As for myself, I would be busy these six years. Never properly assigned to London Station, I found myself moved anywhere they needed extra men: among other things becoming a part of the first convoy to reach Glasgow. I got to see the operations of a dozen bases across Britain, but never one anywhere near the commune.
I spent a memorable season at an aid camp just along the coast from Portsmouth, watching streams of boats come in across the gleaming water, feeding those who having made their way coastward were then loath to turn back. There were volunteers who lived a mile out to sea along those pontoon harbours, not meeting dry land from one year to the next.
When I first arrived in Kent it was intended to be in a purely guarding capacity. However, I could sometimes find myself watching workers from around the world – eager, kind, tireless people – but who didn’t know one end of a shovel from the other. Having cut my teeth at the commune, I would find myself mucking in, showing them the ropes. Now, technically speaking this was against my remit, for doing so meant that I was leaving my watch, yet amongst the men, and later our commanders, I found myself typecast as ‘the one who knew about farming’ (which I did a bit); and so began to find myself retained on projects closer to the land. This somehow concluded with my being posted to one of a group of farms in Hampshire, and as a supervisor no less. I hoped that if Mill could’ve seen me that day then she would’ve been proud.
By this time things had calmed down for me, the moves became less frequent, and I spent what would be a whole farming cycle there, from early-spring to late-autumn. And that wasn’t all; for as a senior member of the community I had occasional use of an office with an Internet link! This felt like Concorde coming in to land, or men being back on the moon, some glint of the past caught in the corner of my eye, only when I turned it was still there, seen in full focus.
Now, one thing we had always had had been the post, at least if you lived on an Army base; and in the early days working out of London Station and of hoping to catch a lift up to the commune that never came, I had written Mill a necessarily important-sounding letter, and sent it by care of the motorway convoys. But you can guess that I was moved on before I might have received a reply. Now, with this technological assistance, I hoped I’d have a better chance, and I allowed myself to feel things I hadn’t done for years.
The PC in the office contained the Govt. Directory, an electronic version of the dusty books we used to sometimes find in the bunkers (and how like another life those subterranean days already felt, though they had been only a few short years before). There within the Govt. Directory sure enough, under Agricultural Centres (Independent) as opposed to those sub-categorised as (Main Scheme) was the name of the commune’s town, their phone number, their email address, and the contact name of Jack Berne. Not having a satellite phone at our facility, I sent them an email… and three days later she replied.
Forgive me if I take a moment out to gasp again as I did then.
She was well, she wrote. Had gotten my letter and had replied, and had had her letter come back to her, so knew I hadn’t received it. They were larger now, had an army presence after roving gangs had tried to sack the Council House, and had just recently welcomed twenty French civilian volunteers; who though they were there purely out of charity, she was happy to say worked just as hard as anyone else. She also told me that she hadn’t been more than five miles outside of the Council House in four years. It was getting that long.
Busy as hell, something new breaking every day and the land we managed stretching over fifteen miles, I was hardly ever at the office; but whenever I was there was always a message waiting.
She remarked how the new soldiers there wouldn’t be interested in her anyway as she must look forty.
I replied don’t tempt me, I hadn’t seen anyone looking that young in four years. (It was a fact we all looked dreadful.)
She said it was a shame, surrounded by soldiers now and none of them me.
I wrote that it might be different if we were married.
She replied that it might.
The email system was for official use only and so we were always cautious, although I knew of others who used it scurrilously. Not that I had the luxury of it for long before, of course, I was moved again. I sent Mill one last message explaining, and saying I would be in touch soon. I found Captain Linkater too under Main Personnel, and sent a message wishing him well; before I bid goodbye to Hampshire, and the team I’d got to know there.
