Brother in the Land (11 page)

It wasn't till the next morning that I discovered the reason for the sing-song. It had been Christmas Eve. At least Branwell, who tried to keep track of time, said it was. He had this little toy fire-engine he'd got from somewhere, and he gave it to Ben when he came in to breakfast. I'd thought it was just what they did there at night – the sing-song I mean. When the others had gone out I said, ‘I didn't know it was Christmas. They didn't sing carols or anything.'

Branwell dumped some dishes in hot water. ‘No,' he said. ‘Funny, that. Someone started one; must have been while you were over at the factory. A few joined in, then it sort of fizzled out. They stopped singing, one by one. Perhaps it was too sad, y'know?'

I knew. I still heard the end of that other song in my head. Anyway, apart from the sing-song and Ben's fire-engine, Christmas was an ordinary time for us. It was special for everybody else in Skipley though.

What happened was, the loud-speaker came round again, telling everybody to stand by for a special instruction. Some wag started a rumour that a full Christmas Dinner was to be served in Ramsden Park: he must have known what day it was, too. Some of the guys in Masada were in town, and they heard the whole thing. It went like this.

Starting that day, every able-bodied adult had to report to
Kershaw Farm each morning for work. Anybody who didn't work, didn't eat. The Local Commissioner had worked out a plan for the building of ‘dwellings' and the planting of crops. It was all to do with National Recovery. The people were to abandon Skipley as soon as they had built themselves dwellings on the hillside below the Farm. Then a fence would be erected round these dwellings, for the protection of those within, and soldiers would patrol this fence at all times. This development, said the announcement, would mark the beginning of a return to normal life for the people of Skipley.

That evening, when everybody had returned to the house, old Branwell called us together. The people who had heard the special instruction had told him all about it. He stood looking down at us as we sat on the floor. His face was grim.

‘Well, my friends,' he began. ‘The thing we have feared from the first is beginning to happen.' He outlined the content of the special instruction, then went on, ‘We all know what that means. It means that our exalted Commissioner, whoever he is, has decided to start building his little feudal village. Kershaw Farm will be the Manor House, or castle, and the Commissioner will be the Lord. The soldiers, and everybody else up there, will be the knights, squires, reeves and so forth. They will sit in the Manor, living off the labour of the serfs. The serfs will be the people of Skipley. They'll toil all year, growing food, and then the Lord and his gang will pinch most of it and leave them the scraps. And there's nothing the people can do about it, because they're dependent on Kershaw Farm for their grub. That's why we banded together to form Masada: we're
not
dependent on Kershaw Farm and they'll not make serfs out of us!'

There was some cheering when he said this, but he stopped it pretty quick. ‘No!' he cried. ‘This is not a time to be cheering. This is a time to beware. They know we're here, those people up at the Farm. They've a fair idea we've been knocking off the odd truck now and again. They know we're a threat to their plans, and they'll stop at nothing to break us up. From now on, we must be even more alert than we've been so far. We must strengthen the guard on this house, and on the factory. We must
work faster on the vehicles we are mending, and on the other equipment too. We always knew we'd have to fight some day, and that day is drawing near. I will be consulting this evening with Mr Rhodes and our various experts, and detailed instructions will be issued later tonight. Meanwhile, let us all go about our usual tasks, and remain calm.'

One of the detailed instructions was that I was to start taking my turn on sentry duty with someone else, every third night. I was glad to be of some use. I'd managed to hide Charlie's pistol up till now, but I turned it in to old Branwell and he was over the moon. ‘Gold, my boy.' he said. ‘Pure gold. We need every weapon we can lay hands on.'

It was tense for a few days, like guarding the shop. We expected them to come any minute, but they didn't. I reckon they were too busy supervising the work that had started on the hillside above the town. Long huts were going up, sprouting like magic from the snow. Our people watched from a distance all the time. Within a couple of weeks it was like a village up there, or a camp. We nick-named it Butlin's. ‘What's happening up at Butlin's?' But as the winter wore on, and news started trickling in of what was happening to the people, we gave it another name. Belsen.

