The Wine-Dark Sea (21 page)

But immediately he spoilt it all by speaking further.

‘They’ll have shot up a lot further by this time,’ he observed. His eyes were searching round the room, as they always did when the subject of the boys arose.

‘Thank you, Uncle Stephen,’ said Millie, as he stopped pouring. ‘It’s a beautiful breakfast. When I’ve finished it, I’d like to sleep a little more. Then I’ll come down and give you a hand.’

He took the hint quite quietly. He merely said, ‘I see now that you’re looking pale. Don’t you worry about helping me. I can easily bring up your little lunch when the time comes.’

‘You
are
good to me, Uncle Stephen.’

But, as soon as he had left the room and closed the door, Millie began to heave; and in no time, while trying to muffle the noise, she was being copiously sick into the article
provided
in well-found houses for that and other purposes: as sick as she had been, without cessation as it had seemed, during the long months before the two boys were born.

*

Really there could be no question of Millie even attempting to lead a life of her own as, like so many women, she had originally, in a vague way, intended. She was afraid to leave the house, and even more so after what Uncle Stephen had so’ casually said.

That she had good reason to lie low was confirmed by the episodes that followed.

It was more than a year after Millie had left Phineas, and the gold of summer was fast dissolving into the copper of autumn, when one night Millie stirred in her sleep to see a big face pressed against the panes of her first-floor bedroom window. Whether it was Angus’s face or Rodney’s face, which of their faces, she would probably not by now have known in any case. It was an unseemly blot on the October
moonlight
, then it ducked.

What was more, her window was open, as at night it always was. The boy was far too big to climb right in, but he could easily have inserted a huge arm, perhaps reached to the bed, and then strangled or humiliated her. Millie had realised from the first that the boys must have a perfectly clear idea of where she was, even though she emerged so seldom, and Uncle Stephen never recommended otherwise. What had decided the boys to re-enter her life now? She had seen only one of them, but was sure that the other was there also, because the other always was. She suspected that by now their combined strength could throw down the entire house. And very possibly they were growing still. Boys by no means always cease to grow at sixteen or seventeen.

She drew on her kimono and ran to Uncle Stephen’s room. She knocked at his door, as she had done before when hungry during the night, or when merely lonely.

‘Come in, girl. Come in.’

‘Uncle Stephen. The boys are back. One of them has just looked through my window in the moonlight. I think I’m going to be sick again.’

‘Come in with me, little love. I’ll look after you and protect you. That’s what I’m doing in your life. That’s what I’m here for. You know that.’

Fortunately, it was a very large bed. Uncle Stephen had brought it back from the East; from gorgeous, sanctified Goa, now for ever lost.

‘When I was young, I could never in my life have even imagined anything so frightening,’ said Millie. ‘Not until the boys were born. Or actually a little before that. When Phineas and I were on our honeymoon. In France, and then in the marshes behind Ariano. I never dared to read horror stories and ghost stories.’ She snuggled towards Uncle Stephen.

‘No man and no woman knows anything of the troubles they are going to meet with in life. Or I take it they’d succeed in dodging them,’ said Uncle Stephen. ‘They’re supposed to be sent to form and mould us, but my idea is to form and mould
them
whenever possible. Remember that.’

‘You’re the most wonderful uncle,’ Millie murmured, though she was still shivering and gulping.

‘I’ll stay with you ten minutes while you calm down and arrange your pinafore, and then I’m going hunting.’

‘No, Uncle Stephen! It’s too dangerous. They’re watching the house. They’re
immense.
’

‘Many times in my life I’ve been under siege. Each time, in the end, I burst out and destroyed everything in sight. I’m hard to hold, Millie.’

‘Things have changed since those days, Uncle Stephen. It’s sad, but it’s true. Even
The
Imperialist
admits it. That was the bit I read you, when you ordered me to stop. There’s nothing for either of us to do nowadays but escape. A
fortune-teller
told me that last year, and now it’s come true.’

