KEV WAS FIRST DOWNSTAIRS AND cooked breakfast. Toasted SPAM sandwiches.
‘Food of the gods,’ he told Nina, who followed him into the kitchen, her hair wet from the shower.
They shared a glance and a smile. Best mates, thought Kev. He’d settle for that. They had each taken a single bed the night before but, sometime in the early hours, Nina had climbed into his. He had used his unzipped sleeping bag as a quilt and she had slipped beneath it as he faked sleep, lying there in his boxers and a t-shirt. She was in a similar state of undress, t-shirt and pants, and had simply snuggled against his side and gone back to sleep, one arm across his chest, one naked leg across his naked thigh.
For a time, he wondered whether he would be able to control himself but he had, of course. There was no way he would have added to Nina’s woe by taking advantage of her need for companionship. Eventually, he had even gone back to sleep. When he awoke with the dawn, she was still there. She had rewarded him with a sleepy kiss on the cheek.
‘Thanks, Kev,’ she had said, slipped out of bed and, grabbing her clothes, gone to the bathroom.
Nice bum, he had noted, and no, he hadn’t chastised himself. Sneaking a quick look had been his reward for being a saint. Or what was it? A nice man. How the hell had he become a nice man?
James and Gwen joined them and announced their engagement. James seemed to be walking taller. Probably on air.
‘We’ll talk to the Rev Nick when we get back. Get married. Have it done properly.’ He frowned. ‘There won’t be any objection because of my age, will there?’
‘I’ll make sure there are no objections,’ said Kev, giving the young man a crushing embrace and Gwen a softer and hesitant squeeze and a kiss on the cheek. ‘Made for each other, you two. God told you that.’
Nina held Gwen and whispered to her, ‘I’m so happy for you both. So happy.’ And the girls shared a tear until Gwen lightened the moment.
‘Liquorice allsorts,’ she said. ‘We promised God. We should try and get him some on the way back.’
‘We will,’ said Kev. ‘And cartridges for his shotgun.’
‘We can do better than that,’ said James.
He left them to go into the hall and run upstairs. A short while later, he returned holding a small bunch of keys.
‘Come on,’ he said, leading the way into the pantry.
The room was long with one small high window and, even though the day was bright, it was still gloomy. James took the torch from his belt and led the way to the back of the room to a tall metal cabinet. He used the keys to unlock it and opened both doors. Kev used his torch too, to add further illumination.
‘I thought the old man might like these,’ James said.
‘By heck!’ said Kev. ‘That’s a collection.’
‘A pair of Purdeys, a pair of Holland and Holland Royals and a Perazzi.’
He took one of the Royals from the rack and held it to show Gwen. The walnut stock shone and the silver engraving was intricate.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she said. ‘How can a gun be so beautiful?’
‘They were my father’s pride and joy. They are beautiful.’
‘Expensive?’ Kev said.
‘Trust you,’ said Nina.
‘It’s my mercenary nature,’ Kev said. ‘That and growing up on a council estate.’
‘Quality costs money,’ said James, a little defensively.
‘How much?’
‘The Purdeys were about thirty thousand each, the Holland and Holland Royals closer to seventy.’
‘Seventy thousand pounds?’ Kev said, in awe. ‘Each?’
‘As I said. Quality.’
‘What about the other one. The Italian job.’
‘The Perazzi was about £5,000.’ He put the Royal back and picked up the Perazzi. ‘This was my gun. My father bought it for my fourteenth birthday.’
‘Well, if you take my advice, you’ll give that one to the old man. What would he do with a £70,000 piece of kit?’
‘There’s plenty of cartridges, too,’ said James. The bottom of the gun cabinet was stacked with boxes. ‘That’s a fair return for a case of SPAM.’
‘Plus the sweets,’ said Gwen.
They left mid-morning, packing all five shotguns in their cases and the cartridges in the back of the Rover. They also packed a good proportion of the tins of food from the pantry.
