The first ten days at Shingle Street had seen the transformation of that quiet hamlet into a pulsing centre of strange and seemingly unconnected activities: the second saw them take form and cohesion. Regular convoys were proceeding between the village and the Labour Colony. The small fishing fleet was organised on Naval lines the men electing, at Gregory’s suggestion, the most experienced among themselves as Commander and Lieutenant. They ordered sailings in accordance with weather and tide, while Petty Officer Sims augmented the flotilla by supervising repairs to boats that had long been out of service. The majority of farm carts, now no longer needed, were knocked to pieces, and from the material a jagged but stout palisade erected behind the village under the lee of the houses. Into the compartments of this great corral the live stock were herded, safe from the rigours of the coming winter or the depredations of desperate men who might slip past the sentries under cover of the night.
The fortifications were now almost completed and a long line of breastworks linked the Martello Tower on the south with Silas’s redoubt to the north, screening the whole village and the stockaded enclosure upon the landward side. Gregory well knew the weakness of his defence to be his limited armaments. Only thirteen men with rifles had survived the debacle of the Shark, and his pistol and those of Silas, Kenyon, Sims and Rudd would be of little use except at close range. He still had his three Lewis guns, however, and leaving those in charge of picked troops, passed on the rifles to some of the ex-service men in his Labour Colony levy. He had also acquired eight shotguns and several hundred cartridges on his forays into the interior, and formed a special squad to bring these into action if an attack was pressed to within the limits of their range, so he hoped to be able to put up a performance which would lead an enemy to think that the garrison was far stronger than it was in fact.
However, he placed his confidence far more in rendering the place almost impossible of approach, and for that purpose raked the village from end to end for suitable material. Wireless aerials, now silent and therefore useless, flagstaffs, wood fencing, iron palings, obsolete fishing-nets. Every box, barrel, and wicker basket in the place, to be filled with shingle and inserted in the breastworks. Old potato-sacks and tarpaulins were filled with earth, and he even demolished several shreds to utilise their corrugated iron roofing for revetments.
Entrenchments were dug and emplacements thrown up, fields of fire cleared for the Lewis guns and these rendered doubly difficult of approach by a hundred ingenious devices. Tangles of wire and netting, pieces of board with long nails driven through them and scattered broadcast in the long grass to stab the feet of running men, and lines of pits with pointed stakes set upright in them, but cunningly concealed by rushes and dried turf.
Veronica meanwhile, slim and boyish in her borrowed overalls, worked at her mending in the August sunshine, or, when she could, sneaked off to sun-bathe in a sheltered dip of the beach that she had found, continuing in the evenings her dual flirtation.
She felt that she liked the big American the better of the two; he never pestered her, but placid, smiling, efficient, always seemed to be at her side when wanted, and as she grew to know him better she came to appreciate more and more the immense and kindly tolerance of his simple straightforward nature. He was widely travelled, deeply read, a distinguished amateur of music and at some time or other he seemed to have met nearly all the really important people who had influenced events, a month—no, it seemed to her a year—ten years ago, in that other, now so distant and orderly, existence. Yet he seldom spoke of the influence he had wielded and only little by little did she become aware of his vast interests.
Gregory on the other hand treated her in a fashion she would have resented from any other man. He forced her to fulfil her daily quota of the mending that she so detested, as ruthlessly as he made his soldiers dig; stalked off to bed immediately after dinner when he felt that way inclined, hardly troubling to throw her a casual ‘good night’, yet such was his magnetism that when he uttered an abrupt ‘Come on—let’s walk,’ her resistance seemed to crumple and with a half-guilty, half-defiant glance at Silas she would gaily respond ‘Why not?’ and accompany him to the grassy bank behind the stockade. He was as great a lover as he was a leader of men, when he chose to devote himself to her. His crisp intellect was a continual delight and he confided in her alone, often days in advance, every new plan as he devised it for their better security and comfort. He knew too, instinctively it seemed, just when to caress her and when to refrain; so that his passion never irked her, and she began to crave the deft touches of his masterful hands. She wondered sometimes what would have happened if they had met in normal times and felt, that if he had insisted on it, she might quite well have abandoned Grosvenor Square for Gloucester Road.
