John Christopher - The Death of Grass

David said: “This is serious. Can’t you fool him somehow?”

“Fool him? Not Pirrie.” John looked away, up the long vista of Blind Gill, snug beneath its protecting hills. He said slowly: “If you turn those others down, you’re turning us down—you’re turning Davey down.”

“This man, Pirrie… I might persuade them to let one other in with you. Can he be bribed?”

“Undoubtedly. But the idea will have entered the heads of the others by now—particularly since I shall have to tell them they can’t just walk in as they had been hoping. There isn’t a hope of my getting the children in here without them all coming.”

“There must be some way.”

“That’s what I said to you, isn’t it? We aren’t free agents any longer, though.” He stared at his brother. “In a way, we’re enemies.”

“No. We’ll find a way round this. Perhaps… if you were to go back, and then I got our people to run a sortie against you, under machine-gun cover… you could have passed the word to Ann and the children to lie still until we had chased them away.”

John smiled ironically. “Even if I were prepared to do it, it wouldn’t work. Mine have been blooded. That ditch makes a fair cover. The machine-gun isn’t going to scare them.”

“Then… I don’t know. But there must be something.”

John looked up the valley again. The fields were well cropped, mostly with potatoes.

“Ann will be wondering,” he said, “not to mention the others. I shall have to get back. What’s it to be, Dave?”

He had come already to his own decision, and the agony of his brother’s uncertainty could not touch that grimness. Dave said at last, forcing the words out:

“I’ll talk to them. Come back in an hour. I’ll see what they say about letting the others in. Or perhaps we’ll think of something in that time. Try to think of something, Johnny!”

John nodded. “I’ll try. So long, Dave.”

David looked at him miserably: “Give my love to them all—to Davey.”

John said: “Yes, of course I will.”

The two men came down from the platform and unbarred the gate again. John squeezed through. He did not look at David as he went.

They were waiting for him as he dropped into the ditch. He saw from their faces that they expected only bad news; any news was bad that was not signalled by the gate to the valley thrown open, and an immediate beckoning in.

“How’d it go, Mr Custance?” Noah Blennitt asked.

“Not well.” He told them, baldly, but passing quickly over the invitation to his own family to come in. When he had finished, Roger said:

“I can see their point of view. He can make room for you and Ann and the children?”

“He can’t do anything. The others had agreed about that, and apparently they’re willing to stick by it.”

“You take it, Johnny,” Roger said. “You’ve brought us up here—we haven’t lost anything by it, and there’s no sense in everyone missing the chance because we can’t all have it.”

The murmur from the others was uncertain enough to be tempting. It’s been offered, he thought, and they won’t stop me if I take it straight away while they’re still shocked by their own generosity. Take Ann and Mary and Davey up to the gates, and see them open, and the valley beyond… He looked at Pirrie. Pirrie returned the look calmly; his small right hand, the fingers still carefully manicured, rested on the butt of his rifle.

Seeing the bubble of temptation pricked, he wondered how he would have reacted if he had had the real rather than the apparent freedom of action. The feudal baron, he thought, and ready to sell out his followers as cheerfully as that. Probably they had been like that—most of them, anyway.

He said, looking at Pirrie: “I’ve been thinking it over. Quite frankly, I don’t think there’s any hope at all of my brother persuading the others to let us all in. As he said, some of them have seen their own relations turned back. That leaves us two alternatives: turning back ourselves and looking for a home somewhere else, or fighting our way into the valley and taking it over.”

Ann said: “No!” in a shocked voice. Davey said: “Do you mean—fighting Uncle Dave, Daddy?” The others stayed silent.

“We don’t have to decide straight away,” John said. “Until I’ve seen my brother again, I suppose we can say there’s an outside chance of managing it peaceably. But you can be thinking it over.”

Roger said: “I still think you ought to take what’s offered you, Johnny.”

This time there was no kind of response; the moment of indecision past, John reflected wrily. The followers had realized the baron’s duty towards them again.

Alf Parsons asked: “What do you think, Mr Custance?”

“I’ll keep my opinion until I come back next time,” John said. “You be thinking it over.”

Pirrie still did not speak, but he smiled slowly. With the bandage round his head, he looked a frail and innocent old man. Jane sat close by him, her pose protective.

It was not until John was on the point of going back to the gate that Pirrie said anything. Then he said:

“You’ll look things over, of course? From inside?”

“Of course,” John said.

If there had been any hope in his mind of David persuading the others in the valley to relent, it would have vanished the moment he saw his brother’s face again. Four or five other men had accompanied him back to the fence, presumably to help the three already on guard in the event of John’s troops being reluctant to accept their dismissal. There was, John noticed, a telephone point just inside the fence, so that the men there could summon help quickly in the event of a situation looking dangerous. He glanced about him, looking for further details of the valley’s defences.

David said: “They won’t agree, Johnny. We couldn’t really expect them to.”

The men who had come with him stayed close by, making no pretence of offering privacy to the brothers. As much as anything, this showed John the powerlessness of his brother’s position.

He nodded. “So we have to take the road again. I gave Davey your love. I’m sorry you couldn’t have seen him.”

“Look,” David said, “I’ve been thinking—there is a way.” He spoke with a feverish earnestness. “You can do it.”

John looked at him in inquiry. He had been noting the angle the fence made with the river.

“Tell them it’s no good,” David said, “—that you will have to find somewhere else. But don’t travel too far tonight. Arrange things so that you and Ann and the children can slip away—and then come back here. You’ll be let in. I’ll stay here tonight to make sure.”

John recognized the soundness of the scheme, for other people under other conditions. But he was not tempted by it. In any case, David was underestimating the intervention Pirrie might make in the plan; a reasonable error for anyone who did not know Pirrie.

He said slowly: “Yes, I think that might work. It’s worth trying, anyway. But I don’t want to have the kids mown down by that gun of yours in the night.”

David said eagerly: “There’s no fear of that. Give me our old curlew whistle as you come along the road. And it’s full moon.”

“Yes,” John said, “so it is.”

John dropped down into the ditch where they all were.

He said immediately: “We shan’t get in there peaceably. They won’t budge. My brother’s tried them, but it’s no good. So we have the alternatives I spoke of—going somewhere else or fighting our way into Blind Gill. Have you thought about it?”

There was a silence; Alf Parsons broke it. He said:

“It’s up to you, Mr Custance—you know that. We shall do whatever you think best.”