The Chalk Giants (3 page)

Maggie said, ‘There’d still be fall-out.’

Martin said, ‘I shouldn’t think there’d be much to worry about there. You only get fall-out with ground detonations. If we get anything it will be air blasts; they’re far more destructive anyway.’

Maggie said bitterly, ‘Maybe they’ll want some good dirty blasts while they’re at it.’

‘It’s possible,’ said Jones politely, ‘but I think strategically unlikely.’ He brushed the light hair back from his eyes. ‘After all, they - and don’t forget “they” could be the Americans - will want to occupy the territory afterwards. Otherwise the whole thing’s pointless.’

Richard said, ‘It’s nice to know there’s some point in air blasts. It makes it all seem more worth while.’

He turned. As if in emphasis, a rumbling had sounded from outside. The noise intensified; then past the open door ground yellow headlights, dark green armour. The vanguard, it seemed, of a considerable column, moving up towards Worth and the sea. They watched the first vehicles pass; then Ray shrugged. He said, ‘That’s it then.’ He picked a cloth up ex-pressionlessly, hung it over the pumps. A shocked pause; and somebody laughed. They said, ‘It’s not Time yet.’

‘No,’ said Martin. ‘Not yet. But soon...’

Stan Potts had not spoken. His mind was working furiously; for he knew just such a spot as the other had described. He remembered the lane that wound down from the range road, the lane they only opened once a year, in summer when the Gunnery School closed down. The dead village behind its ten-strand fence, ruined, bullet-pocked gables of barns; and the great shuttered farmhouse by the sea, close under the brooding cliffs. The hippie had spoken, as usual, with calm conviction; and the unthinkable had come to seem, for a space at least, a practical reality. He glanced at Ray, under his lids; at Joyce the painter, and at Martin Jones. Lastly, he saw Martine; and something caught his breath, made his heart begin to pound. Though the notion that later came was not yet fully formed.

The tail-lights ahead brightened. He braked automatically, stared round. For a moment he was disorientated. He brought his mind back from distance, saw with something like a shock the railway siding to his left, the bulky line of tankers. Ahead was the bend that took the road into Wareham; and on the bend they had set up their block. The Army this time; he saw the lorries drawn up, figures moving purposefully behind the red-and-white striped pole. Handlamps bobbed, he caught the gleam of a steel helmet. A car was turned back peremptorily, another waved to one side. So he wasn’t going to make it, after all; but he had known that from the start.

Where he sat at the tail of the queue he was a quarter-mile or more from the checkpoint. The vehicles in front of him moved forward, stopped again. He saw a car directed into the side road that runs inland, across the heath to Wool. Another followed it; and something seemed to snap inside his head. He thought, ‘This is an army vehicle.’

It seemed his hands and feet had acquired a purpose of their own. He swung out, horn blaring, drove fast down the outside of the queue. He saw a man turn, surprised; another unslinging a Stirling from his shoulder. He braked with a squeal, shoved his driving licence from the window. He said, ‘Territorials.’ The man stepped back; and he sounded the horn again.

A lamp flashed into his eyes. Somebody said, ‘Get out of that thing. Keep your hands in sight.’

He was lined up for the barricade. He let the clutch go, clamped his foot on the floor. The Champ bellowed, took the pole across the bonnet. A cracking; the wheels hit the level-crossing tracks, slewed. He saw a man running, waving his arms. Then the street was full of din. He glimpsed lorries drawn up, civilians being herded aboard a coach; and the noise came again, a metallic hammering from behind. His vision starred; he swerved, held the car. White walls showed the house-fronts stained with neon; and the bridge was ahead. Beyond, a lane forked right. He stamped the brake, clawing at the wheel. His mirrors blazed; he accelerated, swung on to the rough. The suspension bottomed, sickeningly. Bushes showed ahead; he clawed at the dash, and he was driving blind. The wheels sucked, spun, gripped again. The lights jazzed on the skyline; then he was swaying and racketing down a long slope, and behind him was darkness.

Ten minutes later he braked to a halt. He killed the engine, opened the cab door. His ears were singing; water was trickling, somewhere close, but there were no other sounds.

