Sean Gabb - The Break

Perhaps an hour after setting out from the Dover roundabout, a lorry had almost knocked her off her bicycle. Since she’d fallen in with this set of travelling companions, and wheeled her bicycle ever west, perhaps a dozen cars had sped by. But, if motor travel was a luxury that few could gather the coupons to afford, the pilgrims had been one tiny component in the endless and often jolly stream of unmotorised traffic. Sooner or later, they’d have to come off the motorway. They would have to face a barrier thrown across the road, and unblinking officers would check every identity card. Perhaps the Outsider had been right—that the motorway exits would be too crowded for every single card to be checked. It was on this that Jennifer had been counting. But being caught with even one Outsider was a danger she couldn’t afford.

There was a voice behind her—deep and rich and a touch mournful. “He went by this afternoon, Honey,” it said. Not turning, Jennifer could see the large black woman in her mind’s eye. She’d been one of the loudest respondents in the prayer sessions laid on by the American. “You hadn’t even joined us yet,” she added, now very mournful. “It’s only the Devil out there now.” Not answering—still not looking round—Jennifer stared harder out into the darkness. The farthest she could see was beyond the central barrier of the motorway, just where the tarmac ended and the darkness of a grass bank began. There might be a party there of travellers out of London—funny, she supposed, how people still kept to the left lane, even when the old traffic rules made no sense. But whoever might be over there was wholly out of her sight. “It’s you he’s looking for, isn’t it, Honey?” the woman asked.

Still not turning round, Jennifer shrugged. She might have argued that two dozen loud pilgrims were a more likely target of satanic interest than one girl with a bicycle. Then there was the family of East European Gypsies slumped in quiet despondency about their own fire. No one could assume they were up to any good. But why bother with the obvious? You don’t argue with religious fanatics—not when there’s so much to get fanatical about. There was a shift of the night breeze, and a cloud of filthy smoke drifted over from the fire.

“Why you don’t take the train?” the woman asked accusingly. “I see the gold and silver in your money belt.” Jennifer stiffened slightly and resisted the urge to reach for her knife. The woman laughed. “I see all things,” she explained. “The Lord has given me the gift of sight.” Jennifer smiled. If she’d somehow got this much right, it was worth asking how she’d managed to lose her man and both her sons when they were caught celebrating Christmas in September. Being overlooked when the police swooped, and so not being packed off to build roads in Ireland, required less than some Divine Revelation. The one oddity was that the police had chosen her men, rather than others, for one of the random acts of barbarity with which they managed to keep everyone terrorised into obedience.

The woman moved closer, and Jennifer was aware of the slightly asthmatic breathing. Time for some kind of response. Though a nuisance, the woman was useful to keep Jennifer’s mind from going back over a plan of action that only made sense when she didn’t think about it. “Have you tried buying a railway ticket since The Break?” No answer. Possibly, the woman hadn’t. Anyone who, in the Olden Days, had thought the old airports were rigidly policed hadn’t now tried getting into Charing Cross without a valid permit to travel. Being caught out on the railways was a shooting matter. That much she’d seen for herself on the one trip her father had allowed her to make with him. It really had been two wheels and two legs or nothing.

“You don’t belong with us,” the woman said, now in a sorrowful croon. “Your man is already waiting for you in London. You must leave us.” Jennifer smiled again. She’d already decided it was time to strike out on her own. All considered, it might be safer to creep round the police barriers. This mad creature might believe that God would allow her and her friends through—and with at least one Outsider for company. But, however slight, the risk of being caught, and then detained when her own documents were found out of order, was too great. The black woman was only jogging her arm. If he didn’t yet know it, there was a man waiting for her in London; and she knew that he could be found there only at certain fixed times.

The singing behind them both had given way to an exalted chanting, and Jennifer could see the glow from the fire behind her as the American repeated his act of dancing barefoot on hot ashes. She made her mind up. There was no one out there to watch her or anyone else. But, if she turned out to be wrong, the smoke would give enough cover for a quiet getaway.

Or had she really made up her mind? She could simply turn back for the coast. Another three days, and there would be another boat setting into St Margaret’s Bay. She thought of Count Robert. But she thought again. Where her parents were concerned, what use would the Outsiders be?

Her watch said 3am as she reached the top of Blackheath Hill. So much wondering about how to squeeze past in the shadows, and she’d found the Kidbrooke exit from the motorway unmanned. Even the bar across the road had been raised. No one had challenged her as she made her way in darkness along the silent main road that led from Shooter’s Hill and across the empty Heath. If she hadn’t known better, she might have supposed she was still coming through Sidcup. But there could be no doubt she was deep inside London. The dark haze overhead and the increasingly foul air had made this plain.

She stopped where the Heath ended and the inner city began. She looked left, and saw the dark outline of one of the gigantic Hills of the Dead that had risen above every open space in London. In Kent, The Hunger had been a grievous thing. But Kent had its countryside, where food could often be gathered. Her father had likened the suffering in London to a game of musical chairs in which half the chairs were missing from the outset. She looked right. The high towers of Canary Wharf would once have blazed with light. The pyramid that topped the highest tower would then have shown plain ten or twenty miles back along the motorway. But this, and all the other lights that once had shone there, belonged to a world of seven billion people that had looked to London as its undisputed banker. She knew that the towers themselves had survived the quelling of the Food Riots. Unless empty, they must be filled to bursting with those who’d huddled in from the outermost suburbs. Whatever the case, the only lights now to be seen from the top of Blackheath Hill were the dull and flickering reds that glowed from a thousand factory chimneys—that and the incandescent glare of bulbs over one of the street markets in a city that, if much changed and somewhat diminished, could still be said never to sleep. Jennifer kicked her bicycle forward and coasted down to the junction with Greenwich South Street. Here, she had no choice but to get off and push her way into the crush of pedestrians and carts and brightly-lit stalls.

“You mind where you’s stepping, Lovey!” a woman shrieked as Jennifer nearly unbalanced the pile of things she was carrying on her head. She tried to apologise, but stood transfixed by the pattern of tribal scars that gleamed on the woman’s face. According to her father, more than half the Londoners bulldozed into the Hills of the Dead had been black. Perhaps by accident, perhaps by design, blacks had suffered terribly in The Hunger, and worse in The Pacification. Her one London trip since The Break had been confined to the absolute centre—here, just about everyone had been white. It was a shock, after so long, to see so many black faces. She stepped back, and someone swore loudly behind her. She gripped hard on her handlebars and pushed her way deeper into the crowd. Never mind the incidentals of colour—after so many days, when she’d heard nothing but the twittering of birds and the murmured conversations of slow-moving travellers, the loud babble of voices and the hum of treadmill-powered generators was a shock she had to fight hard to overcome. So too the omnipresent smell of coal smoke and of unwashed humanity. She ignored the reek of close-packed, sweaty bodies. She skirted the crowds of drunks reeling from every pub. She hurried past the piteous beggars and the raucous whores of every age and sex.