The Children of Men

  He left them. The keys were easily found. Then he went back to the bedroom. “I’ll need a large suitcase. Have you one?”

  It was the woman who answered: “Under the bed.”

  He dragged it out. It was large but light, made only of cardboard reinforced at the corners. He wondered whether the remnants of torn sheet were worth taking. While he was hesitating, holding them in his hand, the man said: “Please don’t gag us. We won’t call out, I promise. Please don’t gag us. My wife won’t be able to breathe.”

  Theo said: “I’ll have to notify someone that you’re tied up here. I can’t do that for at least twelve hours, but I will do it. Are you expecting anyone?”

  The man, not looking at him, said: “Mrs. Collins, our home help, will be here at half past seven tomorrow. She comes early because she has another morning job after us.”

  “Has she a key?”

  “Yes, she always has a key.”

  “No one else is expected? No member of the family, for example?”

  “We have no family. We had a daughter but she died.”

  “But you’re sure Mrs. Collins will be here at half past seven?”

  “Yes, she’s very reliable. She’ll be here.”

  He parted the curtains of light flowered cotton and looked out into the darkness. All he could see was a stretch of garden and behind it the black outline of a hill. They could call out all night but it was unlikely that their frail voices would be heard. All the same, he would leave the television on as loudly as possible.

  He said: “I won’t gag you. I’ll leave the television on loudly so that no one will hear you. Don’t waste energy trying to shout. But you’ll be released when Mrs. Collins comes tomorrow. Try to rest, to sleep. I’m sorry I have to do this. You’ll get your car back eventually.”

  Even as he spoke it seemed a ridiculous and dishonest promise to make. He said: “Is there anything you want?”

  The woman said feebly: “Water.”

  The single word reminded him of his own thirst. It seemed extraordinary that, after the long hours of craving water, he could have forgotten his need even for a moment. He went into the bathroom, and taking a tooth mug, not even bothering to rinse it, gulped down cold water until his stomach could hold no more. Then he refilled the mug and went back to the bedroom. He raised the woman’s head on his arm and put the mug to her lips. She drank thirstily. The water spilled down the side of her face and on to the thin cardigan. The purple veins at the side of her forehead throbbed as if they would burst and the sinews of the thin neck were taut as cords. After she had finished he took a piece of linen and wiped her mouth. Then he refilled the glass and helped the husband to drink. He felt a strange reluctance to leave them. An unwelcome and malignant guest, he could find no appropriate words of farewell.

  At the door he turned and said: “I’m sorry I had to do this. Try to get some sleep. Mrs. Collins will be here in the morning.”

  He wondered whether he was reassuring them or himself. At least, he thought, they are together.

  He added: “Are you reasonably comfortable?”

  The silliness of the question struck him even as he asked it. Comfortable? How could they be comfortable, trussed up like animals on a bed so narrow that any movement might cause them to fall off. The woman whispered something which his ears couldn’t catch but which her husband seemed to understand. Stiffly he raised his head and looked straight at Theo who saw in the faded eyes a plea for understanding, for pity.

  He said: “She wants to go to the toilet.”

  Theo almost laughed aloud. He was an eight-year-old again hearing his mother’s impatient voice. “You should have thought of that before we started out.” What did they expect him to say? “You should have thought of that before I tied you up”? One of them should have thought of it. It was too late now. He had wasted too much time on them already. He thought of Julian and Miriam waiting in desperate anxiety in the shadow of the trees, ears strained for the approach of every car, pictured their disappointment as each one swept past. And there was so much still to be done: the car to be checked, the stores collected. It would take him minutes to untie these tight multiple knots and he hadn’t minutes to spare. She would have to lie there in her own mess until Mrs. Collins arrived in the morning.

  But he knew he couldn’t do it. Trussed and helpless as she was, stinking with fear, lying in rigid embarrassment, unable to meet his eyes, there was one indignity which he couldn’t inflict on her. His fingers began scrabbling at the taut cotton. It was even more difficult than he had expected and in the end he took the nail scissors and cut her loose, freeing her ankles and hands, trying not to notice the weals on her wrists. Getting her off the bed wasn’t easy; her brittle body, which had seemed as light as a bird, was now set in the rigor of terror. It was nearly a minute before she could begin her slow shuffle to the lavatory with his arm around her waist supporting her.