The country road was as deserted as the previous day. A mile down it, they forked left and within two hundred yards had arrived in the centre of a village. A small overgrown green, The Blacksmith’s Arms pub, an ancient church and a village shop. England must be full of such green and pleasant places, Kev thought. He’d just never noticed them when the world was normal.
‘You never know,’ James said, pointing at the shop.
A metal Walls ice cream sign stood outside on the pavement and the windows were intact.
They got out of the Rover, carbines at the ready, and surveyed the cottages and overgrown gardens. Weeds and grass were growing through the cracks in the pavement. The village looked deserted.
‘Hello?’ Kev shouted. ‘Anyone?’
No one replied.
James tried the door to the shop. It was open.
‘We’ll stay out here,’ Kev said.
He and Nina stayed by the car, watching the empty village. James and Gwen went inside. The shelves held no food, no sweets. Mop heads and household items remained, but anything edible had gone. An inner door led to a flight of stairs and a back room.
‘Anyone there?’ shouted James.
Silence and a scurrying from upstairs. Rodents disturbed by their presence.
‘There used to be a stock room out back,’ James said.
‘How on earth do you know that?’
‘I was friends with some of the village boys. They told me. They would occasionally sneak into the back and, if Mr Priestley had left it unlocked, they would take a can or two of pop.’
They went through a back door into a yard and he stopped abruptly in front of her.
‘What is it?’
‘I think it’s what’s left of Mr Priestley.’
The remains were mainly held together by the clothes the man had been wearing. Some bones were scattered across a yard, the result of rats or other animals.
‘He’s lying against the store room door,’ James said. ‘In the early days, it might have deterred anyone from going in there.’
He went back into the shop and Gwen gazed at the sad remains of the shopkeeper. Another life gone, another corpse left. They had all seen so many the shock value had dissipated long ago.
James came back with a garden rake.
He handed her his carbine and used the rake to move the corpse away from the door. Keys were left behind where Mr Priestley’s hand had once been. Gwen picked them up and unlocked the door and pulled it open. More scurrying from inside. There were no windows so the only light came through the door. James used his torch. Small piercing eyes stared back at him from the shadows. Mice or rats. The debris they had left behind was all over the place. Every packet had been eaten open, the unrecognisable contents spread over shelves and floor.
Gwen shuddered alongside him and took a step back. He felt guilty at forgetting, so soon, the ordeal she had gone through.
‘You okay?’
‘Yes,’ she said. She didn’t sound it.
‘Look,’ he said, to distract her from the memories and fear of rats and dark, enclosed spaces, and his torch lingered on one shelf that held a row of large glass bottles. Old-fashioned sweet jars, containing midget gems, aniseed balls, pear drops, sherbert lemons, liquorice torpedoes. ‘We’ve found the liquorice.’
His torch moved again.
‘And the cans of pop your village boys didn’t take,’ she said.
She had recovered her composure and they stared at tins of Coke, Seven Up and Fanta. The rodents had damaged the packaging but the cans were intact. They were near the door and he raked them out. Gwen went back into the shop and returned with two wire baskets. She filled them up. James was nervous about entering the windowless store room that was infested with vermin but there was no alternative. He banged the rake on shelves and the low ceiling, causing more scurrying as rats moved away, dropped it on the ground and walked swiftly into the darkness, his torch fixed on the bottles.
It was not far away from the door but, even so, the darkness inside seemed to enclose him and make him vulnerable and he could only wonder at the fear Gwen had been subjected to when the men had locked her in the caravan. He picked up two of the jars, trying not to rush and show his fear, but was aware of near silent activity close by as the rats crept back. The noise of the rake being bashed about almost made him drop the jars in shock.
‘Get away, you bastards!’ shouted Gwen, with such venom that he heard them retreat.
He took the jars outside, exchanged a tight grin with her and went straight back inside. She continued to bang the rake and shout and the rats stayed away and he liberated all six untouched jars of sweets.
