Darkening Island

to friends

I have white skin. Light brown hair. Blue eyes. I am tall: five feet, eleven inches. My mode of dress tends to the conservative: sports jackets, corduroy trousers, knitted ties. I wear spectacles for reading, though they are more an affectation than a necessity. I smoke cigarettes to a moderate amount. Sometimes I drink alcohol. I do not believe in God; I do not go to church; I do not have any objections to other people doing so. When I married my wife, I was in love with her. I am very fond of my daughter Sally. I have no political ambitions. My name is Alan Whitman.

My skin is smudged with dirt. My hair is dry, salt-encrusted and itchy. I have blue eyes. I am tall: five feet, eleven inches. I am wearing now what I was wearing six months ago, and I smell abominably. I have lost my spectacles, and learned to live without them. I do not smoke at all most of the time, though when cigarettes are available I smoke them continually. I am able to get drunk about once a month. I do not believe in God; I do not go to church. When I last saw my wife, I was cursing her, though I have learned to regret it. I am very fond of my daughter Sally. I do not think I have political ambitions. My name is Alan Whitman.

I met Lateef in a village ruined by an artillery bombardment. I disliked him the moment I saw him, and it was evidently reciprocated. After the first moments of caution, we ignored each other. I was looking for food in the village, knowing that as the bombardment had finished only recently it would not yet be in a totally plundered state. There were several houses still intact and I ignored these, knowing from experience that the groundtroops habitually ransacked these first. It was more fruitful to sift through the rubble of partially destroyed buildings.

Working methodically, I had filled two haversacks with canned food by midday, and had stolen for future barter three road-maps from abandoned cars. I did not see the other man again during the morning.

On the outskirts of the village I found a field which had evidently been cultivated at one time. In one corner I discovered a row of freshly-dug graves, each marked with a simple piece of wood upon which were stapled metal dog-tags bearing the name of the soldier. I looked at each of the names, and deduced that they were African troops.

As that part of the field was the most secluded I sat down near the graves, and opened one of the cans. The food was odious: half-cooked and greasy. I ate it hungrily.

Afterwards, I walked out to the wreck of the helicopter that had crashed near by. It was not likely to contain food, though if any instruments were recoverable they would be suitable for future exchanges. I needed a compass most of all, though it was not likely that the helicopter would have carried one that would be either easily detachable or portable. When I reached the wreck I saw that the man I had seen earlier was inside the smashed cockpit, working at the dashboard with a long-bladed knife in an attempt to remove an altimeter. When he became aware of my presence he straightened slowly, his hand moving towards a pocket. He turned to face me, and for several minutes we regarded each other carefully, each seeing in the other a man who responded to a situation in the same way as himself.

We decided we would have to abandon our house in Southgate the day the barricade was erected at the end of our road. The decision was not implemented at once; for several days we thought we would be able to adjust to the new mode of life.

I do not know who took the decision to erect the barricade. As we lived at the far end of the road, near to the edge of the playing-fields, we did not hear the noises in the night, but when Isobel took the car down the road to take Sally to school she returned almost at once with the news.

It was the first concrete sign in our lives that irrevocable change was taking place in the country. Ours was not the first of such barricades, but there were few others in our particular neighbourhood.

When Isobel told me about it I walked down to see it for myself. It did not appear to be very strongly constructed — made mostly of wooden supports and barbed-wire loops — but its symbolism was unmistakable. There were a few men standing around, and I nodded cautiously to them.

The following day, we were at home when the noise of the eviction of the Martins disturbed us. The Martins lived almost opposite us. We had not had much to do with them, and since the Afrim landings had allowed them to keep to themselves. Vincent Martin worked as a research technician at an aircraft components factory in Hatfield. His wife stayed at home, looking after their three children. They were West Indians.

At the time of their eviction I had nothing to do with the Street Patrol which was responsible for it. Within a week, though, all men in the street had been enrolled, and every member of their families was given a pass-ticket which had to be carried at all times as identification. We saw the pass-tickets as potentially the most valuable possessions we had, as by this time we were no longer blind to the developments around us.

Cars were allowed in and out of the street only at certain times, and the barricade-patrols enforced this rule with absolute inflexibility. As the street opened on to a main road which government regulations kept clear of all parked traffic after six in the evening, it meant that if you arrived home after the barricade had closed, you were required to find somewhere else to park the car. As most streets quickly followed our example and closed their entrances, the effect of this was that you were obliged to leave your car at some considerable distance from home, and walking the rest of the way at such a time was hazardous in the extreme.

The normal strength of a Street patrol was two men, though on a few occasions this was doubled, and on the night before we finally decided to leave there were fourteen men. I was part of a patrol three times; sharing the duty with a different man each time. Our function was simple. While one man stayed at the barricade with the shotgun, the other walked up and down the Street four times. The positions were then reversed, and so on through the night.

While I was at the barricade, I was always most frightened of a police-car coming along. Although I did see their cars on many occasions, none of them ever stopped. During meetings of the Patrol committee, the question of what to do in such an event was often raised, but no satisfactory answer, at least to my mind, was ever given.

In practice, we and the police would leave each other alone, though one did hear stories of battles between the occupants of barricaded streets and riot-shielded police. No news of these ever appeared in the newspapers or on television, and the absence was more noticeable than the news itself would have been.

The true purpose of the shotgun was to deter illegal squatters from attempting to enter our street, and secondarily to show as a form of protest that if the government and the armed forces were unable or unwilling to protect our homes then we would take the matter into our own hands. Such was the essence of what was printed on the backs of our pass-tickets, and was the unspoken creed of the men on the street patrol.

For my own part, I was uneasy. The burnt-out shell of the Martins’ house opposite ours was a constant reminder of the violence inherent in the patrols, and the never-ending parade of homeless shambling through the night past the barricades was disturbing in the extreme.

The night the barricade on the next street fell, I was asleep. I had heard that the patrol was to be enlarged, but it was not my turn of duty.

Our first awareness of the fighting was the firing of a shot nearby; while Isobel took Sally downstairs to shelter in the space beneath the staircase, I dressed hurriedly and went to join the patrol at the barricade. Here, the men of the street stared sullenly at the army lorries and police vans parked across the main road. About thirty armed soldiers faced us, evidently nervous and trigger-happy.

Three water-cannons rumbled past, and disappeared through the jumble of parked vehicles towards the next street. From time to time we heard more shots, and the sound of voices raised angrily. Occasionally, the explosions were deeper and more powerful, and slowly a red glow brightened near by. More army lorries and police vans arrived, and the men inside ran towards the street. We at our barricade said nothing, only too aware of the flagrant provocation and absolute inadequacy that our solitary shotgun represented. It was kept fully loaded, but out of sight. At that time, I would not have liked to be the man in possession of it.

We waited at the barricade all night, listening to the sounds of the battle only fifty yards away. As dawn came, the noise gradually lessened. We saw the bodies of several soldiers and policemen carried away, and many more wounded driven off in ambulances.

As the full light of day came, nearly two hundred white people, some dressed in only their nightclothes, were escorted by the police towards a fleet of ambulances and lorries a mile away. As they passed our barricade, some of them tried to argue with us, but were herded on by the soldiers. While they passed, I looked at the men on our side of the barricade and wondered whether the hard lack of expression was also on my own face.

We waited for the activity outside to die down, but the sound of gunfire continued spasmodically for many hours. We saw no normal traffic on the road, and assumed that it had of necessity been diverted. One of the men at our barricade was carrying a transistor radio, and we listened anxiously to each of the BBC’s news-bulletins hoping to hear some word of reassurance.

By ten o’clock it was apparent that events had levelled off. Most of the police vehicles had driven away, but the army was still around us. About once every five minutes there was a gunshot. A few houses in the next street were still burning, but there was no sign of the fires spreading.

As soon as I could manage it I slipped away from the barricade, and walked back to my house.

I found Isobel and Sally still sheltering under the stairs. Isobel had withdrawn almost entirely; she had lost all her colour, the pupils of her eyes were dilated and she slurred her speech when she spoke. Sally was no better. Their story was a garbled and incomplete recounting of a series of events they had experienced at secondhand: explosions, shouting voices, gunfire and the spreading crackle of burning wood … all heard as they lay in the dark. While I made them some tea and warmed up some food, I inspected the damage to the house.

A petrol-bomb had exploded in the garden, setting fire to our shed. All the windows at the back had been broken, and lodged in the walls I found several bullets. Even as I stood in the back room a bullet flew through the window and missed me by a few inches.

I crawled on my hands and knees to the window, and peered through.

Our house normally commanded a view across the intervening gardens to the houses in the next street. As I knelt there, I saw that of them only about a half were still intact. Through the windows of some of these I could see several people moving. One man, a short Negro in filthy clothes, stood in the garden sheltering behind a part of a fence. It was he who had fired his gun at me. As I watched he fired again, this time at the house next to mine.

When Isobel and Sally had dressed, we took the three suitcases we had packed the previous week and I put them in the car. While Isobel went through the house and systematically locked all interconnecting doors and cupboards, I collected our cash.

Shortly afterwards, we drove down to the barricade. Here we were stopped by the other men.

“Where do you think you’re going, Whitman?” one of them asked me. It was Johnson, one of the men with whom I had shared a patrol three nights before.

“We’re leaving,” I said. “We’re going to Isobel’s parents.” Johnson reached in through the open window, turned off the ignition before I could stop him, and took the key.

“Sorry,” he said. “No one leaves. If we all ran out, the niggers’d be in like a flash.”

Several of the men had crowded round. By my side, I felt Isobel tense. Sally was in the back. I didn’t care to think how this may be affecting her.

“We can’t stay here. Our house overlooks those others. It’s only a matter of time before they come through the gardens.”

I saw several of the men glance at one another. Johnson, whose house wasn’t on the same side as ours, said stubbornly: “We’ve got to stick together. It’s our only hope.”

Isobel leaned over me and looked up at Johnson imploringly. “Please,” she said. “Have you thought of us? What about your own wife? Does she want to stay?”

“It’s only a matter of time,” I said again. “You’ve seen the pattern in other places. Once the Afrims have got a street to themselves, they spread through the rest of the district in a few nights.”

“But we’ve got the law on our side,” one of the other men said, nodding his head in the direction of the soldiers outside the barricade.

“They’re not on anyone’s side. You might as well pull down the barricade. It’s useless now.”

Johnson moved away from the car-window and went to speak to one of the other men. It was Nicholson, one of the leaders of the patrol committee. After a few seconds, Nicholson himself came over.

“You’re not leaving,” he said finally. “No one’s leaving. Get the car away from here and come back on barricade duty. It’s all we can do.”

He tossed the ignition-key in, and it fell on Isobel’s lap. She picked it up. I wound the window-handle and closed the window tightly.

As I started the engine, I said to Isobel: “Do you want to chance it?”

She looked at the men in front of us, and at the barbed-wire barricade, and at the armed soldiers beyond it. She said nothing.

Behind us, Sally was crying. “I want to go home, Daddy,” she said.

I turned the car round and drove back slowly to our house. As we passed one of the other houses on the same side of the street as our own, we heard the sound of a woman screaming inside. I glanced at Isobel, and saw her close her eyes.

I stopped the car by the house. It looked strangely normal. We sat in the car and made no move to get out. I left the engine running. To turn it off would have been too final.

After a while I put the car into forward gear and drove down to the end of the street, towards the recreation-field. When the barricade had been erected at the main-road end, only two strands of wire had been put across here, and it was normally unmanned. So it was now. There was no one around; like the rest of the street it was at once unnervingly normal and abnormal. I stopped the car, jumped out and pulled down the wire. Beyond it was a wooden fence, held in place by a row of stakes. I tried it with my hands, and found that it was firm but not immovable.

I drove the car over the wire and stopped with the bumper bar touching the wooden fence. In first gear I pushed the fence, until it snapped and fell. In front of us the recreation-field was deserted. I drove across it, feeling the car lurch in and out of the ruts of the previous year’s sport.

I pulled myself out of the water and lay gasping for breath on the bank of the river. The physical shock of the cold water had exhausted me. Every part of my body ached and throbbed. I lay still.

Five minutes later I stood up, then looked back across the water to where Isobel and Sally were waiting for me. I walked upstream, carrying the end of the rope I had towed behind me, until I was directly opposite them. Isobel was sitting on the soil of the bank, not watching me but staring blankly downstream. By her side, Sally stood attentively.

I shouted instructions to them across the water. I saw Sally saying something to Isobel, and Isobel shaking her head. I stood impatiently, feeling my muscles shivering into the beginnings of cramp. I shouted again and Isobel stood up. Sally and she tied the end of the rope around their waists and across their chests in the manner I had shown them, then walked nervously to the edge of the water. In my impatience I may have pulled the rope too hard. In any event, just as they had reached the edge of the water they fell forward and began floundering in the shallows. Isobel could not swim and was afraid of drowning. I could see Sally struggling with her, trying to prevent her mother from crawling back on to the bank.

Taking the initiative from both of them, I pulled the rope, towing them out into the centre of the river. Whenever Isobel’s face came above the surface, she shouted and screamed in a mixture of fear and anger.

In just under a minute I had them on my side. Sally lay on the muddy bank, staring at me wordlessly. I wanted her to criticize me for what I had done, but she said nothing. Isobel lay on her side, doubled over. She retched up water for several minutes, then swore at me. I ignored her.

Although the river was cold from the hills, the air was warm. We took stock of our possession. Nothing had been lost in the crossing, but everything we carried had become soaked. It had been part of the original plan that Isobel should hold our main haversack up out of the water, while Sally supported her. Now, all our clothes and food were wet, and our matches for lighting a fire were unusable. We decided it would be best if we removed all our clothes, and hung them in the bushes and trees in the hope that they would be wearably dry by morning.

We lay together on the ground, shivering miserably, and cuddling each other for warmth. Within half an hour Isobel was asleep, but Sally lay in my arms with her eyes open.

We each knew the other was awake and stayed so for most of the night.

I was to spend the night with a woman named Louise. She had taken a room for the purpose in an hotel in Goodge Street, and as I had told Isobel that I was taking part in an all-night demonstration at the college I was able to get away from home for a whole night.

Louise and I dined at a small Greek restaurant in Charlotte Street, then, not wishing to spend the entire evening in her hotel room, we went to a cinema in Tottenham Court Road. I do not recall the title of the film. All I can remember is that it was foreign, that its dialogue was sub-titled in English and that it concerned a violently-resolved love-affair between a coloured man and a white woman. The film contained several scenes of complete sexual frankness, and although it had not been banned, few cinemas were willing to show films which depicted the various forms of the sex act in detail because of several instances of police action. However, at the time we saw the film it had been showing unmolested for more than a year.

Louise and I had bought seats at the rear of the cinema, and when the police came in by way of the entrances along each side, we were able to see the precision with which it was done, indicating that the raid had been planned carefully. One policeman stood at each door and the others moved in a loose cordon around the audience.

For a minute or two there seemed to be no further action, and we continued to watch the film until the house-lights went up. The film still showed and went on doing so for several more minutes. Finally it stopped abruptly.

We sat in the auditorium for twenty minutes without knowing what was happening. One of the policemen forming part of the cordon was near me and I asked him what was going on. He made no answer.

We were ordered to leave the auditorium row by row and to divulge our names and addresses. By a stroke of good fortune I did not have with me any form of self-identification, and was thus unable to prove who I was. Under the circumstances I gave the police a false name and address, and although my pockets were searched in an attempt to find authentication for my story, I was allowed to go free after Louise vouched for my identity.

We returned to her hotel immediately and went to bed. After the events of the evening I was rendered impotent, and in spite of Louise’s best efforts we were unable to have intercourse.

John Tregarth’s government had been in power for three months.

As adversaries we detested the Afrim troops. We continually heard rumours of their cowardice in battle; and of their arrogance in victory, however small or relative it may be.

One day we encountered a member of the Royal Nationalist Air Force who had been captured by an Afrim patrol. This man, who had been a pilot until crippled by the Africans’ torture, told us of brutalities and atrocities in their military interrogation centres that made our own experiences as civilians appear to be trivial and perfunctory. The pilot had lost one leg below the knee, and had suffered lacerated tendons in the other, and he counted himself as among the more fortunate. He asked us for assistance.

We were reluctant to become involved and Lateef called a meeting to decide what to do. In the end we voted to transport the crippled man to within a mile of the R.N.A.F. station, and to allow him to find his own way from there.

Shortly after this incident, we were rounded up by a large Afrim patrol and taken to one of their civilian interrogation centres.

We said nothing to them about the pilot, nor about their military methods in general. On this occasion we made no attempt to resist arrest. For my own part it was because I felt it might be connected in some way with the recent abduction of the women, but on the part of the group as a whole our lack of resistance was an outcome of the overall lethargy being experienced at the time.

We were taken to a large building on the outskirts of one of the Afrim-held towns, and in a large marquee in the grounds told to strip and pass through a delousing section. This was a part of the tent which had been partitioned off and filled with a dense steam. Coming out a few minutes later, we were told to dress again. Our clothes lay untouched where we had left them.

We were then divided into groups of one, two or three men. I was one of those on my own. We were taken to rooms inside the main building and interrogated briefly. My own interrogator was a tall West African, who, in spite of the central-heating system, wore a brown greatcoat. I had noticed on entering the room that the two uniformed guards in the corridor had been holding Russian rifles.

The interrogation was sketchy. Identification-papers, certificate of state and origin and Afrim-stamped photograph shown and checked.

“Your destination, Whitman?”

“Dorchester,” I said, giving him the answer we had agreed upon in the event of arrest.

“You have relatives there?”

“Yes.” I gave him the name and address of fictitious parents.

“You have a family?”

“Yes.”

“But they are not with you.”

“No.”

“Who is the leader of your group?”

“We are self-directed.”

There was a long silence while he rescrutinized my papers. After this I was returned to the marquee where I waited with the others as the remainder of the interrogation-sessions were completed. Then two Afrims dressed as civilians went through our possessions. The search was superficial in the extreme, turning up only a fork for eating that one of the men had left near the top of his haversack. The two knives I had secreted in the lining of my own bag went undetected.

