October the First Is Too Late

Chapter Nine: Andante con Moto

We flew out across the battlefields. From our height, about twenty-five thousand feet, the devastation had a pitiful aspect about it. After our flight across America, and our recent flight in the East, the scale here seemed very tiny. It was tragic to think so small a fragment of the Earth had cost so many lives.

Within an hour we were over central Germany, then over Austria-­Hungary, as I supposed it must now be called. The sharpness of the transition in the Balkans was obscured by the mountainous country. By the time we emerged into the flat lands of Rumania all was changed. Gone were patterns of organized cultivation. Plainly the line of demarcation between 1917 and something quite different occurred somewhere in the Transylvanian Alps.

We came down low. There was no absence of vegetation here. It grew in abundance. It was all utterly out of control, without organization. It looked as though man had never set his hand on the forests and grasslands which lay below us.

We flew over the Black Sea to the Turkish coast. Not a single ship or craft of any kind did we see. It was the same story in Turkey, wild vegetation without any sign of human activity or interference.

By now I was greatly impressed by how vast the Earth really was compared to the limited regions of which I had any knowledge myself. At first the changes in these regions had seemed of enormous significance. Yet Europe had shifted by only fifty years, America by only a couple of hundred years or so. Over most of the Earth the times might well be utterly different.

We flew on over Armenia to the Caspian. Then on the far side of the Caspian we saw one of our objectives, the shining Plain of Glass. Evidently we were again near some line of demarcation. We found the actual line running just south of what used to be the Aral Sea. Of that sea there was not the slightest trace. We turned south in the direction of Tashkent and Samarkand. The glass gave way to sand quite suddenly as if the fusing agent had extended to a particular point and then no further. Here there was straightforward desert, sand.

We must have been somewhere near latitude 40° when we picked up the first traces of humanity. There was not much of it, only an occasional very tiny village. Yet we were enormously encouraged by this modest discovery. We found nothing at all in the place we took to be the site of Tashkent. So we turned west again with the intention of exploring Baghdad and the Tigris-Euphrates valleys. We found more scattered evidence of human habitations, all on a very tiny scale. Even before we reached Baghdad I think we realized we were not looking down on the world of 1917.

On the site of Baghdad—there could be no doubt about the site from the contours of the river below us—there was only a small collection of hovels. Again we found only minute villages on the banks of the great rivers. This was not a part of the world I had been in, or over, before. So I had no real standard of comparison. But there seemed more water than I would have expected. Our pilot was in no doubt of it himself:

‘A bloody great swamp down there, almost like the mouth of the Ganges. Completely changed. Pity we don’t have a flying boat.’

We flew quite low on two or three occasions but could see no people. Perhaps this was not surprising for anybody down there must surely have thrown themselves into hiding at the roar of the plane. Our failure to find anything of interest as we travelled back to the west depressed us more and more. Nothing was to be seen in Mesopotamia of the armies of 1917. We flew on towards Palestine. Our intention was to locate the city of Jerusalem. This we could easily do once we found the Dead Sea, simply by flying on a westerly course from the northern end of the Sea.

We missed the Dead Sea on our first run. Since we were operating on our compasses we could always expect to be a hundred miles off course due to the wind. We did indeed come over a large expanse of water but it was clear we had reached the Mediterranean. So we turned south along the coast of Palestine in the direction of Egypt. We kept on until the coastline turned due west. This we knew must be the neighbourhood of Gaza. From there we found the Dead Sea quite easily. We carried out our plan of flying west from the northern tip. In five minutes or so we were over what should have been Jerusalem. There seemed to be signs of habitation but once again it was just a few hovels. There was no sign of the city of David, captured around the year 1050 B.C. It was plain the Hebrews had not, and now never would, reach the lands below us. Into this new world Christ would not be born.

We headed out over the Mediterranean. Very soon we were over the wine-dark seas of Greece. My reveries were sharply interrupted by a sudden grip on the arm:

‘My god, look down there.’

The sea was breaking around a headland twenty thousand feet below us. Standing proudly on the headland was a temple. At once we were all animated. We flew round in circles coming lower and lower.

‘Look, it’s complete, it’s not a ruin.’

‘Where do you reckon we are?’ I asked the pilot.

‘I think we’re just south of Athens.’

John had been looking at the chart. ‘It fits the Attic peninsula. There’s this island here off the east coast. Its shape fits that long one down there, doesn’t it?’

There wasn’t any doubt about it. We flew lower and lower. Now we could just make out people below us. They were running to the temple. I realized it was the temple of Sounion.

We said nothing as we turned up the coast to the northwest. It took only a few minutes before we were over Athens. Standing complete on the Acropolis was the Parthenon. Close by was an amphitheatre full of people. The city was not very large but at least it was a city. Whatever the time was down there it obviously had little to do with the twentieth century. The time had to be somewhere between the date of construction of the Parthenon, which I remembered to be about 450 B.C., and the date at which the temple at Sounion fell into ruin, which it must have done in the first centuries A.D. There seemed little doubt that we were looking down on the Greece of classical times.

We would have liked to have flown around for a long time, to have come as low as we dared, but we all realized it would be better not to do so. The people down there would see the great bird in the skies as a visitation from the gods. There would be panic and a wailing and gnashing of teeth. The sooner we were away the better. So regretfully we headed west towards Corinth. Naturally there was no canal cutting through the narrow neck of land which separates the Peloponnese from the land to the north. We saw a multitude of small boats as we flew along the Gulf, propelled it seemed by human muscle power, by oarsmen.