The shaking started then. He sat and hung his head and wanted to be sick. In time the fit passed. He raised his face, stared round. Beside him the Champ loomed against the night, parked at the crest of a little rise. To the east an orange haze reflected the lights of Poole; and ahead, dimly visible, were the hills. The night air moved cool against his skin.

The trickling was not water; he could smell, now, the raw, rich stink of petrol. He unstrapped the nearside screen, groped inside, found a torch. He lifted the jerrycan down, poured what remained into the tank and slung the thing into the bushes. Then he walked round to the Champ. Cracks had radiated across the windshield; in the corner was a neat round hole. He touched it, shakily. He said, ‘Oh my Christ’

His head still felt swimmy, and his throat and mouth were dry. He climbed back into the driving seat, twisted the starter, heard the engine catch and bark. The main road ran somewhere to his left; but he dared not risk it again. He drove forward slowly, eyes more accustomed to the gloom. Near at hand the heath stretched broken and undulating, mist clinging to the hollows of the ground like thick white smoke. The hills grew higher, outlining themselves against the night; and in time he heard gravel crunch under his wheels. He had found a lane, or quarry track. He lit a cigarette, closing his eyes against the flare of the match, and set himself to climb. The fear had gone; in its place was a curious sensation, almost like elation. For he had achieved the impossible; crossed a crowded, panicking country to reach her. Now he was almost there; and now he knew how long she had been with him. He’d seen her in cafes and restaurants and supermarkets and pubs, on beaches and hills and in the street; she’d laughed at him from hoardings, kicked her legs on the Box, shown him her belly in the Sunday rags. While he worked his allotment, and walked with Chalky and the dogs, and drank his halves on Saturday nights. Now life was altering, the world breaking up, Sledger and Annette Clitheroe and school and tech blowing away to dark. He was going to her in a stone-built pub where the bar lights burned amber and a fossil fish hung on the wall; and if she wouldn’t come he would beat her, because he’d waited long enough and he was tired. And if she struggled he would tie her, and if he had to tie her he’d brought the rope, and maybe that way it would be better yet.

The moon rose, flooding the horizon with dull golden light. The mist banks gleamed; through and between them the Champ picked its way, a big, cautious shadow in the night.

II

To see the scene that follows through the eyes of Stanley Potts you must imagine extraordinary things; colours that throb and spark, hills that roll and tilt, haloed with light beneath a sky of smoky milk. You must hear the calling of night birds across that haunted space, the crash of the sea like blood pounding in the ears; you must hear too the singing of all the choirs of heaven. And can you not see the Champ as she breasts each slope, floats from cloud to cloud of glowing mist?

Now she halts, at the steep mouth of a little lane; and Stan Potts waves from the window to the car that follows. The station waggon backs up, driven by Richard Joyce; and the Champ charges the fragile gate that blocks the way, the splinters fly in graceful moonshot arcs. And there is the track beyond, winding between fences of bright wire; the field where army hunters used to graze, the empty village with its empty barns, church tower lost in trees, the thistled Great House with its empty windows, washed in brown moonlight. He points wordless; and she nods and smiles, her face with its great eyes underlit by the dash. He is remembering the parties at the tech, each the same; and how one never saw it happen but suddenly everybody would be paired off, he never knew how it happened but it was every time the same; and he would sit and sip his beer, alone in the centre of the room, and try not to hear the giggles from the shadows and the whispering, and try not to care that he was Potts the Pot and nobody wanted him. He is remembering too that it cannot happen any more, that they are four now, in an empty land. He is remembering that she is with him, and that Richard Joyce is following and Maggie who played guitar, once in a lifetime long gone by.

He has made no error in his route. There ahead is the bay with its amphitheatre of cliffs, pale and vast in the sinking light. Below the cliffs a great half-moon of turf, stretching to further rockfalls and the sea. And at the sea’s edge, foursquare against its shimmering plain, the farmhouse with its lines of dark windows, its chimney stacks of burly stone. The joy that fills him makes him want to shout aloud; but he says, ‘We’re nearly there,’ and she laughs and says, ‘It’s beautiful.’ She moves, rustling; and he smells her scent. How ashamed he is, now, of the thoughts that filled him; when she came so sweetly, and made no demur. They all but burn his mind!