After this search there was another long period of waiting, until a lorry bearing a large red cross on a white background was driven up alongside the marquee. The agreed Red Cross hand-out to refugees had been established for some time as being five pounds of protein, but since the Afrims had been handling their own side of the arrangement, provisions had decreased steadily. I received two small cans of processed meat and a packet of forty cigarettes.

Later, we were driven away from the town in three lorries and dumped in the countryside seventeen miles from where we had been arrested. It took us the whole of the next day and part of the day after to find the cache of supplies we had made at the first warning that we were about to be arrested.

At no time during our involuntary visit to Afrim-occupied territory had we seen or heard any sign or hint of the women. That night, I lay awake despairing of seeing Sally and Isobel again.

It had been announced on the early news that the unidentified ship which had been sailing up the English Channel for the last two days had entered the Thames Estuary.

During the morning I followed the regular bulletins. The ship had neither answered nor made any radio signals since first being sighted. It was not flying any flag. A pilot cutter had gone out to it from Tilbury, but the men had not been able to board it. From the name on her bows, the ship had been identified as a medium-sized cargo tramp, registered in Liberia and according to Lloyd’s was at present chartered to a shipping firm in Lagos.

It happened that from twelve-thirty I was free to leave the college, and not having any appointments or lectures in the afternoon I decided to go down to the river. I caught a bus to Cannon Street and walked out on to London Bridge. Several hundred other people, mainly workers from near-by offices, had had the same notion, and the east side of the bridge was crowded.

As time passed several people moved away, evidently in order to return to their offices, and as a result I was able to move forward to the parapet of the bridge.

At just after two-thirty we were able to make out the ship, coming upriver towards the Tower Bridge. We saw that there were several craft in attendance around it, and that many of them were launches of the river police. A wave of speculation passed through the crowd.

The ship approached the bridge, which kept its road down. A man standing near to me had a small pair of field-glasses, and he told us that the pedestrians on the bridge were being moved off, and the road was being closed to traffic. A few seconds later the bridge opened just in time for the ship to pass through.

I was aware of sirens near by. Turning, I saw that four or five police-cars had driven on to London Bridge. The men remained inside, but left the blue lights flashing on the roofs. The ship came on towards us.

We observed that several men on the small launches around the ship were speaking to those on board through loud-hailers. We could not make out what was said, but the sound came to us across the water in tinny resonances. It became unnaturally quiet on the bridge, as the police sealed off each end to traffic. A mounted policeman rode up and down telling us to leave the bridge. Only a few of us obeyed.

The ship was now less than fifty yards from us, and it was possible to see that its decks were crowded with people, many of whom were lying down. Two of the police-launches had reached London Bridge, and were turned towards the ship. From one of them, a policeman with a loud-hailer shouted to the captain of the ship to stop his engines and to submit to a boarding party.

There was no acknowledgement from the ship, which sailed on slowly towards the bridge, though many of the people on the decks of the ship were shouting back at the police, unable to make themselves understood.

The bows of the ship passed underneath an arch of the bridge about fifteen yards where I stood. I looked down at it. The decks were crowded to the rails with people. I had no more time to observe their condition, because the superstructure amidships crashed into the parapet of the bridge. It was a slow, grinding collision, making an ugly scraping noise of metal on stone. I saw that the paintwork of the ship and its superstructure was filthy and rusty, with many panes of broken glass in the ports.

I looked down at the river and saw that the police-launches and two river-authority tugs had gone in against the hull of the old ship, and were trying to push her stern towards the concrete bank of the New Fresh Wharf. I saw from the black smoke still issuing from her funnel and from the white-cream froth at the stern, that the ship’s engines were still running. As the tugs made headway in pushing her towards the bank the metal superstructure scraped and crashed repeatedly against the bridge.

I saw movement on the ship, on the decks and inside. The people on board were moving towards the stern. Many of them fell as they ran. As the stern rammed into the concrete quay the first men jumped ashore.

The ship was wedged firmly between the bank and the bridge, her bows still under the arch, her superstructure against the parapet and her stern overhanging the quay. A tug moved round to the bridge, to make sure that until the engines were stopped the ship wouldn’t turn somehow and move back into the river. Four police-launches were now against her port side, and ropes and rope-ladders were thrown with grappling-irons on to the decks. The fleeing passengers made no efforts to remove them. When the first ladder was secured the police and customs officials began to climb it.

On the bridge, our interest was directed to the people leaving the ship: the Africans were coming ashore.

We watched them with a mixture of horror and fascination. There were men, women and children. Most if not all were in an advanced state of starvation. Skeletal arms and legs, distended stomachs, skull-like heads holding staring eyes; flat, paper-like breasts on the women, accusing faces on them all. Most were naked or nearly so. Many of the children could not walk. Those whom no one would carry were left on the ship.

A metal door in the side of the ship was opened from within and a gangplank pushed across the strip of water to the quay. From below-decks more Africans came out on to the shore. Some fell to the concrete as they stepped on the land, others moved towards the wharf-building and disappeared either into it or around its sides. None of them looked up at us on the bridge, or back at their fellows who were in the process of leaving the ship.

We waited and watched. There seemed to be no end to the number of people on board.

In time, the upper decks were cleared, though people still poured ashore from below. I tried to count the number of people lying, dead or unconscious, on the deck. When I had reached one hundred, I stopped counting.

The men who had gone aboard finally managed to stop the engines, and the ship was made fast to the quay. Many ambulances had arrived at the wharf, and those people suffering most were put inside and driven away.

But hundreds more just wandered from the wharf, away from the river, and up into the streets of the City, whose occupants knew nothing as yet of the events on the river.

I learned later that the police and the river authorities had found more than seven hundred corpses on the ship, most of them children. The welfare authorities accounted for another four and a half thousand survivors, who were taken to hospitals or emergency centres. There was no way of counting the remainder, though I heard once an estimate of three thousand people who had wandered away from the ship and tried to survive alone.

Shortly after the ship had been secured, we were moved off the bridge by the police, who told us that its structure was considered to be unsafe. The following day, however, it was open again to traffic.

The event I had witnessed became known in time as the first of the Afrim landings.

We were signalled down by a prowling police-car and questioned at some length as to our destination, and the circumstances surrounding our departure. Isobel tried to explain about the invasion of the next street and the imminent danger in which our home had been.

While we waited for permission to continue, Sally tried to soothe Isobel, who was taken by a flood of tears. I did not want to be affected by it. While being in full sympathy with her feelings, and realizing that it is no small upset to be dispossessed in such a manner, I had experienced Isobel’s lack of fortitude for the last few months. It had been understandably awkward while I was working at the cloth factory, but in comparison with some of my other former colleagues at the college, our situation was relatively settled. I had made every attempt to be sympathetic and patient with her, but had succeeded only in reviving old differences.

In a few moments the policeman returned to our car and informed us that we could proceed, on condition we headed for the U.N. camp at Horsenden Hill in Middlesex. Our original destination had been Isobel’s parents, who now lived in Bristol.

The policeman told us that civilians were not advised to make long-distance journeys across country after dark. We had spent a large part of the afternoon cruising about the London suburbs in an attempt to find a garage that would sell us enough petrol to fill not only the tank of the car, but also the three five-gallon cans I carried in the boot, and consequently it was now beginning to get dark. All three of us were hungry.

I drove along the Western Avenue towards Alperton, after having made a wide detour through Kensington, Fulham and Hammers mith to avoid the barricaded Afrim enclaves at Notting Hill and North Kensington. The main road itself was clear of obstructions, though we saw that every side-road and one or two of the subsidiary main-roads that crossed it at intervals were barricaded and manned by armed civilians. At Hanger Lane we turned off the Western Avenue and up through Alperton, along the route we had been directed. At several points we saw parked police vehicles, several dozen uniformed police and many U.N. militiamen.

At the gates of the camp we were again detained and interrogated, but this was only to be expected. In particular, we were questioned closely about the reasons we had left our home, and what precautions had been made to protect it while we were away.

I told them that the street in which we lived had been barricaded, that we had closed and locked every door in the house, for which we had keys, and that troops and police were in the neighbourhood. While I spoke, one of the questioners wrote in a small notebook. We were obliged to give our full address and the names of the men at the barricades. We waited in the car while the information was relayed by telephone. In the end, we were told to park the car in a space just inside the gates and to take our belongings on foot to the main reception centre.

The buildings were farther from the gates than we had anticipated, and when we found them we were somewhat surprised to find that they consisted mainly of light prefabricated huts. On the front of one of them was a painted board, written in several different languages, and which was illuminated by a floodlight. It directed us to separate; men to go towards a hut known as D Central, and women and children to enter this one.

I said to Isobel: “We’ll see each other later, I suppose.”

She leaned over and kissed me lightly. I kissed Sally. They went into the hut, leaving me on my own with the suitcase.

I followed the directions and found D Central. Inside, I was told to surrender the suitcase for search, and to take off my clothes. These I did, and my clothes and suitcase were taken away together. I was then instructed to pass through a shower of hot water and to scrub myself clean. Understanding that this was to minimize health risks I complied, even though I had bathed only the night before.

When I came out, I was given a towel and some rough clothing. I asked if I could have my own clothes back. This was refused, but I was told that I could have my nightclothes later.

When I had dressed, I was ushered into a plain hall which was full of men. The ratio of whites to blacks was about one to one. I tried not to show my surprise.

The men were sitting at several benches, eating, smoking and talking. I was instructed to take a bowl of food from the serving-hatch, and although this did not satisfy my hunger, I was told I might have more if I requested it. At the same time, I learned that cigarettes could be obtained at the hatch, and I collected a packet of twenty.

I was wondering about Isobel and Sally, and assumed that they were receiving similar treatment somewhere else. I could only hope that we would be reunited before going to bed.

While I was consuming the second bowl of food, I noticed that several more men came into the hall from time to time and that they were given the same treatment irrespective of race. At my own table there were more Negroes than whites, and although I felt uncomfortable at first, I rationalized that being in the same position as myself, they represented no threat to me.

Two hours later we were ushered to other huts near by, where we were to sleep on narrow beds equipped with only one blanket, and without a pillow. I did not see Isobel and Sally.

In the morning I was allowed an hour with them.

They told me how badly they were treated in the women’s quarters, and that they had not been able to sleep. While dis cussing this, we heard a report that the government had reached a negotiated settlement with the leaders of the militant Afrims and that everything would be back to normal in a matter of days.

It was this that made us decide to return home, arguing that if our house was still in danger we would return to the refugee camp that night.

After a great deal of difficulty, we contacted a U.N. official in the camp and told him we wished to leave. For some reason he was reluctant to agree to this, saying that far too many people were wanting to leave, and that it would not be wise until the situation had stabilized. We told him that we considered our home to be safe, and he warned us that the camp was nearly full, and that if we left now he would not be able to guarantee us a place should we return.

In spite of this, we left the camp after retrieving our clothes and our car. Although our suitcases had obviously been searched, none of our belongings was missing.

At the time of the second Afrim landing I was in a small spa town in the north of England, attending a symposium of academics. I remember little of the proceedings. I can recall, though, that the event was well organized and that the formal programme was adhered to rigidly.

On two consecutive occasions I happened to share my lunchtable with a young woman from Norwich, and in time we became friendly. During the secondof our lunches together I was spoken to by an acquaintance from my days at the university. We exchanged greetings and he joined us at the table. I did not wish to see him, but I was polite to him. Shortly after this the young woman left us.

I found my thoughts turning to her during the afternoon, and though I made several attempts to find her I was unsuccessful. She did not appear for dinner and I assumed she had left the conference early.

I spent the evening in the company of my university friend, exchanging reminiscences of our student activities there.

That night, as I was undressing in my hotel room, there was a knock at my door. It was the young woman. She came in and we shared the remainder of a half-bottle of Scotch I had. Our conversation was of little consequence. She told me her name, though I have since forgotten it. We seemed to make intellectual contact, even as our subject-matter was trivial. It was as if the ponderous content of the day’s formal proceedings had exhausted us both of the capacity for thought, though not of the ability to establish a rapport.

Later, we made love together on my bed, and she stayed in my room for the rest of the night.

The following day was the last one of the conference, and apart from a small ceremony in the main hall there were to be no formal events. The young woman and I shared a table for breakfast, aware that this was probably the last time we would spend together. It was during breakfast that the news came through of the second Afrim landing, and we spoke for several minutes about the significance of this. Following a confused discussion with Lateef, I found myself working alone in a small town on the south-coast. It had been clear to me that Lateef had not formed any plan, and that my present mission was as ill-defined as his instructions had been. As far as I knew he wanted to have some kind of defensive weapons against future attacks, and we who had been sent foraging were to attempt to provide some.

I had little or no idea where to start, or what would constitute an effective defence.

I felt uneasy because the town was within Afrim-held territory, and although I was not impeded in any way I felt my movements were being observed.

All shops had been looted. The main parade was a desolate line of ruined stores, their racks emptied by repeated pillagings, but in one store I discovered a domestic-sized glass-cutting instrument, and pocketed it in lieu of there being anything else of worth.

I moved on down to the shore.

There was a large group of white refugees here, living in a crude encampment of old beach-huts and tents. Though I approached them, they shouted at me to go away. I walked along what had once been the beach promenade in a westerly direction until out of their sight.

I encountered a long row of bungalows which, judging by their affluent appearance, at one time would have been occupied by the wealthy retired. I wondered if the Africans had any plans to use them and why the refugees I had seen were not camping there. Most of the bungalows were unlocked and there appeared to be nothing to prevent entry. I walked along the row, glancing into them all. There was no food to be had from any of them, nor anything that could be conceivably used as a weapon. Though most of them were still furnished, removable commodities, such as sheets and blankets, had been taken.

About two-thirds of the way along the line I encountered a bungalow that was empty of all furniture. Its doors were locked securely.

Intrigued, I broke in through a window, and searched it. In one of the back rooms I noticed that some of the floorboards had been removed and replaced. I levered them up with my knife.

In the space below there was a large crate full of empty bottles. Someone had gouged a diagonal line across each of them with a file, thus weakening them. Near by was a neatly folded pile of linen, torn into squares about fifteen inches across. In another room, also under the floorboards, I discovered ten five-gallon drums of petrol.

I considered the use of petrol-bombs to us and whether it would be worth telling Lateef of their presence. It was obviously impossible for me to move them single-handed, and it would be necessary for several men to come here to take them.

In the time I had been with Lateef and the other refugees, there had been some considerable discussion concerning the kinds of weapons which would be of use to us. Rifles and guns were obviously the prime necessity, but they were at a premium. It was unlikely we would ever obtain them except by stealing. Then there was the problem of ammunition. We all carried knives, though they were of assorted qualities. My own had formerly been a carving-knife, which I had honed down to a usable size and sharpness.

The kind of use to which a petrol-bomb is best put is as an anti-personnel device in enclosed spaces. Operating as we were in the countryside, we would have little use for incendiaries.

In the end I returned the bottles, linen and petrol to their hiding-places, reasoning that if Lateef disagreed with me, we could always return for them.

The lavatory was in working condition and I used it. Afterwards I noticed that a bathroom cabinet on the wall still had its mirror intact, and this gave me an idea. I prised it away and, using the glass-cutter, I sliced it up into long triangular strips. I managed to cut seven such strips from the thick glass. I fashioned the ends to as sharp a tine as possible, twice drawing my blood in the process. With a chamois leather I took from my bag I made handles for the daggers, wrapping it in strips around the thicker ends.

I tried out one of the new daggers, swinging it experimentally in the air. It made a lethal but difficult weapon. I would have to devise some method by which the daggers could be carried conveniently so that their users would not be endangered by them if they fell. I packed the seven new daggers into a heap, and prepared to roll them up into a piece of sacking so that I might carry them back to the others. As I did so, I noticed that one of the shards had a minute fault in the glass, near the handle. I saw that it might shatter easily, perhaps lacerating the hand of whoever used it. I discarded it.

I was ready to return to Lateef and the others. Night was falling, so I waited for the dark to come. The twilight was shorter than normal, because of the atmospheric murk and low clouds. When I felt it would be safe to move, I collected my possessions and started back towards the encampment.

The time I had spent by the shore had had a strangely soothing effect on me, and I felt it might be good future policy to spend more time there. I resolved to suggest it to Lateef.

I was hiding at the top of a barn because my elder brother had told me that the bogey would get me. I was about seven years old. Had I been older I would have been able to rationalize the fears that took me. They were formless, but for the clear image of some monstrous being with black skin that was out to get me.

Instead, I cowered at the top of the barn, lying in my own private hidey-hole which no one knew was there. Where the farmer had stacked the bales of straw, a small cavity had been left between three of them and the roof.

The comforting subjective security of the hide-out restored my confidence, and some time later my fears had receded and I was involved in a juvenile fantasy involving airplanes and guns. When I heard rustling in the straw below, my first panicky thoughts were of the bogey, and I lay in a state of frozen terror while the rustling continued. Finally, I summoned courage to creep as silently as possible to the edge of my hide-out and peer downwards.

In the loose straw on the ground, at the back of the bales, a young man and a girl were lying with their arms around one another. The man was on top of the girl and the girl had her eyes closed. I did not know what they were doing. After a few minutes, the young man moved slightly and helped the girl to take off her clothes. It seemed to me that she did not really want him to take them off, but she resisted only a little. They lay down again and within a very short period of time she helped him remove his own clothes. Not wishing to change my position, I lay very still and quiet. When they were both naked he lay on top of her again and they began to make noises with their throats. The girl’s eyes were still closed, though the lids fluttered from time to time. I can recall very little of my impressions during this; I know I was curious to see a girl who could open her legs so wide — all the women with whom I had come into contact (my mother and my aunts) had seemed incapable of opening their knees more than a few inches. After a few more minutes the couple stopped moving around and lay together in silence. It was only then that the girl’s eyes opened properly and looked up at me.

Many years later my elder brother was among the first British National soldiers to be killed in action against the Afrims.