  He said, shame and impatience making his voice gruff: “Don’t lock the door. Leave it ajar.”

  He waited outside, resisting the temptation to pace the landing, his heartbeats thudding out the seconds which lengthened into minutes before he heard the flush of the cistern and slowly she emerged. She whispered: “Thank you.”

  Back in the bedroom, he helped her on to the bed, then ripped more lengths from the remainder of the sheet and bound her again, but this time less tightly. He said to her husband: “You’d better go too. You can hop there if I give you a hand. I’ve only time to free your hands.”

  But this was no easier. Even with his hands free and one arm resting across Theo’s shoulders the old man lacked the strength and balance to give even the smallest jump, and Theo had almost to drag him physically to the lavatory.

  At last he got the old man back on the bed. And now he must hurry. He had wasted too much time already. Suitcase in hand, he made his way quickly to the back of the house. There was a small kitchen, meticulously clean and tidy, an over-large refrigerator, and a small pantry leading from the kitchen. But the spoils were disappointing. The refrigerator, despite its size, held only a one-pint carton of milk, a packet containing four eggs, half a pound of butter on a saucer covered with foil, a slab of wrapped cheddar cheese and an opened packet of biscuits. In the freezer compartment above he discovered nothing but one small packet of peas and a slab of cod, frozen hard. The pantry was equally disappointing, yielding only a small quantity of sugar, coffee and tea. It was ridiculous that a house should be so underprovisioned. He felt a rush of anger against the old couple, as if his disappointment were their deliberate fault. Presumably they shopped once a week and he had been unlucky with the day. He grabbed everything, stuffing the provisions into a plastic bag. There were four mugs hanging on a stand. He took two and found three plates from a cupboard above the sink. From a drawer he took a sharp paring knife, a carving knife, three sets of table knives, forks and spoons; he put a box of matches in his pocket. Then he ran upstairs, this time to the front bedroom, where he lugged sheets, blankets and pillows from the bed. Miriam would need clean towels for the birth. He ran into the bathroom and found half a dozen towels folded in the airing cupboard. They should be enough. He stuffed all the linen into the suitcase. He had put the nail scissors in his pocket, remembering that Miriam had asked for scissors. In the bathroom cupboard he found a bottle of disinfectant and added that to his spoils.

  He could spend no further time in the house, but one problem remained: water. He had the pint carton of milk; that was hardly enough to satisfy even Julian’s thirst. He searched for a suitable container. Nowhere was there an empty bottle. He found himself almost cursing the old couple as he hunted feverishly for any kind of receptacle that would hold water. All he could find was a small thermos flask. At least he could take Julian and Miriam some hot coffee. He needn’t wait for the kettle to boil. Better to make it with hot tap-water, however odd the taste. They would be frantic to drink it immediately. That done, he filled the kettle and the only two saucepans he could find
which had close-fitting lids. They would have to be carried separately to the car, wasting more time. Last of all he again drank his fill from the tap, swilling the water over his face.

  On the wall just inside the front door was a row of coat-hooks. They held an old jacket, a long woollen scarf and two raincoats, both obviously new. He hesitated for only a second before taking them down and slinging them over his shoulder. Julian would need them if she were not to lie on damp ground. But they were the only new things in the house and stealing them seemed the meanest act of his petty depredations.

  He unlocked the garage door. The Citizen had only a small boot but he wedged the kettle and one of the saucepans carefully between the suitcase and the bedclothes and raincoats. The other saucepan, and the plastic bag containing the food and the mugs and cutlery he placed on the back seat. When he started the engine he found to his relief that it ran smoothly. The car had obviously been well maintained. But he saw that the tank was less than half full and that there were no maps in the pocket. Probably the old people only used the car for short journeys and for shopping. As he backed carefully into the drive, then closed the garage door behind him, he remembered that he had forgotten to turn up the volume on the television set. He told himself that the precaution was unimportant. With the house next door empty and the long garden stretching at the rear, the couple’s feeble cries were unlikely to be heard.

