The White Mountains (The Tripods) (2 page)

I had seen the future, and found it disappointing; so what remained? Well, there was the past. The color which had bleached out of our interplanetary speculations was still bright in human history and there was life there, and romance and action. I doubted if my inquiring publisher would be much impressed by getting a story set in feudal England, but there might be a way around that.

Imagine a race of aliens who conquer the earth. They have a means of controlling their human slaves, which involves putting a metal Cap on their heads when they reach puberty. Through the Cap they can subdue people individually, suppressing rebellious impulses. To exercise a more general control they need to impose a social organization which is orderly and hierarchical. The chaotic capitalist system which they first encounter, with its emphasis on individual enterprise, is not suitable for this purpose. So they delve into human history and find a system which is. Out go bankers and inventors and those awkward types who just want to do something different; back come kings and nobles, farmers and peasants—people accustomed to order imposed from above, in a world which only changes with the seasons.

The publisher wanted the future; I was more interested in the past. I reckoned I might satisfy both of us by combining the two, in a medieval world threatened and dominated by monstrous futuristic machines.

Somehow it worked. Over and over again in the letters I’ve had from young readers there have been comments along these lines: “What really got me about the book was not knowing whether I was in the past or the future.”

So I wrote
The White Mountains
and sent it off. The London publisher approved of it. Another copy went to New York. My agent there wrote back to say he had offered the book to a children’s book publisher, who had turned it down but said they might be interested if I rewrote it. He enclosed a long letter from the children’s books editor.

Basically, what she said was that she loved the first chapter but the rest of the book was a mess: it would need a complete reworking from
Chapter 2
onward. This was something that had not happened to me before. My adult novels had either been taken or rejected as they stood. I was not used to rewriting and certainly not eager to start doing so with a mere children’s book. Macmillan had been the first U.S. publisher to see the book; another firm might take a different view.

Then I read thoroughly the letter I’d previously only skimmed. I realized the observations were sharp, the suggestions very much to the point. And I was forced to accept that my own attitude had been badly flawed. I was to learn a hard but invaluable lesson: there’s no such thing as a “mere children’s book,” and children’s book editors are some of the brightest and most dedicated people in the field. So, after fuming a little, I went back to work and rewrote the book from the end of Chapter 1. I sent the revised version to the London publisher, who said yes again. Then it came back from New York with another letter: The beginning and the end were okay, but the middle was still wrong. I sighed, and went back to the typewriter.
The third version met her high critical standards. The London publisher simply agreed yet again.

It isn’t easy to start an apprenticeship when you are the author of thirty published books, but it’s certainly good for you. With the sequel,
The City of Gold and Lead,
the New York editor only asked me to rewrite the beginning. When she received
The Pool of Fire,
the last book in the trilogy, she cabled an immediate acceptance.

I thought then that I’d licked it, but I still had a lot to learn about writing for young people. The next book I wrote was rejected as a total mess, only salvaged when my American and British editors brought me to London and sat over me till we (one of them, actually) came up with a solution to the chief and seemingly intractable problem. Over the years I was to be grateful for much advice and help from children’s book editors, something I had never encountered while writing my thirty previous adult books.

My editor in New York was Susan Hirschmann. The original version of
The White Mountains
was probably just about worth publishing: the London editor thought so. But would it, without Susan, have remained in print and worthy of a commemorative relaunch, three and a half decades after its original publication? I’ve no doubt about the answer to that.

Apart from the one in the church tower,
there were five clocks in the village that kept reasonable time, and my father owned one of them. It stood on the mantelpiece in the parlor, and every night before he went to bed he took the key from a vase, and wound it up. Once a year the clockman came from Winchester, on an old jogging packhorse, to clean and oil it and put it right. Afterward he would drink camomile tea with my mother, and tell her the news of the city and what he had learned in the villages through which he had passed. My father, if he were not busy milling, would stalk out at this time, with some contemptuous remark about gossip; but later, in the evening, I would hear my mother passing the stories on to him. He did not show much enthusiasm, but he listened to them.

My father’s great treasure, though, was not the clock, but the Watch. This, a miniature clock with a dial less than an inch across and a circlet permitting it to be worn on the wrist, was kept in a locked drawer of his desk; and only brought out to be worn on ceremonial occasions, like Harvest Festival, or a Capping. The clockman was only allowed to see to it every third year, and at such times my father stood by, watching him as he worked. There was no other Watch in the village, nor in any of the villages round about. The clockman said there were a number in Winchester, but none as fine as this. I wondered if he said it to please my father, who certainly showed pleasure in the hearing, but I believe it truly was of very good workmanship. The body of the Watch was of a steel much superior to anything they could make at the forge in Alton, and the works inside were a wonder of intricacy and skill. On the front was printed “Anti-magnetique Incabloc,” which we supposed must have been the name of the craftsman who made it in olden times.

The clockman had visited us the week before, and I had been permitted to look on for a time while he cleaned and oiled the Watch. The sight fascinated me, and after he had gone I found my thoughts running continually on this treasure, now locked away again in its drawer. I was, of course, forbidden to touch my father’s desk and the notion of opening a locked drawer in it should have been unthinkable. Nonetheless, the idea persisted. And after a day or two, I admitted to myself that it was only the fear of being caught that prevented me.