His relief was palpable and she hugged him briefly in acknowledgement of what he had done. Not much, if truth be told, but to her, it would have seemed an ordeal. They carried the baskets of drinks through the shop and onto the street. Kev, standing guard by the front of the Range Rover, glanced at them.
‘Hey-ho, me hearties!’ he said. ‘What have you got?’
‘Jackpot,’ James said.
They went back and returned with the six glass jars and packed the lot in the vehicle. James volunteered to drive, as he knew the roads, and went along narrow country lanes, past a handful of substantial houses and the track to a farm, round a bend and into another village. He slowed. This hamlet was smaller than the last, no church but a pub and a shop and a collection of houses at a crossroads.
Kev, in the passenger seat, said, ‘There are people here. I saw someone in the pub.’
James stopped the car.
‘Should we try to talk to them?’
‘They might not be in the mood,’ Kev said, caressing the carbine in his lap.
Gwen lowered the back window and shouted, ‘Hello? Anybody? We’re friendlies! Just passing through!’
A woman’s greeting might attract a more positive response.
‘Anybody?’ Gwen shouted again. ‘We’re from York! Passing through! We mean no harm!’
‘But will they believe us?’ said James, in a low voice.
No one called back. No one showed themselves.
‘Let’s get on,’ Kev said. ‘No point scaring them to death and I don’t want to start shooting at farmers. Likely they’ve had a bad experience in the past.’
James drove on and, in a few miles, joined a major road that would take them to Knutsford.
‘It’s sad,’ he said, ‘when people are too frightened to make contact.’
‘Country folk,’ Kev said. ‘They could have kept to themselves before it happened. Think how much more they’ll want to stay on their own now, with the world gone mad.’
They approached Knutsford and exchanged the open fields for the start of residential housing. A petrol station was ahead on the right. Poles had been set on oil drums across the entrance and exit to block admittance. The houses near the road were substantial and in their own grounds, many hidden by foliage. This had been a wealthy town. They reached traffic lights and a sign that pointed down the hill to a railway station.
James drove slowly and almost silently across the junction.
‘The place is packed with history,’ he said, his voice soft. ‘This is the bypass. The town is to the right. Nice shops, old pubs, great restaurants. Well, there used to be.’ He caught a breath. ‘Parish church coming up on the right. The Crown Court on the left … oh my God…’
The impressive Georgian courthouse was a long building with a cobblestone forecourt for parking and central entrance steps between sandstone columns. The car park was empty except for a bright yellow mobile crane. Hanging from it was the body of a man. The body looked as if it had been there for some time.
‘Barrier,’ James said.
The roads off to left and right had been barricaded with vehicles. Behind them were men. The bypass road was the only one clear and James continued along it. They were being encouraged to drive through.
‘Shit,’ said Kev. ‘Lower your windows,’ he said to the girls.
This was normal procedure if there was the possibility of attack. Lowered windows meant less flying glass. The girls in the back lowered their windows and held their carbines at the ready. As the curving highway straightened out, they could see another barricade ahead of them, near a roundabout, blocking their way.
James immediately began a U turn, quick with desperation, but by the time he was heading back the way they had come, a flat back lorry had been driven across part of the road and a delivery van was being moved from the other side to complete the blockade. They had driven into a trap.
‘Give me an angle on the van!’ Kev said, and James slewed across the road and stopped. Kev aimed at the driver of the van and fired. Targeted shots. Deadly shots. The driver was hit and slumped sideways out of the open front sliding door of the van, which came to a halt. Kev turned his attention on the cab of the low loader, causing the driver to duck out backwards. There was just enough space between the two vehicles to get through. James didn’t wait to be told. He reversed briefly, put the Rover back into drive and aimed at the gap.
Gunshots came from both sides of the road and Kev returned fire, shouting ‘Get down!’ to Gwen and Nina, who ignored him to lean out of the rear windows and return fire. The combined fusillade encouraged their attackers to keep their heads down.
Bullets pinged into the metal of the car and starred a corner of the windscreen but by now they were travelling fast. They went through the gap and accelerated away, back past the parish churchyard with its ancient dead and the courthouse with its more recent corpse.
