‘Come on,’ said Mill grumpily after a moment’s adjustment, and bidding that I follow her. By then you could just see your way in early daylight, the residents of the corridors stirring or rising for the fields.
‘They get up early, don’t they,’ I noted, Zak reacting to my chummy tone in surprise.
‘We fell back into Medieval pattern,’ started Mill. ‘There’s not much to do after dark around here.’
We got to the locked internal door of the old reception, beyond which Wareing was clearly moving around in even more discomfort than I had felt upon my waking.
‘Those pills half-kill you,’ I said, ‘and he had had two of them.’
‘Three actually.’
‘He needs water,’ I found myself imploring.
Zak, upon a look from Mill, thrust a re-used litre milk carton into my hand, saying,
‘Give him this and get him up…’
‘…and then get ready to get out of here.’ Mill’s tone since leaving her room had shocked me, she being so friendly mere seconds before. Zak opened the old reception door, and then watched me the entire time I sat with Wareing. I chivvied my companion up and gave him the water,
‘Wareing, wake up. It’s okay, it’s okay.’
‘Where are we, God I can’t…’
‘Here, drink this, all of if, till you feel sick and then keep drinking.’
‘But what are we..?’
‘Look, just get drinking…’
‘Where are we?’
‘Still at the Council House. It’s okay. Let’s get up and out of here, and then I’ll tell you everything.’
Seeing his state, I realised I was far from one hundred percent myself. Those pills were nasty little things, toxic I was sure. For myself, thinking back, I wasn’t sure I had been quite clear-headed my entire time in that building.
After he’d necked half the water though, Wareing began to gather himself,
‘We’re at the Council House, yes, I remember that much. They did something to us? They knocked us out?’
Casting a wary glance at Zak behind the glass, Wareing following my gaze, I only said as little as I thought I could get away with,
‘They don’t trust strangers, they wanted to be sure of us, they drugged our drinks I think when we first arrived. But it’s okay, the basement rooms are all empty, there’s nothing to stay for.’
‘How do you know?’
‘They told me.’
‘When?’
‘Just now. I woke before you.’
‘How long before?’
‘Just now. They know about the rooms, they’ve always known. They’ve been safe for years.’
‘So they told you? But we need to check.’ He started to get up, though not to leave.
‘I’ve seen them,’ I had to say. ‘They took me down there.’
‘They took you down..? But…’
‘I told you, I was up before you.’
He gave me there such a glare of half-awake mistrust.
‘Look, come on,’ I urged, ‘finish your water, and I’ll get you more for the journey. We’ve got to get off.’
The sun was rising quickly and the place was waking up, the courtyard outside alive with people. Some were carrying food or drinks, others bringing out spades and forks in barrows. One of the retiring night watch startled us by knocking at the old reception door and clanking his keys against the glass. Zak, from behind the other doors, nodded his assent to the man who then unlocked them.
Wareing held his head in his hands,
‘God, I feel like hell.’
I remembered that Wareing had had three times my dose and had been left without water for twice as long; nor had he had the benefit of a meal.
‘Let’s have you up,’ I encouraged, as good as hauling my partner out of the sleeping bag he had at least been put in, and onto his feet.
‘Stop,’ he called. ‘I need to see the rooms. I’m going to tell them I need to see them.’
‘No, we’re not going down there, we’re coming out this way.’ It was only as I tried to get him walking that I felt my own bruises, and so remembered how injured we both were before even being poisoned and left in that place. Was that my penance for imagined sins, I wondered, to have the responsibility of getting Wareing out of there, he still confused and half-dead to the world? And, as was surely to come, to be the one to have to explain all this to him; or rather, come up with the story that would least inflame him? I wanted to look back to find Mill, but knew I’d only see Zak with his gun pointed.