The words of the official at the U.N. camp came to mind as I drove along the North Circular Road. The radio had confirmed that an amnesty had been offered by Tregarth’s emergency cabinet, but had implied also that the leaders of the Afrims were not responding in a wholly favourable way.

One possibility was that they did not trust Tregarth. On several occasions in the past he had initiated social reforms that had acted against the Afrims, and there was no reason that now they had an upper hand in a military sense Tregarth would compromise with them in a way prejudicial to his own administration. With a rift established in the armed forces, and another threatened within the police forces, any policy of appeasement which was at all suspect would not work.

It was estimated that already more than 25 per cent of the army had seceded, and had placed itself at the disposal of the Afrim leaders in Yorkshire, and three ground-attack squadrons of the Royal Air Force had so far similarly changed allegiances.

In a later programme we heard a group of political pundits speculating that public opinion in favour of the Afrims was diminishing, and that Tregarth and his cabinet would take more militant action.

The only outward sign of the events taking place that we could discern was that traffic was unusually light. We were stopped several times by police patrols, but we had grown accustomed to this in the last few months and thought little of it. We had learned the appropriate responses to make to questioning, and maintained a consistent story.

I was disturbed to notice that many of the police we encountered were from the civilian-reserve special force. Stories describing various atrocities had been circulating continuously; in particular, one heard of coloured people being arrested without warrant, and released only after experiences of personal violence. On the other hand, white people were subjected to harassment if known or suspected to be involved with anti-Afrim activities. The entire situation regarding the police was confused and inconsistent at this time, and I for one felt that it would not be an entirely bad thing if the force were to divide formally.

Just to the west of Finchley, I was obliged to stop the car and refill the tank with petrol. I had intended to use some of the petrol I had put by as a reserve, but discovered that during the night two of the cans had been emptied. Consequently, I was forced to use up the whole of my reserve. I said nothing of this to Isobel or Sally, as I anticipated being able to restock sooner or later, even though none of the garages we had passed that day was open.

While I was pouring the petrol into the tank a man came out of a near-by building carrying a pistol and accused me of being an Afrim sympathizer. I asked him on what evidence he formed this suspicion, and he told me that no one could be driving a car at this time without the support of one political faction or another. At the next police road-block I reported this incident and was told to ignore it.

As we approached our house all three of us reflected by our behaviour the apprehensions we felt. Sally became restless and asked to go to the toilet. Isobel smoked one cigarette after another and snapped irritably at me. I found myself continually pushing up the speed of the car unconsciously, although I knew that it was generally better to stay at lower speeds.

To relieve the tension between us, I responded to Sally’s requests by stopping the car at a public lavatory about a mile and a half from where we lived, and while Isobel took her inside I took the opportunity to turn on the car radio and listen to a news bulletin.

Isobel said, when they had got back into the car: “What shall we do if we can’t get into the street?”

She had voiced the fear none of us had liked to express.

“I’m sure Nicholson will listen to reason,” I said.

“And if he doesn’t?”

I didn’t know. I said: “I just listened to the radio. They said that the Afrims were accepting the terms of the amnesty, but that occupation of empty houses was continuing.”

“What do they mean by empty?”

“I don’t like to think.”

Behind us, Sally said: “Daddy, are we nearly home?”

“Yes, dear,” Isobel said.

I started the engine and moved off. We reached the end of our street a few minutes later. The police and army trucks had moved off, but the barbed-wire barricade was still there. On the other side of the road, mounted on the top of a dark-blue van, was a television camera operated by two men. It was protected in front and at the sides by heavy plates of glass.

I stopped the car five yards from the barricade, but left the engine running. No one appeared to be near the barricade. I blew the horn and regretted the action an instant later. Five men appeared from the house nearest to the barricade and walked towards us carrying rifles. They were Afrims.

“Oh God,” I said under my breath.

“Alan, go and talk to them. Perhaps our house is not being used by them!”

There was an edge of hysteria in her voice. Undecided, I sat in my seat and watched the men. They lined up at the barricade and stared at us without expression.

Isobel urged me again, and I got out of the car and walked over to them.

I said: “I live at number 47. Can we get through to our house, please?” They said nothing, but continued to stare. “My daughter is ill. We must get her to bed.”

They stared.

I turned towards the camera-crew and shouted: “Can you tell me if anyone has been allowed in here today?”

Neither of them responded, though the man pointing the microphone in our direction looked down at his equipment and adjusted the setting of a knob.

I turned back to the Africans.

“Do you speak English?” I said. “We must get to our house.” There was a long silence, and then one of the men said in a thick accent: “Go away!”

He lifted his rifle.

I got back into the car, put it into gear and accelerated away, swinging across the deserted road in a wide U-turn. As we passed the camera the Afrim fired his rifle and our windscreen shattered into opacity. I banged my forearm against it and a shower of glass fragments blew in. Isobel screamed and fell to the side, covering her head with her arms. Sally reached over from the back seat and put her arms around my neck and shouted incoherently into my ear.

When we were about a hundred yards away I slowed a little and leaned forward in my seat, pulling myself from Sally’s grip. I looked in the rear-view mirror and saw that the camera-operator had turned the instrument to follow our flight down the road. I stood with many others on the beach at Brighton. We were watching the old ship that was drifting in the Channel, listing to port at an angle of what the newspapers told us was twenty degrees. It was about a mile from the shore, riding the rough seas uneasily. The lifeboats from Hove, Brighton and Shoreham stood by, awaiting radio confirmation that they might take it in tow. Meanwhile, we on the shore were watching for it to sink, some of us having come many miles to see the spectacle.

I reached the main group without meeting any patrols, and as soon as I considered it prudent I approached Lateef and gave him the mirror-daggers.

He said nothing about the other men who had been foraging, nor whether they had been successful.

He looked critically at the daggers, but was unable to conceal his grudging admiration for my initiative. He took one in his right hand, balanced it, held it up, tried holstering it in his belt. His habitual frown deepened. I wanted to make excuses for the crudity of the weapons, explain about the shortage of materials suitable for the manufacture of armaments, but held my silence as I knew he was aware of this.

His criticism of my handiwork was political, not practical.

Later, I saw him throwing away my daggers, and I decided against mentioning the petrol-bombs.

As I passed through my adolescence I underwent, as is common to most boys, many puzzling stages of development towards full sexuality.

Near where I lived with my parents and brothers was a large area of waste ground which was cluttered with many piles of building materials, and torn into mounds of bare earth by bulldozers. I understood that at one time it had been scheduled for development, but for reasons unknown to me the scheme had been delayed. Consequently, the area provided an ideal playing-ground for myself and my friends. Though officially we were forbidden to play there, the many hundreds of hiding-places made it possible for us to evade the various forms of authority as manifested by parents, neighbours and the local police-constable.

During this period I was undergoing doubts as to whether or or not I should be indulging in such childish activities. My elder brother had obtained a place at a good university and was half-way through his first year there. My younger brother was at the same school as I, and by all accounts was more academically successful than I had been at his age. I knew that if I wished to emulate my elder brother’s achievement I should apply myself more purposefully to my studies, but my mind and my body were occupied with an uncontrollable restlessness and many times I found myself on the building-site with boys not only a year or two younger than I, but who attended a different school.

It had always appeared to me that the other boys were more advanced in their thinking than I was.

It was always they who made the suggestions about what we should do, and I who followed. Any move to a new activity came from someone else, and I was often amongst the last to take it up. In this way, such pastimes that I had at that time were secondhand to me and did not provide me with any real involvement.

In a limbo between what I was doing and what I should be doing, neither was effected well.

Accordingly, when two or three local girls joined us on occasional evenings, I was slow to appreciate the subtlety of how their presence was affecting the behaviour of the others.

By chance, I knew one of these girls already. Her parents and mine were on friendly terms, and we had passed several evenings in each other’s company. My relationship with her to this point, however, had been platonic and superficial: I had not reacted to her presence in any sexual way. When she and her friends appeared for the first time on the waste ground I did not exploit this small advantage I had over the other boys. On the contrary, I became embarrassed at her presence, imagining in some obscure way that word of my activities would get back to my parents.

The first evening they were with us was awkward and unsettling. The conversation became an aimless and banal banter, with the girls feigning disinterest in us, and myself and the other boys pretending to ignore them. This set the pattern for the next few encounters.

It happened that I went away with my parents for a short holiday, and on my return I discovered that the relationship with the girls had entered a more physical phase. Some of the boys had air-rifles, and they used these to impress the girls with their marksmanship. There was a lot of fake hostility and sometimes we would become involved in wrestling matches with them.

Even through this I failed to observe the sexual aspects of what was happening.

One evening a pack of cards was produced by one of the boys. For a while we played childish games with them, but became bored quickly. Then one of the girls said she knew a variety of the game Consequences which could be played with cards. She took the pack and dealt out cards to us all, explaining as she went. The idea was very simple: everyone was dealt cards from the top of the pack, and the first boy and the first girl to receive a card of the same value — say two Queens or two Sevens — were matched up for Consequences.

I did not fully understand, but took the first card as it was given to me. It was a Three. On the first deal, no two people had similar cards, though one of the other boys also had a Three. This provoked ribald comments, which I laughed at without properly appreciating the humour. On the next deal, the girl I knew through my parents was given a Three.

A short discussion ensued, the outcome of which was that I was adjudged to be the winner as I had drawn the Three before the other boy. I was willing to let him take my turn, as I was uncertain of what was expected of me.

The girl who had started the game explained that it was usually played strictly to the rules, and that I had to take my turn. I was to go, she said, to the far side of some near-by earthworks with the other girl and that we would be allowed ten minutes.

The girl and I stood up, and amid many catcalls did as directed.

When we reached the other side of the earthworks, I felt I could not admit to her that I did not know what to do. Alone with a girl for the first time in my life I stood in miserable silence.

Then she said: “Are you going to?”

I said: “No.”

She sat down on the earth and I stood before her. I kept glancing at my watch.

I asked the girl several questions. I found out how old she was, and what her middle name was. She told me the school she went to and what she was going to do when she left. In answer to my question, she told me that she had lots of boyfriends. When she asked me how many girlfriends I had I told her that there were a few.

As soon as the ten minutes were up we went back to the others.

I was handed the cards, which I shuffled and then dealt for the second round. This time there was no question as to who the winners were, as two Tens came up on the first deal. The boy and the girl left us and went to the other side of the earthworks. While we waited for them to return, several dirty jokes were told. The atmosphere amongst those of us waiting was tense and strained, and though I joined in with the others I found myself wondering what was going on behind the mound of bare earth.

At the end of the ten minutes they had not returned. The girl who had started the game was the one with the boy and we assumed she would play by the rules. One of the boys suggested that we go and get them, and this we did, running towards the earthworks shouting and whistling. Before we reached them they came out and we went back to the cards. I noticed that neither of them looked at each other, nor at any of us.

On the third deal, the girl I had been with drew a number with one of the other boys, and they went off to the mound. I found myself disturbed by this. After a moment or two I declared I was sick of the game and walked off in the direction of my house.

As soon as I was out of sight of the others, I worked round through the waste ground and approached the earthworks from the side. I was able to get close up to the couple without being observed, as a pile of unpainted window-frames was stacked near by. From this cover I watched them.

They were standing up. The girl was wearing her school blazer and dress. The boy was standing close to her, with his back to me. They were talking quietly.

Suddenly, he threw his arms around her neck and dragged her to the floor. They wrestled together for a moment, in the way we had often done before. At first she fought back, but after a minute or so she rolled away from him and lay passively. He reached over to her and laid his hand very tentatively on her stomach. Her head lolled away from him, facing towards my hiding-place, and I saw that her eyes were tightly closed. The boy pushed aside her blazer and I could see the gentle swell of her breasts by his hand. Because she was lying down, they were not as protuberant as normal. The boy was staring at them rigidly, and I discovered that I was beginning to have an erection. With my hand in my trouser pocket I moved my penis so that it was less uncomfortable, and as I did so the boy’s hand slid up and cupped one of her breasts. He slid the hand backwards and forwards with increasing speed. In a while, the girl cried out as if it were hurting her, and she rolled back towards him. Though she then had her back to me, I could see that she had put her hand at the top of his legs and was caressing him.

I was becoming intolerably excited by this, and though I wanted to stay where I was I felt very unsettled by what I was witnessing. I backed away and walked in the direction I had come. As I did so my hand was still in my pocket holding my penis, and in a moment I ejaculated. I mopped myself clean with a handkerchief, then went back to the others, explaining that I had returned home but that my parents were out.

A few minutes later the girl and boy came back. Like the others, they did not meet our eyes.

We were prepared for a fourth hand, but the girls said they were fed up and wanted to go home. We tried to persuade them to stay, but in a few moments they left. As they walked away we could hear them giggling. When he was sure they were gone, the boy who had just come back undid the fly of his trousers and showed us his penis. It was still erect and looked a dark red colour. He masturbated in front of us and we watched enviously.

The girls came back to the waste ground the following evening, by which time I had devised a method of ensuring I dealt myself the right cards. I rubbed the breasts of each of the three girls, and one of them allowed me to put my hand inside her dress and brassiere and feel her nipples. After this the cards were no longer used and we took it in turns. By the end of the following week I had had sexual intercourse with the girl I had known through my parents, and was proud that I was the only one of us she would do it with.

I took my examinations in the weeks following and was not successful. I was obliged to reapply myself to my work and in course of time I lost contact with the group. I entered university two years later.

If anything, the wind had increased in the time I had been on the beach, and as the waves broke on the shingle about twenty-five yards from where I stood, a fine spray was driven across our faces. I was wearing my spectacles, and within a few minutes the lenses were misted with a thin deposit of salt. I removed them and placed them inside my pocket in their case.

The sea was now very rough, white breakers flickering across its surface as far as the horizon. As yet the sun still shone, though there was a bank of dark cloud in the southwest. I stood in a large crowd of people, and we were watching the drifting ship.

The transistor radio carried by someone near by announced the news that the ship was not to be assisted by rescue craft, and that the lifeboats were being ordered to return to their stations. Not a mile away from us we could see the very boats circling, obviously undecided whether to obey the orders from the shore or their own consciences. Some distance behind the drifting ship we could see the Royal Navy frigate which had been detailed to follow. So far, it had not interfered.

At one point I turned round to make an estimate of the number of people watching from the shore and saw that every available access point was crowded along the side of the King’s Road that overlooked the beach, in addition to the hundreds of people that stood on the Central Pier.

At just after four minutes past two o’clock the lifeboats turned away from the ship and headed back to their respective stations. I estimated that in less than a quarter of an hour the ship would have drifted past the end of the pier and be invisible from where I was standing. I debated whether or not to move, but decided to stay.

The ship sank at just before ten past. Its angle of list had increased markedly in the last few minutes, and many of the people on board could be seen jumping over the side. The ship sank quickly and unspectacularly.

Within fifteen minutes of it sinking the majority of the crowd had dispersed. I stayed on, enthralled in some primeval way by the feel of the wind, the sound and the sight of the great surf and by what I had just witnessed. I left the shore an hour or so later, distressed by the appearance of the few Africans who managed to swim to the shore. Less than fifty of them made it to the beach alive, though I understand from my acquaintances in Brighton that in the next few days the sea threw up hundreds of dead with every tide. Human flotsam, made buoyant by its distended, gas-filled belly.

As night fell I pulled the car into the side of the road and stopped. It was too cold to continue driving with the glass of the windscreen knocked away, and in any case I was reaching the end of our supply of petrol and did not wish to discuss this with Isobel in front of Sally.

For security we had driven north from London and were in the countryside around Cuffley. I had debated mentally whether to try to reach the U.N. camp again, but after two long and extremely tiring journeys to and from there in the last twenty-four hours, neither I nor the others were anxious to repeat it if an alternative could be found. In addition, the twin factors of a dwindling supply of petrol and the discouragement of the official that morning combined to indicate that we should at least find an alternative.

We took our warmest clothing from the suitcases and put it on. Sally lay down on the back seat of the car and we covered her with as much warm material as we could find. Isobel and I waited in silence, smoking the last of our cigarettes, until we felt reasonably sure she had drifted off into sleep. None of us had eaten a proper meal during the day, the only food we had consumed being some chocolate we found in an automatic machine outside a row of closed shops. While we sat there it began to rain, and in a few minutes a trickle of water came in through the empty rubber frame, and ran over the dashboard on to the floor.

“We’d better make for Bristol,” I said.

“What about the house?”

I shook my head. “We’ve no hope of going back.”

“I don’t think we should go to Bristol.”

“Where else can we go?”

“Back to the U.N. camp. At least, for the next few days.”

“And after that?”

“I don’t know. Things must get better. We can’t be kicked out of our house just like that. There must be a law …”

I said: “That won’t be the answer. Things have gone too far now. The Afrim situation has grown out of the housing shortage. I can’t see them agreeing to a compromise where they will have to give up the houses they’ve already taken over.”

Isobel said: “Why not?”

I didn’t answer. In the few weeks preceding the recent events Isobel had shown an increasing disinterest in the progress of the Afrim situation, and this had only widened the distance between us. Whereas I had been continually faced with the breakdown of the society that we knew, Isobel appeared to withdraw from the reality as if she could survive by ignoring events. Even now, with our home inaccessible to us, she was content to allow me to take the decisions.

Before we settled for the night, I walked from the car in the direction of a near-by house, from whose windows showed warm amber light. Less than a hundred yards away, an unaccountable fear came into my mind, and I turned away. The house was of the upper middle-class variety, and there were two expensive cars and a trailer in the drive.

I considered my own appearance: unshaven and in need of a change of clothing. It was difficult to say what would have been the reaction of the occupiers of the house had I knocked at the door. The anarchy of the situation in London bore no relation to this area, which had as yet had no contact with the homeless and militant African people.

I returned to the car.

“We’re going to an hotel for the night,” I said.

Isobel made no answer, but stared out of her side-window into the dark.

“Well, don’t you care?”

“No.”

“What do you want to do?”

“We’ll be all right here.”