As I mentioned, it was the towns still in walking distance of farmland and small enough to get started again, where society could flourish; and where other opportunities arose for me too. The Hampshire collective having being felt to have settled into its routine, I was co-opted instead into a new national scheme of ‘taming’ those stretches of prime farming land left ‘feral’ since E-Day, towns we knew to be alive but who were running things their own way. In my case, this was to be an area in the West Country, centred around a town of which traders told tales of ‘getting out of the place with empty hands and a lash across our backs’, and it was decided that they ought be brought under the authorities’ wing.
There were mixed feelings amongst the men and women I found myself working with: should the independent town be left alone? Or were these farmers really just protecting something? For it was well known that the traders’ interest had been sparked in the first place by the presence of a country house within the area. This was ‘A proper National Trust place’, as it had been described to me, which from a far hillside could be seen to be in good order, and so imagined to be filled with riches beyond measure. Was this really what was being defended?
Not that such quandaries mattered – the decision had been made, we went in the next week. The most startling thing about it all was the discovery that once in I was to be in charge of farming operations.
In the end, the farms were defended literally to the death. And as we pulled down the corrugated metal barriers and window shutters of the first farmhouse we met, the one they had enforced, I asked a woman there whether there was anyone at the ‘big house’, as it was called.
‘Go and ask them yourself!’ she shouted back, the bodies of her menfolk on the ground before us. These had been tough years.
And so I did ask, or would have, had there been anyone at the ‘big house’ to speak to when I reached it the next day. I was enquiring not only out of my own interest, but because our operations would need a base. Alas, the ‘big house’ though intact was standing empty, its doors wide open and everything of value taken in what seemed a careful removal. Animals had occupied the lower floors – I even startled a deer in the servants’ areas, it skipping out of another door open to the rear gardens. I didn’t like to leave the building like this, knowing the cold weather blowing through its unheated rooms would already have begun to harm the fabric. I imagined the building warmed, lit and full of people like the Council House; and we certainly had no shortage of those who wanted work and a roof.
As it was, another farm house was found more suitable for the headquarters; but as the man in charge I got my own room among the outbuildings – the loft of a converted barn, a mezzanine half the length of the structure and twelve feet high along the centre of the shallow-pointed roof. It had only three walls, but added privacy by dint of the fact that access was by a ladder from ground level. Up here then (for it is where I am now writing) was moved a bed, desk, chairs and cupboards, and the understanding given – for we all had more space than we could use – that this space was reserved for my solitary contemplations, and to be visited by appointment only. (You’ll guess too from the tone we were using that we were a good group with humour coming easy.)
Yet all this still wasn’t the most amazing thing. My role being often supervisorial, once the crew were in full swing I found I had free time for the first time in years. It felt selfish to think it, but I had earned these afternoons, coming up to my long room and just resting beneath the sun that poured in from slats openable on my level: this was
half a decade’s back pay and holiday coming all at once, and I was going to enjoy it.
After a while though it started to feel lazy, and I sought out other interests. I found my way back to the ‘big house’ and set about checking the rooms properly, and sealing up the few upper-floor windows that had been broken (I left the doors open though for the wildlife that found shelter there). Although the furniture and fittings were gone, some of what the thieves might have considered uninteresting was left, such as tools in the servant’s quarters (which helped with boarding up the windows), and a desk table too heavy to carry from its downstairs office. The desk’s drawers though were full of pens, paper and ink.
My best find though was the library, where bar a few gaps that I guessed had held volumes with gilt covers, almost all the books were still there. So I borrowed a handful, leaving a note of which titles I had taken for anyone who noticed they had gone. I think I did this more for myself than in the expectation that anyone would ever read the note. I was too tired of seeing theft and pillage everywhere, and so performed this small politeness for my own satisfaction.
Reading for an hour in the afternoons before we met for evening meals, I soon regained a taste for it lost even before E-Day, when army life had hardly left the time. And seeing those stories written down, those tales of long-lost ages (for even five years ago felt a lifetime) I got to thinking that I had a story of my own. And if ever an era needed recording…
Chapter 38 – The Mezzanine