“That’s no good,” shrugged Mad. “I haven’t got my specs.”
“Borrow mine, lady, borrow mine.” He whipped off his glasses and handed them to her with a flourish. The blue eyes without them looked naked, pale.
Mad placed them upon her own face, frowned, and was instantly transformed into another being, someone older, evil, alien. That is what happens to people, Emma thought, bewildered, when they lose their identity, when they stop being themselves; it happens to individuals when they fall in love with the wrong person, the personality doesn’t develop, it gets swamped, and it happens to communities, to villages, to countries under invasion, however benign the intention, however all-embracing the ultimate design.
“Take them off,” said Emma quickly. “You look ghastly.”
Mad turned her head and stared at her through the borrowed spectacles, and it was as though she, Emma, had become a child again, about the age of Ben, and the grandmother she knew and loved, by putting greasepaint on her face and wearing a wig, had damaged or even destroyed the self within. Mad laughed, removed the offending glasses and gave them back to the Welshman.
“I don’t mind what I look like,” she said. “The trouble is I can’t see through them. They were completely blurred.”
And yet, Emma thought as Mr. Willis replaced them, on his face they are right, they somehow protect him, his eyes just now without them were like an animal, trapped.
“You’ll have to teach me the poem,” said Mad. “Is it very long?”
“Much too long,” Emma replied, “and not really appropriate. We did it for A level at school, and I can only remember lines here and there.”
“Such as?”
Such as… Emma tried to think. Written in London, 1802, what was Wordsworth doing in London, and was it something to do with the Peace of Amiens or war breaking out again or what? All the lines were jumbled together in memory. Aloud, she quoted,
“… We must run glittering like a brook
In the open sunshine, or we are unblest:
The wealthiest man among us is the best;
No grandeur now in nature or in book
Delights us. Rapine, avarice, expense,
This is idolatry; and these we adore:
Plain living and high thinking are no more:
The homely beauty of the good old cause
Is gone.”
She paused, concentrating hard. Blank, blank, blank in her mind. Wait a minute.
“… We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.”
And there was something later on, in another sonnet, about a tyrant, how did it go?
“There is a bondage worse, far worse, to bear
Than his who breathes, by roof, and floor, and wall,
Pent in, a tyrant’s solitary thrall:
’Tis he who walks about in the open air,
One of a nation who, henceforth, must wear
Their fetters in their souls. For who could be,
Who, even the best, in such conditions free…”
Free… Yes, but the bit about freedom came from an earlier sonnet.
“We must be free or die, who speak the tongue
That Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold
Which Milton held. In everything we are sprung
Of earth’s first blood, have titles manifold.”
It was something to do with the Napoleonic wars, must have been, because there was that Anticipation sonnet which came later on:
“Shout, for a mighty victory is won!
On British ground the invaders are laid low:
The breath of Heaven has drifted them like snow,
And left them lying in the silent sun.
Never to rise again! the work is done.
Come forth, ye old men, now in peaceful show,
And greet your sons! drums beat and trumpets blow!
Make merry, wives! ye little children stun
Your grandames’ ears with pleasure of your noise!
Clap, infants, clap your hands! Divine must be
That triumph, when the very worst, the pain
And even the prospect of our brethren slain,
Hath something in it which the heart enjoys.
In glory will they sleep and endless sanctity.”
Yes, that was the bit which she used to enjoy when they had to recite it in class, because of the grandames’ pleasure in your noise, it always suggested Mad laughing at the boys.
“’Tis well! from this day forward we shall know
That in ourselves our safety must be sought;
That by our own right hands it must be wrought,
That we must stand unpropped, or be laid low.”
Phew! It was no good. The whole thing was hopelessly jumbled. No wonder Mr. Willis was exchanging glances with Mad and trying to hide his smile.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “I was simply quoting at random from various sonnets.” She turned to her grandmother. “You’d best give up the idea anyway,” she added.
