The White Mountains (The Tripods) (10 page)

Four bridges proved hopeless, and then the river forked. It seemed to me that this meant that, if we continued toward the east, we should have to find bridges intact over both branches, doubling the difficulty; and that our best course was to go back and try in the opposite direction. But Henry was opposed to turning back, and Beanpole supported him. There was nothing I could do but tag along resentfully.

My resentment was not diminished by the fact that the very next bridge was intact enough to cross, though the parapet had completely gone at one side, and in the middle the bridge itself had a hole bitten out of the edge which we had to skirt warily. On the far side there were relatively few trees, and the buildings were massive. Then we came to an open space and saw at the end of it a building which, even in ruins, had a magnificence that compelled the eye.

There had been twin towers in front, but one of these had been sliced down the side. On them, and on the whole facade, were carvings in stone, and from roofs and angles stone figures of monstrous animals probed the quiet air. It was a cathedral, I guessed, and it looked bigger even than the great cathedral in Winchester, which I had always believed was the biggest building in the world. The huge wooden door stood open, tilted on its hinges and rotting. Part of the roof of the nave had fallen in, and one could see up past the pillars and buttresses to the sky. We did not go inside: I think none of us wanted to disturb its crumbling silence.

The next thing we discovered was that we had not, in fact, crossed to the opposite bank of the river, but were on an island. The waters which had divided to the west came together again in the east. We had to trail back across the bridge. I was not sorry to see Henry discomfited, but I was too tired to think it worth the extra effort.

It was at this time that Beanpole said to me, “What is it on your arm?”

The Watch had slipped down, without my noticing
it, to my wrist. I had to show it to them. Henry looked at it with envy, though he said nothing. Beanpole showed a more dispassionate interest. He said, “I have seen clocks, of course, but not one of these. How is it made to go?”

“You turn the button on the side,” I said. “But I did not bother to do that, since it must be so old.”

“But it is going.”

Disbelievingly, I looked myself. Above the hour and minute hands, a third, more slender pointer was going around, sweeping the dial. I held the Watch to my ear: it was ticking. I noticed a word on the face: Automatique. It seemed like magic, but could not be. It was another wonder of the ancients.

We all stared at it. Beanpole said, “These trees—some are a hundred years old, I think. And yet it works. What craftsmen they were.”

We got across the river at last, half a mile farther up. There was no sign of the city coming to an end; its vastness, which had first awed, and then aroused wonder and curiosity, was now exhausting. We passed many large buildings, including one larger than the cathedral—a side had fallen in and one could see that it was a shop, or a series of shops, right up to the roof—but none of us felt like bothering to investigate them. We saw other tunnels, too, with
METRO
on them. Beanpole decided they were most likely places where people had got on and off the underground Shmand-Fair, and I imagine he was right.

We slogged on. The day was declining, and we were
all weary. By the time we had our evening meal—a limited one, because food was beginning to run short and there was no way here of getting more—it was plain that we would have to spend the night in the city. I do not think any of us was keen on going into one of the buildings to sleep, but a distant howling changed our minds for us. If there were a pack of wild dogs near, it would be safer to get off the streets. They did not usually attack people unless they were hungry; but we had no means of knowing the state of their stomachs.

We picked a substantial-looking edifice and went up to the first floor, stamping warily on the stairs to see if they were likely to collapse. Nothing happened, except that dust rose, choking us. We found a room with glass still in its windows. The curtains and the upholstery of the furniture were faded and eaten in holes by moths, but it was still comfortable. I found a big earthenware jar, with a heavy lid, and roses painted on it. When I took the lid off it was full of withered rose petals, their perfume a ghost of summers long ago. There was a piano, larger and differently shaped from any I had seen, and a frame on it with a picture, in black and white, of a lady. I wondered if it was she who had lived here. She was very beautiful, though her hair was different from the way women wear their hair today, with wide dark eyes and a gently smiling mouth. In the night I awoke, and there was the scent still in the air, and moonlight from the window fell across the top of the piano, and I almost thought I could glimpse her there, her slender white fingers moving across the keys—that I could hear phantom music.

It was nonsense, of course, and when I fell asleep again I did not dream of her but of being back in the village, in the den with Jack, in the time when I had not learned to worry over Caps and the Tripods, and when I had thought never to travel farther from Wherton than Winchester; and that no more than once a year.

The moonlight was misleading; in the morning, not only were the clouds back, chasing each other in an endless pursuit of monotonous gray, but a dreary deluge of rain was sheeting down out of the sky. Even though we were anxious to get clear of the city, we did not feel like tackling these conditions. All that was left by way of food was a hunk of cheese, a piece of dried beef, and some of the ship’s biscuits. We divided the cheese. There was enough for one more modest meal; after that we would have to go hungry.

Henry found a chess set, and he played a couple of games with Beanpole, who won easily. I then challenged him, and was also beaten. Finally I played against Henry. I expected to beat him, because I thought I had done better against Beanpole, but I lost in about twenty moves. I felt fed up, by this and the weather and being still hungry, and refused his offer to play again. I went and stood by one of the windows, and was glad to note that the sky was clearing, the gray turning in patches into a luminous yellow. Within a quarter of an hour, the rain had stopped and we could go on.