The rain still dribbled into the car through the gaping hole that had been our windscreen. In the few minutes I had been outside, the drizzle had soaked my outer clothes. I wanted Isobel to touch me, share to some measure the experience of my walk… yet I shrank mentally from the thought of her hand on my arm.

“What about Sally?” I said.

“She’s asleep. If you want to find an hotel, I won’t object. Can we afford it?”

“Yes.”

1 thought about it for a bit longer. We could stay here, or we could drive on. I glanced at my watch. It was just after eight o’clock. If we slept in the car, in what kind of condition would we be by morning?

I started the engine and drove slowly back to the centre of Cuffley. I knew of no hotels in the neighbourhood, but was confident of finding somewhere. The first place we found was full, and so was the second. We were following directions to a third when the petrol-tank finally ran dry. I coasted the car into the side and stopped.

I was relieved in a way that the decision had been made for us; I’d held out no real hopes of finding accommodation in an hotel. Isobel said nothing, but sat with her eyes closed. Her face and clothes were damp from the rain which had blown in through the screen.

I ran the heater until the water inside the mechanism had cooled to a point where there was no more benefit to be had. Isobel said she was tired.

We agreed to take it in turns to lie across one another; I said she could have the first period. She tucked her knees up and lay across from her seat with her head in my lap. I put my arms around her to keep her warm, then tried to find a comfortable position myself.

Within a few minutes Isobel had passed into a semblance of sleep. I spent the night uneasily, unable to pass into complete sleep because of my uncomfortable position.

Behind us Sally stirred from time to time; of the three of us she was probably the only one who rested fully in the night.

Lateef showed me a leaflet he had found. It was printed by the Royal Secessionist Air Force, and it stated that ten minutes’ warning, in the form of three low traverses, would always be given to civilian occupants of villages before a raid was to take place. There was a road through the New Forest. I drove along it in the twilight of the evening, knowing that we had stayed away too long. It had not been wise to do what we had done in any event, and with the present police situation it had been foolhardy.

I had a girl in the car with me. Her name was Patti. She and I had been at an hotel in Lymington and we were hurrying to get back to London before nine o’clock. She was asleep next to me, her head resting lightly on my shoulder.

She was awakened by my stopping the car at a road-block on the outskirts of Southampton. There were several men standing by the block, which was a makeshift arrangement of two old cars and an assortment of heavy building materials. Each of the men carried a weapon, though only one had a rifle. It occurred to me that for the last few miles we had not seen any traffic going in the same direction as us, and guessed that most local people would have known about the block and have found an alternative route.

As a result of the road-block we were obliged to turn round and follow a long diversion through the countryside to Winchester, and thence to the main road to London. We had been warned by the people at the hotel to expect similar obstructions at Basingstoke and Camberley, and as it turned out we were required to make lengthy detours around these also.

The road into southwest London was unobstructed by civilian defence groups, but we saw many police vehicles and spot-checks on motorists. We were fortunate in passing through without delay. I had not been out of London for several months and had had no idea that access and movement had been curtailed to this degree.

I dropped Patti near the flat she shared in Barons Court and carried on towards my home in Southgate. Again, none of the major roads was blocked by civilian resistance groups, but I was stopped by the police near King’s Cross and my possessions were searched.

It wasn’t until nearly one in the morning that I arrived home. Isobel had not waited up for me. The next morning I went to a near-by house and managed to persuade the occupier to let me have a gallon of petrol siphoned from out of his car’s tank. I paid him two pounds for it. He informed me that there was a garage less than three miles away which had been selling petrol up until the night before. He gave me directions to find it.

I returned to the car and told Isobel and Sally that with any luck we would be able to make Bristol during the day.

Isobel said nothing, though I knew she did not want to go to her parents. From my point of view it was the only solution. As it was equally obvious that we could no longer return to our house, the prospect of moving to the relatively distant town was one sufficiently familiar to reassure us.

I filled the tank with the gallon of petrol and started the engine. As we drove towards the garage as directed, we listened to a news broadcast on the radio which announced the first break in the police. About a quarter of the force had seceded in favour of the Afrims. There was to be a meeting of chief constables with both the Afrim command and Tregarth’s Home Office, and a statement would be issued from Whitehall later in the day.

We found the garage with difficulty and were allowed what the proprietor informed us was the standard quota: three gallons. With what we had, this gave us a maximum potential mileage of around one hundred and thirty miles. This should be just sufficient for us to reach Bristol, provided we were not forced to make too many detours from the shortest route.

I told Isobel and Sally, and they expressed relief. We agreed to set off as soon as we had had something to eat.

At Potters Bar we found a small café which gave us a good breakfast at normal prices. No mention was made of the Afrim situation, and the radio that was playing carried only light music. At Isobel’s request we were sold a vacuum-flask which was filled for us with hot coffee, and after we had washed in the toilets of the café we set out.

The day was not warm, but there was no rain. Driving with the windscreen missing was unpleasant, but not impossible. I decided not to listen to the radio, seeing for once some wisdom in Isobel’s attitude of not allowing the events around us to affect us. Although it was of course essential to keep abreast of the developing situation, I was won over to her passivity.

A new worry materialized in the form of a continual vibration from the engine. I had been unable to maintain regular servicing on it, and I knew that one of the valves was in need of replacement. I trusted to it lasting at least until we reached Bristol and did not mention it to the others.

As far as I could see, the worst part of the journey would be in avoiding barricaded sections of the suburbs around London. I therefore skirted the north-western edge of the city, driving first to Watford (unbarricaded), then to Rickmansworth (barricaded, but open to through traffic on the by-pass), and then across-country to Amersham, High Wycombe and south towards Henley-on-Thames. As we went farther from London we saw fewer and fewer overt signs of the trouble, and a mood of tranquillity came over us. We were even able to purchase more petrol and fill our reserve cans.

At another small café on the way into Reading we ate a lunch and made our way towards the main road to Bristol, confident of arriving there well before nightfall.

Five miles to the west of Reading the engine-vibrations increased suddenly, and the power faded. I kept the car going as long as possible, but at the first incline it stopped. I did what I could to investigate, but the fuel-and ignition-systems were not faulty, and I could only assume that the valve had finally blown.

I was on the point of discussing this with Isobel and Sally when a police-car pulled up alongside.

I worked for some months as part-time barman in a public house in the East End of London. It had become necessary to earn some extra money. I was then studying for my Finals and my grant had been spent.

It came as something of a surprise for me to learn that the East End was a series of loosely connected ghettos, containing Jews, Negroes, Chinese, Greeks, Cypriots, Italians and English. Until this work I had always assumed that this part of London was primarily white. The pub reflected this cosmopolitan aspect to some degree, although it was clear that the publican did not encourage it. Arguments in the bar often arose, and we had been instructed to remove bottles and glasses from the counters if a fracas developed. It was part of my duties as barman to assist in breaking up any fight that started.

When I had been at the pub for three months the publican decided to hire a pop-group for the week-ends, and within a matter of weeks the trouble had passed. The type of customer change noticeably.

Instead of the older drinker, set in his ways and dogmatically opinionated, the pub began to attract a younger element. Members of the minority groups no longer came, and within a couple of months almost every customer at the pub was aged less than thirty.

The clothing fashions at the time tended to be colourful and casual, but these were not common at the pub. I learned in time that this was an outward manifestation of an innate conservatism that is widespread in this part of London.

The publican’s first name was Harry; I never learned his surname. He had once been an all-in wrestler, and on the wall of the bar behind the counter there were several photographs of him in satin dressing-gowns and with a long pigtail. I never heard Harry talk about his experiences in the ring, though his wife once told me that he had earned enough money from it to enable him to buy the pub outright.

Towards the end of the evenings several of Harry’s friends, who were in general around his own age, would come into the bar. Often after closing-time, Harry would invite them to stay behind and have a few drinks with him. On these occasions he would offer me a few extra shillings to stay later and serve them. As a result of this I overheard many of their conversations and came to learn that their prejudices and information on subjects such as race and politics were as conservative as those attitudes implied by the dress of the other customers.

Several years later, John Tregarth and his party were to gain a substantial electoral backing from areas in which different races were mixed freely.

We stayed a few more days at the encampment. Each of us was undecided what should be done. Most of the men had lost a wife or a sleeping-partner in the abduction, and though we knew from what had happened to Willen that it would serve no purpose to approach the Afrims directly, it was instinctive to stay in the place from where they had been taken. I felt restless, and worried continually for the safety of Sally. Isobel I was less concerned for. It was with relief, then, that I heard at the end of the week the rumour that we were to go to Augustin’s.

Though I had no personal wish to visit the place, it did at least mean that we were to move and with apparent purpose.

As we loaded our possessions on to the handcarts and preparations were made for the move, Lateef came over to me and confirmed that we were going to Augustin’s. It would, he said, be good for the morale of the men.

He appeared to be right, as within a couple of hours the mood had changed, and in spite of a sharp fall in temperature we walked the first few miles in a spirit of cavalier good humour.

“You do have a name?” I said.

“Yes.”

“Are you going to tell me?”

“No.”

“Do you have a reason for withholding this information?”

“Yes. That is, no.”

“Well, tell it to me then.”

“No.”

That is the first conversation I had with my wife. Her name was Isobel.

As the full scale of the forthcoming disaster made itself apparent to the British public, there descended on the country the kind of stalwart resolution and directed confusion that my parents had sometimes told me about when recounting their experiences of the early months of the second world war.

In line with a major part of the intellectual element of the country, our college formed a society which professed to be sympathetic to the plight of the Africans. Our motives were principally humanitarian, though there were a few members — mainly those who had earlier reflected a more conservative view, and who joined the society for policy reasons — who adopted a more academic attitude. It was people such as these who first discredited the movement, as they were unable to answer the charges in the press and other media that the pro-Afrim groups were left-wing revolutionaries.

It was undeniably true that the African immigrants were forming themselves into armed groups, that they were being supplied with weapons from abroad and that they were moving into cities on a large scale and occupying houses and displacing the former white inhabitants.

Most people had seen for themselves that these charges were true, but the belief of our college society was that the fault lay with the government. If a more charitable attitude had been adopted from the outset, the Africans’ plight would have been lessened, and political opportunists would not have been able to exploit the situation. But extreme policies induce extreme reactions, and the tight conservatism of Tregarth and his government — approved of by a sizeable percentage of the country — allowed for little liberalism towards the illegal coloured immigrants.

In the remaining weeks of the college term my colleagues and I did what we could to pass our beliefs on to our students. When the end of term arrived, the period of our influence passed. I felt apprehensive as I delivered the last of my own lectures, and even before I left the college grounds I was censuring myself for not having expended more energy in this direction.

In the weeks that followed, as industrial unrest spread and public demonstrations in the streets became an everyday event, I saw that we had been wrong to believe that our attempts to arouse sympathy for the Afrims would do much good. There was a small and vociferous section of the community which adhered to its moral principles, but more and more ordinary people were coming into direct conflict with the Afrims as the armed insurgence went on.

At one of the largest demonstrations in London I saw some of the students from the college carrying a large banner emblazoned with the name of our society. I had not intended to join the march, but I abandoned my intended errand and followed the demonstration to its noisy and violent conclusion.

In the event, the doors of the college were never opened for the following term.

We were told by the two police-officers that we were in restricted territory and that we must move at once. There were reports, they said, that there had been a mutiny in a near-by army-camp, and that the entire neighbourhood was being sealed off by government forces.

I told the police that our car had broken down and that though we were not disputing what they told us, we had come into the vicinity without any warning from the authorities.

The policemen appeared to be incapable of listening to reason.

Their instructions were repeated and we were told to leave the area immediately. Sally began to cry at this point, as one of the policemen had opened the door of the car and dragged her out. I protested at once and was hit hard across my face with the back of a hand.

I was pressed up against the side of the car and my pockets were searched. When they looked in my wallet and saw that I had once been a lecturer at the college, my identity-card was confiscated. Again I protested, but was ignored.

Isobel and Sally were similarly searched.

When this was completed our belongings were taken from the car and put in the road. Our reserve petrol cans were taken from the boot and placed inside the police-car. I remembered what I had heard on the radio earlier, and asked to see the warrant-cards of the police. I was again ignored.

We were told that the police-car would be returning along this road in half an hour. We were to be gone by then. Otherwise, they said, we would be responsible for the consequences.

As they turned to get back into their car, I moved forward quickly and kicked the man who had hit me. I got my shoe hard against his coccyx, throwing him forward on to the ground. The other man turned round and dived at me. I swung my fist at his face, but missed. He threw an arm around my neck, pulled me to the ground and held me there with my arm twisted up against my back and my face pressed painfully into the dirt. The man I had attacked had climbed to his feet, and now he came over and placed three hard kicks into my side.

When they had gone Isobel helped me on to the front passenger-seat of the car, and with a paper tissue wiped away some of the blood that was coming out of my mouth.

As soon as I had recovered sufficiently to walk we set off across a field in a direction opposite to the one in which the police had waved vaguely when telling us about the army mutiny.

There was a severe pain in my side, and although I could walk with some difficulty I was unable to carry anything heavy. Isobel was therefore obliged to take our two large suitcases, and Sally had to carry the small one. I held our transistor radio under my arm. As we walked I switched it on, but was able to raise only one channel of the BBC, and that was the one playing continuous light music.

All three of us were at the point of despair. Neither Isobel nor Sally asked me what we should do next… for the first time since leaving our house, we were wholly aware how far beyond our control events had moved. Later, the rain returned and we sat under a tree on the edge of a field, frightened, directionless, and utterly involved in a sequence of events that no one had expected and that no one now seemed capable of stopping. I learned from the newspaper I read regularly that the mood of the country had polarized into three general groups.

Firstly, those people who had come into contact with the Afrims and suffered accordingly, or those people who were colour-prejudiced in any case, who followed the government’s policy and who felt the Afrims should be deported. According to several polls this feeling was prevalent.

Secondly, those people to whom there was no question but that the Afrims should be allowed to stay in Britain and be afforded as much charity as possible until they were capable of integrating with our society in a normal way.

Thirdly, those people who did not care whether or not the Africans landed, so long as they themselves were not directly affected.

The apparent apathy of this third group displeased me, until I realized that for my general lack of involvement I should probably be counted a member.

I questioned my own moral stand. Although my instinct was to remain uncommitted — at this time I was conducting an affair with a woman and she was occupying a major part of my thoughts — it was this awareness of my insularity which convinced me I should join the pro-Afrim society at the college.

The political and social climates were not responsive to the kind of moral judgements that had to be made.

Soon after the second election Tregarth’s government introduced much of the new legislation it had promised in its manifesto. The police had wider powers of entry and detention, and the elements that some of Tregarth’s ministers described as subversive were more effectively dealt with. Public demonstrations on any political issue were controlled tightly by the police, and the armed forces were empowered to assist in the keeping of the peace.

As the boats from Africa continued to land on British shores, the problem could no longer be ignored.

After the first wave of landings the government issued the warning that illegal immigrants would be prevented from landing, forcibly if necessary. This led directly to the incident in Dorset, where the army confronted two shiploads of Africans. Thousands of people had come to Dorset from all over the country to witness the landing, and the result was a confrontation between army and public. The Afrims got ashore.

After this, the government’s warning was modified to the effect that as illegal immigrants were captured they would be given suitable treatment in hospital, then deported.

In the meantime, polarization of attitudes was accelerated by the illegal supply of arms to the Afrims. As their presence developed into a military threat, so there grew deeper schisms in the country.

The private life of everyone in the regions directly affected — and of many in areas away from the insurgence — became oriented entirely around the immediate problem. The police force divided, and so did the Army and Air Force. The Navy remained loyal to the government. When a detachment of American Marines was landed to act in an advisory capacity to what had become known as the Nationalist side, and when the United Nations drafted a peace-keeping force, the military aspect of the situation became resolved.

By this time, no one could be said to be uninvolved.

“I hear we’re going to Augustin’s.”

The man marching next to me stared straight ahead. “About bloody time.”

“You been missing it then?”

“Piss off, will you?”

I said nothing, but let them drag out the interplay of ideas to their logical conclusion. I’d heard this or a similar conversation a dozen times in the last week.

“It was Lateef that decided. The others wanted to stay put.”

“I know. Good old Lat.”

“He’s missing it, too.”

“They got one of his? He never mentions it.”

“Yeah. They say he was screwing Olderton’s wife on the quiet.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“It’s a fact.”

“What about Olderton, then?”

“Never knew a thing.”

The other man laughed. “You’re right. I have been missing it.”

“Haven’t we all.”

They both laughed then, cackling like two old women in the uncanny cold silence of the countryside.

We slept that night in the open, and in the morning were fortunate in finding a shop still open that sold us, at normal prices, a good deal of camping equipment. At this stage we still had not formulated a serious plan, beyond a recognition of the fact that we must get to Bristol at the earliest opportunity.

We walked all that day, sleeping again in the open, but this time with the equipment. It rained during the course of the night and we were adequately protected. In spite of what at first seemed to be great difficulties, our spirits stayed high, though when I overheard Isobel talking with Sally shortly before the girl fell asleep I thought I detected a considerable strain of false optimism in their tone.

As far as I was concerned, I was passing through what I was to learn later was a temporary phase of genuine high spirits. Paradoxical as this may seem, the comparative freedom we now enjoyed, at a time when the martial law in the cities was imposing impossible restrictions on most of the population, served to compensate for all the other facts such as that we had lost virtually all our possessions, were now homeless and that the possibility of our reaching Bristol was remote.

We encountered a stretch of woodland and for a few days made our encampment there. It was during this time that our mood became depressed.

For food, we visited a near-by village where we were sold all we required without question. But later in the week, when a detachment of the Afrim forces raided the village and as a result the inhabitants erected barricades, this supply was cut off from us.

We decided to move on, and travelled across country in a southerly direction. I became increasingly aware of Isobel’s unspoken resentment about what was happening to us, and I found myself competing with her for Sally’s approval. In this way, Sally became the instrument of our conflict (as in fact she had always been) and suffered considerably.

The day after the soaking of our equipment and possessions in the crossing of the river, the conflict came to a head.