A further surprise was in store for us. Very naturally we were heading for Rome. We were doing so in the full expectation of it being classical times everywhere throughout the Mediterranean. The situation in Rome would allow us to date the epoch more closely. We were due for a sharp disappointment, for over the Italian mainland there was nothing but vegetation. We flew on and on and it was the same everywhere. No city of Rome at all. No towns, villages, or hamlets. Only as we came north of the Alps did the wild country change. Quite abruptly we were in a modern society with its towns and streets and its factories. It was probably 1917 down there but we all felt we had suddenly come back to our own times. It was the same all the way from Switzerland across France. Then we were over the English Channel. It was hard to believe as we flew over the neat fields of Kent that the other regions of the Earth were so grotesquely changed.

To say it felt like waking from a dream is an admitted cliché yet there was a dreamlike quality about it all. Even now, I thought as we moved in to land, we have seen only a fraction of the Earth. We don’t really know the Glass Plain extends right through China. We had no idea of the situation in Africa, or in South America, or anywhere in the southern hemisphere for that matter.

After the sandy deserts of the Middle and Near East, after the missing city of Jerusalem, Greece had seemed real enough. Now I was back in London it all seemed wildly ridiculous. Could one seriously credit that out there it might still be the third, fourth, or fifth century B.C. Yet the fifth century B.C. had been just as real and sharp as 1966.

I had dinner the following night with John. We discussed at length our next moves. It was clear the flights of discovery had to go on without hindrance or delay. It was imperative to get a general idea of the new layout of the whole Earth. One of us at least must continue on those trips. The problem was to decide whether we should both go or whether we should split up, one to continue the general survey, the other to investigate details, perhaps details of the situation in Greece. This would have to be done with the greatest care. The Greeks would not be alarmed by the arrival of strangers, provided they came in a fashion that seemed normal, by boat from the sea. But not in a modern boat with thumping engines. John told me preparations were already being made along these lines. The government had asked the navy to send in an expedition. Did I want to be included in the party? If I did it would be necessary to drop my name in the right quarter, and without delay. I said I would sleep on it. We agreed to meet again at lunch on the morrow.

The decision was an awkward one pretty well evenly balanced. I was completely fascinated at the prospect of seeing classical Greece at first hand. This would be the real thing, not a cruise organized two thousand years after the event. Yet I had the feeling I would be pushing myself out of the main stream of events. The trip must surely be a leisurely one taking weeks if not months. I would lose contact with John. I would hence lose my entrée to the high-stepping circles in which I had moved of late. This was entirely a matter of unbridled curiosity, not at all of snobbery. I wanted to know what was going on. Quite clearly the intricate dealings between Britain and Europe would be utterly intriguing to observe at close quarters.

Ironically these considerations were grossly wide of the mark, for the mainstream of events was not at all where I supposed it to be. As it came about my decision made no difference to my arriving at the true mainstream, but in the ultimate outcome it did make a critical difference, that of my arriving independently, not by John’s much more direct route. No thoughts of this kind were in my mind of course when at last I came down on the side of the Grecian expedition. It was music which swayed the balance. For one thing, here was the chance to settle all the controversy and arguments about ancient music. For another, I was more and more feeling the need of leisure to give expression to my own creative impulses. The flights, the discussions, marvellously intriguing in themselves, were consuming the whole of my time and energies. A reduction of tempo was needed.

When I told John of my decision he was a little doubtful:

‘Things have changed a bit in the last twenty-four hours, I’m afraid. The government is getting itself bogged down more and more with the European situation. They’re really not in a position to give much priority to the Greek business. It was agreed yesterday to keep things pretty well on ice for the time being.’

‘You mean the expedition is off?’

‘Not entirely, but it’s only going to be a small show.’

I have an obstinate streak in me. When I’m thinking about any issue I like to hear the opinions of other people. I like to collect as much information as possible. But once I’ve made a decision I like to stick to it. Once I’ve made up my mind I hate to be ‘advised’. I passed off John’s entirely good-tempered warning. I’d made my decision. I told him so and without further ado he regarded the matter as closed.

‘They’ve put the whole thing under an old naval boy, Admiral Cochrane. You’ll be hearing from him pretty soon.’

Throughout lunch I could see John was bubbling over with something or other. Until my problem was out of the way he wouldn’t say what it was. Then he chuckled and let it all out:

‘Remember we were talking the other day about what would happen when a man in 1966 came face to face with himself in 1917? Well, it’s happened, in a way.’

‘How d’you mean, in a way?’

‘Not a direct confrontation, as of yet.’

‘Go on.’

‘A most exalted member of the government. They’ve managed to hush it up so far, but it’s bound to come out.’

‘Why shouldn’t it come out?’

‘They’re still keeping the identity of the exalted member secret but I don’t think I would need more than one guess.’

‘I wish I could guess what it is you’re driving at.’

‘We were thinking in terms of a man from the trenches coming back and meeting himself. Remember?’

‘For heaven’s sake, out with it!’

‘It’s not the man that’s come back from France, it’s the mother.’

‘I’m getting in deeper, into a bog.’

‘The mother was in the VAD. She’s come back. So the son has met his mother, aged twenty, thirty years or so younger than he is.’

‘Very touching I would imagine.’

‘You’re still not with it, I’m afraid. The point is the mother was, more properly is, of a kindly disposition. She took pity on a young officer. Natural enough in the circumstances, considering what’s been going on in France. In a curious way, death always tends to breed life.’

The preposterous implication hit me. ‘You mean the alter ego is still in the womb!’

‘Right. You could hardly imagine a confrontation more curious than that, could you? I thought I’d covered most of the possibilities but this one got completely past me.’

On this ludicrous note John and I parted, the one of us as it turned out to follow the high road, the other the low road. Not to Scotland, to somewhere very different.