On my return I found the great room completely empty, even the
cedar chest banished from its corner.
‘They said I should have it, sort of a cumulative rent payment.’
Vini had installed it in the living room of his flat where, amid the
books and clutter, it still succeeded in looking lonely.
‘How did they go?’
‘I didn’t see. One day they just weren’t around anymore.’
‘Didn’t they say goodbye?’
‘Yes, well in advance. But I never took them seriously, didn’t believe
they could . . .’
‘Maybe they’re hiding somewhere.’
‘Why?’ he asked, but I didn’t answer the question.
‘I can’t accept this. I have to make further enquiries.’
After some hours, and much nagging, Vini produced a complete
list of the real names behind the monickers of the Lipton Village Society. He could not tell me where they had been living, but I, with access to Education Department records, was able to find about thirty addresses of the nearest and dearest of these dead-end kids, years out
of date.
The following day I made a preliminary venture to the other side
of the city, to interview M r and Mrs Mahaffy, the parents of T hursday October. They refused to speak to me, for I wore working dress, and they rightly suspected a connection with officialdom. I returned
to Hirst folly, changed into casual cheaperie, and went slumming
again.
This time I received cautious help and an occasional insight into
various members of the Society. Strongarm had a brother in jail, and
the family of Linear seemed a prize pack of villains. One of the nightworking girls came from a household of Plymouth Brethren, who pretended she was dead. I called their bluff and forced an admission
that they prayed for her daily.
After five such visits, I could perceive a pattern, which recurred
with depressing inevitability. No, they hadn’t seen the kid for a while,
and they weren’t particularly worried. “You grow up in this district and
you grow up a survivor,’ said Linear’s thuggish father.
Jeri alone had no accessible kin, and I finally phoned the University library. The Personnel Officer was perfectly willing to chat.
‘He left a month ago. Bright lad, we miss him.’
‘Did he say where he was going?’
28
Lucy Sussex
‘To a good job with a tea company. Tetley’s, I believe.’
Having followed my line of enquiry to its dead end, I returned to
Vini. We talked about the Lipton Village Society, and then we talked
about ourselves. Several days later, I moved upstairs, into his flat.
‘I have to be honest with you. I really am only interested in old
books of geography.’
‘I’ll be honest too. I need something to lean on, if you pardon the
cliche.’
So we wait, in a quare house, with plural old books and singular old
cat. For what? A visitor from Lipton Village, home of the truants from
reality.
Tim e andflowers
©
ANTHONY PEACEY
The seascape was vast, the shoreline interminable, the sky an endless ceiling of stratocumulus. His chair stood upon a high sandbar.
Behind him the beach curved around the bay, away and away
northwards, to be lost between grey sea and grey sky. Northeastwards across brown flat country utterly devoid of the relief of vegetation brown mountains reared, blued with distance. At his
feet a small river tried to decide if it were now part of the sea, while
its further bank broke into a maze of lagoons extending southwards
to the limit of sight, leaden or quicksilver as the wind touched their
surface.
No bird sang; no insect chirped; only the clean breeze sighed
through the shells and caverns of his ears. But from the mud a few
paces away, at the bottom of the dike, by the river, a thicket of leafless green twigs grew, the tallest perhaps knee-high. This plant was called Rhynia. Its rhizomes extended slowly beneath the mud, striving to confirm their escape from the water. The man was waiting for the sporangia to ripen on the stem tips. It would be 200 million
years before Rhynia s descendants towered above the Carboniferous
swamps to spray their fronded tops at the sun, and a further 100
million before birds appeared to flit and cry down the aisles of
unborn forests.
The man sat, deep between the arms of his chair, absorbed in
spaces of distance, time and horizon. Not far away the water
clopped, drawing his glance. Rings were expanding on the surface;
29
30
Anthony Peacey
beyond the spit of mud that sheltered this place the water was now
rougher. Gradually, from the space between sea and sky where
wind sighed on its way from world’s end to world’s end, the grey
light drained. Yet when the land was lost in gloom some of the
lagoons still reflected the sky like polished metal.
He stirred. It was a movement of the body, a shifting of lungs and
stomach as much as anything; he had lost all feeling in his
