The Guardians

  Sir Percy presented Rob with a small silver medal.

  “Nice shooting, boy,” he said. “You stand well. I suppose you’ve done quite a bit of archery out in Nepal?”

  It would have been nice to be able to say that he had never seen a bow or arrows until three months ago.

  “A bit, sir.”

  “Keep it up. You’ve the makings of a bowman.”

  Mike congratulated him heartily enough. Later, though, he returned to the subject in a slightly different mood. He was not carping or resentful, more bewildered. He did not put it like that but he was plainly surprised that Rob should have beaten him—should beat him in anything. The pupil had surpassed the instructor and it puzzled him. It occurred to Rob that the whole enterprise—of taking in the fugitive boy from the Conurb and passing him off as gentry—had been a sort of sport to Mike; and he had thought of Rob as an object in the sport rather than as a person in his own right. Now, through having to give best to him in this one small thing, he was being forced to look at him differently, with respect even.

  Rob resented this a bit. If he had thought about it he would have expected Mike to regard himself as superior, but it was not something he had thought about. Nor wanted to now. And yet it was better in the open—and he had beaten him at archery. He had shown he was not just someone to be helped, on a whim.

  • • •

  That evening, as they lay in their tent in the dusk, watching the bats swoop across the sky outside, Mike asked Rob questions. They were questions about his earlier life, about the Conurb. It was something he had not done before. Like everyone else in the County he knew a little about the Conurb: enough to be contemptuous of it. It was the place of the mob, where people dashed around in electrocars, crowded together like sardines, listened to raucous pop music, watched holovision and the bloodthirsty Games—for the most part watched the Games on holovision. It was the place where everyone ate processed foods and liked them, where there were riots and civil disturbances, where no one knew how to behave properly, how to dress or exchange courtesies, how to speak English even. It was the place one knew existed and, apart from thanking God one did not have to live there, preferred to forget.

  The questions were particular rather than general—about Rob’s family, people he had known, the boys at school. Of Rob’s father, he said, “After your mother died, he must have been lonely.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “I wonder if he ever wanted to come over to the County? He had been here, when he met your mother.”

  It was something that had not occurred to Rob. It could be true. He had imagined his mother pining for the life she had known as a girl, but his father had experienced it too, even though briefly. When she died, and afterward, he must have thought about those days, and wished them back.

  “There’s no interchange at all now,” Mike said, “apart from the Commuters. Conurbans are not allowed to come into the County. Why is that?”

  “They don’t want to come.”

  “You did.”

  Rob could hardly say he was different from the rest. Immodesty, by the standards of the County, was one of the deadlier sins. “If they did come they would make a pretty unpleasant mess of things, wouldn’t they? Sixty millions of them . . . with holiday camps and electrocars and community singing and riots when they got drunk . . .”

  “Not all of them, of course. A few, perhaps.”

  “There’s no such thing as a few in the Conurbs,” Rob said. “They aren’t happy unless they’re all doing the same thing at the same time.”

  He surprised himself by the intensity with which he said that. He reminded himself that he had lived in the Conurb and had not been, until his father’s death, unhappy there. He had not realized how accustomed he had grown to this easier and more luxurious life until Mike’s questions recalled the old one.

  “That’s what I’ve always thought,” Mike said, “but is it true? The people you’ve been talking about—they don’t sound all that different from people here. Might there not be some who would like to live in another way but don’t know how to set about it? Like your father, perhaps.”

  Rob rolled over in the sleeping bag which had been bought for him for this trip. It was identical with the one Mike had. The glow of satisfaction that remained from his archery success was mixed with a pleasant tiredness.

  “Nothing anyone can do about it, anyway,” he said, yawning.

  “I suppose not,” Mike replied. “All the same . . .”

  Rob drifted into sleep.

  • • •

  They went to school together in September. It centered around an ancient abbey which had ceased to be a religious foundation at the time of Henry VIII but kept many of the original features including a Gothic chapel with very old stained glass in the windows. Boarding houses and other necessary departments which had been built nearby harmonized with it. They were no more than fifty years old but looked five hundred. The group stood in a quiet valley in green rolling country, with a view on clear days of the distant Welsh mountains.

  The school had come to its present position from what was now a part of the Conurb, and boarding houses were named after landmarks in the old city. There were Cathedral, Westgate, Itchen, St. Cross, Chesil, and one simply called College in which Rob joined Mike.

  He was apprehensive and uneasy at the beginning, but it was not as bad as he had expected. Life was arduous, but tolerable and in some ways enjoyable. They were awakened even earlier than at the boarding school and went out, in all weathers, for a two-mile run, dressed only in shorts and running shoes. Returning, they showered in stinging cold water. This was followed by an hour and a half of lessons before breakfast, by which time they were all ravenously hungry.

  The day was filled with lessons and duties, and infringements of discipline were sharply punished, often by beating with canes. In some ways discipline was more severe here because there were a thousand minor rules you could break, not always realizing you were doing so. There were certain liberties of dress and behavior which went by seniority. At the junior level life followed complicated paths and patterns.

