Brother in the Land (15 page)

I found her down at the bottom of the compound, where the wire had been cut the night we took the farm. Branwell had put up a bit of a shed there for the donkey and I knew she liked to visit the animal now and then.

It was dusk. The inside of the shed was very dim. It smelt sweetly of clean hay. She was sitting on an upturned pail, with an arm draped over the donkey's shoulder and her head resting against its flank. The donkey, its halter twisted round a post, stood with its head down, patiently chewing. I paused in the doorway, unsure of my welcome and reluctant to intrude. I must have made a sound of some sort though, because she turned her head quite suddenly and saw me.

‘How long have you been there?' Her voice was wavery, as though she'd been crying for a long time. As I moved forward I saw that the donkey's coat was wet where she'd rested her cheek.

‘I just came. I've been looking everywhere for you. Are you all right now?'

She turned away. ‘Yes. I think so,' she said, huskily. ‘I'm sorry I shouted at you. I don't know why I did it. I'll never be able to go in that refectory again and I don't know how I'll face the others in the hut tonight. They were all there.'

‘It was nothing,' I said. ‘They'll understand. It probably hadn't occurred to them. Like me. They'll understand now.' I
wanted to comfort her. She looked so young, so slight and thin, in her grubby jeans and torn check shirt. She should have been worrying about discos and boyfriends and O-levels, not fallout and deformed babies. She was stroking her cheek up and down the donkey's flank.

‘D'you think so? D'you think they will understand? I wish they would, because you don't know what it's like, Danny. There's twenty-nine of 'em in my hut. Twenty-nine, and all they ever say to me is you are looking after that sister of yours, aren't you? We can't have anything happening to her and the baby now, can we? What do you hope it'll be, a boy or a girl? And all the time I'm trying to forget about the rotten baby so I can get some sleep at night. Last time somebody asked me that last one I said, yes, I hope it's a boy or a girl, but they didn't get it, they still kept on.'

I knelt in the hay beside the pail and reached out my hand and began stroking her hair. She kept her face on the donkey's flank and didn't pull away.

‘I know it's easy for me to say,' I told her. ‘But you've got to stop worrying all the time. You'll drive yourself barmy, and there's nothing you can do about it. You know it's all decided now, one way or the other. We've just got to hope, Kim. It's all we can do.'

‘I know. I know there's nothing anybody can do. That's the awful part of it. Waiting. I've been doing nothing else for weeks and I'm tired and scared and fed up. Oh, Danny!' She turned and flung her arms round my neck and buried her wet face in my shoulder. ‘What's going to happen to us all? How's it going to end. Danny?'

‘Not with a bang but a whimper.' She was tiny in my arms, sharp-boned and quivering, like a little bird.

‘What?' She lifted her head a little so that I felt her breath on my ear.

‘It's a quotation. Forget it.'

‘Oh. Yes, I've heard it before. Don't say that.'

‘Sorry. Branwell did the same thing to me, ages ago. We were looking at Mum's grave.'

‘What did he do?'

‘Quoted something at me. He who places his brother in the land is everywhere.'

‘What does that mean?'

I shrugged against the weight of her arms. ‘It means, all over the world men are burying their brothers. Ever since he said it, I've watched Ben like a hawk. Y'know, looking for signs of a dose and that. So you see I do know what it's like, worrying.'

‘Yes. I'm sorry. When you're really worried about something, you tend to think you're the only one. I feel better now, Danny. Better than for ages.'

‘D'you think you ought to see Doctor Renton? See if he's got something that'll make you sleep?' I don't know why I said that. I felt tender and weak and hot and excited, all at the same time.

She squeezed my neck. ‘No. Not now. Let's just stay here for a while like this, and then I'll be all right. I do want to be your girl, y'know.'

‘I'm glad.'

How long we might have stayed there if we'd been left undisturbed, I don't know. I sort of half-lifted her down into the hay beside me and, as we kissed, pushed gently till she was lying with my arm under her neck and both hers round mine. We were kissing, long and hard, when suddenly she twisted her head away and hissed, ‘Ssssh! Listen!'

I didn't want to listen. I followed her mouth, trying to cover it with mine. She let go my neck and pushed me away. ‘No. Listen.'

I sat up, frowning with irritation. Kim was sitting too, with her head on one side. I listened. It was a motor, a long way off. Coming up the road from Skipley perhaps.

‘It's a motor. So what?' I was anxious to recapture the mood of a moment ago. I felt it slipping away.