By this time we were out of touch with the rest of the world. The batteries of the radio had been growing weaker, and now the water had damaged it beyond our repair. While Isobel and Sally laid out our clothes and equipment to dry in the sun, I went off by myself and tried to condense my knowledge into something from which I could plan our next moves.

We knew only that we were in grave difficulty and that our personal problems were aggravated by the situation around us. Though we knew only too well the extent of our own difficulties, we would have been better placed to cope with them had we been able to know the current state of the political situation.

(Much later, I learned that at this time there was a large-scale welfare scheme being initiated by the Red Cross and the United Nations, which was attempting to rehabilitate all those people like ourselves who had been dispossessed by the fighting. As it turned out, this effort was fated, as with the worsening state of the conflict, both organizations became discredited in the mind of the public, and their work was used by all participating sides as a tactical, political or social weapon against the others. The result of this was a massive distrust of all welfare organizations, and in time their function became the superficial one of maintaining a presence.)

It was difficult to reconcile ourselves to the standard of existence we were now having to accept.

I found myself looking at the situation as being a predetermined one. That my attitude to Isobel, the way in which our marriage had become nothing more than a social convenience, had resolved itself. While we were living at our house we were able to disregard both the fact that our relationship was hypocritical and that the political situation of that period had an effect on us.

But now that the latter had so changed our mode of existence we could no longer pretend about ourselves.

In those few minutes alone, I saw with penetrating clarity that our marriage had reached its conclusion and that the moment had arrived when the pretence must be abandoned. Practical considerations tried to intrude, but I ignored them. Isobel could fend for herself, or surrender herself to the police. Sally could come with me. We would return to London, and from there decide what next to do.

For one of the few times in my life I had reached a positive decision by myself, and it was not one I liked. Memories of what had gone before — good memories — pulled at me. But I still had the bruises from the policeman’s boot in my side and these served to remind me of the true nature of our lives.

The past had moved away from us and so had the present. Those moments with Isobel when I had thought we might once again work out a way to live with each other, presented themselves to me as falsehoods. Regret did not exist.

We were due to arrive at Augustin’s the following day, but of necessity we slept that night in a field. None of us liked sleeping in the open, preferring to find abandoned houses or farm-buildings. I had never found it easy to settle when on hard ground and exposed to the cold. In addition, we discovered around midnight that by chance we had camped less than a mile from an antiaircraft emplacement. Several times the guns opened fire, and although searchlights were used twice we were unable to see at what it was they were firing.

We moved on at first light, every one of us cold, irritable and tired. Five miles from Augustin’s we were stopped by a patrol of U.S. Marines, and searched. It was routine, perfunctory, and it was over in ten minutes.

Sobered from garrulous irritability to our habitual watchful silence, we arrived in the vicinity of Augustin’s around midday.

Lateef detailed myself and two others to move on ahead and establish that the camp was still there. All we had by way of directions was an Ordnance Survey grid-reference which had been passed on to us along the refugee network. Although we had no reason to doubt this information — the network was the only reliable form of news-dissemination — it was possible that one or another of the military groups had moved it on. In any case, it was essential to ensure that at the time we were there we would not interrupt anyone or be interrupted.

While Lateef organized the preparation of a meal we moved forward.

The grid-reference turned out to be a field which had carried crop-growth. It had evidently lain fallow for more than a year, as it was overgrown with rank grass and weeds. Although there were several signs of human habitation — a soil latrine in one corner, many bare patches in the grass, a refuse tip, the burnt ulcers where open fires had been — the field was empty.

We searched it in silence for a few minutes, until one of the other men found a piece of white card inside a polythene bag resting under a tiny cairn of stones. It said: Augustin’s, and was followed by another grid-reference. We consulted the map and found that it was less than three-quarters of a mile farther on.

The new site was inside a wood and we found it with comparative ease. It consisted of several tents of various sizes, ranging from crude sheets of canvas large enough to shelter only one or two persons, up to a medium-sized marquee of the sort once found at circuses. The whole encampment was roped off, except at one part where a large tent had been erected. Anyone wishing to enter the encampment was thus obliged to pass through this tent.

Over the entrance was tacked a crudely painted sign on what had once been a sheet or tablecloth: AUGUSTIN. Underneath that was written: SCREW A BLACK FOR PIECE. We went inside.

A young boy sat behind a trestle table.

I said to him: “Is Augustin here?”

“He’s busy.”

“Too busy to see us?”

“How many?”

I told the boy the number of men there were in our group. He left the tent and walked through into the encampment. A few minutes later Augustin himself joined us. Few refugees know what nationality Augustin is. He is not British

He said to me: “You got men?”

“Yes.”

“When they coming?”

I told him in about an hour. He looked at his watch.

“O.K. But out by six?”

We agreed to this.

He added: “We got more in evening. O.K.?”

We agreed again, then returned to our own temporary camp where Lateef and the others were waiting for us. It occurred to me that if we told them where Augustin’s was the others would not wait for us, and our own choices would be correspondingly restricted. Accordingly, we refused to divulge the exact location, and said that the camp had moved. When it was clear we intended to say no more, we were given food. After we had eaten we led the others to Augustin’s.

Lateef went into the tent with myself and the other two men. The remainder crushed in behind us, or waited outside. I observed that in the time we had been away, Augustin had tidied up his own appearance and had placed a wooden barrier across the inner flap of the tent to prevent us from passing straight through.

He was sitting behind the trestle table. At his side was a tall white woman, with long black hair and remarkable blue eyes. She glared at us with what I took to be contempt.

Augustin said: “How much you offer?”

“How much do you want?” Lateef said.

“No food.”

“Food is the best we can offer you.”

“No food. We want rifles. Or women.”

Lateef said: “We have fresh meat. And chocolate. And plenty of tinned fruit.”

Augustin tried to look displeased, but I could tell he was unable to resist accepting our offers.

“O.K. Rifles?”

“No.”

“Women?”

Lateef told him, without mentioning the abduction, that we had no women. Augustin spat on to the surface of the table.

“How many nigger-slaves?”

“We haven’t got any.”

I had expected Augustin not to believe this. Lateef had once told me that at his last visit, when Augustin was in a more expansive mood, he had confided to him that he “knew” every refugee-group had several Negroes along as slaves or hostages. Notwithstanding the moral issue, the sheer practical fact of the constant searches and interrogations would have precluded this. In any case, Augustin appeared to take our word for it at the present moment.

“O.K. What food?”

Lateef passed him a sheet of paper, containing a list of provisions with which we would be willing to part. The woman read it out to him.

“No meat. We have enough. It stink too quick. More chocolate.”

Finally, the barter was agreed. Knowing what had had to be paid in the past, I realized that Lateef had struck a fair bargain. I had expected him to be forced to pay much higher. Perhaps for all Augustin’s bluff manner, his surplus of food was not as great as he pretended and was experiencing hardship in other respects. It occurred to me to wonder at his insistence on weapons.

We moved outside the tent to where our handcarts were and off-loaded the agreed amounts of food. The business side accomplished, we were conducted through the tent and into a small clearing. Augustin paraded us proudly past his wares.

There were approximately three times as many men as there were available girls. We agreed to behave in a reasonable fashion, and divided ourselves into three groups. We then drew lots as to the order in which we would go to the girls. I was in the group which selected the lot for the first of the three. While the others waited we walked up to the line of girls, who stood waiting for us as if they were troops on inspection.

All of the girls were Negroes. It appeared they had been chosen by Augustin personally, as they were similar in appearance: tall, full-breasted and wide-hipped. Their ages ranged from youthful middle-aged to one girl who was obviously in her early teens.

I selected a young woman of about twenty-five. As I spoke to her she bared her teeth as if I were to inspect those, too.

After a few words she led me away from the clearing to a small tent at the very edge of the encampment. There was little room inside the tent, so she took off her clothes outside. As she did so, I looked round at the other tents I could see and observed that outside each one the other women were similarly disrobing.

When she was naked she went inside. I took off my trousers and laid them on the ground next to where she had put her clothes. I followed her inside.

She was lying on a rough bed made out of several old blankets thrown on the ground. There were no flaps at either end of the tent, and had she been a few inches taller, both her head and her feet would have protruded.

As I entered the tent, the sight of her naked, outstretched body aroused me. I crawled in between her legs and lay down on top of her. I ran my left hand down between our bodies, caressing first her right breast, and then reaching down and holding tightly the tuft of brittle black hair.

I supported myself with my right arm at first, then as she put her arms around me, allowed it to rest down by her side. As I entered her I felt the cold hardness of metal by her side. Taking pains not to show my awareness of this, I explored as far as I dared with my fingers, and at length decided what I could feel was the trigger and guard of a rifle.

As we copulated, I managed to push the rifle away from us and towards the edge of the tent. I am satisfied that my movements were sufficiently unobtrusive, as she showed no sign of awareness. Finally, the rifle was about twelve inches away from us, yet still covered in part by the blankets.

My preoccupation with the presence of the weapon had lessened my sexual desire and I found that my erection had diminished, even though I had continued to make movements against her. I returned my attention to the girl and her body. Because of what had happened I took much longer than normal to come to a climax, and by the time I finished we were both perspiring freely.

Afterwards we dressed and returned to the clearing. From the ribald comments of the other men I gathered we had been away longer than anyone else. My girl lined up with the others and the second group of men went over and made their selections.

As they moved in pairs towards the outlying tents, I stepped past the others, through the tent with the trestle-table where Augustin and his woman sat in earnest conversation, and out to where we had left the handcarts.

I walked past them into the trees.

Twenty yards away I turned and looked back. Augustin was watching me suspiciously from his tent. I made a lewd gesture towards my crutch, indicating that I was about to urinate, and he waved to me. I walked on.

When I was out of sight of the encampment I turned and walked in a broad circle, keeping the camp on my left. After a while I turned in towards it again, and approached it cautiously. I came to the camp from the side. No one saw me.

Using every available tree and bush as cover, I moved around until I was opposite the tent where I had been. Again making sure that I was not observed, I crawled up to it on my hands and knees. I lay beside it on my stomach, the boundary rope directly above me.

Inside, the man was insulting the girl, cursing and blaspheming and insulting her race, pouring out verbal excrement about the colour of her skin. She replied with groans of passion.

I slid my hand under the flap of the tent, found the rifle, and gripped it. With a slowness that nearly panicked me, I slid it out, then made for the cover of the trees. I secreted the rifle in the wildly growing brambles of a hawthorn bush, then returned to the camp.

As I went past Augustin he made a vulgar comment about urine. He was eating the chocolate and had brown smears on his chin.

With the closing of the college I found mys elf in the second major financial crisis of my life. For a while we existed on our savings, but within a month it was clear I would have to find an alternative occupation. Though I telephoned the administrative section of the college on several occasions, I was rarely able even to obtain an answer, let alone a satisfactory resolution to the predicament. In the meantime, I applied myself to the task of obtaining employment.

It should be understood that at this time the country was passing through a phase of extreme economic difficulty. The balance of payments policy on which John Tregarth and his government had first come to power was seen to be working badly, if at all. As a result, prices continued to rise, and an increasing number of men were made to be unemployed. At first confident of myself and my Master’s Degree in English History, I toured the offices of publishers intending to pick up some temporary position as an editor or adviser. I was soon disillusioned, finding that the world of books, like virtually everything else, was cutting back on expense and staff at every opportunity. With a similarly universal sequence of sadly shaking heads, I found that the way into some form of clerical work was also barred. Manual labour was, by and large, out of the question: since the middle seventies the industrial labour-pool had been directed by the unions.

At this stage I grew extremely depressed and went to my father for assistance. Though he was now retired he had been managing director of a small chain of companies and still had some influence. Neither of us cared for the brief contact into which this brought us, as we had not communicated except formally and politely for several years. Though he managed to obtain for me an insignificant position in a cloth-cutting factory, I never found a way to express fully my gratitude. When he died a few months later I tried unsuccessfully to feel more than a few minutes of regret.

With the more immediate aspects of the personal financial crisis solved, I turned my attention to developments on the national scene. There was no sign of a halt to the progress of events which were taking away the state of affairs I chose to think of as normal. It was of great significance to me that the government had closed the college. Though at first there had been a public outcry about the seemingly arbitrary way in which the universities were being dealt with, popular interest soon passed to other things.

I shall not attempt to describe the details of my work in the cloth factory. In brief, my labours entailed cutting certain types and colours of cloth to determined lengths, ensuring that they were labelled and packed correctly, and following through each consignment to the despatch point.

Within a week I had memorized all relevant details and from there the work degenerated into a meaningless routine which I acted out for the sole purpose of the money it brought me.

I said to Isobel: “I want to talk to you. Come over here for a minute.”

“I want to talk to you too.”

We left Sally by the tents and walked back to where I had been before. We stood facing each other, uncomfortable in each other’s presence. I realized that this was the first time I had been really alone with her for several days, if not weeks. That thought led me to remembering that we had not had intercourse for over three months.

I tried not to look at her.

“Alan, we’ve got to do something,” she said. “We can’t go on like this. I’m terrified of what’s going to happen. We ought to go back to London. It isn’t fair on Sally.”

“I don’t know what to do,” I said. “We can’t go back, we can’t reach Bristol. All we can do is wait.”

“But wait for what?”

“How do I know? Until things settle down again. You know the position as well as I do.”

“Have you thought what this is doing to Sally? Have you looked at her recently? Have you thought about what this is doing to me?”

“I know what it’s doing to all of us.”

“And you do damn-all about it!”

“If you’ve got any positive suggestions . .

“Steal a car from someone. Shoot someone. Do anything, but get us out of this damned field and back to decent living! There must be somewhere we can go. Things would be all right in Bristol. Or we could go back to that camp. I’m sure they’d have us if they saw Sally.”

“What’s wrong with Sally?”

“Nothing you’d ever notice.”

“What do you mean?”

She didn’t answer, but I thought I caught her intention. This was her way of using Sally against me.

I said: “Be reasonable. You can’t expect me to solve everything. There’s nothing I or you can do. If there was, we’d do it.”

“There must be something. We can’t live in a tent in somebody’s field for ever.”

“Look, the country’s in one hell of a state. I don’t know what’s going on, and I doubt if we would if we were in London. There are police on all the main roads, troops in most of the towns. There’re no newspapers and nothing on the radio. All I’m suggesting is that we stay as we are as long as we have to, until things get better. Even if we had a car we probably wouldn’t be allowed to drive it. How long is it since we saw one on the road?”

Isobel burst into tears. I tried to comfort her, but she pushed me away. I stood by her, waiting for her to calm down. I was becoming confused. When I had thought about what I was going to say to her, it had seemed to be so simple.

As she wept, Isobel stepped away from me, shouldering me aside as I tried to pull her back. Across the field I could see Sally staring in our direction.

When Isobel had stopped crying, I said to her: “What do you want most of all?”

“There’s no point in telling you.”

“Yes, there is.”

She shrugged hopelessly. “I think I want us to be as we were before this started.”

“Living in Southgate? With all those rows going on?”

She said: “And you out till all hours of the night, sleeping with some little whore.”

Isobel had known about my affairs for two or more years. She no longer possessed the ability to sting me with them.

“You’d prefer that to this? Would you really? Think about it, will you?”

“I’ve thought about it,” she said.

“And about the rest of the marriage? Would you honestly want any of that back again?” I had already considered the question, knew my own answer to it. Our marriage had finished before it began.

“Anything … rather than this.”

“That’s no answer, Isobel.”

I debated again whether or not to say to her what I had decided. As callous as it seemed to me in the face of her present state of mind, it presented an alternative to a situation we both detested. Though she wanted to retrogress and I was going to move on. Was there, I wondered, any real significance?

“All right,” she said. “How about this? We’ll split up. You go back to London and try to find somewhere for us to live. I’ll take Sally and we’ll try to reach Bristol. We’ll stay there until we hear from you.”

I said at once: “No. Absolutely not. I’m not letting you take Sally. I don’t trust you with her.”

“What do you mean? I’m her mother, aren’t I?”

“That doesn’t embrace every capability.”

For a second or two I saw genuine hatred in Isobel’s face and I looked away. My unfaithfulness to Isobel in the past had been a negative reaction away from her, rather than some distinct movement to someone else in seeking something that she could not provide. It had come about through my inadequacy to confront the reality of our marriage, instead of out of a constructive awareness of some shortcomings in the relationship. Though I knew that our generally unsuccessful sex-life, which had initiated in some psychological difficulty in Isobel, was one of the first causes, it was no longer the whole reason and it was the complexity of our failure that made me unable to deal with it. My own motives were suspect. Thus, in provoking Isobel’s overt hatred, I was rendered discomfited.

She said: “That’s what I want. You’re obviously incapable of supplying an alternative.”

“I do have a suggestion.”

“What is it?”

And so I told her. I said I was taking Sally and that she was to go on to Bristol by herself. I offered her most of our remaining cash and as much equipment as she wanted. When she asked me why I wished to do this, I told her without compromising my earlier conception. I said as bluntly as I could that our marriage as such was over, that the social disruption had only resolved the situation into a more recognizable form. I told her that if she persisted in thinking that we could pick up again she was deluding herself and, in the long run, jeopardizing Sally’s future. The break had been forced on us, but nevertheless it was a natural one. I considered that Sally would be safer with me, and that when things settled down again we could obtain a divorce and Sally would get legal protection.

Isobel just said: “I don’t know,” and walked away.

I examined the rifle at the earliest opportunity and discovered that it was of a sort for which we carried ammunition. Lateef had this, so I was obliged to reveal to him that I had come into possession of a rifle.

Lateef had had the ammunition when I first joined his group, and I had no idea from where it had come.

Speaking to me in private, he told me that he had twelve rounds of ammunition that would suit my rifle, but warned me that it was in the interests of us all to dispose of the weapon at once. When I asked him why, he told me that he had heard that the death-penalty had been invoked for the unlicensed use of firearms.

From what he said, I drew the conclusion that he was envious of my having found the rifle.

I argued the need for protection, that had we been armed earlier we might have been able to protect the women. I made the observation that atrocities against refugees were on the increase, and that there was now no organized force which we could trust.