It was about a month before the defectors started coming in. The huts were finished by that time, and most of the people were living up there on the hillside. Skipley was deserted, except for a few individuals and families like Kim's, reluctant to attach themselves to any group. They brought stuff in to us, and we fed them.

We'd erected a barrier across the road between the house and the factory. I was on guard at this barrier one morning when I spotted two miserable-looking men coming along the road. At first I took them for people from the town, coming in to eat. They had nothing with them, but then it wasn't always possible to find anything with which to pay for a meal, and old Branwell always fed anyone who turned up – even Goths, as long as they behaved themselves. I released the safety-catch on the pistol and stood watching them come in.

It was sleeting, a blustery, early-February morning; and they held their rags about them as they came, glancing over their shoulders from time to time as though in fear of pursuit. As they approached, I was struck by the thinness of their features and their stick-like wrists and ankles. We were none of us fat by this time, but these men looked like walking skeletons. They stopped five yards from the barrier and one of them spoke; eyeing my pistol as he did so.

‘We're from up there.' He jerked his head in the direction of
the camp, invisible beyond the shoulder of the hill. ‘We've broken out. We want to join you.'

I looked at them. The one who had spoken was bad enough, but the other guy was obviously dying. Most of his hair had gone, he was bleeding from the gums and great, purple blotches stained his skin. I'd seen enough radiation-sickness by this time to recognize a creeping dose, and I reckoned he'd be dead in a week. Sooner, if he was lucky.

‘All right,' I said. ‘I'll get somebody to take you to Mr Branwell. He'll tell you if you can stay or not.' I saw desperation in their eyes and added, ‘He'll feed you and let you rest, whether or not.'

I called out to my fellow sentry, dozing in the factory gatehouse, and he led the two skeletons away. I didn't know it then, but they were to be the first of many. From them, and others like them, we got to know what was going on up by Kershaw Farm.

As soon as the huts were built, the people had been compelled to move into them. They were not allowed to bring with them any sick or elderly relatives. If they had such relatives, they were free to return to the ruins of Skipley and care for them there, but in that case there would be no more rations for them. By that time their spirit was thoroughly broken, and few chose to leave.

They were to make a farm. Working with their bare hands mostly, they had first to scrape off and carry away the top two inches of soil. This was because the top two inches were full of radioactive particles, and nothing would grow in them. It was January. The ground was usually hard with frost, and tools; even hand-tools, were scarce. Nevertheless, driven by soldiers who used their rifle-butts freely, the toilers were forced to take off this irradiated soil and wheel it away in barrows to a dumping-ground well away from the camp. The hours of work were long and the food inadequate.

When somebody fell ill, or became too exhausted to work, he was led away to the ‘hospital', from which he never returned. Injections at this hospital were of lead, administered through a revolver. People worked till they died, rather than go
there. It was not surprising, then, that we started getting escapees coming to us for shelter.

It led to trouble inside Masada, though. A lot of the defectors were sick, and Rhodes and some others thought we shouldn't take them. They were a drain on our resources, and contributed nothing to our cause.

Branwell argued that if we started turning people away to die, we were as bad as those in charge up at Kershaw Farm. Most of us were on his side, and so Rhodes and his lot retreated muttering. Things weren't quite the same afterwards. There wasn't the feeling that we were all in together: there were enemies inside, as well as out.

We were forced to change our tactics, too. Before, we'd sat and waited to see what the other side would do, while preparing for eventual conflict. Now, a sense of urgency prevailed. The enemy was even now killing the people of Skipley, and I think it was in Branwell's mind to attempt a rescue, as soon as we had the necessary equipment. Instead of knocking off the occasional truck, he had us out nearly every night; looking for soldiers with vehicles or stuff we might pinch. It all suited Rhodes, of course. He was a bastard, but even I had to admit he could organize an ambush that was a work of art. We struck, and fled, and struck again. The Commissioner's response was to send heavier and heavier escorts with his trucks, but we attacked them anyway, and while we suffered some casualties, our stock of equipment and weapons grew. I wasn't always with the attackers, of course – Branwell operated a sort of roster – but I saw quite a bit of action one way and another, and I'd seen enough horror by now for it not to bother me. What did bother me was that the women insisted on taking their turn on the ambush parties, and Kim was one of them. She was still living in the ruins, but now she came at night as well as during the day, and got herself put on the list.