  The difference between the two places was not easy to grasp at first, but it was distinct. Gradually Rob worked it out as having to do with pride and self-respect. At the boarding school there had been nothing to make up for the hardships. The whole aim had been to grind you down to submissiveness. Here there was a sense of being trained, and trained for eventual authority. This was shown over meals, for example. When, after the run and the cold shower and the early morning lessons, the boys went into the dining room for breakfast they had to sit on hard wooden benches. The food, though ample and well cooked, was plain. But it was brought to the tables by servant girls. They belonged to a special, privileged group, and this was never allowed to be forgotten.

  Mike did his best to help Rob fit in with things, but a lot had to be learned by experience. The habit Rob had formed during his months with the Giffords of watching people, anticipating things they might do or say and being ready to respond, proved an advantage. He worked out the right procedures and did his best to follow them. Quite soon he found himself fitting in, accepting and being accepted. At the beginning some of the boys asked him questions about Nepal but he had no difficulty in coping with them and after a time they stopped. He made friends apart from Mike: they were in different classes for most things.

  Games were important. They played a different kind of football from that in the Conurb: the ball was oval instead of round and you were allowed to pick it up and run with it. It was a rougher, more bruising game, and Rob found he could play quite well. Mike and he were both picked for the first junior house match after a few weeks, Mike as a forward and Rob in the more prominent position of wing three-quarter. It was a hard game which their side won. Afterward they walked back across the muddy field together in the direction of the changing rooms. Rob was talking about the match and Mike made abstracted responses. Then he said, “You played football
in the Conurb, didn’t you? What they call soccer?”

  Rob glanced around quickly but there was no one near.

  “Yes. I like this better.”

  “It’s a funny thing . . . Did you know that in the old days, when the school was inside what’s now the Conurb, we played soccer? Most public schools played rugby but we didn’t.”

  “Really?” Rob said, but without much interest.

  “Why the change?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “It was a school tradition and you know what this place is like about traditions. It changed that one though. Because soccer is a Conurb game and we musn’t do anything the same as they do?”

  Rob shrugged. “I suppose it could be.”

  “But why? Why do all these differences have to be created and maintained?”

  They walked on in silence. Mike had periods of moodiness and Rob had discovered it was better to pay as little attention to them as possible. Increasingly, since the day of the archery contest, they had involved questionings and criticisms of things which no one, Rob felt, could do anything about. It was not that the present mood seemed unfriendly. If anything there was a feeling of closeness, as though Mike were letting him in on an important part of himself, of the way he thought.

  Mike said abruptly, “You know Penfold?”

  Rob knew him by sight. He was a senior boy, in his final year; not a prefect though one would have thought that he ought to have been. He was tall and lanky, with an ugly but distinctive face. He had been good at games but had stopped playing them. He had also won an Oxford scholarship.

  “Yes,” Rob said.

  “He was telling me about it. There’s a group of chaps who meet in his study and talk. Do you feel like coming along after supper?”

  Rob hesitated. It was not just that Penfold was odd, thought by both masters and boys to be in some way unreliable. It was also true that juniors were not encouraged to mix with senior boys. They would not be breaking an actual rule but it meant going against custom and one did not do that lightly. On the other hand he could hardly refuse the suggestion when Mike put it this way.

  “All right,” he said. “If you like.”

  • • •

  Penfold’s study was about eight feet square, bare except for bed, small wardrobe, table and single chair. Ten boys crowded it badly. Some sat on the bed, others on the floor or leaning against the wall. Penfold himself sat on the window ledge looking in to them. He spoke in a rapid, slightly hectoring voice.

  “The point we have to start from is the realization that we’re all conditioned—that we live in the most conditioned society the world has ever known. We have our special position drilled into us from childhood. The servants here in the County are taught to despise the Conurbans and the Conurbans despise them in return. They never meet—they each know scarcely anything about the way the other lives—but they despise them all the same. And we are the privileged ones at the top of the pyramid.

  “The actual difference in classes is not new. There always have been a privileged few and an unprivileged mass, and there have always been people willing to accept a position as servants of the few and think themselves lucky on account of it. But now we have an absolute division: gentry and their servants on the one hand, Conurbans on the other. The Commuters regard themselves as gentry and look forward to the time when they can retire inside the County and not have to go back to the Conurbs. There are two worlds, with a barrier between them. The barrier may not be strong in the physical sense but in people’s minds it’s enormous. We the rulers and they the ruled, and never the twain shall meet.”

  A boy called Logan who was almost as old as Penfold asked, “What do you want us to do about it?”

  “Change it,” Penfold said.

  “Just like that?” Logan laughed. “Tall order.”

  “There are two ways in which societies can be changed,” Penfold said. “If the masses are badly enough treated they may be forced into some kind of revolt. That’s the desperate way and there’s not much chance of it happening at present. The Conurbans aren’t starved or ill treated. They get their bread and circuses like the citizens of Rome used to in the days of the Roman Empire. And there’s butter and jam on the bread and you can see the circuses without stirring from your armchair, 3-D on holovision. The Conurbans won’t start any revolutions.”