Lateef countered my arguments by pointing out the increased frequency of interrogations, and that so far we had managed to avoid personal violence against ourselves, whereas other refugee groups had suffered beatings, imprisonment and rape at the hands of military bodies.

His contention was that this was because we were manifestly defenceless.

I told him that I was prepared to accept any and all consequences of my being found in possession of the rifle; that if we were taken for interrogation I would hide it at once, and that if I was caught actually holding or using the rifle I would absolve the rest of the group from any knowledge or complicity.

Lateef seemed satisfied that this undertaking of mine effectively disposed of any disadvantage to him or the others, and in due course gave me the ammunition.

I took the weapon to pieces, cleaned and lubricated it, and learned how to sight it. Unwilling to waste any of the ammunition, or to draw attention to ourselves by the sound of its explosion, I did not fire it. A man in our group who knew something of rifles told me that it was powerful and accurate, and should be used with discretion.

In the days that followed I appreciated that there had been a subtle shift of emphasis in the way in which the group organized itself. I came to town in the early afternoon, while arrangements for the day’s festivities were in their last stages. The square in the centre of the town had been emptied of cars, and people walked across the open space as if unaware that on normal days the town was jammed tight with the traffic passing through towards the coast.

Most of the shops which opened on to the square had laid out wooden stands in front of their windows and laden them with goods. Several men worked on the tops of ladders, attaching coloured bunting across the streets. Nearly every window ledge was decorated with a handful of flowers.

At the wide end of the square, in front of the council offices, there was a small fairground, consisting of a children’s roundabout, a helter-skelter, a row of swing-boats and several prize-booths.

As I waited outside my hotel, a large coach stopped in a nearby sidestreet and about fifty or sixty passengers climbed out and trooped into a mock-Tudor restaurant on the far side of the square. I waited until the last one was inside, then walked in the opposite direction until I was out of the town centre and in residential sidestreets.

When I returned the festivities were in full swing.

I caught my first sight of the girl as she stood by a display of handbags outside a leather store. It was the fashion at that time for girls to wear clothes made of very light material and with skirts several inches above the knee. She was dressed in pale blue and wore her hair straight and long. To me she was very beautiful. As I crossed the square towards her she moved on and was lost in the crowds. I waited by the leather shop, hoping to catch another glimpse of her, but was not able to. After a few minutes I changed my position and stood in the narrow alley that ran between the shooting-gallery and coconut-shy.

I returned to my hotel after an hour and ordered some coffee. Later, I went back into the square and saw her profile against the side of one of the lorries that transported the fairground equipment. She was walking at right angles to my line of sight, staring thoughtfully at the ground. She reached the steps outside the council offices and walked up them. At the top she turned and faced me. Across the square we gazed at one another. I walked towards her.

I reached the bottom of the steps and she turned and went into the building. Not liking to follow her, I went up to where she had been standing and stood facing into the building. Behind me, I heard an abrupt explosion and a scream, and the sound of several people shouting. I did not turn. For about two minutes the square was noisy with the sound of shouting and music. Finally, someone thought to turn off the music that was being relayed by tannoy into the square, and silence fell. Somewhere a woman was sobbing.

Only as the ambulance arrived did I turn to face the square and saw that an accident had happened on the roundabout. A small child was trapped by its legs between the platform and the motor in the centre.

I waited for the child to be released. The ambulance men did not appear to know how to go about it. Finally, a fire-appliance drove up and three men using an electric saw cut through the wood of the platform and freed the child’s legs. The child was unconscious. As the ambulance drove away, and the music started up again, I realized that the girl stood beside me. I took her hand and led her away from the centre into the streets along which I had walked earlier.

Her beauty took away from me my ability for glib conversation. I wanted to flatter her and impress her, but the appropriate words would not flow.

We returned to my hotel in the evening and I bought her dinner. When we had finished eating she became distracted and told me she had to leave. I saw her to the door of the hotel but she would not allow me to escort her any farther. I went into the hotel lounge and watched television for the rest of the evening.

The following morning I purchased a newspaper and learned that the child had died on the way to hospital. I threw away the newspaper.

I had arranged to meet Isobel in the afternoon and had until then in which to pass the time. For most of the morning I watched the men dismantling the pieces of the fairground and loading them on to the lorries. By midday the square had been emptied of equipment and the police were allowing normal traffic to pass through.

After luncheon in the hotel I borrowed a friend’s motorcycle and took it out on to the main road. Half an hour later in a buoyant mood, I met Isobel. She was wearing the pale-blue dress again, as I had requested. Again we walked, this time leaving the town and finding several paths through the countryside. I wanted to make love to her, but she would not allow me to.

On our way back to the town we were caught unexpectedly in a summer shower, which soaked us thoroughly. I had planned to entertain her with another dinner at the hotel, but instead we hitched a ride back to her house. She would not let me go inside with her. Instead, I promised to return to the town during the following week. She agreed to see me then.

As I went into the foyer of the hotel one of the porters told me that the mother of the child had committed suicide in the afternoon. It had been she, according to the porter, who had encouraged the child to stand on the roundabout as it was moving. For a while we discussed the tragedy, then I had a meal in the hotel restaurant. Afterwards I went to the local cinema and watched a double-feature horror programme. In the interval I noticed Isobel sitting a few rows in front of me, kissing with a young man approximately her own age. She didn’t see me. I left at once and in the morning I returned to London.

In one village I discovered a transistor radio. Its batteries were flat. I took them out of the back of the radio and warmed them slowly the next time I was near a fire. While they were still warm I put them back into the radio and switched it on.

At that time the BBC was broadcasting on one wavelength only, interspersing long sessions of light music with newsreports. Though I listened until the batteries went flat two hours later, I heard no bulletin about the fighting, nor about the plight of the refugees, nor about any political subject whatsoever. I gathered that there had been a plane-crash in South America.

The next time I had batteries for the radio, the only channel I could find was Radio Peace … broadcast from a converted iron-ore ship moored off the Isle of Wight. The output of that was limited to prolonged prayer-sessions, Bible-readings and hymns.

We were running short of food again and Lateef made the decision to approach a near-by village and arrange a barter. We consulted our maps.

From experience we had learned that it was good general policy to avoid any village or town with more than about a thousand inhabitants, or situated anywhere near a major road. We had found that a high percentage of such places were either occupied by one faction or another and were subject to martial law in practice as well as theory, or else that a small garrison or camp would be maintained. As this effectively took from our sphere of operations most towns and villages, we were obliged to obtain the bulk of our supplies from isolated hamlets and solitary farms and houses. If we were fortunate enough to find somewhere that would provide us readily with what we needed, then we would either make an encampment near by, or keep on the move in the immediate neighbourhood.

Looking at the map, Lateef made a decision to go towards a village about two miles to the west of us. One of the other men dissented, saying that he had heard that in the town three miles beyond this village was a Nationalist Forces headquarters. He said he would be happier if we detoured around the town either through villages to the north or to the south.

For a while we discussed it, but finally Lateef overruled us. He said that our primary concern was food and that because of the number of farms near the village we would stand the best chance there.

As we approached the village we saw two or three farms securely barricaded and defended.

By an unwritten law of the countryside, refugees were allowed to traverse or camp in fields lying fallow, on condition they stole no food nor attempted to enter the farmhouses. In all my time on the road, I was subconsciously aware of this rule, and like everyone else I tried to work within it.

For a short time some refugees from East Anglia had joined Lateef’s group, but they clearly adopted the attitude of each man for himself, and Lateef had separated us from them.

We passed the farmhouses, therefore, and headed for the village.

As was our custom, Lateef walked at the head of our column with three other men, immediately behind them came the handcarts containing our possessions, camping equipment and goods for barter, and the rest of the group followed on behind.

Because of my rifle, Lateef told me to walk alongside the leading cart, secreting the weapon in the false bottom in which we normally concealed unacceptable materials during searches or interrogations.

By this I could detect a slight reversal in Lateef’s attitude towards the rifle. Whereas before he had maintained that it was better to be unarmed as a form of self-protection, I saw now that he acknowledged the need to defend ourselves even if that defence was not itself apparent to potential aggressors.

We came to the village along a minor road that ran across country from the town on the far side of this village until where it joined a major road some eight miles to the east of us. Again, it was from experience that we knew it was better to come to a strange village along a road rather than across the fields. Though we felt immediately more exposed, we believed we were establishing a better basis for the coming barter by doing so.

According to the map the village had no actual nucleus, but was more a straggling collection of houses along two narrow roads: the one we were on and one that crossed it at right angles. From one end to another it was probably more than a mile long — typical of the villages in this region.

We passed the first house in silence. It had been abandoned and its windows were all broken. The same was true of the next house, and the one after, and of all the houses for the first two hundred yards leading into the centre.

As we rounded the bend, there was an explosion in front of us, and one of the men at Lateef’s side was thrown backwards.

We stopped. Those near the handcarts crouched down behind them, the others took what cover they could find at the side of the road. I looked down at the man who had fallen. He was on the ground five yards from where I crouched. The bullet had struck him in the throat, tearing away a large chunk of his neck. Blood spurted fitfully from his jugular vein, and though his eyes stared skywards with the dull glaze of death, he continued to make faint rasping noises from what was left of his throat. In seconds, he quietened.

Ahead of us a barricade had been erected across the road. It wasn’t the kind of barricade to which we had grown accustomed — an untidy barrier of paving-stones, old cars or masonry — but had been designed purposively and built with bricks and cement. In the centre was a narrow gate through which pedestrians could pass, and on either side of this were two protective raised sections behind which I could just make out the figures of men. As I watched one of them fired again, and the bullet smashed into the wood of the front of the handcart not two feet from where I was. I crouched down even lower.

“Whitman! You’ve got the rifle. Shoot back.”

I looked over at Lateef. He was lying on the ground with two other men, trying to shelter behind a low mound of earth.

I said: “They’re too well protected.”

I saw that the houses to each side of the barricade had been similarly defended with a wall of concrete. I wondered whether it would be possible to enter the village by going across the fields and coming to it from the side, but the inhabitants were so obviously hostile that there would be little point.

Reaching into the false bottom of the handcart I slid out the rifle and loaded it. I was aware that every member of our group was watching me. Still attempting to keep as close to the side of the cart as possible, I aimed the rifle towards the barricade, trying to find a target I would be reasonably certain of striking.

I waited for a movement.

In the next few seconds a variety of thoughts passed through my mind. This wasn’t the first occasion on which I had been in possession of a lethal weapon, but it was the first time I had ever taken deliberate aim with the knowledge that if I was successful I would kill or injure somebody. It is at times like this that one would try to rationalize all one’s actions if it were not for the immediate need for direct participation.

Lateef said quietly: “What are you waiting for?”

“I can’t see anyone to aim at.”

“Put a shot over their heads. No … wait. Let me think.”

I let the barrel sink. I had not wanted to fire. As the next few seconds passed I knew I would not be able to fire it in this premeditated way. Thus, when Lateef told me to return it to its hiding-place, I was relieved. A direct order from him to shoot would have created a situation almost impossible for me to resolve.

“It’s no good,” he said, not just to me, but to everyone in earshot. “We’ll never get in there. We’ll have to retreat.”

I think I had known that from the moment of the first shot. I realized that to Lateef this decision meant a lot as it was in some ways an abrogation of his authority. The man who had told Lateef about the Nationalist garrison was near him, but he said nothing.

There was a white sheet over the top of the handcart. We had used it on several occasions in the past when wishing to underline our neutrality. Lateef asked me to pass it to him. He stood up, unfolding the cloth as he did so. No one at the barricade fired. I had to admire his bravery; under the same circumstances of leadership I would have risked anyone’s life but my own. When I am in danger I have found that my capacity for self-honesty overrules all my thoughts.

After several seconds Lateef told us to get back in the road and to move away slowly. I stood up myself, crouching down behind the bulk of the handcart. Our little convoy began to move back the way we had come.

Lateef stood between us and the hostile village. He held the white sheet at arm’s length, as if to provide cover for the rest of us. Slowly, carefully, he stepped backwards, obviously uncertain what would happen if he turned and walked with the rest of us.

The handcart was half-way round the bend that would take us out of the line of fire, when the last shot sounded. Although some of the men not actually hauling on a handcart scattered to the sides of the road, the rest of us broke into a sprint until we were round the curve in the road. When we were all out of the line of gunfire we stopped.

Lateef rejoined us a few seconds later. He was swearing violently. The bullet had passed through the white sheet and scuffed his sleeve. A piece of cloth about four inches square had been torn away from near his elbow. We judged that had the bullet been even a quarter of an inch higher it would have smashed his bone.

When I was in my sleeping-bag that night it occurred to me that Lateef had come out of the day’s events in a stronger position. I was glad that my own thoughts were private, for they revealed me to be a greater coward than I had feared. For the first time since she had been taken by the Afrims I felt a strong sexual urge for Isobel, missing and wanting her, tormented by false memories of happiness together.

In the afternoon I spent about an hour with Sally, while Isobel walked into a near-by village to try to obtain food. Money was the greatest problem in this respect, as we had only a pound or two left out of all that we had brought with us.

In talking to Sally I found myself treating her as an adult for the first time. She had no way of knowing what Isobel and I had discussed, but her bearing had the manner of a suddenly increased sense of responsibility. This pleased me immensely.

The evening passed in silence for the large part; certainly, Isobel and I exchanged only a couple of sentences. When night came we laid out in our tents in the manner we had done since the start: Isobel and Sally in one tent and myself in the other.

I found myself regretting that the conversation with Isobel had not come to a more determined conclusion. As it was, I felt we had not achieved anything.

I lay awake for an hour, then drifted into sleep. Almost at once, it seemed, I was awoken by Isobel.

I reached out and touched her; she was naked.

I said: “What… ?”

“Sshh. You’ll wake Sally.”

She undid the zip of my sleeping-bag and lay down with her body against me. I put my arms around her and, still half-asleep and unthinking of what had gone between us during the day, I began to caress her sexually.

Our love-making was not well matched. My mind made indistinct by sleep, I was unable to concentrate and achieved orgasm only after a long time. Isobel, though, was voracious in a way I had never known her before, the noise of her gasps almost deafening me. She came to orgasm twice, disconcertingly violently the first time.

We lay together linked for several minutes afterwards, then Isobel murmured something and attempted to wriggle out from under me. I rolled to one side and she pulled away. I tried to restrain her, placing an arm around her shoulders. She said nothing, but got to her feet and went out of the tent. I lay back in the residual warmth of our bodies and fell asleep again.

In the morning Sally and I found we were on our own.

There was a policy discussion the next day, stemming mainly from our lack of food. After checking our stores carefully we established that there was now sufficient food to last us only another two days. After that, we would be able to manage on biscuits, chocolate and so forth for another week.

This was our first encounter with a real prospect of starvation, and none of us liked it.

Lateef outlined the alternatives open to us.

He said that we could continue as we had been doing so far: moving from village to village, bartering for food as necessary, and pilfering exchangeable goods from abandoned buildings and cars as we came across them. He pointed out that the military activity around us was on the increase, and though we were not involved in it because of our vagrancy, we could not afford to ignore it. People still living in towns and villages were taking defensive precautions accordingly.

Lateef recounted to us a story he had not previously told us, about a village in the north which had been taken over by a group of Negroes claiming to be a part of the regular Afrim forces. Although the blacks had not established a proper garrison, and appeared to have no military discipline, the suspicions of the villagers had not been aroused. After a week, when units of the Nationalist Army were reported to be in the neighbourhood, the blacks had run amok, killing several hundred civilians before the Nationalist forces had arrived.

This, Lateef said, was not an isolated incident. Similar outrages had been recorded all over the country and had been committed by members of the armed forces on all three sides of the conflict. From the point of view of the private citizens, all outsiders should be treated as enemies. This attitude was spreading, he said, and made more hazardous our attempts to trade with civilians.

Another alternative would be to surrender ourselves formally to one side or another and enroll into the military. The arguments for this were strong: a rationalization of our existence, the fact we were all reasonably healthy men capable of military duty, a commitment to a situation that had a deep effect on us all.

We could join the Nationalists, the so-called “legal” army that defended the policies of Tregarth’s government, but one that was now committed to an overt policy of genocide. We could join the Royal Secessionists, the white supporters of the Afrim cause who although officially non-legal and under continuous sentence of death, had a great deal of public support. If Tregarth’s government were overthrown, either from within by a military victory or by effective diplomatic action from the U.N., it was likely that the Secessionists would take or sponsor office. We could join the United Nations peace-keeping force, which although technically non-participating, in effect had had to intervene on many occasions. Or we could align ourselves with one of the outside participants, such as the U.S. Marines (which had taken over civilian police responsibility) or the theoretically uncommitted Commonwealth forces, who had little effect on the progress of the war beyond further confusing the situation.

A third choice open to us, Lateef said, was to surrender ourselves to a civilian welfare organization and return eventually to a quasi-legal situation. Though this was ideally the most attractive alternative, it was doubtful if any of the refugees would be prepared to take it in practice. Until the military situation quietened down, and the social effects of the Afrim uprising were absorbed, such a recourse would be hazardous. In any event, it would mean ultimately that we would have to live under Tregarth’s government, which would automatically involve us in the crisis.

Lateef said that it was our present lack of effective involvement which was the best argument for continuing to stay as we were. In any event, the main preoccupation of most of the men was to be reunited with their women and to surrender ourselves to a participating faction would reduce our chances of this.

A vote was taken and we elected to do as Lateef suggested. We moved on towards a village five miles to the north of us.

Again I detected a feeling amongst the other men that Lateef’s position had been strengthened both by the shooting at the barricade the day before, and by his reasoned arguing of the alternatives. I myself had no wish to become involved with him in a struggle for power, but nevertheless my possession of the rifle could not be entirely ignored by him.

As we moved northwards I walked at his side.

By this time I had bought my own motorcycle and used it those week-ends I went to see Isobel.

My early days of recklessness had passed and though I still enjoyed the sensation of speed, I kept to within the legal limits for much of the time. It was rare for me, when by myself, to open up the cycle and take it to its maximum speed, though when Isobel was on the back she encouraged me to do it often.