“I have,” replied Mad briefly. “You’ve done my work for me.”
“What do you mean?”
Mad nodded at Mr. Willis. “Show her.”
The Welshman laid bare the floorboard close at hand. There was a small tape-recorder among the rest of the paraphernalia. The tape was still running. He switched it off.
“You may have thought yourself back in the schoolroom,” he told her, “but I did not. You were staring at the ceiling in such concentration that you never noticed when I signaled to your grandmother and pointed to my little box of tricks, and she gestured in the affirmative. Now we have your voice recorded, and no one will ever be the wiser when they listen except that it is a young voice transmitting the stirring message. I shall send it out on the air later tonight.”
Wizard and witch looked at her, and laughed.
“You can’t,” exploded Emma. “It wouldn’t be fair, I never agreed to it, and the lines are all mixed up, they didn’t make sense.”
“On the contrary, they made great sense. They were very inspiring,” he said. “Would you like me to play it back?”
“No.” Emma rose to her feet and paced up and down the wooden floor. “Mad,” she pleaded, “you must prevent it. Please make him give you the tape and we can destroy it.”
“Nonsense,” said Mad firmly. “Taffy’s perfectly right, the lines were most inspiring, and all the better for the purpose by being quoted out of order.” She rose from the rickety chair and straightened her Chairman Mao cap. “You were very good, darling,” she said generously, “far better than I should have been. I never could speak verse. You must let us know, Taffy, what sort of effect it has upon your Celtic masses and all the other people underground. Come on, Em, Dottie will be wondering where on earth we’ve got to.”
She made a move towards the door. Mr. Willis, however, had once more placed the headphones over his ears. His expression was intent, he was listening hard.
“Wait one moment,” he said hastily. “There is something coming through. It’s a little confusing…”
His face changed to astonishment. He tilted the headphones and Emma could hear the muffled voice coming through. Whoever it was spoke rapidly, seeming excited, and then as suddenly it faded, was cut. All was silent again. Mr. Willis turned to his visitors, genuine bewilderment in the bright eyes behind the spectacles.
“It wasn’t expected,” he said, “no one was warned. But on the whole, all things considered, it must work to our advantage and puzzle the enemy, which is what we are after, isn’t it?”
“If we knew what you were talking about, we might agree,” Mad replied.
Mr. Willis stared. The news had evidently so dumbfounded him that he had forgotten he was one step ahead with information.
“Why, the boyos have landed,” he said, “one in Scotland, the other in Wales.”
Now it was the turn of Emma and her grandm
other to stare, first at Mr. Willis and then at one another. How could Joe and Terry have possibly escaped from the Isles of Scilly and be landing in the west and north? Did it mean there had been some sort of mass escape, and their many companions were free as well?
“Who helped them, how did it happen?” asked Emma.
Mr. Willis shook his head. “No details,” he said. “Later, perhaps. Just the bare facts that both boys have landed, and want nothing for themselves, no titles, no honors, no pushing themselves forward, they just want to serve, and band themselves together with other youngsters throughout the country to keep the land free. It’s time, after all, they showed some activity and let us older folk sit back.” He looked across at Emma. “Your tape may be heard by princes, think of it,” he said. “Young Andrew in Scotland and Charlie boy in Wales. You must find it distinctly encouraging, to say the least of it. Put fire into both their bellies, that it will.”
Mr. Willis insisted on walking back with them through the wood. He would take no denial. He carried an old ship’s lantern which glowed and flickered as he swung it from side to side, plodding a few steps ahead of them all the while. He parted from them at the far end of the wood, where the hedge bordered on their own domain.
“The transmission will go out at 21:30 hours,” he told Emma. “First your own voice speaking, then the translation I shall make in the two languages, for it’s a pity, after all, not to send it out in all three. I have a busy night ahead of me. Sleep soundly, ladies.”