‘I know all about times changing, none better,’ said Uncle Stephen, holding her close. ‘The fact remains that
I
have
not
changed. I am older, unfortunately, but otherwise exactly the same. Also I have weapons, I have strategy and tactics, and I have experience. I am going to give those cubs the lesson they’ve needed since their first birthday. I learned, my little love, to deal with growing boys in a harder school than Eton and Harrow or any of those places.’

‘I’m not going to let you try. You’re over-confident. Those two are like children of the future.’ She was appalled. ‘Perhaps they
are
children of the future?’

‘I’ll admit that they’re too big for their boots,’ said Uncle Stephen drily.

‘If you go anywhere near them they’ll harm you. We’re just going to wait for the daylight. I’ll stay with you if you’ll let me. Then we’ll steal away somewhere for a bit. Somewhere nice. You’ve always said you could afford it, if only
circumstances
had been different. Well, circumstances
are
different, whether we like it or not. We could go and stay in an hotel at Southampton and you could look at the different ships going to places. You would like that, wouldn’t you?’

‘And if everyone behaved in that way?’ enquired Uncle Stephen. ‘If everyone did, what would become of our country? Things are rough enough already. You’re as bad as that
so-called
man of yours, Millie.’ But he spoke affectionately, none the less, cuddling and caressing her, not meaning his
comparison
very seriously.

‘Uncle Stephen, don’t be silly. They’re not ordinary boys you can either pamper or stand in the corner. They’re
enor
mous
.
I told you what the man from the police station said. They’re quite beyond handling by any single individual.’

‘All I know is that they’re boys, and that’s enough. I don’t want to leave you alone, as you know perfectly well, my little pet, but I’m going. You just lie in my bed until I’m back. And don’t worry. I’m here to keep you from all harm. And I have weapons. Remember that.’

He squeezed her hand, and clambered out into the night.

Soon he was on the roof, directly above her. She could hear the slotting of iron into iron, or was it nowadays steel into steel? When she had lived beside the Heath as a small child during the Second World War, the A.T.S. girls operating the anti-aircraft unit concealed among the evergreen gorse had made that noise all day as they took the long guns to pieces and put them together again. Uncle Stephen possessed artillery of his own. It was included in the weapons he had mentioned; nor did it consist in a couple of squat, serio-comic muzzle-loading Peninsular War mortars, looking like pugs. On the contrary, Uncle Stephen could mount at least three quite modern-looking pieces, painted not black but dark green as gorse and palpably requiring expert knowledge to discharge satisfactorily; the kind of knowledge that the girls on the Heath had been acquiring during the daytime. He had explained to Millie that these guns were designed by the authorities primarily for withstanding a concerted rush. She wondered when he had managed to dismantle at least one of them in the room downstairs and reassemble it on the roof of the house without her hearing or noticing a thing. She might have been impressed by his foresight, but instead resurrected her suspicions that Uncle Stephen had all along known
something
that he had failed to pass on.

There was a flash and a crash: quite startlingly like 6:30 or 7:30
P.M
. when Millie had been but a tot.

Another and another. Millie fully realised that this could not continue for long; not in the modern world. Somehow it would be stopped, however justified it might be, even by the narrowest legalistic standard of self-defence and of protecting an unarmed mother.

Concurrently, Millie was subdued by a confused mêlée of feeling about Angus and Rodney; even though she had never been able within herself to accept that they were
authentically
her own offspring.

A shadow passed between the moon and the casement. Surely the boys should have been intelligent enough to take cover? How, without doing so, had either of them survived Uncle Stephen’s cannonade? Uncle Stephen was the least likely of men to aim and then miss. He kept in continual practice, as in so many directions.

Another flash and crash: though this time in the latter was a curious rending sound, as if the gun barrel were about to burst asunder. Millie had heard of guns soldering up through being fired continuously day and night. Probably Uncle Stephen’s gun had not of late been fired often enough to be in prime condition. Millie realised the danger that Uncle Stephen might be running from the gun exploding within itself and shattering into smithereens, as she understood that guns not infrequently did.

But by now the official legions were massing. Millie could hear outerspace blastings of fire engines, of ambulances, of police cars; and between them the insect whinings of
television
vans and radar. It was much as the moment when an escape from a concentration camp is first notified. She ran to the window.

