Sean Gabb: The Break

He might have said more, but the monk was now leaning over the side of the boat and calling in a loud voice. Robert stepped back and bowed. Then, with a bound, he was over the wall and onto the beach and hurrying towards where his men were visibly impatient as well as scared.

Jennifer stood watching till the boat vanished into the dawn mist. Alone, she looked up into the sky. By all appearances, it would be another glorious March morning. Across the water, it would be a morning in June, plus nearly two hours ahead and a different day of the week. But, just as there was no need any more to reset the time after a crossing, it was best not to think about the larger question of the date. It was enough to know that the boat would be half way across the Channel before the mist burned away—and that would be enough, now that Border Protection had given up on sinking anything outside the Exclusion Zone.

Even with no additional weight to carry, the road up to the village was too steep for cycling. Still, she mounted up and pedalled to where, under cover of the trees, she’d have to get off and start pushing.

Once through the village and on to Station Road, Jennifer went into top gear. It was a road of steep descents and rises. But, if she could build up enough momentum going down, she could usually coast all the way to the top again. The main obstacle to this was knowing when to begin swerving to avoid the hole in the road, where, shortly after The Break, someone had filled his car with a petrol substitute, and it had gone up in a ball of flame visible from Ramsgate.

Mostly, she had to keep her eyes on the road for broken glass and other obstacles. Every so often, though, as she sped downhill, she allowed her self to look over the trees and luxuriant hedges that lined the road. It was still barely six in the morning—English time, that is. But she could already see the long lines of people in the fields as they went about the work that had to be done, of guaranteeing the first proper harvest since The Break.

Another ten minutes, and she was at the junction with London Road. Turning left here would take her uphill to the Dover Roundabout where the A2 began. Right would lead down, through Walmer, to Deal. It was at this junction that the local Hill of the Dead had been created. There had been perhaps only five thousand bodies from Deal to be buried. The great majority of those who’d starved to death, or been killed in The Pacification, were from Dover. But it was here that the bodies had been heaped up and covered with earth. Jennifer stopped and looked again at the mound. It was only ten months since the army of diggers had finished their job. Since then, however, three seasons of the year had done their work. Smoothed over and covered in grass, the mound was already becoming as fixed and as natural a part of the landscape as the memorials set up to the lesser catastrophes of war.

It wasn’t even a year—but it might have been a decade, or a whole age, for all that had passed. Jennifer could remember the day, when, after endless assurances in the media, that everything was under control, the shops had run out of food. Or, if there was still food, no one had been allowed the fuel to transport it. The looting of homes had begun within hours. It was now that those who’d previously broken the law, and accumulated weapons against a chance of breakdown that few really believed would come, could think themselves lucky. But they were the minority. The begging—by those who hadn’t stocked up, or had lost their stocks at gunpoint, or those who had neither contacts nor things that others wanted to buy—had been pitiable. The frantic pleas of the starving had been terrible to behold—terrible and, once the police began raiding anyone who, by giving charity, showed he had a surplus, quite unavoidable. It had toughened those who had. It had prepared those who had not, but who still managed to survive, for their place in the new order of things. And, once the gulf of The Hunger had been crossed, this new order had emerged as quickly and as logically as the movement of iron filings in a magnetic field.

Jennifer let her eyes rest on the Hill of the Dead. So many times she’d seen it. So many times, she’d passed it by with a shudder, or with indifference. Now, she watched as perhaps fifty labourers were allowed their time for the morning remembrance. There was Mrs Jones, the lawyer, digging tool in both hands, her lean and toughened body still wrapped in the rags that had been her business suit. There was Jennifer’s Science teacher. His face was in shadow under his hat, and she couldn’t see the branding mark left there after he’d been denounced for cutting down a tree to keep warm. There was the little man who’d used to sell expensive chinaware from a shop in Deal. They were the lucky ones—those who had once gambled on, and appeared to do well from, a division of labour that no longer made sense, and who had survived the collapse of the old world. They stood together in memory of those they had lost, their right hands clenched into fists and beating out on their chests the now customary pattern of despair. But the ruddy man on horseback now rang his bell, and it was back to the endless work of hoeing and trenching and weeding.

Once everyone was back to work, Jennifer looked over the miles of farming land that stretched before here. There was a time when she’d have needed to wait for a gap in traffic that raced in both directions. Though she looked from habit up and down the road, all was peaceful here. The only sound was of twittering birds too small to be hunted, and of trees that sighed gently in the breeze. She turned right, and, squeezing gently on the brakes, was carried downhill again. There was a minute of pedalling as she crept uphill towards the old service station where Slovak immigrants had once earned a few pounds by washing cars. After this, it would be an easy ride back to the coast.

As she reached the edge of the built-up area, she had to give more attention again to the road. The cars themselves had long since been requisitioned for scrap. But quite a few of the owners had made sure to vandalise their property first. Even before then, cars had often been ripped open by armed men to get at the petrol. The road hereabout still had the occasional cube of glass to be avoided. Braking, she lost most of her speed, and was now coasting forward at little more than a brisk walking pace.

She was still a quarter of a mile away when she saw the trouble. It was by the Sacred Heart Church—the one where the huge brick porch looked directly over the road. If she couldn’t yet smell it, she could see the cloud of organic diesel smoke from the black van, and the two uniformed figures standing above someone who crouched in the road beside the porch. She could see the glint of sunlight on the plastic visors, and the dark shapes of the rifles that were levelled at the crouching figure.

“Don’t let them see that you’re looking,” she muttered grimly as she covered the last fifty yards. These were her first words in English since she’d lied her way on to Count Robert’s boat, and her voice grated slightly from the unfamiliarity of the words. She tried to look straight ahead. But nothing could keep her from seeing the graffito that someone had scrawled in white characters a foot high on the outside wall of the church.

It said nothing more. But that was enough. For letting this go up, the priest would be lucky if all he got was a clubbing. She’d slowed still more, and had to choose between coasting past, and risking that one of the officers would try to grab her, and speeding up—though that would raise obvious suspicions.

The choice was made for her. “Stop!” The officer stepped in front of her and lifted his rifle. Jennifer squeezed the brakes and stopped six feet short of the uniformed man. She resisted the urge to reach back and pat the bulging saddlebag. She forced a smile onto her face, and tried to look like any other teenage girl who’d been out early to gather food. “Get in there,” he ordered with a nod at the church. “Get buckets and a broom.” He turned back to the priest, who was now on his knees.