Looking back over her shoulder Emma watched the flickering lantern disappear, engulfed, all of a sudden, by the ghostly line of trees. She put out her hand and clung to her grandmother’s arm.
“Is it true?” she whispered.
“Is what true?” countered Mad.
“Everything. Transmissions on the radio, voices on the air, the princes landing. Or was it all a hoax just to impress?”
Mad opened the garden gate and they passed inside. “I don’t know,” she said. “But when we looked through the window he had the earphones over his head and a gun by his side. He didn’t expect us. It wasn’t rehearsed.”
The house stood out before them, dependable, solid, everything about it homely and safe, lacking only Joe and Terry to give final assurance.
“Then you do believe him?” Emma asked.
“I neither believe nor disbelieve,” Mad answered. “Taffy’s a mountebank, so am I. Rogues, vagabonds, strolling players, we’re all alike. Politicians too. The original mountebank was the Pied Piper, who first of all led the rats out of town, and then the children. Who follows depends upon the tune.”
She slid the doors into the porch and walked up the steps through to the hall. Everything was as they had left it. Only Folly had moved and was waiting on the mat, tail slowly wagging, tongue hanging from a salivary jaw.
“I think,” said Emma, “that’s the most immoral thing I’ve ever heard you say. You imply that nothing is ever true, that we are all misled, that each one of us, guilty or innocent, follows some will o’ the wisp and then vanishes off the face of the earth forevermore?”
“That’s right,” Mad replied, patting Folly’s sleek head and submitting to a wet caress.
“In that case…” Emma looked about her, the one candle, left by the faithful Dottie, throwing a doubtful light on familiar things, “why do any of us bother, what’s the point of living, why… why…” she searched desperately for an answer to questions never before put, “why didn’t you just go on acting until you dropped, instead of living here in retirement and adopting the six boys?”
“Ah,” said Mad, kicking off her boots, “that was just a sop to appease my ego. Haven’t I told you I always wanted seven sons? Listen…”
She lifted her head. The silence was broken, as it had not been for several days and nights, by the sound of aircraft passing overhead.
22
Something was happening. Above them in the air, and out at sea. Gunfire, explosions, depth-charges, all of these things or none of them, they couldn’t tell. Lights flashing on the horizon, lights in the sky. A stench of chemical or oil. No brewing of cocoa this time, no sitting chatting round the kitchen table. They dragged mattresses to the basement and spread them out over the flags, not seeking to rekindle the ashes in the old grate because smoke might attract attention, and the only thing anybody wanted was to stay hidden. Dottie, her back to the wall, a pillow between her and the cold plaster, rocked Ben to sleep. Colin, who at first had shaken from head to foot like someone with high fever, calmed down when Sam hit upon the right solution, which was to stuff his ears with cotton wool and tie a scarf around his eyes.
“It works with animals,” Sam explained. “If a stable catches fire you bandage the horse’s eyes, so it must work with humans too.”
The practical measure diverted attention from the terror outside, and after a while imagination brought its own reward. “I’m a very old man,” said Colin. “I’m a very old man starving in a city where they’ve just had an earthquake,” and he smiled as Emma wrapped a blanket round his shoulders, and took off the bandage covering his eyes, but kept the cotton wool in his ears. Sam himself was preoccupied with the needs of Folly, the squirrel, the pigeon, and a new addition, a very old and quarrelsome rook which had tumbled down the chimney of his and Andy’s room. Andy was on duty at the cellar door, bow in hand, a sheaf of arrows slung across his shoulder. Mad had given him permission.
“If we’re attacked I’ll stand by your side and fight with you,” she said, “and anyway, we’re all together. What a good way to go!”
The thundering of aircraft flying low overhead, the explosions out at sea, and at times the shaking of the walls themselves seemed to threaten not only the roof and the upper floors but the foundations themselves. When this happened Ben stirred in his sleep and clung to Dottie, Colin trembled again, and Andy, with a grinding of teeth and a sigh of exasperation, fixed an arrow at the ready, pointing it at the cellar door and the non-existent foe without. The transistor radio brought no news: the battery was not yet dead, but no voice came from the regional station, nor from any other. Someone spoke from a German source, but nobody understood what he was saying, and a French voice, caught for an instant with the words “On dit que les associés de l’USUK sont maintenant…” was instantly jammed.