Our relationship was developing more slowly than I would have liked.

Before I had met her I had enjoyed several physical affairs with other girls, and though Isobel could present me with no moral, religious or physical reason why we should not sleep together, she had never allowed me to go further than superficial contact. For some reason I persevered.

One afternoon, in particular, we had ridden on the motorcycle up to a near-by hill where there was a gliding club. We had watched the sailplanes for some time before growing bored.

On our way back to town, Isobel directed me away from the road and into a copse of trees. This time, she took the initiative in our preliminary kissing and did not stop me when I removed part of her clothing. The moment, though, my hand went inside her brassiere and touched her nipple, she pulled away from me. On this occasion I was not willing to stop and persisted. She tried again to prevent me, and in the ensuing struggle I pulled off her brassiere and skirt, tearing the latter in the process.

From this point there was no reason to continue, and after she had dressed we returned to her parents’ house. I went back to my room at the hall of residence that evening and did not see Isobel again for three weeks.

As the news reached us, there was much speculation about the implications of the war. The main danger was that it would spread from continental Africa to the rest of the world. Though the bombing was over in a matter of days, no one really knew or cared to reveal how many nuclear devices there had been in Africa.

The two main powers were in the process of formal disarmament at the time, with teams of observers in both continents. The main danger, as far as both powers were concerned, was China, which had been stockpiling devices since the end of the nineteen-sixties. Territorial interests of China in Africa were not known, and it was not possible to predict how much of an influence there had been. Fissionable ores were not, by and large, readily available in Africa, nor was the necessary technology to assemble the weapons. Under these circumstances, it appeared that one or both of the powers had been supplying various countries illegally.

In effect, the source of the weapons was irrelevant; they were present in Africa and they were used.

There was one wave of bombing, then four days later another. The rest of the world waited uneasily, but that was the last of it. Things began to move: welfare organizations launched huge relief-schemes for what survivors there may be, the main powers argued, threatened, but quietened. In Britain, the news was taken calmly: the holocaust in Africa was the embodiment of something awful, but not something that seemed to threaten us directly. And, anyway, we were in the last stages of a General Election; the one declared by John Tregarth six months after he had come to power, and the one in which he consolidated his majority.

Meanwhile, reports came back from Africa describing the horrors of the thermonuclear aftermath. Most major cities had been partially or wholly destroyed, some were still intact. But Africa is large; a majority of the population survived the bombing. Many died later from the results of flash-burns, radiation sickness and the residual radioactivity… but millions survived.

The relief workers were almost entirely incapable of dealing with the survivors. Many died; perhaps five millions, and not all of these as an outcome of the bombing.

But for all the deaths, millions still survived, and as hunger grew so did desperation. And as it seemed that continental Africa was no longer capable of supporting human life, so there developed a drift away from it.

It started slowly, but within three months it had built up into an exodus. Any boat or aircraft that could be found and made to operate was used. The emigrants headed for nowhere in particular … only away from Africa.

They landed in due course in countries all over the world: India, France, Turkey, the Middle East, America, Greece. In the period of evacuation, it was estimated that between seven and eight million people left Africa. In the course of about a year, just over two millions of them landed in Britain.

The Africans, the Afrims, were welcome nowhere. But where they landed, they stayed. Everywhere they caused social upheaval; but in Britain, where a neo-racist government had come to power on an economic-reform ticket, they did much more.

I reported to the recruiting-station at the appointed time of one-thirty in the afternoon.

For several days there had been a saturation of advertisements on television and in the press, stating that entry into the armed forces was still voluntary, but that conscription was to be introduced in the next few weeks. This statement was underlined with an implication that men who volunteered at this time would be given preferential treatment over those who were eventually drafted.

I learned through friends of mine that certain categories of men would be the first to be selected. My job at the cloth factory qualified me for one of these categories.

During this period, my working life at the factory was not happy and the pay in the army would be slightly higher than what I was then receiving. I therefore had a variety of motives when I reported for the medical examination.

I had applied for officer training, learning from the advertisements that a degree was sufficient to establish suitability. I was directed to a specific room in the building where a sergeant-major in dress uniform told me what to do, adding the word ‘sir’ to the end of every sentence.

I was given an IQ test, which was marked in my presence. The errors I made were carefully explained to me. Then I was questioned sketchily on my background and political standing, and finally I was instructed to remove my clothes and to go into the next room.

The lighting was very bright. There was a wooden bench along one wall and I was told to sit on it while waiting for the doctor. I was not sure where the doctor was, for apart from myself the room was deserted.

I had been waiting for ten minutes when a young nurse came in and sat at a desk opposite to where I was sitting. I found I was embarrassed to be naked in her presence. My arms were folded across my chest, and not liking to attract her attention I did not move them. I crossed my legs in an attempt to preserve modesty.

I felt myself to be in a position of exceptional sexual vulnerability, and although she paid little attention to me, and I told myself that she was accustomed to seeing men in the nude, I was constantly aware of her presence. In a few moments I felt a tightening in my groin, and to my consternation realized that my penis was beginning to erect.

Awareness of the tumescence did nothing to reduce the condition. I tried to restrain the organ by gripping it tightly between my thighs, but this soon became painful. It was at this point that the nurse glanced up from her work and looked at me. As she did so, the penis swung out of the restraint of my legs and assumed its fully erect position. I covered it at once with my hands. The nurse looked back at her work.

“The doctor will see you in a few moments,” she said.

I sat motionlessly, concealing my penis with my hands. By the clock on the wall opposite I saw that ten minutes passed. I was still in possession of a full erection when a man in a white coat appeared at the far end of the room and asked me to step inside. As it would have appeared unnatural to walk across the room with my hands at my crutch, I reluctantly allowed my arms to swing at my side. I was aware of the girl’s gaze on my body as I walked past her desk.

Once inside the main examination room the erection began to dwindle and in less than a minute had gone altogether.

I was given a routine medical examination, had my chest X-rayed and samples of my blood and urine taken. I was presented with a form to sign which stated that subject only to medical suitability I would be commissioned into the British Nationalist Army as a trainee 2nd Lieutenant, and that I would report for duty at the time and place indicated on my mobilization certificate. I signed it and was given my clothes again.

There followed an interview with a man in civilian clothing, who questioned me at great length on subjects central to my overall character and personality. It was a distasteful interview and I was glad when it was over. I recall that in its course I revealed my former membership in the pro-Afrim society at the college.

A week later I received a duplicated letter which stated that my medical examination had revealed a liver complaint and that my temporary commission was accordingly terminated.

The day before this letter arrived I had seen conscription reintroduced by the Ministry of Internal Security and a corresponding increase in militant Afrim activities. A month later, with the massacre of the Nationalist troops at Coichester barracks and the arrival of the first American aircraft-carrier in the Irish Sea, I saw that the military situation was more serious than I had imagined. Though relieved at my own lack of personal involvement, day-to-day life became less easy and my own experiences as a civilian were not better than anyone else’s.

After receiving the letter from the military I visited my own doctor and had the complaint in my liver investigated. After a few days of deliberation I was informed that there was nothing wrong with it.

We encountered a large band of Negroes and were at once uncertain of what was to happen. We had the choice of three courses of action: run from them, show our defensive ability with the rifle or meet them.

What disconcerted us most was that they were not wearing Afrim uniforms, but were clad in the same sort of clothes as ourselves. It was possible that they were a group of civilian refugees, but we had heard that Nationalist troops treated such people with extreme callousness. The result of this was that most Negro civilians had surrendered themselves to the welfare organizations, and those few who remained had integrated themselves with white groups.

The men we met were friendly, well-fed and appeared to be unarmed. They did have three large handcarts near to which we were not allowed to approach, and it is possible that these contained weapons.

We spoke for several minutes, exchanging the usual pieces of news which were the only real currency on the refugee network. The blacks showed no signs of nerves, nor any awareness that we had a guarded attitude towards them.

They did however reveal certain signs of excitement, a cause for which we were unable to determine. Our main concern during the encounter was for our own sakes, and as such we were not judging their behaviour as much as we might at another time. But it seemed to me that they behaved as if jubilant, or as if anticipating something.

In the end we moved on, leaving the blacks near a wood. We crossed a field, then passed out of sight. Lateef called me over to him.

“They were Afrim guerrillas,” he said. “Did you notice their identity-bracelets?”

Sally and I waited for a few hours to see whether Isobel was going to return. I felt in no need to explain to Sally why she had left us; on the contrary, I deduced from the child’s manner that she had anticipated some such act. I think that she regretted that it had had to come, but that she was capable of accepting the new situation.

Isobel had taken with her exactly half of our remaining money, in addition to a suitcase of her own clothes and some of the food. All the camping and sleeping equipment she had left with us.

By midday it was clear that lsobel was not coming back. I began to make preparations for a meal, but Sally said she would do it. I allowed her to take over and meanwhile packed our gear. At this point I had made no decision about what we were to do, but I felt that it was time to leave this particular location.

When we had eaten, I explained to Sally as best I could what we could do.

My predominant feeling at this time was a sense of inadequacy. This extended to my ability to make the right decision regarding our movements, as well as giving me severe doubts as to the real reasons for the breakdown of my marriage. I felt that Sally was in potential danger as I could, through my inadequacy, make more mistakes. In consulting her on the next move we should take, I felt I was not only giving Sally some participation, but was assisting myself to come to terms with my own weaknesses.

I explained to Sally that her mother and I had agreed that we were to return to London, while she went on to Bristol. We were not going to return to our house, but we were going to find somewhere new to live. Sally told me that she understood.

I then went into some detail about the difficulties confronting us: that we were out of touch with the political situation, that we had very little money, that it would not be possible to go back by car, that we would probably have to hike for the major part of the way.

Sally said: “But couldn’t we go on a train, Daddy?”

Children have a facility for cutting sideways across a problem and seeing possible solutions that have not occurred to their parents. In the time we had been living in the countryside I had completely overlooked the existence of the railway system. I wondered if Isobel had similarly not thought of it, or whether she was intending to reach Bristol that way.

“It’s a question of money,” I replied. “We probably haven’t got enough. We’ll have to find out. Is that what you’d like to do?”

“Yes. I don’t want to live in the tent any more.”

I had learned that it was not possible to plan too far ahead. But I couldn’t avoid returning to the question of what we would do if the situation in London was as bad as when we had left. If the occupation by militant Afrims of houses was continuing, and the law-enforcement agencies were divided, then we would not be the only people looking for accommodation. If the situation was as bad as I feared, we might well be obliged to leave London once more. If that happened, then the only place I could think of going to was my younger brother’s house in Carlisle. Even if we were able to go there, the practical difficulty of travelling three hundred miles was still to be faced. Unfortunately, I could see no alternative — he was the only remaining member of my family after the death of my parents four years before, and of Clive, my elder brother, in the confrontation at Bradford.

As far as Sally was concerned, though, the matter was settled, and we collected the remainder of our belongings and packed them. I carried our remaining suitcase and the rucksack, and Sally carried the other bag containing our clothes. We walked eastwards, not knowing the location of the nearest railway station, but moving in that direction as we felt it was the right one.

We came, after about a mile and a half, to a macadamed road. We followed this in a northerly direction until we encountered a telephone-box. As a matter of course, I lifted the receiver to find out whether it was working. In the past we had found that although the receivers had not been damaged in any way, the lines were dead.

On this occasion there was a short series of clicks, and then a woman’s voice answered.

“Exchange. Which number do you require?”

I hesitated. I had not expected a reply and was thus unprepared.

“I’d like to make a call … to Carlisle, please.”

“I’m sorry, caller. All trunk lines are engaged.”

There was a note of finality to her voice, as if she were about to close the connection.

“Er — could you get me a London number then, please?”

“I’m sorry, caller. All lines to London are engaged.”

“Would you ring me back when they are free?”

“This exchange is open for local calls only.” That final tone again.

I said quickly: “Look, I wonder if you can help me. I’m trying to get to the railway station. Could you direct me to it, please?”

“Where are you speaking from?”

I gave her the address of the telephone-box as printed on the plaque in front of me.

“Hold the line a moment.” She closed the connection and I waited. After about three minutes she came back on. “The station nearest to you is in Warnham, about three miles to the south of you. Thank you, caller.”

The line cleared.

Sally was waiting for me outside the box and I related to her the substance of the conversation. As I did so, we both became aware of the sound of heavy diesel-lorries, and a few seconds later seven troop-carriers passed us. An officer was standing in the rear of one of them and he shouted something to us as they passed. We were not able to hear him. I recall a feeling of vague reassurance at that moment, even though it was the first time I had witnessed actual troop-movements.

When the lorries had passed I was able to identify the state which had caused my earlier disquiet. It was that we were the only people around.

While living in the tent, our only contact with other people had been on those occasions when-we had visited shops to purchase food. Even then, we had all observed a slackness which had not been noticeable before the trouble began. But now Sally and I were as if alone.

We began our walk to Warnham, and within a few minutes saw more signs of military activity and civilian inactivity that caused us both alarm.

A mile from the telephone-box we passed through a village. We walked the length of the street without meeting anyone, but in the windows of the last house we saw the shape of a man. I waved and called out to him, but either he did not see me or did not choose to, and he moved out of sight.

Outside the village we encountered an emplacement of heavy artillery manned by several hundred soldiers. There was a rough, but guarded, barbed-wire barrier between them and the road, and as we approached it were warned to move on. I tried to speak with the soldier, and an N.C.O. was called. He repeated the injuction, adding that unless we were out of the neighbourhood by nightfall we would find our lives in danger. I asked him whether they were Nationalist troops and received no reply.

Sally said: “Daddy, I don’t like guns.”

We moved on towards Warnham. Several times jet aircraft flew overhead, sometimes in formation, sometimes alone. I discovered the remains of an old newspaper and tried to read it to learn what I could about what was going on.

It was a privately printed tabloid and one which I felt sure was illegal. We had heard on the radio two weeks before that the operations of the press had been suspended temporarily. I found the tabloid to be virtually unintelligible; badly printed, abominably written, disgustingly slanted towards an overt racist xenophobia. It spoke of knives and leprosy, guns and venereal disease, rape, cannibalism and plague. It contained detailed instructions for the manufacture of such home-made weapons as petrol-bombs, coshes and garrottes. There were items of ‘news’, such as mass rape by Afrim militants, and raids by loyal military forces on Afrim strongholds. On the back page, at the bottom, I learned that the paper was published weekly for civilian consumption by the British Nationalist Army (Home Division).

I burned it.

The approach to Warnham Station was guarded by more soldiers. As we came into their view Sally’s hand took hold of mine and gripped it tightly.

I said to her: “It’s nothing to worry about, Sally. They’re just here to make sure no one tries to prevent the trains running.”

She didn’t reply, perhaps detecting that I was as alarmed as she at their presence. It meant, in effect, that the trains were still running, but that they were under military control. We walked up to the barricade and I spoke to a lieutenant. He was polite and helpful. I noticed that on his sleeve he had a strip of cloth on which was stitched: Loyal Secessionists. I did not refer to it.

“Is it possible to get a train to London from here?” I said.

“It’s possible,” he said. “But they don’t run very often. You’ll have to inquire, sir.”

“May we pass through?”

“Of course.”

He nodded to the two soldiers with him and they pulled back a section of their barricade. I gave the officer my thanks and we walked up to the booking office.

It was manned by a civilian wearing the normal uniform of British Rail.

“We want to go to London,” I said. “Could you tell me when the next train’s due?”

He leaned forward across the counter, put his face close up to the glass panel and looked through at us.

“You’ll have to wait till tomorrow,” he said. “There’s only one way to get a train here and that’s to ring through the day before.”

“Are you saying that no trains stop here?”

“That’s right. Not unless someone wants ‘em to. You have to ring through to the terminal.”

“But suppose it’s urgent.”

“You have to ring through to the terminal.”

I said: “Is it too late to get a train to stop here today?”

He nodded slowly. “The last one went through an hour ago. But if you’d like to buy your tickets now, I’ll ring through to the terminal for you.”

“Just a minute.”

I turned to Sally. “Listen, love, we’ll have to sleep tonight in the tent again. You don’t mind, do you? You heard what the man said.”

“O.K., Daddy. But can we definitely go home tomorrow?”

“Yes, of course.”

I said to the clerk: “How much are the tickets?”

“Ninety pence each, please.”

I pulled out of my pocket what remained of our money and counted it. We had less than a pound.

“Can I pay for them tomorrow?” I asked the clerk.

He shook his head. “Got to be paid in advance. If you haven’t got enough now, though, I’ll take a deposit and you can pay the rest tomorrow.”

“Will this be enough?”

“Should be.” He dropped the change into a drawer, reckoned the amount on to a register and passed me a slip of printed paper. “Bring this and the rest of the money tomorrow. The train’ll be here about eleven in the morning.”

I glanced at the slip. It was just a receipt for the money, not a ticket. I thanked the man and we went back outside. It had started to drizzle. I wasn’t sure how I was going to obtain the rest of the money by morning, but already a half-formed determination to steal it if necessary had come to mind.

At the barricade, the young lieutenant nodded to us.

“Tomorrow, eh?” he said. “That’s happened to a lot of people here. Are you refugees?”

I told him we were, though I had not previously applied the word to our predicament.

“You should be all right in London,” he said. “Our lot are getting things organized there.”

He gave me the name and address of a group in London who were trying to find accommodation for the homeless. I wrote it down and thanked him. He expressed concern about what we were to do tonight.

“I could have offered to find you a billet,” he said. “We’ve done it before. But there’s something on. We might be moving out tonight. What will you do?”

“We’ve got camping-equipment,” I said.

“Oh, that’s all right then. But if I were you, I’d get as far away from here as you can. We’re being mobilized. The Nationalists are only a couple of miles away.”

