John Christopher - The Death of Grass

She shrank a little. “No! He won’t need it. It will be peace then.”

“Enoch was a man of peace,” John said. “He lived in the city which his father built for him. But he kept his father’s dagger in his belt.”

He went to the bed, bent down, and kissed his brother’s face.

He had kissed another dead face only a few days before, but centuries lay between the two salutations. As he turned away towards the door, Ann asked:

“Where are you going?”

“There’s a lot to do,” he said. “A city to be built.”

John Christopher was born in 1922 and educated at Peter Symonds School, Winchester. During the Second World War he served in the Royal Corps of Signals. He is a writer whose early interests were conditioned by pre-war American science fiction, and his own books such as The Death of Grass and The World in Winter have had that flavour, but the emphasis has been more on character than on scientific extrapolation. The writer of fiction he most admires is Jane Austen. He writes (under an assumed name) general novels to which critics and public alike display a massive indifference, but his books for children such as The White Mountain, The City of Gold and Lead, The Pool of Fire and The Lotus Caves have enjoyed considerable success. His latest novel is Pendulum.

John Christopher, who was born at Knowsley in Lancashire, was involuntarily transported at the age of ten to Hampshire, a manoeuvre which he regards as in a sense equivalent to Dickens’s banishment to the blacking factory. He is now, however, so reconciled to the South that he has settled with his wife and children on the island of Guernsey.

Prodrome:preliminary book or treatise, introductory section

Westmorland:English county, now part of Cumbria

Boy’s Own Paper: boys’ magazine, popular earlier in this century

gill:deep and often wooded ravine

Cyclop:one-eyed giant of Greek mythology who made thunderbolts for Zeus, ruler of the gods

any road:at any rate (slang)

good lie:favourable situation or position

purchase:hold or grip

pony-trap:lightweight carriage drawn by a pony, seating one or two, including the driver

born for a hanging:able to survive any danger

aftermath:consequences

townie:one who lives in a town

hybrid:composed of different or opposite elements

clod:slow-witted, dull person (slang)

New Statesman :radical weekly paper

decorum:proper behaviour

pictures:the cinema

statute:law

drop in the ocean:minute amount

Chinks:Chinese (slang)

Dives:Luke 16, the parable of Dives and Lazarus, the rich and the poor man

skyscrapers:the multi-storey buildings that dominate the skyline of certain cities

culms:jointed, hollow stems of grasses

genera:plural of genus, a class or group containing several kinds of related plants (or animals) having common structural characteristics

putrefying:rotting

dummy:in bridge, the hand of a dealer or dealer’s partner, turned up and played by the declarer

rubber:three successive games (or two games won by the same side) between sides or persons in bridge

finessing:playing the lower card with the hope of winning the trick (though still holding a higher card)

true colours:real characteristics or thoughts

United Nations:formed from the nations who defeated Italy, Germany and Japan in World War II (1939–45).

field tests:practical demonstrations

isotope:one or more forms (of an element) with the same atomic number, same chemical properties etc., but differing in atomic weight and in nuclear properties such as radioactivity

Magnificat:Hymn of the Virgin Mary (Luke 1:46-55)

Taj Mahal:the massive, splendid mausoleum at Agra, India, built in the 17th century by the Mogul Emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his favourite wife

whitewash:concealment of faults or errors

throwback:living in the past

first tack:the first idea for a solution

lick:defeat (slang)

hop on the wagon:do something because it is popular (usually bandwagon)

Martian:supposed inhabitant of the planet Mars

hedge my bets:play safe, make sure that I am covered against all risks

tighten our belts:eat less, ration ourselves

House of Representatives:the lower House of the Congress of the United States

Plimsoll line:load line on outside of merchant ship showing the limit to which it may sink in the water when loaded (after Samuel Plimsoll, English MP)

hats … that might be eaten:from the proverbial expression ‘to eat one’s hat’, meaning to retract all that one has said in the event of being proved wrong

licked:defeated (slang)

commons, short:reduced rations of food

Order-in-Council:sovereign’s order on some matter of administration, given on the advice of the Privy Council (body of advisers to the sovereign)

rescinded:cancelled

Haydn:Austrian-born composer (1732–1809)

Black Death:the bubonic plague. Originated in Asia, reached England in lethal form in 1348-9. The skin of victims was blackened.