“The associates of USUK are now”… what?
Emma looked at her grandmother. Mad was asleep. The night wore on, the children creeping closer to the adults, the adults creeping closer to one another, and even Andy finally slumped to his knees and lay with his bow beside him, the arrow-sheaf for pillow.
Ben was the first to awake, belly empty, demanding food. “He’s not meek,” Emma thought, wrenching open her reluctant eyes, “he won’t inherit the earth.” Ben, indeed, was the only one to look round about him with an air of cheerful confidence, having slept well, and because he was black he showed little outward sign of strain or weariness, whereas his white companions looked like little old men, gray with fatigue, bags beneath their eyes. And the adults… Poor Dottie, poor Mad. Old women with no future, humped, chins dropping. And myself, Emma thought, I know how I look too, and how I feel, a jaundiced yellow, streaky hair, a furry tongue, and frightened still.
She glanced at her watch. It had stopped just after three, she had forgotten to wind it. The light was gray, seeping in through the small basement windows. It must be seven, perhaps later. Ben, fumbling with his brief shorts, looked enquiringly at her. She put her fingers to her lips. It didn’t matter about the boys, but Mad and Dottie must sleep on. Ben grinned, and scrambling to the far end of the cellar made water onto a pile of logs. This is what we shall all be doing, she thought, if it continues, if the rumbles in the distance never cease, for, although the house no longer shook, somewhere, higher than it had been during the night, aircraft were flying, but in what direction, whether inland or out to sea, it was impossible to tell.
Ben pottered to and fro, chewing an apple he had found on the shelf wher
e Joe had stored them, yet keeping silent, intuition warning him, perhaps, that this was no ordinary morning, when he could joke and play with Colin, adding new words to his vocabulary. If we none of us had woken up, Emma thought, but only Ben, he would have fed himself on apples and raw beetroot, and played alone, and somehow got through the day on his own until he felt sleepy again, when he would have yawned and tumbled down in a heap by Dottie’s side, the very fact that she was there bringing security. Looking at the sleeping figures, Mad, Dottie, the three boys, the morning light so slowly invading the dark room, she thought that this was how a chamber of the dead must look when discovered by archaeologists after centuries, the only difference being that those who lay buried would be priests or kings or queens, with jewels upon them, and anyone who ventured into the basement of Trevalan after a thousand years would think they had stumbled upon the skeletons of peasants. Folly too, her muzzle between her paws, might be the guardian hound that, cast in gold, guarded Egyptian tombs.
The curious smell, half-chemical, half-oily, which she had noticed the night before seemed more obtrusive now. She got up silently and peered into the narrow court beyond the cellar. In winter abandoned because it had no sun, in summer Dottie used to hang washing out to dry between two posts. A robin was lying dead on the cobbled stones. Something for Sam to bury, she thought with pity, and then… the night had not been cold, why had it died? The light became more gray, more pallid, and wiping the streaky window she saw the sea mist drifting into the court, masking the trees above, and with each passing vapor the smell of oil became stronger, more pungent, coming inland from the sea. Had it happened? Had it started? Had it come at last, the chemical warfare people had warned one another about for years? Was the robin lying there one of the victims? Why were Mad and Dottie and the boys sleeping so heavily? Why did the air itself seem more oppressive in the old basement kitchen than it had been when they all descended to it the night before?
This was it. Not nuclear power but something more silent, more insidious, set loose upon the air from pilotless planes and coming in vaporous form to fall upon the land, to seep into cracks between windows, cracks in walls, down chimneys, up through drains, until breathing was stifled, the good air turned to poison, the heart burst…