  As he drove he pondered the next move. To go on or to double back? Xan would know from Rolf that they planned to cross the border into Wales and find wooded country. He would expect the plan to be changed. They might be anywhere in the West Country. The search would take time even if Xan sent out a large party of the SSP or the Grenadiers. But he wouldn’t. This quarry was unique. If Rolf succeeded in reaching him without revealing his news until that vital, final encounter, then Xan too would keep it secret until its truth was verified. He wouldn’t risk Julian falling into the hands of an ambitious or unscrupulous SSP or Grenadier officer. And Xan wouldn’t know how little time he had if he were to be there for the birth. Rolf couldn’t tell him what he didn’t know. How far, too, did he really trust the other members of the Council? No, Xan would come himself, probably with a small and carefully selected band. They would succeed in the end; that was inevitable. But it would take time. The very importance and delicacy of the task, the need for secrecy, the size of the search party, all would militate against speed.

  So where and in what direction? For a moment he wondered whether it would be an effective ploy to double back to Oxford, hide in Wytham Wood, above the city, surely the last place which Xan would think of searching. Too dangerous a journey? But any road was dangerous and would be doubly so when the old people were discovered at seven-thirty and told their story. Why did it seem more hazardous to go back than to go on? Perhaps because Xan was in London. And yet for an ordinary fugitive London itself was the obvious place of concealment. London, despite its depleted population, was still a collection of villages, of secret alleyways, of vast, half-empty tower blocks. But London was full of eyes and there was no one there to whom he could safely turn, no house to which he had entry. His instinct—and he guessed it would be Julian’s—was to put as many miles as possible between them and London and to keep to the original plan to hide in deep and remote country. Every mile from London seemed a mile towards safety.

  As he drove along the mercifully deserted road, carefully, getting the feel of the car, he indulged a fantasy which he tried to convince himself was a rational, attainable aim. He pictured a woodman’s cottage, sweet-smelling, the resinous walls still holding the warmth of the summer sun, rooted as naturally as a tree in deep woodland under the sheltering canopy of strong, leaf-laden boughs, deserted years ago and now decaying, but with linen, matches, tinned food enough to provide for the three of them. There would be a spring of fresh water, wood they could gather for the fires when autumn gave way to winter. They could live there for months if necessary, perhaps even for years. It was the idyll which, standing beside the car at Swinbrook, he had mocked and despised, but now he took comfort in it, even while knowing that the dream was a fantasy.

  Somewhere in the world other children would be born; he made himself share Julian’s confidence. This child would no longer be unique, no longer in special danger. Xan and the Council would have no need to take him from his mother even if he were known to be the first-born of a new age. But all that was in the future and could be faced and dealt with when the time came. For the next few weeks the three of them could live in safety until the child was born. He could see no further and he told himself that he need see no further.

  31

  His mind and all his physical energies had for the last two hours been so fiercely concentrated on the task in hand that it hadn’t occurred to him that he might have difficulty in recognizing the fringes of the wood. Turning right from the lane on to the road, he tried to remember how far he had travelled before the taking the turning to the town. But the walk had in memory become a turbulence of fear, anxiety and resolution, of agonizing thirst, of panting breath and an aching side, with no clear recollection of distance or time. A small copse came into view on the left, seeming at once familiar, raising his spirits. But almost immediately the trees ended, giving way to a low hedge and open ground. And then there were more trees and the beginning of a stone wall. He drove slowly, his eyes on the road. Then he saw what he had both feared and hoped to see: Luke’s blood spattered on the tarmac, no longer red, a black splurge in the headlights, and to his left the broken stones of the wall.

  When they didn’t at once come forward out of the trees to meet him, he felt a moment of appalled anxiety that they weren’t there, that they had been taken. He drove the Citizen close against the wall, vaulted over and passed into the wood. At the sound of his footsteps they came forward and he heard Miriam’s muttered “Thank God, we were beginning to get worried. Have you got a car?”