Some nights he would neither go to bed nor make love to her, but set off alone on long tramps, penetrating far inland and often not returning until dawn. No one else was allowed outside the fortifications on any pretext, so their news of the outer world was confined to such rumours as he chose to pass on to them after these solitary expeditions. However, he spoke little of them, except to state that conditions in the interior were growing more and more terrible and the roving population desperate to a primitive degree, until at the end of the third week of their stay he told them that he had good reason to believe that a Communist Government had been established in London.
‘What effect is that likely to have on us?’ Kenyon inquired.
‘The disruption has been too great for it to have any at the moment,’ Gregory replied slowly; ‘and it is doubtful if it can last for more than a week or two. If the old order couldn’t feed the people how can the Communists? Yet it is the danger that I have feared all along. Similar groups may gain control in places like Ipswich, and while they last they will endeavour to secure any sources of supply which are left for their own maintenance, regardless of the remainder of the people. Our state of plenty here must be known for miles around by now, and it is to protect us from a proper organised attack that I have thrown up all these defences, my automatic and a loaded crop would have been good enough to scare off anything short of a multitude without arms.’
‘Do you think we’d be able to defend this place against troops then?’ Silas asked.
‘Yes,’ Gregory declared firmly; ‘the surrounding marshes form a natural barrier and all the ordinary approaches are now so skilfully protected that I am prepared to hold Shingle Street for the Shingaleese against all comers. They won’t have any artillery and nothing short of shell fire could drive us out of here.’
During all his days of labour at the entrenchments and palisades, Kenyon’s thoughts had never been far from Ann. Had he supposed her threatened by any danger, he would have set out for Orford instantly, but Rudd had reported her safe delivery into the hands of her delighted uncle with a wealth of fluent detail. He reported that the leading citizens of Orford had formed themselves into a committee to deal with any emergency and that, just as at Shingle Street, a plentiful supply of fish could be relied upon to keep the small population from any danger of actual starvation. The little town was shut away from the industrial areas and great trunk roads by miles of desolate heath and sparsely-populated farm lands, so there seemed little imminent risk of invasion by hunger marchers; feeling her to be secure, Kenyon had flung himself whole-heartedly into the work alloted to him in the early days of their arrival.
As time wore on the urge to see her again was strengthened by a desire to reassure himself about her safety, and in the second week he spoke of it to Gregory, but the General reasoned with him.
‘Hang on for a day or two,’ he begged. ‘Ann’s no fool and if there is any trouble at Orford she’s certain to seek shelter here. I simply can’t do without you, even for a day, until Shingle Street is straightened up and my plans completed.’
‘Perhaps she would like to now but is afraid to face the journey with all these toughs on the roads.’
‘Nonsense, Kenyon. They wouldn’t attack a woman; it’s food they are after, and anyhow, she knows the district like the back of her hand, she could easily come by bypaths if she wanted to.’
‘All right,’ Kenyon agreed reluctantly, his uneasiness quieted for the moment by Gregory’s reasonable hypothesis, but as the days passed he began to worry again. Orford might have its watch committee, but the town possessed no military strength, so how could they resist the growing bands of hungry desperadoes who were pressing daily nearer to the sea? Despite the hard labour on the fortifications which left his body tired each night, and should have ensured a sound healthy sleep, he could no longer quieten the wild and horrible misgivings which filled his brain. His imagination began to play havoc with his nerves and night after night he tossed and turned sleepless with anxiety until the paling of the stars.
When Gregory spoke of the possibility of organised attack, therefore, he could bear it no longer but declared his intention of visiting Orford on the following day.
The General shrugged his lean shoulders. ‘If you want a holiday by all means go; it’s Sunday tomorrow, anyway, and now we have broken the back of our job we might as well reinstitute the ancient custom of the Seventh day. The men will get stale if they’re not allowed a break now and then.’
‘Good. Then I’ll set off first thing tomorrow.’
