John Christopher - The Death of Grass

“We’ll look after that when the time comes.”

“I can tell you how. By cannibalism. Are you looking forward to it?”

The leader himself was still contemptuously hostile, but there was some response, John thought, in the ranks behind him. He could not have had long to weld his band together; there would be cross-currents, perhaps counter-currents.

The man said: “Maybe we’ll have the taste for it by then. I don’t think as I could fancy you at the moment.”

“It’s up to you,” John said. He looked past him to where the women and children were; there were five women, and four children, their ages varying between five and fifteen. “Those who can’t find a piece of land which they can hold are going to end’ up by being savages—if they survive at all. That may suit you. It doesn’t suit us.”

“I’ll tell you what doesn’t suit me, mister—a lot of talk. I never had no time for gabbers {133} 133 gabbers: those who talk too much (slang) .”

“You won’t need to talk at all in a few years,” John said. “You’ll be back to grunts and sign language. I’m talking because I’ve got something to tell you, and if you’ve got any sense you will see it’s to your advantage to listen.”

“Our advantage, eh? It wouldn’t be yours you’re thinking about?”

“I’d be a fool if it wasn’t. But you stand to get more out of it. We want temporary help so that we can get to my brother’s place. We’re offering you a place where you can live in something like peace, and rear your children to be something better than wild animals.”

The man glanced round at his followers, as though sensing an effect that John’s words were having on them. He said:

“Still talk. You think we’re going to take you on, and find ourselves on a wild-goose chase up in the hills?”

“Have you got a better place to go to? Have you got anywhere to go to, for that matter? What harm can it possibly do you to come along with us and find out?”

He stared at John, still hostile but baffled. At last, he turned to his followers.

“What do you reckon of it?” he said to them.

Before anyone spoke, he must have read the answer in their expressions.

“Wouldn’t do any harm to go and have a look,” a dark, thickset man said. There was a murmur of agreement The red-faced man turned back to John.

“Right,” he said. “You can show us the way to this valley of your brother’s. We’ll see what we think of it when we get there. Where abouts is it, anyway?”

Unprepared to reveal the location of Blind Gill, or even to name it, John was getting ready an evasive answer, when Pirrie intervened. He said coolly:

That’s Mr Custance’s business, not yours. He’s in charge here. Do as he tells you, and you will be all right.”

John heard a gasp of dismay from Ann. He himself found it hard to see a justification for Pirrie’s insolence, both of manner and content; it could only re-confirm the leader of the other group in his hostility. He thought of saying something to take the edge off the remark, but was stopped both by the realization that he wouldn’t be likely to mend the situation, and by the trust he had come to have in Pirrie’s judgement. Pirrie, undoubtedly, knew what he was doing.

“It’s like that, is it?” the man said. “We’re to do as Custance tells us? You can think again about that I do the ordering for my lot, and, if you join up with us, the same goes for you.”

“You’re a big man,” Pirrie observed speculatively, “but what the situation needs is brains. And there, I imagine, you fall short.”

The red-faced man spoke with incongruous softness:

“I don’t take anything from little bastards just because they’re little. There aren’t any policemen round the corner now. I make my own regulations; and one of them is that people round me keep their tongues civil.”

Finishing, he tapped the revolver in his belt, to emphasize his words. As he did so, Pirrie raised his rifle. The man, in earnest now, began to pull the revolver out. But the muzzle was still inside his belt when Pirrie fired. From that short range, the bullet lifted him and crashed him backwards on the road. Pirrie stood in silence, his rifle at the ready.

Some of the women screamed. John’s eyes were on the men opposing him. He had restrained his impulse to raise his own shot-gun, and was glad to see that Roger also had not moved. Some of the other men made tentative movements towards their guns, but the incident had occurred too quickly for them, and too surprisingly. One of them half lifted a rifle; unconcernedly, Pirrie moved to cover him, and he set it down again.

John said: “It’s a pity about that.” He glanced at Pirrie. “But he should have known better than to try threatening someone with a gun if he wasn’t sure he could fire first. Well, the offer’s still open. Anyone who wants to join us and head for the valley is welcome.”

One of the women had knelt down by the side of the fallen man. She looked up.

“He’s dead.”

John nodded slightly. He looked at the others.

“Have you made up your minds yet?”

The thick-set man, who had spoken before, said:

“I reckon it were his own look-out. I’ll come along, all right. My name’s Parsons—Alf Parsons.”

Slowly, with an air almost ritualistic, Pirrie lowered his rifle. He went across to the body, and pulled the revolver out of the belt. He took it by the muzzle, and handed it to John. Then he turned back to address the others:

“My name is Pirrie, and this is Buckley, on my right. As I said, Mr Custance is in charge here. Those who wish to join up with our little party should come along and shake hands with Mr Custance, and identify themselves. All right?”

Alf Parsons was the first to comply, but the others lined up behind him. Here, more than ever, ritual was being laid down. It might come, in time, to a bending of the knee, but this formal hand-shake was as clear a sign as that would have been of the rendering of fealty {134} 134 fealty: loyalty (feudal tenants’ fidelity to the lord) .

For himself, John saw, it signified a new role, of enhanced power. The leadership of his own small party, accidental at first, into which he had grown, was of a different order from this acceptance of loyalty from another man’s followers. The pattern of feudal chieftain was forming, and he was surprised by the degree of his own acquiescence—and even pleasure—in it. They shook hands with him, and introduced themselves in their turn. Joe Harris… Jess Awkright… Bill Riggs… Andy Anderson… Will Secombe… Martin Foster.

The women did not shake hands. Their men pointed them out to him. Awkright said: “My wife, Alice.” Riggs said: “That’s my wife, Sylvie.” Foster, a thin-faced greying man, pointed: “My wife Hilda, and my daughter, Hildegard.”

Alf Parson said: “The other’s Joe Ashton’s wife, Emily. I reckon she’ll be all right when she’s got over the shock. He never did treat her right.”

All the men of Joe Ashton’s party had shaken hands.

The elderly man of the first party stood at John’s elbow.

He said: “Have you changed your mind, Mr Custance? Can we stay with your lot?”

John could see now how the feudal leader, his strength an over-plus, might have given his aid to the weak, as an act of simple vanity. After enthronement, the tones of the suppliant beggar were doubly sweet It was a funny thing.

“You can stay,” he said. “Here.” He tossed him the shot-gun which he had been holding. “We’ve come by a gun after all.”

When Pirrie killed Joe Ashton, the children down by the wall had frozen into the immobility of watchfulness which had come to replace ordinary childish fear. But they had soon begun playing again. Now the new set of children drifted down towards them, and, after the briefest of introductions, joined in the playing.