No one said anything. Kev checked and replaced the magazine in the carbine. James drove back along the main road, past the petrol station, and left the large houses behind. They were back in the country. He slowed and stopped and they listened to their breathing and the sounds of the countryside.
James exhaled noisily.
‘Perhaps that’s why the people in the village didn’t want to talk,’ he said.
Kev looked over his shoulder. ‘Well done, ladies!’
‘Back roads,’ said James. ‘We have liquorice to deliver.’
* * *
Godfrey was pleased to see them again, although a little surprised.
‘I didn’t think you’d come back.’
‘We made a promise,’ Kev said.
They unloaded tins of food, cans of pop and the jars of sweets. The old man’s eyes widened as they stacked them inside the village store.
‘I’ve no more SPAM,’ he said, defensively.
‘That’s all right,’ Kev said. ‘We’ve got enough.’
Nina said, ‘You could come with us, you know?’
‘No thank you, lass. This is my village. Has been, all me life. And Beth and I can’t be moving, not at our age. No, I’ll stay here, thank you very much.’
‘Well stay out of sight,’ she said. ‘You were right. There are very strange folk in Knutsford. Not nice people at all.’
‘Was it them made a mess of your car?’
‘It was.’
God looked at each of them in turn. ‘You weren’t hurt?’
‘No. We’re okay.’
‘That’s good, then.’ He seemed lost for words as he stared at the mound of goods on the counter. ‘Eeh, I don’t rightly know what to say.’
Gwen gave him a kiss on the cheek. ‘Don’t say anything. Just take care.’
James carried the Holland and Holland Royals into the shop and laid them on the counter. He went back to the car and returned with boxes of cartridges. God held one of the guns in his hands.
‘Thought you might need a new one,’ James said. ‘In these times, it’s as well to be prepared.’
‘Nay, lad. You can’t give me these? They’re grandly.’
‘That’s the perfect word for them,’ said Kev, with a smile.
‘They were my father’s,’ James said. ‘I think he would be pleased for you to have them. For protection, for you and Beth. And perhaps you can use them to bag a bird or rabbit?’
God said, ‘You’re a good lad, but I’m all right for food. I set my traps for rabbits. Catch quite a few rats, too.’ He smiled when they winced. ‘They don’t taste so bad. And there’s plenty of fruit and veg in the gardens. We’ll be all right.’ He looked at the variety of tins they had brought and the glass jars of sweet confection. ‘But this will liven up the diet a fair bit.’ He stroked the silver engraving on the stock of the Royal. ‘Mind, there are deer on the estate and I was always partial to venison.’
They said their goodbyes, knowing they wouldn’t see each other again.
‘You two take care of each other,’ God told James and Gwen.
‘We will,’ said Gwen.
He shook hands with Kev and Nina and looked from one to the other, as if not quite sure. ‘And you two, take care of them two, and yourselves.’
Kev nodded. ‘We will.’
‘Love to Beth,’ said Nina, through the open back window as they drove away.
‘Aye,’ said the old man, and waved them off.
They drove down the wooded lane for a while until Kev broke the silence.
‘You’ve left him with £140,000 worth of shotguns.’
‘Grandly shotguns,’ Gwen corrected from the back.
‘Well you can’t be mean when you give God a present, can you?’ said James.
* * *
James and Gwen were married four days after they returned to Haven. The ceremony was in the Parish Church of St Oswald in the nearby village of Westfield. Sandra, Reaper and the Blues attended, along with Cassandra Cairncross, the widow of a Squadron Leader and now deputy farm manager of Haven, Ashley, Pete Mack, Dr Greta and a handful of others. Shaggy, a former rock musician and reformed druggie who had joined them from Scarborough, played the organ. Kev was best man and Nina was matron of honour.
A simple service, an exchange of vows, a burst of music and the couple were joined together. The Rev Nick hoped it would be for a long, long time.