  “A Citizen. That’s about all I have got. There wasn’t much to take in the house. Here’s a thermos of hot coffee.”

  Miriam almost snatched it from him. She unscrewed the top and poured the coffee carefully, every drop precious, then handed it to Julian.

  She said, her voice deliberately calm: “Things have changed, Theo. We haven’t much time now. The baby has started.”

  Theo said: “How long?”

  “You can’t always tell with a first labour. It might be only a few hours. It could be twenty-four. Julian’s in the very early stages but we have to find somewhere quickly.”

  And then, suddenly, all his previous indecision was swept away by a cleansing wind of certainty and hope. A single name came into his mind, so clearly that it was as if a voice, not his own, had spoken it aloud. Wychwood Forest. He pictured a solitary summer walk, a shadowed path beside a broken stone wall leading deep into the forest, then opening out into a mossy glade with a lake and, further up the path to the right, a wood-shed. Wychwood wouldn’t have been his first or an obvious choice: too small, too easily searched, less than twenty miles from Oxford. But now that closeness was an advantage. Xan would expect them to press on. Instead they would double back to a place he remembered, a place he knew, a place where they could be certain of shelter.

  He said: “Get in the car. We’re turning back. We’re making for Wychwood Forest. We’ll eat on the way.”

  There was no time for discussion, for weighing up possible alternatives. The women had their own immense preoccupation. It must be for him to decide when to go and how to get there.

  He had no real fear that they would again be attacked by the Painted Faces. That horror now seemed the fulfillment of his half-superstitious conviction at the start of the journey that they were destined for a tragedy as inescapable as its time and nature were unpredictable. Now it had come, had done its worst; it was over. Like an air-traveller, terrified of flying and expecting to crash each time his plane soared, he could rest knowing that the awaited disaster was behind him and that there were survi
vors. But he knew that neither Julian nor Miriam could so easily exorcise their terror of the Painted Faces. Their fear possessed the little car. For the first ten miles they sat rigid behind him, their eyes fixed on the road, as if expecting at every turn, at every small obstruction, to hear again the wild whoops of triumph, and to see the flaming torches and the glittering eyes.

  There were other dangers, too, and the one over-riding fear. They had no way of telling at what hour Rolf had actually left them. If he had reached Xan, the search for them might even now be under way, the road blocks being unloaded and dragged into place, the helicopters wheeled out and fuelled to await the first light of day. The narrow side roads twisting between straggling, untamed hedges and broken dry-stone walls seemed, perhaps irrationally, to offer their best hope of safety. Like all hunted creatures, Theo’s instinct was to twist and turn, to remain hidden, to seek the darkness. But the country lanes presented their own hazards. Four times, fearing the risk of a second puncture, he had to brake sharply at an impassable stretch of creviced tarmac and reverse the car. Once, soon after two o’clock, this manoeuvre was almost disastrous. The back wheels rolled into a ditch, and it took half an hour before his and Miriam’s joint efforts got the Citizen back on the road.

  He cursed the lack of maps but, as the hours wore by, the cloud-base cleared to reveal more clearly the pattern of the stars and he could see the smudge of the Milky Way and take his bearings from the Plough and the Pole Star. But this ancient lore was no more than a crude calculation of his route and he was in constant danger of getting lost. From time to time a signpost, stark as an eighteenth-century gallows, would rear up out of the darkness and he would make his careful way over the broken road towards it, half-expecting to hear the clank of chains and see a slowly twisting body with its elongated neck, while the pinpoint of light from the torch, like a searching eye, traced the half-obliterated names of unknown villages. The night was colder now, with a foretaste of winter chill; the air, no longer smelling of grass and sun-warmed earth, stung his nostrils with a faint antiseptic tang, as if they were close to the sea. Each time the engine was switched off the silence was absolute. Standing under a signpost whose names might as well have been written in a foreign language, he felt disorientated and alienated, as if the dark, desolate fields, the earth beneath his feet, this strange, unscented air, were no longer his natural habitat and there was no security or home for his endangered species anywhere under the uncaring sky.