I sweated every time she went out, but in the event it was I who came unstuck.

It was a simple trap, and we fell into it. Rhodes should have suspected something, but maybe he was having an off day or something. Anyway, this is how it happened.

There were six of us. Rhodes and the others had submachine-guns, and I had my pistol. It was late, around one or two a.m. I guess. We were in the bushes beside the Skipley Branford road. We knew some trucks had gone out that morning in the Branford direction, with an APC and a couple of motor-bikes. We had only to wait, and eventually they'd pass this way.

Rhodes had this trick with plastic bowls. He had some bowls in grey plastic, and when he wanted to stop a vehicle, he'd plant one of these bowls upside-down in the middle of the road. If it was a wide road he'd put three or four in a line. The first vehicle was usually an APC, and when the driver spotted the bowls he'd stop. They were all jumpy, because of the number of ambushes we'd pulled, and unless you were very close the bowls looked like some sort of landmine. Anyway, the APC nearly always stopped, and we'd lie low till the driver or some crew member got out to take a closer look. Then we'd lob a grenade or a bottle of petrol into the APC and go for the truck pulled up behind. It hardly ever failed, except if a driver took his vehicle round the bowls by driving off the road, and all the others followed.

What happened this time was, a truck came by itself, and when the driver saw the bowl in his headlight, he pulled up. Like I said, we should have known. Trucks just didn't go round alone anymore.

Anyway we didn't, and when the driver got out and started walking up the road, Rhodes yelled ‘Go!' We crashed through onto the road, firing. The driver flung himself into the verge, and then all hell broke loose. There was a roar of motors and two APCs came round the bend, shooting. They had spotlights on them. Blinded, we milled about in the roadway, and then another APC came from the other side. We were caught in the middle. Rhodes was yelling ‘Back! Into the trees!' but I couldn't see, and then something hit me and I fell. There was this terrific noise all round and blinding light. I thought I'd been shot. I lay with my eyes screwed tight, waiting to die. All I could think about was Ben. Then I passed out.

When I came to I was lying on the floor in a room somewhere, with a guy looking down at me. It was Booth. Alec Booth. Before the nukes he was the worst bully in school. It took me back, lying there with him looking down at me. It made the whole thing seem unreal somehow.

‘Hello, Lodge,' he sneered. ‘Been by-byes, have we? Playing at soldiers, were we?'

It was the same old Booth. Usually he'd say, ‘What're you staring at,' or ‘What's that you said?' and no matter how you replied, it was the wrong answer and then he'd beat you up. This time I remained silent, but that wasn't right either and he kicked me in the side with his boot.

‘I said, “Playing at soldiers, were we?” ' he repeated, in a dangerously soft voice. It dawned on me that I was a sort of prisoner of war, and that Booth was interrogating me. Terror washed over me when I remembered into whose hands I had fallen, because I realized quite suddenly that I was going to die. I wondered for an instant why they hadn't killed me already, back there on the road, and then I knew why. They wanted something from me. Some information.

I'd read stories about spies in enemy hands, holding out against the most dreadful tortures. Saying nothing. I'd fantasized
about being in a similar position myself: remaining silent while they pulled out my toenails and pushed hot needles into my flesh. My fantasies always ended with my being rescued; battered, emaciated, but silent to the end; flying home a hero to convalesce at length with a chestful of medals while our armies, their secrets unrevealed, swept on to total victory. I knew, now that I was faced with the reality, that I wouldn't last five minutes.

Booth was speaking again in his quiet, dangerous voice, something about Masada. For some reason, I was remembering a film I saw once, about this prisoner of war who got himself sent home by pretending to be barmy. It was a true story from the Second World War. It had nothing to do with my situation but I was the proverbial drowning man, drowning in his own terror, and I clutched at it like a straw.

