John Christopher - The Death of Grass

“Go to sleep,” John said. “There’ll be time enough to think about your great-grandchildren.”

“Ghosts,” Roger said. “I see ghosts all round me tonight. The ghosts of my remote descendants, painted with woad {118} 118 woad: blue-black or green dye used by the Ancient Britons .”

John made no reply, but climbed up the embankment to his post on the line. When he looked back from the top, Roger was curled up, and to all intents asleep.

The sentry’s duty was to keep both sides of the line under observation, but the far side—the north—was more important owing to the fact that the main road lay in that direction. That was the sentry’s actual post, out of direct sight of the group of sleepers. John took up his position there. He lit a cigarette, guarding the glowing end against possible observation. He didn’t really think it was necessary, but it was natural to adapt old army tricks to a situation with so many familiar elements.

He looked at the small white cylinder, cupped in his hand. There was a habit that would have to go, but there was no point in ending it before necessity ended it for him. How long, he wondered, before the exploring Americans land at the forgotten harbours and push inland, handing out canned ham and cigars, and scattering Chung-Li immune grass seed on their way? In every little outpost, like Blind Gill, where the remnants of the British held out, something like that would be the common daydream, the winter’s tale. A legend, perhaps, that might spur the new barbarians at last across the western ocean, to find a land as rough and brutal as their own.

For he could no longer believe that there would be any last-minute reprieve for mankind. First China, and then the rest of Asia, and now Europe. The others would fall in their turn, incredulous, it might be, to the end. Nature was wiping a cloth across the slate of human history, leaving it empty for the pathetic scrawls of those few who, here and there over the face of the globe, would survive.

He heard a sound from the other side of the railway line, and moved warily across to investigate. As he reached the edge of the embankment, he saw that a slim figure was climbing the last few feet towards him. It was Millicent. She put a hand up to him and he grasped it.

He said: “What the hell are you doing?”

She said: “Ssh—you’ll wake everyone up.”

She looked down at the sleeping group below, and then moved across towards the sentry post. John followed her. He was reasonably certain what the visit promised. The calm effrontery of it made him angry.

“You’re not on duty for another couple of hours,” he said. “You want to go back and get some sleep. We’ve got a long day in front of us.”

She asked him: “Cigarette?” He took one from his case and gave it to her. “Mind lighting it?”

He said: “I don’t think it’s a good idea to show lights. Keep it under, and cover it with your hands when you inhale.”

“You know everything, don’t you?”

She bent down to his cupped hands to take the lighter’s flame. Her black hair gleamed in the moonlight He was not, he realized, handling the situation very well. It had been a mistake to give her the cigarette she asked for; he should have sent her back to bed. She straightened up again, the cigarette now tucked behind her curled fingers.

“I can do without sleep,” she said. “I remember one week-end I didn’t have three hours sleep between Friday and Monday. Fresh as a daisy after it, too.”

“You don’t have to boast. It’s stamped all over you.”

“Is it?” There was a pause. “What’s the matter with Ann?”

He said coldly: “You know as much as I do. I suppose it wouldn’t have affected you—either what happened or what she did afterwards.”

Complacently, she said: “There’s one thing about not having very high standards—you’re not likely to go off your rocker when you hit something nasty—either from other people or yourself.”

John drew on his cigarette. “I don’t want to talk about Ann. And I don’t want an affaire with you—do you understand that? I should think you would see that, quite apart from anything else, this isn’t the time for that sort of thing.”

“When you want a thing is the time to have it.”

“You’ve made a mistake. I don’t want it.”

She laughed; her voice was lower when she did so, and rather hoarse.

“Let’s be grown up,” she said. “I may make mistakes, but not about that sort of thing.”

“You know my mind better than I do?”

“I shouldn’t be surprised. I’ll tell you this much, Big Chief. If it had been Olivia who had paid you this little visit, you would have sent her back straight away, and no back-answers. And why are you talking in whispers, anyway? In case we make anyone wake up?”

He had not realized that he had dropped his voice. He spoke more loudly: “I think you’d better get back now, Millicent.”

She laughed again. “What would be so unreasonable about not wanting to wake people up? I don’t suppose they’re all as good at doing without sleep as I am. You rise too easily.”

“All right. I’m not going to argue with you. Just go back to bed, and forget all about it.”

She said obediently: “O.K.” She dropped her cigarette, half smoked, and trod it into the ground. “I’ll just try the spark test {119} 119 spark test: used to see if the sparking plug (in the internal combustion engine of a car) is firing properly. (Millicent uses the phrase when she is ‘testing’ John’s sexual response) , and if you don’t fire, I’ll go right down like a good little girl.”

She came towards him. He said: “Don’t be silly, Millicent.” She paused just short of him. “Nothing wrong with a goodnight kiss, is there?” She put herself in his arms. He had to hold her or let her fall, and he held her. She was very warm, and softer to hold than he would have expected. She wriggled slightly against him.

“Spark test satisfactory, I think,” she said.

They both turned at the sound of small stones falling. A figure rose above the embankment’s edge and stood facing them.

Pirrie tapped his rifle, which he held under his arm. He said reprovingly: “Even carrying this, I very nearly surprised you. You are not as alert as a good sentry should be, Custance.”

Millicent had disengaged herself. She said: “What do you think you’re doing, wandering around in the middle of the night?”

“Would it be altogether inappropriate,” Pirrie asked, “to put a similar question to you?”

She said scornfully: “I thought the eyeful you got the last time you spied on me had put you off. Or is that the way you get your kick {120} 120 kick: pleasure (slang) now?”

Pirrie said: The last several times, I have borne with the situation as the lesser evil. I will grant that you have been discreet Any action I might have taken could only have made my cuckoldry conspicuous, and I was always anxious to avoid that.”

“Don’t worry,” Millicent said. “I’ll go on being discreet.”

John said: “Pirrie! Nothing has happened between your wife and me. Nothing is going to. The only thing I am concerned with is getting us all safely to Blind Gill.”

In a musing tone, Pirrie said: “My natural inclination always was to kill her. But in normal society, murder is much too great a risk. I went so far as to make plans, and rather good ones, too, but I would never have carried them out.”

Millicent said: “Henry! Don’t start being silly.”

In the moonlight, John saw Pirrie lift his right hand, and rub the fingers along the side of his nose. He said sharply:

“That’s enough of that!”