The glass doors now unlocked, at gunpoint the pair of us made our staggered way across the carpark; every man and woman there turning to see us, and at their liberty to imagine the transgression that was seeing us escorted off the premises. Wareing eased up once his legs were moving – thank God the grogginess of those pills did fade with water – and was almost under his own steam by the time we reached the sandbagged archway through which robust vehicles were also leaving.
Outside the building, though with Zak’s gun tucked away, the scene was little different. As we walked on into the town we were surrounded by happy, hearty agriculturalists displaying such remarkable ease that you could imagine it was prevalent throughout the country still. Some gave us curious glances, for we must have looked quite odd, yet most just smiled and carried on doing what they were doing. I wondered if any of them knew what had happened, or thought us just a pair of drunks being escorted off site by Zak, who’s footfalls (though never too closely) were ever behind us.
A fear suddenly came to me that we were being taken away to be killed. A man with a rake over his shoulder crossed our path and smiled. Such things couldn’t happen here, could they? With every relaxed gardener who sauntered by I felt more like Edward Woodward out of his depth on Christopher Lee’s island.
Once away from the centre of the commune’s activities and at the threshold of the town itself, then I felt less self-conscious. We were led towards a shopping area, quite deserted now, the shopfronts all looted, some boarded. Seeing our bags there waiting for us was proof that we were being let go.
We hadn’t had a chance to unpack our packs before collapsing, though I noticed then as I collected them up how both were left undone after Zak’s (and I guessed Mill’s) rifling. Also on the tarmac were our confiscated items; and what a motley collection of belongings there were: just some iodine water, first aid, food packets from the London base, a few maps and papers, our jimmies, knives… and the small grey packs of charges and timers that had caused all the trouble.
The presence of Jack Berne waiting for us there was also reassuring, for all the disappointment in his gaze. He seemed to bear the look of fathomless sadness that only the losing of your whole family could generate in a man.
‘Now look here,’ began Wareing, still not seeing how things were going to work out for us, ‘I demand to see those rooms, you hear?’
But it was Zak, who with Mill had moved to stand beside Jack Berne, who spoke,
‘If we see you again, we’ll shoot on sight. Fair warning?’
I nodded; while Jack Berne merely looked on with an air of infinite disappointment. At least he bore none of the ambiguity of Mill though, who said quietly as we left,
‘You have no idea of how close you came, do you.’
Those there, myself included, might have thought this a lament at how close we came to causing irreparable damage to their project. Yet after an hour of the panicked marching that followed, I realised that I, myself, Crofts, not Wareing, had done something quite specific to disappoint her. After two hours, I further realised that this disappointment had been expressed by her more in sadness that annoyance; and by the time we’d passed what must surely by then have been the extent of their lands, and had crashed out amid trees to sleep properly at last, finally appreciated that I had been alone with her in her room, had been lain on her bed, had had her singing to me about wanting to be a woman… in short, had been presented with a rare and unlikely-to-be-repeated opportunity, and
had failed to see or seize it.
That afternoon, as Wareing slept and even I managed a fitful catnapping, she was all that I could think about. With the hours of marching ahead, I would have time to repent at my leisure how this life we were living had blunted my senses, had left me with too much else to think about, had had me miss a main chance as clear as that with which any man may be presented. Not even the facts of our being drugged and imprisoned that same night were reasons enough for me to go easy on myself or to justify my lack of awareness, wits, response, and action – not when so much of life was instant, and our instant responses what counted.
Nor did it seem to matter that, even had I jumped up and swept her off her feet in the few seconds I had been granted in which to act, that Zak would still have been at her door a moment later to interrupt us, and so bring the whole hateful world outside crashing into our stolen hour. No, none of that made any difference to my thinking – a gesture had been made and I had not responded; and now that was that.
I just want to be a woman… I found the words going through my head, resolving upon my return to France (for how long could it be now?) that I would find this record out and hold it as a keepsake; a bittersweet reminder not even of what might have been, but only of a moment I didn’t appreciate at the time, of a chance I was always set to miss.
Chapter 21 – Together Alone