A Spacer. I'd pretend to be a Spacer. Spacers don't know anything. There'd be no point torturing a Spacer for information. It never occurred to me at the time that they'd simply shoot me. All I was bothered about then was how to avoid being tortured. I turned blank eyes up to my tormentor.

He kicked me again, twice, in the same place. I doubled up and held my side, groaning; praying that he'd ask me something before the next kick, so that I might demonstrate my madness.

He bent down with an oath, grabbed me by the collar and jerked me onto my back. I stared up through tear-filled eyes, letting my jaw go slack.

‘Masada,' he snapped. ‘What's Masada, Lodge? What're you trying to do, eh?'

I gazed vacuously up into his coarse, vicious features. If the Commissioner had chosen Booth to be his chief interrogator, he couldn't have picked a better man. He drew back his foot.

I forced myself not to flinch away and, grinning stupidly at the naked lightbulb, said, ‘I've been busy.'

‘Busy?' He squatted, seized a fistful of my coat and hauled me up till I was half sitting. ‘Doing what, sunshine? That's what I want to know.'

‘I've had to burn all my biscuits because of them mice,' I told him. ‘I had them in a tin right at the back of the cupboard but when I went to get one they tasted funny and I had to burn them all.' I let my head loll to one side and began to cry. ‘Nothing goes right for me, mister. Nothing. I used to keep the butter on the windowsill till the sun made it melt. You wouldn't think it, would you? You can't even leave your butter on the window-sill. I'm fed up.'

Booth's expression shifted and he muttered something under his breath. He let go my coat and I let my head hit the floor. He straightened up with an exclamation of disgust. ‘Spacer!' He walked away, turned suddenly and shouted. ‘Effin' Spacer! What were you doing on that road, eh?'

I giggled wetly. ‘I'm asleep, and they put the light on and start making a noise. Nothing goes right for me, mister. Nothing.'

‘Spacer.' He came and looked down at me again. ‘You always were a snivelling little creep, Lodge, and now you're a Spacer, aren't you? A gawping Spacer who doesn't know if he's on this earth or fuller's.' His hands twitched as though longing to strangle somebody and his face was tight with frustration. He watched me silently for a moment, then said, ‘You know what we do to Spacers, Lodge, don't you?'

I'd been so relieved that my ruse seemed to be working that I hadn't thought what they'd do if they fell for it. Now it hit me like a sledgehammer, and I almost gave myself away. I almost cried out ‘No!' or something like that, but I was trapped now in my own deception. If I showed fear – if I even indicated that I understood, then the interrogation would recommence. Weak with terror, I forced myself to smile and say, ‘Nothing goes right, mister. Nothing.'

Without warning he bent, grabbed me by the collar with both hands and hauled me onto my feet. My side hurt where he'd kicked me and my legs were rubbery. I staggered when he let go, so he seized my arm and snarled. ‘Come on. Let's clear it with the boss and get it over!' He began hustling me across the room. I could scarcely stand and wanted to vomit. He wrenched open a door with his free hand and we went along a
dim corridor with a stone floor. We passed a window. I glanced through a saw a muddy yard and what looked like a barn, and I knew we were at Kershaw Farm.

We turned a couple of corners and passed some doors, till we came to one with ‘Commissioner' on it in white paint. Booth shoved me up against the wall and knocked. A voice said, ‘Enter.' I remember wondering why the guy didn't just say come in like everybody else.

He pushed me in first and there was Finch, sitting behind a green metal desk. Councillor Finch, the coal-merchant who was always getting his picture in the Times. The Skipley Times, not the big one. He came to our school once, talked about how the town was run. I don't know who I'd expected to see when Booth shoved me in there, but it certainly wasn't Councillor Finch. It was as much as I could do to keep from showing recognition. He hunched forward with his elbows on the desk, looking into my face.

‘Ah!' he said. ‘The prisoner. A child, I see. What has he to tell us, Colonel?'