Kim looked at me, big-eyed in the gloom. ‘Do we have any motors out?'

I shrugged. ‘I don't know. Why?'

She began to get up, brushing hay from her seat. ‘Because if we haven't, it's somebody elses, isn't it? It sounds – different somehow. Listen.'

I stood up and listened, facing the doorway which was covered with a curtain of sacking. The thrumming was closer now. Much closer, and behind it I fancied I could hear a swishing noise, like when someone whirls something round and round their head on a rope. My heart kicked against my chest and I stood a moment with my mouth open, unable to speak. The noise swelled, till it seemed the thing was right outside.

The sacking rippled and blew inwards and somebody shouted on the compound. Kim stared at me, incredulity stamped on her face.

‘It's a –'

‘Helicopter!' I ran to the doorway, tore aside the curtain and we tumbled through, gazing up.

It hung snarling, black against the twilit sky, turning slowly on its axis as though someone inside was taking a careful look at us. People poured from their huts, shouting and waving their arms, their faces turned up in the downdraught that stung their eyes and whipped their unkempt hair.

The machine completed three slow rotations through three hundred and sixty degrees then flew, nose-down, away over the wire in the direction of Skipley. Cries of dismay followed its departure, and everybody ran to the gateway and milled about on the slope, waving, watching the winking green navigation-light dwindle against the hills across the valley. When we could see it no longer we broke up into chattering, gesticulating groups, or wandered away in a daze by ourselves, unable to believe what we had seen.

It's not possible to describe adequately what the arrival of that helicopter did to us. It was a sort of instant dislocation – the end of life as we'd come to expect it would be, a glimpse of a world we thought had gone forever. We surged about, all talking at once, so that the air was thick with a thousand speculations. It was a British helicopter, sent at long last by the Government to rescue us. It was Russian, and tomorrow enemy soldiers would come and occupy the farm. One wag said it was the Barratt helicopter, come to survey the land for a housing-estate. Finally, after I don't know how long, Branwell
managed to get us quiet enough to announce a meeting in the refectory and we trooped up there, laughing and talking. I went up with Ben riding on my shoulders and my arm round Kim's waist and tears of – I don't know – happiness or relief, pouring down my cheeks. I didn't care. I wasn't the only one.

Rhodes had had his field-glasses on the aircraft, and it was Swiss. As soon as Branwell announced this, everybody started telling everybody that it was obvious; the Swiss had deep shelters, enough for everybody, in the mountainsides. They'd survived, and now they were here to save us, to shower us with condensed milk and chocolate and cuckoo-clocks. Any rescuer would have been rapturously welcomed, even a so-called enemy, but the fact that we'd been found by the Swiss was the icing on the cake, the little barrel of brandy round the St Bernard's neck.

I've forgotten what else was said at that meeting. Something about awaiting rescue calmly and meeting it in a dignified manner. We sat deaf and bubbling, like kids on the last day of term, and when old Branwell finally let us go we cheered him with tears in our eyes and sang, ‘For He's a Jolly Good Fellow', and ran outside to turn cartwheels and practise our yodelling. It was a long celebration, a short sleep, and a rude awakening.

They came mid-morning, grinding up the road in a jeep and a truck while a helicopter, a big one, hovered above our heads with guns sticking out of it.

We'd all come out to greet our rescuers, all except the sick. We stood close together just outside the wire. Most of us weren't feeling too good. We'd broken out the remaining rations the night before and stuffed ourselves, and we weren't used to it. We'd spent a short, uncomfortable night, unable to sleep for excitement and indigestion, and now, as we watched the soldiers jump down from the truck, we were troubled by the vague feeling that all was not quite as it ought to have been. There was a ragged cheer, but not the sort of rapturous greeting we'd imagined ourselves giving.

The soldiers formed a semicircle and moved forward slowly, their weapons pointed at us. I suppose we'd had visions of smiling guys in leather shorts and braces. When they were about ten yards from us they stopped. Nobody was smiling. One of them stepped forward. He had what looked like Captain's pips on his epaulette. He had a pistol in a holster too. He said, ‘Who is in charge here?'

Branwell moved out from among us. ‘I am, I suppose. Allow me to say on behalf of us all that you are a most welcome sight.'

The officer inclined his head slightly but did not smile. ‘Thank you. You are the Commissioner?' Branwell shook his
head. ‘No. I am – adviser, I suppose, to these people. There is no Commissioner here.'

‘Oh?' The officer arched his eyebrows. Is this not Sub-regional H.Q.? Sub-region Two-point-one?'

