, and then . . . well.” She could either tell him now or not at all. So she told him about her last meeting with Thorne.

  When she had finished, he whistled. “Christ, Ellie. That’s . . . I mean, everyone sort of knew. But you’re saying you had proof? You saw it, in his office?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you take it? Think of what could have been done with it. Jesus, we could have got rid of Davenport. Even he couldn’t have survived proper evidence of a blanket attack on civilians.”

  “I was nineteen, David. I was terrified. And Thorne told me there was no possible benefit in telling anyone, and that I’d be killed if I tried.” Her eyes were prickling.

  “You’ve carried round that knowledge for such a long time. Come here, Ellie.” He crossed the room and hugged her. Maybe it was the physical contact, or the relief of telling him something she hadn’t even in their marriage. Whatever it was, she felt herself crying. She had hardly been touched since she arrived in London. Her brother had hugged her welcome, Harv had hugged her goodbye, and David was the only one of the three who had not let her down.

  Eventually he stepped back.

  “When I came over as he was dying, I thought he was going to tell me something about all that. That’s the only reason I came.”

  “Do you still think it’s about that?”

  “I think it could be. Maybe it’s the proof of the sinkings. Maybe he wanted to publish during his lifetime but he was too scared. But I don’t see how it could damage Davenport.”

  “Either way, we need to go to Oxford.”

  “Yes.”

  “All right then. Well, at least we shouldn’t be stopped leaving London. They normally don’t check people leaving, not at this time of day. I’ve put some of Pam’s paperwork in the car; you can use that if required.”

  It didn’t take long to pack the car: the same bag Hopper had taken from Mark’s place, a little food and drink for the journey, sandwiches in an old biscuit tin with pictures of a bucolic harvest scene around the edges. She remembered it from their marriage.

  As they were about to leave, David said, “Just a second,” and darted into the house. He was back within a minute, and as he got in, he leaned over and carefully placed a heavy object, wrapped in a handkerchief, into the glove compartment.

  “What’s that?”

  “Nothing. Something I borrowed from a friend.”

  She opened the compartment and twitched the handkerchief aside.

  “A gun? A fucking gun, David?”

  “Not a good one.”

  “I’m glad I’m not your defense lawyer. Look at this thing. It’s practically antique.”

  “I know. I’m not intending to use it.”

  “Does it work?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I suppose you could lecture someone about it until they died of boredom.”

  He laughed, then started the car.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  The sky to the west was dark as they drove out through Notting Hill, up onto the old flyover, where the sky broadened out and the west of London opened before them, mile after mile of bland suburb. There was a large smear of charcoal in the sky ahead. The forecasts had been right: rain was coming.

  The roads were quiet. Most private cars didn’t make long journeys these days, and the less they were used, the fewer cars proved roadworthy the next time their owners did need to travel.

  Hopper always wondered, when she saw the blank faces in other cars, what desire or crisis or secret hope had prompted their journey. Today, as always, the faces of the drivers they passed revealed nothing. They overtook a military convoy, six trucks with half-open backs hauling along the slow lane. Young men and women were visible inside, their tanned faces obscured by the gloom of the trucks.

  Within half an hour they were out of London. The barrier was easily crossed, with only a cursory glance at David’s papers. He had been right: the queue into the city was long, but nobody was leaving.

  After the suburbs had receded behind them, he spoke. �
��Can you smell that?”

  “What?”

  “Not-London.”

  He was right. The tarry stink of the city had faded from Hopper’s nose. She lowered the window and stuck her head out a little, just to smell the clean air.

  When she pulled back in, David spoke again. “How will we find the warden?”

  “She’ll be there. I know it.”

  Hopper knew the warden was still in post—had been two months ago anyway. Her birthday had been listed in the Times passed around the rig’s canteen. It wasn’t surprising: the job was not taxing, and Hopper could well imagine her being pliant enough to avoid being dislodged in favor of a younger candidate. The real surprise was that she had risked her reputation by offering Thorne a position in the first place. They must have been truly close.