  Someone said, “They have riots, don’t they?”

  “So I believe. Safety valves to let off steam, and police enough to handle them comfortably. It’s all cleverly worked out. Like the life we lead here in the County. We don’t have holovision. That’s for the vulgar lower classes, for the Conurbans who don’t know how to occupy their empty lives. Or is it because we and they mustn’t be allowed to share anything? As far as we’re concerned the clock stopped just before the sun went down on the British Empire. We’ll go on living forever in the afternoon glow—with horses and carriages, servants by the dozen, ladies in silk dresses and port and cigars after dinner.”

  He spoke with scathing contempt. A boy called Rowlands said, “Don’t see much wrong with it.”

  “Don’t you?”

  Logan said, “You spoke of two ways of changing things. What’s the other?”

  “It’s always been the more effective one,” Penfold said. “It’s done by the people inside the ruling class who realize that the system is rotten. They get together and do something about it.”

  “Such as?”

  “Persuading. Agitating.” Penfold paused. “Using force if necessary.”

  “How do we start?” Rowlands asked. “By hanging the Head Man from the flagpost?”

  The reference to the headmaster caused some amusement. Rob wondered if any of those present took Penfold seriously in the smallest degree. It was, of course, quite ludicrous to think of schoolboys going out and starting a revolution.

  “We start by preparing ourselves,” Penfold said. His voice sounded strained. “There are others who think the same way. Older people.”

  “Do you know any?”

  Penfold hesitated. “Yes.”

  “Well, who?”

  He stared around the crowded room. “I don’t want to say at this stage.”

  There was another ripple of scornful laughter. He had lost them, Rob saw. Most of them, at least. He noticed Mike had not been laughing.

  Logan said, “What it seems to boil down to is this: ninety-nine percent or more are happy with the way things are. The Conurbans are happy, the Commuters are happy, our servants are happy, and most of us aren’t complaining. You want us to go out and bust everything up. Why? So that we can go into the Conurbs? Hands up those who want crowds, street rioting and mass living in general. Not even you, Penfold? So that the Conurbans can come over here? With no holovision? They’d go mad inside a couple of days. All right, say it’s true we’re kept apart. We can’t go there and they can’t come here. But neither of us wants to. Are you going to launch a revolution to force us to do what we don’t want to do?”

  “You don’t understand,” Penfold said.

  “Fair enough,” Logan said. “You explain.”

  “I’m not saying most people aren’t reasonably contented . . .”

  “But you want them to be discontented? Is that it?”

  “In a way, yes.”

  A hoot of laughter made Penfold stop. It was several moments before he could go on. “Being discontented is a part of being free. And we aren’t free—that’s what I’m trying to say.”

  “Free to talk bilge,” Rowlands said. “I’ve had enough of this lot.”

  • • •

  Rob and Mike shared a study-bedroom. They did not say much on the way back. When they were inside, though, Mike said, “What did you think?”

  “About Penfold? I wasn’t all that impressed. What Rowlands said at the end made sense. Nobody stops him talking like that, so what’s all this about people not being free?”

  “They don’t mind as long as it’s only talk.”

&n
bsp; “They?”

  “The government.”

  “Well, if it is only talk, what’s the use of it?”

  “If there were more than that . . .”

  “What do you mean?”

  “In confidence. All right?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “There are others, outside the school. Penfold’s in touch with them. That thing tonight . . . it was just a blind, and a way of finding those who might be sympathetic. The real thing is different, a proper organization.”

  “Penfold told you this?” Mike nodded. “Do you believe him?”

  “Yes. His brother’s part of it. He’s been out in the China War. He came back at the beginning of the year.”

  “It’s still ridiculous,” Rob said.

  “You could find out.”

  “Find out what?”

  “Whether it’s ridiculous or not. By coming in. You’d have to take an oath of secrecy, of course.”

  He began to see that Mike was serious about this. The idea itself was nonsense but Mike believed in it. He hesitated, then said, “I don’t think I would be much use.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. You know the Conurb. There are all sorts of ways in which you could be useful. If for no other reason than because you would be demonstrating that Conurbans are people just like us, that the picture the gentry have of them as an ignorant mass, as sub-men almost, is quite wrong.” He spoke earnestly. “You could help a lot, Rob.”

  “And if things don’t work out—if it gets squashed? What then?”

  Mike shrugged. “It’s a chance we have to take.”

  “It’s not quite the same chance, though, is it? The men might get sent to prison. They probably wouldn’t bother with boys. Not if everything else was all right. But it’s obvious what would happen to me: I’d be sent back to the Conurb.”

  Mike was silent. Rob was getting ready to say something else when Mike said, “You’re right. I hadn’t thought of that. In your case it’s too much to ask.”

  He was relieved that Mike had accepted it so easily. At the same time he felt guilty. Without Mike he would not be here, safe in the County. He could not have survived and escaped capture on his own. He started to argue, not about the particular point but about the whole idea. Since nearly everyone was satisfied it was lunatic to want to upset everything on the whim of a few. And even more lunatic to think there was any chance of a revolt succeeding. How could it?