‘As you wish, but I wouldn’t fret yourself. I was in Orford a few nights ago and the place was perfectly peaceful. You’ll find a picket at the approaches to the town, but I expect they’ll let you through when you mention Ann’s uncle. I had to dodge them, of course, myself, but that was easy at night because I have the sort of eyes which can see in the dark better than most people’s.’
Kenyon had already consulted Rudd on the best way of getting to Orford and knew it to be a longish journey. True it was no more than six miles as the crow flies but the River Butley, only a tiny stream at low tide yet with formidable mud banks on either shore, cut off direct approach from the south-west. He must strike north, cross the stream three miles inland, and turn south-eastwards along the Woodbridge Road, a good ten miles in all; but one of the villagers possessed a bicycle and proved willing to lend it to him for the day, so on Sunday, despite dull and cloudy weather, Kenyon set off immediately after breakfast with his heart high at the prospect of seeing Ann again.
He stopped for a moment at the Labour Colony to exchange a few words with Merrilees whom he met just starting out to visit Gregory. The little man was highly elated at a report that order had been restored in Ipswich and a limited ration, procured from where he could not say, was being issued to residents who had remained in the town; but his brief mention of a Workers’ Council which was apparently in control caused Kenyon to dis-count the goodness of the news. Merrilees would naturally suppose them to be an honest body, similar to his old colleagues of Trade Union days, but if Gregory was right they would prove a greater danger to the countryside than the unarmed stragglers who infested the woods and moors at the present time.
One thing was certain: no such groups could possibly be powerful enough to reorganise the country with such a terrible upheaval still in progress, and the probability was that, after a brief local reign, they would disappear or develop into bandit formations, who would levy a regular toll upon the produce of the surviving peasants in their area, just as their predecessors had in the dark ages.
With these black thoughts, Kenyon pedalled on through Capel St. Andrew, Butley and Chillesford. Here and there upon the roadside, even in these quiet lanes, he passed an abandoned motor-car or tradesman’s van, and twice saw helicopters which had been forced to land in the open fields. Once he caught sight of some fifty people slouching along the road in his direction, and thinking discretion the better part of valour hid behind a hedge until they had passed, but for the most part the people that he saw seemed frightened of him and bolted into the bracken at his approach. Those whom he passed at close quarters showed faces grown gaunt and evil by lack of food.
Just after he reached the main Orford Road he got a nasty scare. A newly-erected bungalow stood at the roadside apparently deserted, but a big Alsatian suddenly leapt the wicket gate and came for him with gaping, slobbering jaws. Evidently the poor beast, maddened by hunger had taken on the semblance of his half brother the hunting wolf and famished, perhaps for days, was now grown bold enough to attack a man.
Kenyon was knocked spinning from his bicycle and rolled into the ditch, but the dog got his forepaw caught in the spokes of the front wheel so he had a moment to whip out his jack-knife, a souvenir of the Shark, and by the time the animal was free he was standing again, ready to meet its attack.
The dog howled pitifully as the blade went home between its ribs and Kenyon felt almost worse about it than when he had had to levy toll on the defenceless farmers, but it was absolutely necessary, and as he mounted again he felt that he had had a lucky escape from being badly mauled.
‘Orford could not be far now,’ he thought, and the last few miles of the way thither, he began to be more than ever satisfied that Gregory was right about Ann’s safety. The scattered farms grew more infrequent, alternating with long stretches of beautiful but desolate heath where little woods of pine and birch, or wide Stretches of golden flowering gorse, broke the monotony of the rolling sweep of heather. A land that had known the imprint of the hand of man for centuries but one with which he had dealt kindly, never settling in his hordes to blacken it with smoke and grime. As the road narrowed Kenyon felt that in normal times one would not see a human being in a three-mile stretch, the way leading nowhere but to Orford and the sea. The last mile or so lay downhill through narrow twisting lanes and there was the little town sleeping in the sunshine as it had slept for centuries, cut off on the north by the great sweep of the Aide and on the south by the Butley from intercourse with its neighbours, its only method of communication the solitary inland road. He noted that it was even separated from the sea by a strip of water which he remembered to be the River Ore; a mile of marshland had to be crossed before the beach could be reached, and there no stretches of fair golden sand lay spread to attract the tripper, but a hard steeply-shelving foreshore where the waves broke monotonously upon the pebbles. Ipswich might be barely a hundred miles from London and its population of eighty thousand people had enjoyed, up to a month ago, all the amenities of modern civilisation, but Orford, although only a further sixteen miles from the metropolis, was literally in the back of the beyond and the life of its inhabitants differed little in essentials from that of their predecessors two hundred years before. In the days of the Flemish weavers it had been a prosperous little port—now it was only a village. A few crooked streets with rambling houses and fishermen’s cottages clustered about the great Norman Church; yet even that relic of bygone splendour was in partial ruin, the transepts fallen away, the main aisle only kept watertight for a limited number of parishioners. No railway station linked it with modern life, the nearest being at Wickham Market, seven miles away and only a branch line. Where in all England could Ann live more securely at such a time?