Again I thanked him and we moved on. Both Sally and I had been comforted by his outgoing nature, by his apparent willingness to assist us. But what he had said had given us cause for alarm and I decided to heed his warning. We walked another three or four miles to the south before trying to find somewhere to camp. In the end, we came across a suitable place on the side of a low hill, screened on three sides by woodland

That night while we lay in the dark together we heard the sound of artillery, and jet aircraft roared overhead. The night was lit by brilliant flashes from explosions to the north of us. We heard troops marching along the road a quarter of a mile from us, and a stray shell exploded in the woods behind us. Sally clung to me and I tried to comfort her. The noise of the artillery itself remained constant, but the explosions from the shells varied considerably between being very close and very distant. We heard small-arms fire from time to time and the sounds of men’s voices.

In the morning it drizzled again, and the countryside was still. Reluctant to move, as if the act of doing so would re-initiate the violence, Sally and I stayed in our bivouac until the last possible moment. Then at ten o’clock we packed our gear hastily and set off towards the station. We arrived at just before eleven. This time there were no soldiers. The station had been bombed, and the railway track itself had been blown up in several places. We looked at the ruin in desolate horror. Later, I threw away the receipt.

That evening we were captured by a detachment of the Afrim forces and taken in for our first session of interrogation.

Isobel and I lay together in the dark. We were on the floor. In the room above us her parents were asleep in bed. They did not know I was there. Though they liked me, and encouraged Isobel to see more of me, they would not have been pleased if they were aware of what we had been trying to do in their sitting-room.

It was after three in the morning and therefore essential we made no noise.

I had removed my jacket and shirt.

Isobel had taken off her dress, her slip and her brassiere. At this time our relationship had developed to the point where she allowed me to remove most of her clothing while we kissed, and to fondle her breasts. She had never allowed me to touch her in the region of her pubes. In the past, most of the girls I had known had shown a liberal attitude towards sex, and I was puzzled at Isobel’s apparent lack of interest. Her reticence had been alluring at first — and continued to be so — but now I was beginning to see that she was genuinely frightened of sex. Although my interest in her had been initially almost entirely sexual, as we grew to know one another I had developed a deep liking for her and had made my sexual advances to her more and more gently. The combination of her physical beauty and her gaucherie was a continual delight to me.

After a prolonged session of kissing and petting I lay back on the floor and allowed Isobel to run her hand lightly over my chest and stomach. While she did this I found myself willing her to slide her hand into the top of my trousers and caress my penis.

Gradually her hand moved down until it was rubbing lightly against the cloth of the waistband. When her fingers did eventually explore the cloth, they came into contact with the end of my penis almost at once. Evidently unaware to that moment of my tumescence, she snatched her hand away at once and lay at my side, facing away from me, trembling.

“What’s the matter?” I whispered to her after a minute or two, knowing both that I would get no reply and that I already knew what had happened. “What’s the matter?”

She said nothing. After a while I put my hand on her shoulder and found her skin to be cold.

“What’s the matter?” I whispered again.

She still made no reply. In spite of what had happened, I remained erected, unaffected by the trauma she experienced.

In a while she rolled back towards me and, laying on her back, took my hand and placed it on her breast. Like her shoulder, it was cold. The nipple was shrunken and lumpy.

She said: “Go on. Do it.”

“Do what?”

“You know. What you want.”

I didn’t move, but lay there with my hand on her breast, not wishing to create a positive movement by either doing as she said or taking my hand away altogether.

When I made no response, she took my hand again and thrust it down roughly to her crutch. With her other hand she dragged down her pants and laid my hand on her pubes. I felt warm, soft down. She started shaking.

I made love to her at once. It was painful for both of us. Pleasureless. We made a lot of noise; so much so that I was scared her parents would hear us and come to investigate. As I climaxed, my penis slipped from its place and my semen went half inside her, half on to the floor.

I pulled away from her as soon as I could and lay away from her. Part of me remained detached, seeing wryly my experienced sexual artistry reduced to fumbling adolescence by the encounter with frigid innocence; part of me lay curled up on the floor, unwilling to move. .

In the end it was Isobel who moved first. She stood up and switched on the low-powered table-lamp. I looked up at her, seeing her slim young body nude for the first time, denuded for the first time of sexual mystery. She pulled on her clothes, kicked mine across to me. I put them on. Our eyes didn’t meet.

On the carpet where we had laid there was a small patch of damp. We tried to remove it with paper tissues, but a faint stain remained.

I was ready to leave. Isobel came over to me, whispered in my ear that I was to push my motorcycle to the end of the road before starting it up. Then she kissed me. We agreed to see each other again the following week-end. As we walked out into the hall we were holding hands.

Her father was sitting on the bottom step of the stairs dressed in his pyjamas. He looked tired. As I walked past him he said nothing to me, but stood up and held Isobel tightly by her wrist. I left, starting the engine outside the house.

We had not used any form of contraceptive. Though Isobel did not become pregnant from that intercourse she did conceive a few weeks before we were married. From that time we had sex together very occasionally, and to my knowledge she attained orgasm only rarely. After Sally was born, what sexual dependence on one another that we had ever had grew less, and in due course I found myself turning to other women who were able to give me what Isobel couldn’t.

In the good times, I would gaze at Isobel across a distance, seeing again the pale blue dress and the youthful beauty of her face, and a bitter regret would well inside me.

As the days passed since the abduction of the women by the Afrim soldiers, it seemed to me that while my own quest grew stronger that of the other men diminished. I found myself questioning whether we were moving on in the eternal search for a safe place to camp and somewhere that we may obtain food, or whether we were still pursuing our search for the women.

They were mentioned less and less frequently, and since the visit to Augustin’s brothel it was sometimes as if they had never been with us. But we were reminded forcibly of what might have happened to them on the day after we met the African guerrillas.

We came to a group of houses that were marked on the map as being a hamlet called Stowefield. At first sight it appeared to be no different from any one of a hundred others we had come across in the past.

We approached it with our customary caution, determined that if the hamlet were barricaded we would retreat immediately.

That there had at one time been barricades became apparent at once. Across the road at the side of the first house there was a pile of rubble, which had been pushed aside to make a gap wide enough for a lorry to pass through.

With Lateef, I inspected the ground behind where the barricade had been and we discovered several dozen empty shotgun cartridges.

We investigated every house in the hamlet and within half an hour had established that it had been evacuated. We were fortunate in finding canned food in several of the houses and were thus able to replenish our supplies.

We speculated as to the identity of the men who had raided the village. It was probably prejudice which prompted the majority of us to assume it was the Afrims, but it had been our experience that this was the kind of action they would take against small settlements that they found barricaded.

What had become of the inhabitants we had no way of telling. Later, as we searched the houses for suitable billets, one of the men discovered something and shouted for the rest of us to come.

I arrived with Lateef. As soon as we saw what was there, he shouted at everyone, telling them to wait downstairs. He indicated that I was to stay.

There were the bodies of four young white women in the upstairs room. Each was naked and each had been assaulted sexually. My heart had begun to beat faster at my first sight of them, as the fates that could have befallen Sally and Isobel had been prominent in my imagination for some time. It took only two or three seconds to establish that these women were unknown to me, but even so my heart continued at an accelerated pace for some minutes afterwards.

My early alarm soon turned to shock and then to anger. Each of the women was young and had been physically attractive. Their deaths had come after a long period of helpless agony: the torment was embedded in their expressions. Each one was tied hand and foot, and had evidently struggled to escape from the bonds in her last few minutes of life.

The men who assaulted them had disfigured their bodies with either bayonets or knives, slashing them many times in the region of their genitals. There was blood all over the floor.

Lateef and I discussed what we should do. I suggested that we bury them, but neither of us relished the task of carrying the bodies downstairs. The alternative that Lateef suggested was to burn the house. It was set apart from the ones nearest to it, and it did not seem likely that the blaze would spread to others.

We went downstairs and spoke with the others. Two of the men had been sick, the rest of us felt nauseated in the extreme. Lateef’s suggestion was adopted, and a few minutes later the house was fired.

We moved away to the other end of the village and set up a camp for the night.

For a variety of reasons I was one of the few men who worked in the cutting-shop of the factory. In spite of the equal-pay legislation that had gone through in the last months of the government immediately prior to Tregarth taking office, there were still many different kinds of work which were exclusively or nearly exclusively the domain of women. In the bulk-cloth industry cutting is one of these.

My only colleagues of my own sex were old Dave Harman, a pensioner who came in mornings to sweep the floor and make tea, and a youngster named Tony who tried to flirt with the younger women but who was treated by them all as a cheeky young urchin. I never discovered his true age, but he couldn’t have been less than twenty. How he came to be working at the factory I never asked, and there built up between us a kind of male understanding that unified us against the vulgarity of the women.

My own relationship with the women was acceptable once we had overcome the initial problems.

It was thought, for instance, by a sizeable number of the women that I had been brought in as some form of supervisor or inspector, and whenever I attempted to speak to them I was treated with cold politeness. In this, my college-rounded vowels did little to help. Once I had established in my mind what was the probable cause of the friction, I went to great pains to let them know my position in the cutting-shop. When this was clear the atmosphere lightened considerably, though there were still one or two women who could not but retain a slightly distant air. Within a few weeks things had relaxed to the point where I felt as if my presence was taken for granted.

With this relaxation came a growing vulgarity of behaviour. In my relatively sheltered life to this point — sheltered in the sense that I had not mixed with large numbers of working people — I had lived by the assumption that women were the more socially restrained sex. It may of course have been the developing national situation which encouraged a slackening of morality as a reaction against the new repressive laws, or simply that this group of women had known each other for years and were of a similar background. In any event, a typical working day was punctuated with obscenities, disgusting jokes and various direct and indirect references to either my or Tony’s sexual organs. Tony told me once that shortly before I had come to the cutting-shop, one of the women, in a mock-serious kind of way, had unzipped the front of his trousers and tried to grab him. He told me this off-handedly, though I could tell he had been upset by the incident.

There were several coloured women in the cutting-shop, and as the Afrim situation intensified I watched them when I could to see how they reacted. There were five Indians or Pakistanis, and seven of Negro stock. On the face of it, their behaviour showed no change, though during some of the more offensive sessions of banter, I noticed how they would remain silent.

It was my custom during this period to eat for lunch the sandwiches that Isobel made for me. This was partly in order to save a little of our money, and partly because the quality of food available in public restaurants deteriorated considerably.

I understood that the company was not receiving as many orders as it had once done, and consequently the work-load upon us was light. Following government restrictions it was not possible to make staff redundant, except at the cost of high financial penalty, and our labour-force was not reduced in any way. Shortly after I joined the firm the length of our break for lunch was increased from one and a half to two hours, and at the time of the first secessions in the armed forces it was increased by a further half-hour. Sick-leave was encouraged by our employers, though after the government’s temporary withdrawal of National Health benefits absenteeism was rare.

It became necessary to find ways of passing the surplus time in the social company of each other.

Board games were brought in from home, and packs of playing-cards. Several women brought in such things as needlework or knitting, and others wrote letters. For my own part, I used the free time for reading, but found that if I did too much of it in the dimly lit room, my eyes would begin to hurt. Very few of us ventured out during the lunch-break. Once or twice, some of the women went out shopping together, but on the whole it was considered too hazardous to be done habitually.

I don’t know how it began, but several of the women used the time to get together around the top of a bench and play on an improvised ouija board. The first I was aware of it was one day when I was walking through the adjoining warehouse with the intention of stretching my muscles. The women were in a corner of the warehouse. Seven of them actually sat at the table and another ten or twenty stood around watching. The pointer they were using was an inverted plastic tumbler, and the letters of the alphabet were scribbled on scraps of paper around the edge.

One of the older women was asking questions into the air, while the tumbler spelled out the answers from under the fingertips of the seven participants. I watched fascinated for a while, unable to determine whether the women were actually moving the tumbler voluntarily or not. Annoyed that I was unable to understand it, I walked away.

At the far side of the warehouse, behind a stacked pile of rolls of cloth, I came across Tony and one of the girls who worked with him. Although they were both fully clothed, they were lying in the normal position for intercourse, and he had his hand inside the top of her dress, holding one of her breasts. Neither of them saw me.

As I turned away there was the sound of several voices from the ouija table. One of the women, a Negress, broke away from the group and ran into the cutting-room. A few seconds later I heard her talking loudly to her friends, and then the sound of someone crying.

By the end of the following week all the coloured women had left the firm.

As night fell the house was still burning; a glow of orange a hundred yards away.

The mood of the group had altered subtly. For me, and I presumed for the other men, the assault on the four young women represented a physical manifestation of our fears about our own abducted women. It is one thing to imagine an atrocity; it is something else again to witness it.

Individually, I think we were all horrified and numbed… but working as a group our reaction was one of more directed determination not to become further involved in the civil war. The search for the abducted women was not mentioned; for my own part what I had seen in the house had only hardened my resolution in this respect. It was Sally I was worried about, for she was innocent. My daughter, not my wife, was uppermost in my mind.

As darkness came on, I moved away from the main group of men and went into a house about twenty yards from the one we had fired. Behind me there was a glow of smouldering wood. The blaze had finished now, but it would go on smouldering for hours. There was a sweet smell of smoke in the air, obstinately pleasant.

I sat by myself in an old armchair in a downstairs room of the house I had occupied and brooded about what I would do in the morning.

Time passed. I became aware of the sound of engines, but I ignored them. They grew louder, drowning my thoughts. I leaped out of my chair and ran through the house and into the small garden at the rear.

The sky was clear of clouds and a quarter-moon threw enough light to mark the ground. I had been sitting in the dark in the house (as was our custom when temporarily occupying evacuated property) and my eyes adapted at once.

It took me only a couple of seconds to locate the source of the sound: it was a formation of helicopters travelling at a low height and speed from the south in a direction that would carry them over the village. As they approached, I dropped to the ground, my hand tightening over the rifle. I counted them as they passed overhead: there were twelve. They slowed even more in the next few seconds, and landed in one of the fields beyond the village.

From where I was lying I was not able to see them. I climbed to my feet and peered over the hedge. I heard the engines ticking over together in a low, muted grumbling sound.

I waited.

For another ten minutes I stood still, debating whether to rejoin the others. There was no way of telling why the helicopters were here, or whether they knew of our presence. It was Unlikely that they had not seen the smouldering remains of the house.

With an abruptness that startled me, there was a burst of gunfire in the near distance, and two or three loud explosions. From the direction of the flashes I guessed that they were coming from the far side of a large wood that I had seen earlier, running alongside the main road about a mile from the hamlet. There was more gunfire, more explosions. I saw one spout of white flame, then a red verey-light shot up into the sky from the direction of the wood.

Almost immediately the helicopters took off again, still holding their formation. They swooped into the air and swung away towards the wood. They became lost to sight, though the sound of their engines remained clear.

I heard a movement behind me: the house door opening, closing.

“Is that you, Whitman?”

I made out the dim shape of another man. As he came up to me I saw that it was Olderton, a man with whom I had had only superficial contact so far.

“Yes. What’s going on?”

“No one knows. Lateef sent me to find you. What the devil are you doing?”

I told him I had been looking for food and that I was going back to the main camp in a few minutes.

“You’d better come back now,” Olderton said. “Lateef’s talking of moving on. He thinks we’re too close to the main road.”

“I think we ought to know what’s happening before we move.”

“That’s up to Lateef.”

“Is it?” For no reason I could determine at that moment I felt a taint of rebellion in being told what to do. In any event, I didn’t want to discuss it with Olderton.

The sound of the helicopters in the distance took on a new note, and we went back to where I had been standing before, looking across the fields in the direction of the wood.

“Where are they?” Olderton said.

“I can’t see.”

There was a renewed burst of gunfire, then a shrill, high-pitched whistling sound followed immediately by four explosions coming almost together. A brilliant ball of flame rose up inside the wood, then dwindled. I heard more gunfire, then a helicopter roared over the village. There was another whistling sound, and four more explosions. As the second helicopter passed overhead the sequence was repeated again.

“Rockets,” Olderton muttered. “They’re after something on the main road.”

“Who are they?”

“Lateef thought they were Afrims. He said the helicopters looked as if they were Russian.”

Over at the main road the barrage went on. The helicopters were timed exactly right. As the explosion from one set of rockets died down, another gunship came in and followed up. Meanwhile, small-arms fire rattled from the ground.

“I think it’s those guerrillas,” I said suddenly. “The ones we met yesterday. They’ve ambushed something on the main road.”

Olderton said nothing. As I thought about it, the more likely it became. The Negroes had been concealing something, on that we had all agreed. If, as Lateef had guessed, the helicopter gunships were Russian-supplied and manned by Afrims, then everything made sense.

For a few more minutes the battle went on. Olderton and I watched as well as we could, seeing only the flame of the explosions and the gunships as they came by overhead after their pass. I found myself counting the number of attacks made. After the twelfth, there was a slight pause, and we could hear the helicopters re-grouping in the distance. Then one of the machines flew over the wood again, this time without firing any of its rockets. It zoomed overhead, then went to join the others. We waited again. From the direction of the wood there was now a steady glow of orange and the occasional sound of a small explosion. There did not appear to be any more gunfire.

“I think it’s over,” I said.

Olderton said: “There’s still one of them around.”

To my ears it seemed as if the formation of gunships was moving away, but there was no uniformity in the sound of the engines. I kept looking around, but could see no sign of any of the helicopters.

“There it is!” Olderton said. He pointed over to our right.

I could just make out its shape. It was moving slowly and near the ground. It had no navigation lights. It came towards us steadily, and irrationally I felt it was looking for us. My heart began to beat rapidly.

The aircraft moved across the field in front of us, then turned, and climbing slightly flew directly over us. When it reached the smouldering remains of the house on the other side of the road it hovered.

Olderton and I went back into our house, climbed the stairs and watched the helicopter. It was about twenty feet above the burnt-out ruin, and the draught from its vanes sent cinders scudding over the ground. Flames took again in some of the timbers, and smoke swirled up and across to us.

In the glow from the ground I could see the helicopter’s cabin clearly. I lifted my rifle, took careful aim and fired.

Olderton leaped over to me and knocked the barrel aside.

“You stupid bastard!” he said. “They’ll know we’re here.”

“I don’t care,” I said. I was watching the helicopter.