so that it seemed as if the air was hung with/delicate pellets of gold.
Julian had wandered along the edge of the lake. She called: “The water looks cleaner here and the bank’s quite firm. It’s a good place to wash.”
They joined her and, kneeling, thrust their arms into the lake and dashed the stinging water over their faces and hair. They laughed with the pleasure of it. Theo saw that his hands had swilled the water into greenish mud. This couldn’t be safe to drink even if it were boiled.
As they returned to the Citizen Theo said: “The question is whether we get rid of the car now. It may provide the best shelter we’re likely to get, but it’s conspicuous and we’ve nearly run out of petrol. It would probably only take us another couple of miles.”
It was Miriam who answered. “Let it go.”
He looked at his watch. It was just coming up to nine o’clock. He thought that they might as well listen to the news. Banal, predictable, uninteresting as it would probably be, to hear it was a small valedictory gesture before they finally cut themselves off from all news but their own. He was surprised that he hadn’t thought of the radio before, hadn’t bothered to turn it on during their journey. He had driven in such taut anxiety that the sound of an unknown voice, even the sound of music, would have seemed intolerable. Now he reached his arm through the open window and switched on the radio. They listened impatiently to details of the weather, information on the roads which were officially closed or which would no longer be repaired, to the small domestic concerns of a shrinking world.
He was about to turn off the set when the announcer’s voice changed, becoming slower and more portentous. “This is a warning. A small group of dissidents, one man and two women, are travelling in a stolen blue Citizen car somewhere on the Welsh border. Last night the man, who is thought to be Theodore Faron of Oxford, forced his way into a house outside Kington, tied up the owners and stole their car. The wife, Mrs. Daisy Cox, was found early this morning bound and dead on her bed. The man is now wanted for murder. He is armed with a revolver. Anyone seeing their car or the three persons is asked not to approach them but immediately to telephone the State Security Police. The registration of the car is MOA 694. I’ll repeat that number: MOA 694. I am asked to repeat the warning. The man is armed and dangerous. Do not approach.”
Theo wasn’t aware that he had switched it off. He was conscious only of the pounding of his heart and of a sick misery which descended and enveloped him, physical as a mortal illness, horror and self-disgust dragging him almost to his knees. He thought: If this is guilt, I can’t bear it. I won’t bear it.
He heard Miriam’s voice. “So Rolf has reached the Warden. They know about the Omegas, that there are only three of us left. But there’s one comfort, anyway. They still don’t know that the birth is imminent. Rolf couldn’t tell them the expected date of delivery. He doesn’t know. He thinks Julian still has a month to go. The Warden would never ask people to look out for the car if he thought there was a chance they’d find a new-born child.”
He said dully: “There is no comfort. I killed her.”
Miriam’s voice was firm, unnaturally loud, almost shouting in his ear. “You didn’t kill her! If she was going to die of shock it would have happened when you first showed her the gun. You don’t know why she died. It was natural causes, it must have been. It could have happened anyway. She was old and she had a weak heart. You told us. It wasn’t your fault, Theo, you didn’t mean it.”
No, he almost groaned, no, I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean to be a selfish son, an unloving father, a bad husband. When have I ever meant anything? Christ, what harm couldn’t I do if I actually started to mean it!
He said: “The worst is that I enjoyed it. I actually enjoyed it!”
Miriam was unloading the car, shouldering the blankets. “Enjoyed tying up that old man and his wife? Of course you didn’t enjoy it. You did what you had to do.”
“Not the tying up. I didn’t mean that. But I enjoyed the excitement, the power, the knowledge that I could do it. It wasn’t all horrible. It was for them, but not for me.”
Julian didn’t speak. She came near and took his hand. Rejecting the gesture, he turned on her viciously. “How many other lives will your child cost before she gets herself born? And to what purpose? You’re so calm, so unafraid, so sure of yourself. You speak of a daughter. What sort of life will this child have? You believe that she’ll be the first, that other births will follow, that even now there are pregnant women not yet aware that they are carrying the new life of the world. But suppose you’re wrong. Suppose this child is the only one. To what sort of hell are you condemning her? Can you begin to imagine the loneliness of her last years-over twenty appalling, endless years with no hope of ever hearing another live human voice? Never, never, never! My God, have you no imagination, either of you?”
Julian said quietly: “Do you think I haven’t thought of that, that and more? Theo, I can’t wish that she had never been conceived. I can’t think of her without joy.”
Miriam, wasting no time, had already pulled the suitcase and the raincoats from the boot and lifted down the kettle and the saucepan of water.
She spoke more in irritation than in anger: “For God’s sake, Theo, take hold of yourself. We needed a car; you got us a car. Maybe you could have chosen a better one and got it at less cost. You did what you did. If you want to wallow in guilt, that’s your affair, but leave it until later. OK, she’s dead and you feel guilty, and feeling guilt isn’t something you enjoy. Too bad. Get used to it. Why the hell should you escape guilt? It’s part of being human. Or hadn’t you noticed?”
Theo wanted to say: “In the past forty years there are quite a number of things I haven’t noticed.” But the words, with their ring of self-indulgent remorse, struck him as insincere and ignoble. Instead he said: “We’d better get rid of the car, and quickly. That’s one problem the broadcast has settled for us.”
He released the brake and put his shoulder to the back of the Citizen, scraping a foothold in the pebbled grass, grateful that the ground was dry and gently sloping. Miriam took the right-hand side and together they pushed. For a few seconds, inexplicably, their efforts were unsuccessful. Then the car began to move gently forward.
He said: “Give it a hard shove when I say the word. We don’t want it stuck in the mud nose-first.”
The front wheels were almost at the edge when he called out “Now,” and they both pushed with all their strength. The car shot over the rim of the lake and hit the water with a splash that seemed to wake every bird in the forest. The air was clamorous with calls and shrieks and the light branches of the high trees shook into life. The spray flew upwards, splattering his face. The cover of floating leaves shattered and danced. They watched, panting, as slowly, almost peacefully, the car settled and began to sink, the water gurgling through the open windows. Before it disappeared, on impulse, Theo took the diary from his pocket and hurled it into the lake.
And then there came for him a moment of dreadful horror, vivid as a nightmare, but one which he could not hope to banish by waking. They were all there together trapped in the sinking car, water pouring in, and he was searching desperately for the handle, trying to hold his breath against the agony in his chest, wanting to call out to Julian but knowing that he dare not speak or his mouth would be clogged with mud. She and Miriam were in the back drowning and there was nothing he could do to help. Sweat broke out on his forehead and, clenching his wet palms, he forced his eyes from the horror of the lake and looked up at the sky, wrenching his mind from imagined horror back to the horror of normality. The sun was pale and round as a full moon but blazing with light in its aureole of mist, the high boughs of the trees black against its dazzle. He closed his eyes and waited. The horror passed and he was able to look down again at the surface of the lake.
He glanced at Julian and Miriam, half expecting to see on their faces the stark panic which must momentarily have transformed his own. But they were looking down at the sinking car with a calm, almost detached interest, watching the clustered leaves bobbing and bunching on the spreading ripples, as if jostling for room. He marvelled at the women’s calmness, this apparent ability to shut away all memory, all horror in the concern of the moment.
He said, his voice harsh: “Luke. You never spoke of him in the car. Neither of you has mentioned his name since we buried him. Do you think about him?” The question sounded like