He coasts the Champ to a halt, by the boarded-up door of the place. His senses, it seems, are unnaturally acute. The Cambridge pulls in beside him; he hears the crunch of tyres on shingle, the squeak and whimper of the fanbelt as the engine dies. His own boots rasp on rock; he hurries to the passenger door; and Martin Jones says, ‘Good evening!’

Have you imagined his mood? Have you heard the angels sing, felt the tremulousness that filled him like bubbling wine, till it seemed he was floating on air? Now you must imagine a further change; a reversal of his fortunes, no less!

How the sea spins, inside his Potty old head; how the sky whirls, and the cliffs! He sees her run to him; he sees the arm that curls about her; he hears her say, ‘I didn’t know how to get here. But he brought me.’ Now they are five, and the world is comprehensible again; the smile has already fixed itself protectively about his lips. He feels he should sing light tunes,
Dah-dah dee-dee-dee dah-di-dah,
as he unpacks the Champ, as he carries in the sleeping bags and the stove and the food and the tins and cases and boxes and cans. Jones has brought what he has not, blanketed the windows of the long-disused rooms, set out chairs and a folding table. A fire of driftwood crackles in a hearth; Tilly lamps hang green and hissing, even the floors have been swept. It’s a real little Home from Home! He sees how carefully it has all been planned; he sees how she clings to him as he goes from room to room, rubbing him with her little brown hands. He’s glad he’s had so much practice at keeping the half-smile clamped to his mouth, at lidding his eyes and at staring at the ground; for nobody has guessed his secret. It was all his fault, right from the start. He has been silly; men with fat bottoms should never fall in love!

There is even a tablecloth, gay-checked in white and blue. They make a meal, using his stove; there’s no question but that they’re going to let him stay. He blushes, smiling at the cloth, as they thank him, thank him for what he has done; and the party is quite gay. Afterwards the cars are hidden, driven from sight in a ruined outhouse, and bracken and brushwood heaped round their fenders to make them invisible from the air. Stan fetches his handlamp because there are only two Tillys, and naturally they will be needing three rooms. But there is a spare room, at the end of a cold, cluttered corridor; Martin leads the way to it, Tilly lamp held high, the light glancing from his soft blond hair. He calls the place the Bachelor’s Suite, and they all laugh, and Stan joins in. There is no water, explains his host; but he has found a jug and basin, and set up an old packing crate as a wash-hand stand. He was expecting more visitors, he tells him, more than in fact arrived. He hopes he will be comfortable, and leaves him.

There is an awkward moment then because she stands in the doorway and smiles as if she means it and says, ‘Thank you,’ again and for a moment it’s almost as if she’s going to peck his cheek. But Martin calls from the corridor, and adds something Stan doesn’t catch, though he hears the artist laugh. So she turns away, and he pushes the door to and hangs the lamp from a hook in one of the ceiling beams. Then he spreads his bag out and turns the liner back, and Gets Undone.

He doesn’t feel he can really bother to shave.

He lay for a while unsleeping, though now that he and the Champ had both done their bit he supposed they had earned a rest. The sea lapped and whispered outside the place, the still, damp air of the room stung his cheeks. For a time the traffic noise dinned in his ears; the shouting and hooting, revving of engines, bawling of the many loudhailers. Then he wished that he could become angry, but his inhibition was too great. Men with large bottoms look funny when they are annoyed. From this his thoughts drifted to other things, none creative, some positively counter-productive. He remembered how one day in Biology Chapman discovered his resemblance to the duckbilled platypus, and passed a note to Smythe about it, so from Potty Potts he became Potts the Platypus, which he did not like. Though the name didn’t take too well till the Sledge found a drawing on the board one day, and realized the direction of the sniggerings, and said, ‘How rare is the platypus, Potts?’ and there was this great roar of laughing. So he had to stand up, ‘on his back legs’, as Sledger put it, and stammer out all he knew about the creature, and after that the nickname was assured. Then the R stream got hold of it, the yobboes, so each break time and each afternoon it was
Platypus, platypus,
in chanted rhythm while he was josded and shoved and had his balls grabbed from behind, at the centre of a ring of races, unable to get away, waiting for the prefect’s bell to end the torture. He thought perhaps he could beat one of them up till he saw Tompkins, who was the worst, fight in the boxing tournament and realized what would happen to him if he tried. And so the half-smile was born. It had stayed on his face for twenty-five years.