  Hopper’s memory of Heathcote was of a stout, crafty woman, intelligent and waspish, leaning to one side to better hear her guests along the top table at dinner. Like a lot of women her age, conscription and conflict around the time of the Stop had left her half-deaf.

  “What if she refuses to see us?”

  “I don’t think she will.” She tapped the glove compartment and grinned. “I’m armed and dangerous, after all.”

  The Chiltern Gap loomed ahead of them, a huge hollow in the hills through which the road had been cut. It was the pinch point—in Hopper’s mind—dividing Oxford from London. The beauty of it pressed them temporarily into silence. It was jungly, the chalk of the hillside barely visible through the thick dark leaves. As she looked, there was a little flutter of brighter green—two parakeets, one pursuing the other, flitting over the road. The only sign of humanity was a rusted, abandoned guard’s hut.

  And there, before them, Oxfordshire opened out, a patchwork of greens and browns and yellows, the pale-gray artery of the road diminishing to invisibility in the distance. Hopper had always loved this moment, and this time found little enough changed—at this distance anyway—to preserve her sense of the county’s beauty.

  They carried on for a few miles, descending into the broad low plain of the Thames Valley, past abandoned road signs she had seen before, had been passing since the first time she came for her interview. CALLAGHAN HAULAGE. MACHINES MOVED. RING NOW read one, followed by a number for a phone network that no longer existed. They were comforting, these signs, faint implications that the world might one day begin again.

  David was silent beside her. She nearly spoke to him, but was conscious he was in the middle of his own thoughts, and felt a sudden tenderness, a desire to protect him there for a while.

  They drifted off the motorway at the right junction, onto one of the tiny capillary roads that served Oxford. Up ahead, a queue of cars blocked the road. Hopper could just see, in front of them, a corrugated iron structure topped with a Union Jack, and the red and black of a road barrier grinding down. A checkpoint. She swore under her breath.

  “Can you come off? Or reverse?”

  “No.” The embankment of the road was high—probably why they had placed the checkpoint here. Even past the embankment, the road was lined with thick trees. And there were already more cars approaching behind, boxing them in.

  They halted about six cars from the front. Two figures were manning the checkpoint, in the uniform of the army, not the police. One was in a roadside booth, the other was at the side of the foremost car.

  Hopper felt sick. “What do we do?”

  “Pick up Pam’s papers in the front there. There’s no photo on them, so you can pretend they’re old ones and your new ones are in the post. Do you think they’ll know you’re missing yet? Will there be a description out?”

  “Maybe not.”

  “Sure?”

  “No.” It was nearly one in the afternoon. Her bedroom door had been shut behind her. It was possible that her brother had left for work, that Laura wouldn’t have pushed the door open. If Mark had realized she was missing, would he have reported it by now? Or would he have granted her a few hours’ grace?

  The soldier running the booth was rotund, unsmiling. He waved the car ahead of them through, and David slowed to a halt in front of him, winding down his window as the man approached.

  The soldier was reddened, his skin livid under the sun. The sides of his neck and the backs of his hands were raw and cracked. They shone too, and as he leaned briefly on the edge of the car window, his knuckles pressed a faint oily slick in eight fat lines on the edge. They still looked raw. Some people had never adapted to the sun. Hopper wondered how long it would take them to die out.

  “What’s the purpose of your travel today?”

  “Visiting family,” David said.

  “Where?”

  “Oxford.”

  The soldier lowered himself awkwardly, inspected Hopper in the passenger seat, and grunted. “Papers?”

  “Yes, of course.” They handed them over, David fumbling as he did so. He was easily flustered. Hopper remembered a time when she’d found it endearing, and felt a pang of it now, even through her mounting panic.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “These are expired but there have been problems with the new ones.”

  The man stood, flicking through the papers, so all they could see of him was an expansive stomach, a curl of thick black hair poking out between the buttons on his shirt front.