The avenues through which we traveled were gloomy at first, the surface puddled with water or, where trees had split it, of sodden earth, the general
wetness continually augmented by drips from the branches above. It was like walking through rain in slow motion, and just as dampening; it was not long before we were all thoroughly soaked. Later, brightness filtered down as the cloud lifted, and the birds seemed to make a second wakening and filled the air with their chatter and song. Drops still fell, but more rarely, and in bare patches where the trees had not got a footing, the sun laid strokes of heat across us. Beanpole and Henry talked more, and more cheerfully. My own spirits did not revive as thoroughly. I felt tired, and a bit shivery, and my mind seemed thick and dull. I hoped I was not getting a cold.

We ate the last of the food in a place where the trees were dense in front of us, without any buildings. The reason lay in the slabs of stone, some upright but more leaning or fallen, which stretched away into the darkness of the wood. The words carved on the nearest one were:

The first two words, Beanpole explained, meant “Here Lies,” “ans” was years and “décédée” was died. She had died, at my own age, and been buried here at a time when the city was still throbbing with life. One day at the end of winter. So many people. The wood stretched out, laced with the stones of the dead, across
an area in which my village could have been set down several times over.

It was late afternoon when we came at last to the southern edge of the city. The transformation was sudden. We pushed for about a hundred yards through a stretch where the trees were thick, the buildings few and completely in ruins, and emerged into a cornfield, waving green spears in the slanting sunlight. It was a relief to be in the open again, and in cultivated land. With that came awareness that we needed to resume habits of caution: there was a horse plowing several fields away, and in the distance two Tripods stalked the horizon.

Clouds came up again as we traveled south. We found a field of early potatoes, but could find no wood dry enough to start a fire to cook them. Henry and Beanpole ate them raw, but I could not. I had little appetite, anyway, and my head was aching. At night we slept in a ruin well away from any other houses. The roof had fallen at one end, but was still supported at the other; it was wavy, and made of a gray material that looked like stone but was much lighter. I spent the night in a series of heavy sleeps, from which I was wakened by nightmarish dreams, and in the morning I felt more tired than I had been the night before. I suppose I must have looked funny, because Henry asked me if I were feeling ill. I snapped something back at him, and he shrugged and turned his attention to other things. Beanpole said nothing, I think because he noticed nothing. He was much less interested in people than in ideas.

It was a weary day for me. I felt worse as the hours went by. I was determined not to show this, though. At the beginning I had not wanted sympathy from the others because I resented the fact that they appeared to be getting on with each other better than I was with either. After I had rebuffed Henry, my resentment was because neither he nor Beanpole took the matter any farther. I am afraid I got some satisfaction out of feeling ill and carrying on without admitting it. It was a childish way to behave.

At any rate, my lack of appetite did not make much impression because we were all on short commons. I was not bothering anyway, but Henry and Beanpole found nothing. We had reached the wide river, flowing southeast, which the map told us we should follow, and Henry spent half an hour at one place trying, without success, to tickle trout up from under the bank. While he did so, I lay gazing stupefied at the cloudy sky, grateful for the rest.

Toward evening, after endless fields of young wheat and rye, we came in sight of an orchard. There were rows of cherry, plum, and apple. The apples would be small and unripe still, but even from a distance we could see golden and purple plums and cherries black or red-and-white against the green of leaves. The trouble was that the farmhouse was right by the orchard and would have a good view of anyone moving among the long straight ranks of trees. Later, of course, with the onset of darkness, it would be different.

Henry and Beanpole disagreed as to what we should do. Henry wanted to stay, where there was an assurance
of some kind of food at least, and wait for the chance to get at it; Beanpole was for pressing on, hoping to find something else, or something better, in the couple of hours’ light that remained. I got no pleasure, this time, out of their opposition—I was feeling too heavy and ill to bother. I supported Henry, but only because I was desperate for the rest. Beanpole gave in, as always with a good grace, and we settled down to let the time pass.

When they tried to rouse me to go with them, I paid no heed, being too sunk in lethargy and general wretchedness, and eventually they left me and went off on their own. I had no idea how much later it was that they came back, but I was aware of them trying to rouse me again, offering me fruit and also cheese, which Beanpole had managed to steal from the dairy which abutted on the farmhouse. I could not eat anything—could not be bothered to try—and for the first time they appreciated that I was ill, and not merely sulking. They whispered together, and then they half-lifted, half-dragged me to my feet and hauled me away, supporting me between them.

I learned later that there was an old shed at the far end of the orchard which did not seem to be in use, and they thought it best to get me there: rain was threatening again and it did rain during the night. I was aware only of stumbling and being pulled along, and at last being allowed to collapse on an earth floor. There were more sweating sleeps after that, and more dreams, from one of which I emerged shouting.

The next thing I realized with any precision was that a dog was growling nearby. Shortly afterward, the door
of the shed was flung open, and a shaft of hot sunlight fell on my face, and I saw the dark outline of a gaitered man against the light. It was followed by more confusion, by loud voices in a strange tongue. I tried to struggle to my feet, but fell back.

And the next thing after that, I was lying in cool sheets, in a soft bed, and a grave, dark-eyed girl, in a blue, turban-like cap, was bending over me. I looked past her, in wonder, at my surroundings: a high white ceiling, worked in arabesque, walls of dark-paneled wood, hangings of thick crimson velvet around the bed. I had never known such luxury.

Henry and Beanpole had realized,
the morning after my collapse, that I was not well enough to travel. They could, of course, have left me and gone on by themselves. Barring that, they had a choice either of dragging me farther away from the farmhouse, or of staying in the hut and hoping not to be observed. As far as the first was concerned, there was no other shelter in sight and, although the rain had stopped, the weather was not promising. And the hut did not look as though it were used much. Anyway, they decided to stay where they were. In the early morning they crept out and got more plums and cherries and returned to the hut to eat them.