On Saturday morning, I found myself alone in the
house. My father was in the mill room, grinding, and the servants—even Molly who normally did not leave the house during the day—had been brought in to help. My mother was out visiting old Mrs. Ash, who was sick, and would be gone an hour at least. I had finished my homework, and there was nothing to stop my going out into the bright May morning and finding Jack. But what completely filled my mind was the thought that I had this opportunity to look at the Watch, with small chance of detection.

The key, I had observed, was kept with the other keys in a small box beside my father’s bed. There were four, and the third one opened the drawer. I took out the Watch, and gazed at it. It was not going, but I knew one wound it and set the hands by means of the small knob at one side. If I were to wind it only a couple of turns it would run down quite soon—just in case my father decided to look at it later in the day. I did this, and listened to its quiet rhythmic ticking. Then I set the hands by the clock. After that it only remained for me to slip it on my wrist. Even notched to the first hole, the leather strap was loose; but I was wearing the Watch.

Having achieved what I had thought was an ultimate ambition, I found, as I think is often the case, that there remained something more. To wear it was a triumph, but to be seen wearing it … I had told my cousin, Jack Leeper, that I would meet him that morning, in the old ruins at the end of the village. Jack, who was nearly a year older than myself and due to be presented at the next Capping, was the person, next to my parents, that I most admired. To take the Watch out of
the house was to add enormity to disobedience, but having already gone so far, it was easier to contemplate it. My mind made up, I was determined to waste none of the precious time I had. I opened the front door, stuck the hand with the Watch deep into my trouser pocket, and ran off down the street.

The village lay at a crossroads, with the road in which our house stood running alongside the river (this giving power for the mill, of course) and the second road crossing it at the ford. Beside the ford stood a small wooden bridge for foot travelers, and I pelted across, noticing that the river was higher than usual from the spring rains. My Aunt Lucy was approaching the bridge as I left it at the far end. She called a greeting to me, and I called back, having first taken care to veer to the other side of the road. The baker’s shop was there, with trays of buns and cakes set out, and it was reasonable that I should be heading that way: I had a couple of pennies in my pocket. But I ran on past it, and did not slacken to a walk until I had reached the point where the houses thinned out and at last ended.

The ruins were a hundred yards farther on. On one side of the road lay Spiller’s meadow, with cows grazing, but on my side there was a thorn hedge, and a potato field beyond. I passed a gap in the hedge, not looking in my concentration on what I was going to show Jack, and was startled a moment later by a shout from behind me. I recognized the voice as Henry Parker’s.

Henry, like Jack, was a cousin of mine—my name is Will Parker—but, unlike Jack, no friend. (I had several cousins in the village: people did not usually travel
far to marry.) He was a month younger than I, but taller and heavier, and we had hated each other as long as I could remember. When it came to fighting, as it very often did, I was outmatched physically, and had to rely on agility and quickness if I were not going to be beaten. From Jack I had learned some skill in wrestling which, in the past year, had enabled me to hold my own more, and in our last encounter I had thrown him heavily enough to wind him and leave him gasping for breath. But for wrestling one needed the use of both hands. I thrust my left hand deeper into the pocket and, not answering his call, ran on toward the ruins.

He was closer than I had thought, though, and he pounded after me, yelling threats. I put a spurt on, looked back to see how much of a lead I had, and found myself slipping on a patch of mud. (Cobbles were laid inside the village, but out here the road was in its usual poor condition, aggravated by the rains.) I fought desperately to keep my footing, but would not, until it was too late, bring out my other hand to help balance myself. As a result, I went slithering and sprawling and finally fell. Before I could recover, Henry was kneeling across me, holding the back of my head with his hand and pushing my face down into the mud.

This activity would normally have kept him happy for some time, but he found something of greater interest. I had instinctively used both hands to protect myself as I fell, and he saw the Watch on my wrist. In a moment he had wrenched it off, and stood up to examine it. I scrambled to my feet, and made a grab, but he held it easily above his head and out of my reach.

I said, panting, “Give that back!”

“It’s not yours,” he said. “It’s your father’s.”

I was in agony in case the Watch had been damaged, broken maybe, in my fall, but even so I attempted to get my leg between his, to drop him. He parried, and, stepping back, said,

“Keep your distance.” He braced himself, as though preparing to throw a stone. “Or I’ll see how far I can fling it.”

“If you do,” I said, “you’ll get a whipping for it.”

There was a grin on his fleshy face. “So will you. And your father lays on heavier than mine does. I’ll tell you what: I’ll borrow it for a while. Maybe I’ll let you have it back this afternoon. Or tomorrow.”

“Someone will see you with it.”

He grinned again. “I’ll risk that.”

I made a grab at him, I had decided that he was bluffing about throwing it away. I almost got him off balance, but not quite. We swayed and struggled, and then crashed together and rolled down into the ditch by the side of the road. There was some water in it, but we went on fighting, even after a voice challenged us from above. Jack—for it was he who had called to us to get up—had to come down and pull us apart by force. This was not difficult for him. He was as big as Henry, and tremendously strong also. He dragged us back up to the road, got to the root of the matter, took the Watch off Henry, and dismissed him with a clip across the back of the neck.

I said tearfully, “Is it all right?”

“I think so.” He examined it, and handed it to me. “But you were a fool to bring it out.”

“I wanted to show it to you.”

“Not worth it,” he said briefly. “Anyway, we’d better see about getting it back. I’ll lend a hand.”