‘It was,' replied Branwell. ‘We were forced to take it over.'

‘Why?'

Branwell shrugged. ‘It's a long story, Captain. Shall we talk about it in the house. We can manage a little coffee, I think.'

‘Certainly not!' The Captain's tone was frigid. ‘I see an officer in uniform. There – behind you.' He pointed. ‘Who are you, sir? Why do you not speak for these people?'

Captain Laycock stepped forward. His uniform was in tatters and his hair curled about his ears. Beside his Swiss counterpart he resembled an scarecrow.

‘I was Senior Military Officer here, Captain. My name is Laycock.'

The Swiss officer stared at Captain Laycock coldly. ‘Why are you not Senior Military Officer here now, Captain? Were you … relieved of your command?' Captain Laycock shook his head.

‘No, Captain, I was not. My men and I were compelled to surrender to these people. They were armed then, and they came under cover of darkness. The Commissioner had – exceeded his authority, sir.'

‘Indeed?' The officer's face wore a sarcastic expression that reminded me of Rhodes. ‘You surrendered, and yet you do not look to me like a prisoner of war. Your men mingle with the crowd quite freely it seems. I think that you have co-operated with your conquerors, Captain.'

Laycock inclined his head. ‘That is true, Captain. We have all of us had to work together in order to survive.'

‘I see,' said the Captain. ‘Then this establishment is what we might call a commune?'

Laycock nodded. ‘Yes: I suppose it is.'

‘Commune, as in Communist?'

‘No! I mean, damn it all. You're twisting my words.'

‘No I am not. You have seen fit to run this Headquarters
along communist lines, rather than in the manner laid down by your Government.'

‘No. I've already explained. It was necessary – '

‘It was your duty to protect your Commissioner, Captain. And if you became a prisoner of war it was your duty to escape. How many of you are there here?'

‘What?'

The Captain flipped a hand in our direction. ‘Is this everybody, or are there others?'

‘There are others,' said Laycock. ‘The sick. When the British Government knows the circumstances, I'm sure it will exonerate everybody here at once.'

The Captain laughed, a brief, harsh sound. ‘There is no British Government. We must make a count.'

‘What?'

‘A count. The numbers here. And don't keep saying what.'

He turned and barked something at his men. Four soldiers slung their weapons and ran to him. He spoke briefly, gesticulating towards us and the camp. Two men went towards the gates. The other two started shoving us about, counting. Branwell went over to the captain.

‘Will you please tell us what's happening?' he said. ‘Are we to wait here, or do we go with you?'

The Swiss regarded the old man coldly. ‘You remain here, naturally. What do you think I am going to do with a crowd of broken-down Englishmen? March them to Berne?'

Branwell ignored the sarcasm. ‘Will we be given food and medicine?'

‘Perhaps,' the Swiss replied. ‘In due course. And in the meantime I must complete my count and report to my superiors, so please get out of my way.' He brushed the old man aside and strode up towards the camp. The two soldiers had finished counting us. They fell in behind him.

Branwell stood, gazing after them with hurt in his eyes, and a soldier came and prodded him back into line. The helicopter had landed somewhere inside the wire. We stood there, staring dumbly down the muzzles of their guns, while the captain and his men went through all our stuff. He counted the sick,
prodded about among the stores and made a pile of our weapons, all the time making notes in a little pad. He'd taken Laycock along to show him where things were and he told us about it afterwards.

It took about two hours. The kids got restless. Some of them wanted to go to the toilet but when Branwell asked the soldiers they ignored him. Maybe they didn't understand English. Anyway, by the time the captain came back there were some wet pants and a lot of helpless anger. As soon as he came striding through the gateway, Branwell called out, ‘Captain, we are British Citizens and you are treating us like criminals. Do you intend to help us, or not?'

There was a bang and a roar. Somewhere behind us the helicopter was starting up. The captain had to shout his reply.

‘The term British Citizen has no meaning now,' he yelled. There are groups like this one all over Europe. You must wait your turn!' The helicopter rose from beyond a line of huts and he had to grab at his cap to keep it from being blown off. He turned and started down towards the jeep. The soldiers followed, walking backwards at first, covering us with their weapons. The helicopter thrashed about over our heads till the Swiss were in the vehicles, then it swung away down the slope and out across the valley. The jeep bounced off down the road and the truck followed. We all stood and watched them go, and when we finally traipsed back into camp, we found they'd immobilised the vehicles and taken our weapons away.