Functionaries were swarming over and around machines to make sure that nothing remained unaccounted for in the designated area, except criminally. It was an ideal spot for such an operation, as Uncle Stephen’s house stood in
comparative
isolation at a corner of the woods; a public open space owned by the Council.

Millie ran back to her own room. It would be most unwise to turn on a light, and possibly the current had already been chopped at the main. In any case, public lights were beginning to range: brutal searchlights, and the torture-chamber arc lights necessary for television.

Millie tore off her nightdress. She plunged into her jeans and a thick sweater which Uncle Stephen had bought for her at the supply stores where he bought many of his own garments. She had lost her handkerchief and took out a clean one.

For these simple actions the case was cogent enough. But Millie then hesitated. Uncle Stephen had stopped firing, and Millie could but speculate upon the exact reason. She could not possibly bring herself to desert Uncle Stephen, but the thing of which she was most certain was that the two of them could not win. She suspected that Uncle Stephen really knew that as well as she did. So what then?

Cautiously, she re-entered Uncle Stephen’s bedroom. The beam of light which now filled it illuminated nothing human or real. In her short absence, the room had been killed.

Millie realised that Uncle Stephen was in difficulties. The gun was refusing to fire, as cars sometimes refuse to start. Uncle Stephen was tinkering with it, bashing it, cursing it. Soon, in the nature of things, the functionaries would close in finally, nor would it be a concerted attack of the kind which the gun was designed to ward off. It would be more a matter of irresistible infiltration, worked out long before in every detail, standard practice, precluding all possibility of
topographical
variation.

Millie ascended the attic ladder to the rooftree. ‘Uncle Stephen!’ she called down to him.

Absorbed though he was in his male task, he looked up at once.

‘Go back,’ he cried out. ‘Go back, little Millie.’

‘What’s up, Uncle Stephen?’ What’s gone wrong?’ Nothing else was possible than to enter into things as he saw them.

‘The boys have won this round, Millie. We must admit that. They’ve put the gun right out of action.’

‘But how, Uncle Stephen?’

‘It’s some kind of schoolboy muck. They dropped a whole gob of it into the breech. Clever monkeys, we must admit.’

Millie had almost forgotten the boys; incredible though that seemed.

‘Where are they now?’

‘I’ll bet they’ve made off. They don’t have much more to do, just at this moment.’

Millie glanced anxiously round amid the confused and inhuman lights. But she knew that for a second she had almost wished the boys had still been there; as some kind of reassurance against all that was developing.

‘I said I was here to protect you,’ affirmed Uncle Stephen, ‘and I shall do it still. I have always won the last battle. Always and always.’

‘Come away with me, Uncle Stephen, while there’s time.’

He went through burlesque bristling motions. ‘You don’t suppose I shall knuckle down to a couple of schoolboys with their pockets full of gum.’ He expressed it facetiously, but of course he meant it, could hardly have meant it more.

Now that the firing had ceased for some time, the
encircling
host had begun to relax. Cups of tea were being
consumed
; ambulance workers were chatting to firemen on
familiar
subjects, their respective rates of pay and conditions of employment, their pension prospects, the maladies of their dear ones.

‘Oh come on, Uncle Stephen. If the boys have gone, we can go too.’

To her consternation, he was not to be budged. ‘No, girl,’ he said. ‘This is my home, my castle, as we used to say; and perhaps by now it’s your home and castle too. Wouldn’t you say that’s very nearly true, Millie?’ He had given up fiddling with the gun, and was addressing himself to something even more important.

‘The boys will return,’ she said. ‘When all the people have gone. And you’ll be in endless trouble for firing that gun in any case, even though I know you did it for my sake.’

‘All my guns are licensed, Millie. I’m a registered holder of firearms. And as for the boys, let them come. I want nothing better. They’ve won a battle. They won’t win the war. They’re hulking brutes, but they’re still only schoolboys. Look at this.’ Uncle Stephen displayed the mess on his hands and combat suit.