  “Wait here.” He turned and lumbered back toward the booth. After the door clanged behind him, Hopper looked at David.

  “What if he arrests us?”

  “I suppose you should try to get out on your side, get away. If I open the door quickly on him I could slow him down, maybe, surprise him . . .” David tailed off. It was obvious to him, and to her, that they were no match even for a fat, bored guard at a roadblock armed with a rusting pistol.

  Even so, her feet tingled, and as the door of the booth swung open again, her hand rested lightly on the door handle, while the other eased off her seat belt.

  As the soldier made his way out, one of the cars behind them risked a couple of blasts on its horn, the noise startling birds from nearby trees, and he shot a baleful glance toward it. He leaned down into the car and looked at Hopper for a second. As she was preparing to hurl herself out, to try to make it into the trees at the side of the road, he simply said, “Drive safe.” He ditched the documents into David’s lap and stood once again, already waiting for the next car, as the red-and-black barrier ground upward.

  David released the clutch and the car sprang forward, nearly stalling as he pulled away. Neither of them spoke until the booth had disappeared behind them around a curve in the road. He pointed ahead: “Good thing we didn’t just drive through.” Before them, parked at the side of the road, was an armored vehicle, three soldiers sitting in it. One straddled a gun mounted in the back.

  They had the road to themselves once again.

  David spoke. “Do you want to stop before we arrive?”

  “No.” She had answered without thinking about it. Her hand was shaking. She sat on it, squashing it beneath her leg. Her breathing felt short. “How much farther to go?”

  “We’ll be there before two.”

  After a mile, the hedgerow widened and jerked away from the road. They saw the slow-down signs next, followed by the village sign welcoming them to Bicklehampton, beneath a painted image of a hare and a fox chasing each other in a circle, an idealized rural ouroboros. It sparked a memory in her, but before she could catch hold of it, it was gone, whipped away by the movement of the car.

  Bicklehampton was nearly abandoned. David slowed the car as they went, but from the look of the outskirts—houses choked with weeds, an old community hall with a moss-stained door—there seemed little reason to do so.

  Before they reached the dilapidated heart of the village, they passed the human flotsam on its edges: two young women sitting in a rusty corrugated-iron bus shelter, one pushing a pram back a
nd forth, the other smoking. A little way along, two children were kicking a football against a wall. Both pairs followed the car’s movement with their eyes as they passed. A hundred yards beyond was Bicklehampton proper: houses, a dark-timbered pub, and a parade of shops, showing more chipboard on the ground floor than plate glass.

  “We’ve been here before.” He was right. She’d had a feeling since seeing the sign as they entered, a feeling now punctured by the banality of the truth—it was just memory, after all. They had stayed here for a night.

  It had been some sort of driving holiday, a few months after their wedding. Her idea: she had just taken possession of a car, an ancient but lovingly patched Ford. She had wanted to show it off, and so for two weeks they had traveled across the country, staying in little bed-and-breakfasts as they went.

  They had been happy. David had been granted an extended break from his work, and her first job was not due to start for another month, so away they had gone. David had called it “The Great Patriotic Tour,” making fun of some propaganda campaign running at the time.

  They had stayed in cheap establishments run by proprietors keen to earn a bit of extra money, many of them elderly people who remembered life before the Slow and had tried to re-create it in small ways. One woman in a little family hotel in Wiltshire had rigged up a region of her garden with hanging sheets to give the impression of “evening sun,” as she called it. A retired army officer who had seemed perfectly normal at first showed them the earthen cellars he had dug out beneath the foundations of his now tottering home. It had sent everyone a bit mad, the Slow, in different ways.

  As they passed out of the village, Hopper thought about the women at the bus stop, and wondered where they were going. People’s borders had shrunk. Even fifteen years ago this sort of journey, sixty miles or so from London, would have been normal, worth making to see family. You could get anywhere in the country in a couple of days. But as the petrol shortages had tightened, everyone’s mental boundaries had been circumscribed, degree by degree.