‘Col –?' I had begun to exclaim, glancing at Booth over my shoulder, before I could check myself. Finch's brows went up. ‘Yes? What were you about to say?'

Colonel Booth. It was fortunate for me that, even in this extremity, the title struck me as ludicrous. I laughed, more loudly than the joke merited; putting it on. Booth, standing by my shoulder, said, ‘He doesn't know anything, sir. He's a Spacer.'

Finch's gaze flicked from my face to Booth's and his expression hardened. ‘I gave instructions that one of those swine from Messina, or whatever it's called, was to be captured alive. Why do you bring me this – thing?' He indicated me with a disdainful flap of his pudgy hand.

‘Masada, sir,' said Booth. ‘He was with them, sir. I mean, he was on the road when we closed in. We weren't to know he wasn't one of them, sir.'

‘Weren't to know!' spat Finch, disgustedly. He eyed me again. ‘How d'you know he's a Spacer?'

My heart lurched. Booth said, ‘I knew him, sir, before. At
school. He was always soft, sir; not the sort to join guerilla movements. He's a Spacer all right, sir.'

‘Then what the devil was he doing on that road?'

Booth shrugged. ‘Sleeping I expect, sir – in the bushes. The shooting disturbed him and he ran right into the middle of it. I'm sorry, sir.'

‘Bit late for that.' Finch seemed suddenly to lose interest. He reached for some papers, riffled through them and, after a moment, glanced up. ‘Well, Colonel. What're you waiting for?'

‘Sir?'

Finch flapped his hand in exasperation. ‘Get him out of here, Booth. Take him out and shoot him. And have a genuine member of Masada here this time tomorrow. That's all.'

Fear all but overwhelmed me. I would certainly have fallen, but Booth grabbed my arm and led me out of the room. I was too shocked to resist. We went along a whitewashed passage and out into the yard. By the outside door a guy in a radiation suit stood with a submachine-gun. Booth said something to him and he handed over the gun. As we walked across the mud I kept looking at it in horrid fascination as it bounced on Booth's shoulder; the instrument of my death. I wondered where he'd do it.

We walked round the barn, and there before me was the camp we called Belsen – rows of wooden huts stretching away down the slope. Between the camp and the farm was a high barbed-wire fence with a gate in it. The gate was guarded by two men and a dog. Outside the camp, away to our left, lay the farm they were making; a great patch of raw earth with figures scattered across it, stooping, lifting, pushing barrows, while fallout-suited soldiers looked on.

We turned right, leaving the yard through a double fence. Between the fences, the ground had been cleared and flattened, and lamps strung like a necklace on cable along its length. Every forty or fifty yards there was an elevated watch-tower, like a prison-camp in a movie. All of this I saw in a kind of stupor as I walked towards my death. Thoughts chased one-another at random across my skull. Where do they get power
for the lamps? What'll become of Ben? Where's he going to kill me? Oh, Kim.

We walked down the slope, with the single fence of the camp on our left. The ruins of Skipley lay spread out before us. Everything was crystal clear in my brain. I remembered reading somewhere that the imminence of death concentrates the mind. It does, too. We stopped by the bottom corner of the fence. He shoved me up against one of the posts and I thought, ‘This is it.' There was no panic, no frenzy. Too late for that, I suppose. He'd back off a few paces, raise the gun, and then … Better than torture. Better than a creeping dose. Better than betraying my friends.

I became aware that my executioner was speaking, and focussed my attention on his words. Knowing him, I expected taunts, a little gloating to prolong the agony. What he said was, ‘You're a right prannock, aren't you, Lodge? I've seen more Spacers than you've had hot dinners, and if you're a Spacer I'll eat spiders. Fooled the boss, though. Didn't know you had it in you. Still, you can thank your luckies it was me that got you. Anyone else and you'd be dead, right?' He rammed the muzzle of the gun hard into my gut. As I doubled up he stepped back, and as I fell he kicked me in the face.

I collapsed onto my side. I would have stayed there but he bent, grabbed my shirt and hauled me upright. I was choking on blood. My nose bubbled when I breathed and there was a blinding pain behind my eyes.