At the first houses four men with staves, and brassards on their arms, stopped him but one of them knew Ann so Kenyon was allowed to pass, having learnt from them that the Reverend Timothy Croome was not the incumbent of the parish as he had supposed, but lived retired at Fenn Farm some way outside the town. The shuttered shops in the straggling square seemed no more strange than on a normal Sunday and turning to the right he took the road beneath the great eight-sided single tower of the Castle, which dominates the coast for miles around, out into the open country once more. After a little it faded almost to a track running parallel to the sea, and passing two small farms half a mile or so apart, he came to a solitary house which he knew must be his destination.
The track ended there and he propped his bicycle against the ramshackle gate, noting as he did so from the hill upon which the place was set, the broad mud flats of the Butley which cut it off so securely from the south and west. For a second he wondered if Ann would run out when she saw him, and if they would kiss, but his thoughts were chilled by the bleak appearance of the house. Its peeling paint and dilapidated exterior suggested straitened circumstances and, set in this desolate spot between the wind and sea and sky, the thought of easterly gales beating upon its jimcrack doors and windows leapt to his mind, and how cheerless the place must be when the grey mists crept up to it from the marshes in the winter.
He paused for a moment irresolute beneath the scanty foliage of a tree warped by the constant pressure of the wind. The house was silent as the grave; silent with a sinister silence that seemed to catch at Kenyon’s heart. Why were there none of the little noises that spoke of peaceful habitation? Why no questioning bark—there should at least have been a dog. The iron gate clanged behind him with a dismal sound, yet no inquiring face appeared at the windows.
‘Ann!’ he bellowed, ‘Ann!’ but no small figure appeared to greet him. The house remained cold, a cheerless example of Edwardian architecture, grimly foreboding in its continued silence.
With a set face Kenyon hurried up the path. Something was wrong, he knew it with a horrible certainty as he pressed the bell in the absurd ornate porch which gave the place the air of a suburban villa that had gone a-wandering. Jarringly the peal shrilled through the house but no answering footsteps sounded in the hall. He pressed again but no stir or movement broke the following silence, now weighing like a cloak of dread upon his troubled mind.
He left the porch, stepped back to stare up at the windows and noticed for the first time that the curtains were drawn. Perhaps the place had been abandoned, yet somehow he did not feel that it had, a second sense seemed to tell him that there were people in the house. In search of another entrance he walked swiftly round the corner and coming at once upon an open window, thrust it up, pushed back the curtains, and peered into the dim recesses of the room.
The furniture was in keeping with the house, an Edwardian mahogany dining-room suite, heavy and tasteless. The remains of a meal lay spread upon the table, but Kenyon’s thoughts were not upon the furnishings.
An elderly woman lay stretched on her face in the doorway, she was quite still—dead undoubtedly, and the dark matted patch in her grey hair showed that she had been struck down from behind. By the fireplace lay another huddled form, black clad, a clergyman—his white collar proclaimed the fact—but that was stained with blood, and the head hung back at an unnatural angle. Horrified but fascinated, Kenyon could not drag his eyes away from the white face and the red gash beneath—for the man’s throat had been slit from ear to ear.
‘Ann,’ he called again, but his voice only came in a hoarse choking whisper, and still there was no answer.