The DOUCH(E) truck was a valuable piece of equipment. When national governments broke down, as foreseen by the Washington foundation, the trucks became in themselves small DOUCH HQ’s. They contained full recording equipment, stores, and sundry supplies; they were fully armoured; an hour’s work would convert them into tracked vehicles; they ran on the recently perfected charge-battery system, and had an emergency drive that worked on petrol or any of the current petrol substitutes. This neat packet of technology, or Timberlane’s sample of it, had been left in its garage, below the flat in Iffley Road.
“I have the keys still,” Timberlane said, “and the vehicle is shuttered down. They haven’t asked me for the keys.”
Martha’s eyes were closed. She heard him, but she was too tired to reply. “We’re well placed here to observe contemporary history,” he said. “What DOUCH did not consider was that the vehicles might be an attraction to the history-makers. Whatever happens, we must not let the truck pass out of our control.”
After a minute of silence, he added, “The vehicle must be our first concern.”
With the sudden energy of fury, she sat up on the bed. “Damn and blast the bloody vehicle!” she said. “What about me?”
She slept fitfully throughout that stuffy night in the barracks. The silence was fractured by army boots stamping across a parade ground, by shouts, by the close vibrations of a mosquito or by the surge of a Windrush coming home. Her bed rumbled like an empty stomach when she turned in it.
Night, it seemed to her, was a padded pincushion — she almost had it in her hand, so closely did its warmth match the humidity of her palm — and into it, an infinite number of pins, went the sound effects of militant humanity. But each pin pierced her as well as the cushion. Towards morning, the noises grew less frequent, though the heat bowl of the square outside remained unemptied. Then from a different quarter came the faint ring, long continued, of an alarm clock. Distantly, a cock crowed. She heard a town clock — Magdalen? — chime five. Birds quarrelled over the dawn in their guttering. Army noises slowly took over again. The clang of buckets and iron utensils from the cookhouse proclaimed that preparations for breakfast had begun. She slept, fading out on a tide of despair.
Her sleep was deep and restorative. Timberlane was sitting grey and unshaven on the edge of his bed when she awoke. A guard came in with a breakfast tray, set it down, and departed.
“How are you feeling, my love?”
“I’m better this morning, Algy. But what a noise there was in the night.”
“A lot of stretcher parties, I’m afraid,” he said, glancing out of the window. “We’re in one of the centres of infection here. I am prepared to give Croucher guarantees about my conduct if he’ll let us live away from here.”
She went over to him, cupping his stubby jaws in her hands. “You’ve come to a decision, then?”
“I had last night. We took on a job with DOUCH(E). We are after history, and history is now being made here. I think we must trust Croucher; so we remain in Cowley to co-operate with him.”
“You know I don’t question your decisions, Algy. But can we trust a man in his position?”
“Let’s just say that a man in his position does not seem to have any reason to shoot us out of hand,” he said. “Perhaps a woman looks at these things differently, but let’s not allow DOUCH to take precedence over our safety.”
“Look at it this way, Martha. In Washington we didn’t just take on obligations; we took on a way of thinking that makes sense when most human activities no longer do. That may have a lot to do with the way we have survived as a pair in London while all around us personal relationships are going to pot. We have a mission; we must serve it, or it won’t serve us.”
“You put it like that and it sounds fine. Just let’s not fall into the trap of putting ideas before people, eh?”
They turned their attention to the breakfast. It looked like soldier’s rations; because tea was scarce, there was weak beer to drink, and to eat the inevitable vitamin pills that had established themselves as a national food since domestic animals were stricken, a grainy bread, and some fillets of a brown and nameless fish. Because whales and seals had almost vanished from the sea, and freak radiation effects seemed to have encouraged the growth of plankton and minute crustacea, fish had multiplied. Many farmers in coastal areas throughout the world had been forced to take to the seas when their livestock dwindled; so there was still a strip of fish to stretch across the cracked plates of the world.
As they ate, Martha said, “This Corporal Pitt who is acting as combined gaoler and bodyguard is a nice sort of man. If we must have someone sitting over us all the time, perhaps we could have him. Ask Croucher about it when you see him.”
They were swallowing the vitamin pills down with the last of the beer, when Pitt came in with another guard. On his shoulder tabs, Pitt wore the insignia of a captain.
“It looks as if we have to congratulate you on a good and swift promotion,” said Martha.
“You needn’t be funny,” Pitt said sharply. “There happens to be a shortage of good men round these parts.”
“I was not trying to be funny, Mr. Pitt, and I can see from the number of stretchers busy outside that men are growing shorter all the while.”
“It doesn’t do to try and make jokes about the plague.”
“My wife was attempting to be pleasant,” Timberlane said. “Just watch how you answer her, or there will be a complaint in.”
“If you have any complaints, address them to me,” Pitt said.
The Timberlanes exchanged glances. The unassuming corporal of the night before had disappeared; this man’s voice was ragged, and his whole manner highly strung. Martha went over to her mirror and sat down before it. How the hollows crept on in her cheeks! She felt stronger today, but the thought of the trials and heat that lay before them gave her no reassurance. She felt in the springs of her menstruation a dull pain, as if her infertile and unfertilizable ovaries protested their own sterility. Laboriously, from her pots and tubes, she endeavoured to conjure into her face a life and warmth she felt she would never again in actuality possess.
As she worked, she studied Pitt in the glass. Was that nervous manner simply a result of sudden promotion, or was there another reason for it?
“I am taking you and Mrs. Timberlane out on a mission in ten minutes,” he told Timberlane. “Get yourself ready. We shall proceed to your old flat in Iffley Road. There we shall pick up your recording van, and go up to the Churchill Hospital.”
“What for? I have an appointment with Commander Croucher. He said nothing to me about this yesterday.”
“He told me he did tell you about it. You said you wanted documentary evidence of what has been going on up at the hospital. We are going up there to get it.”
“I see. But my appointment—”
“Look, don’t argue with me, I’ve got my orders, see, and I’m going to carry them out. You don’t have appointments here, anyway — we just have orders. The Commander is busy.”
“But he told me—”
Captain Pitt tapped his newly acquired revolver for emphasis.
“Ten minutes, and we are going out. I’ll be back for you. You are both coming with me to collect your vehicle.” He turned on his heel and marched noisily out. The other guard, a big slack-jawed fellow, moved ostentatiously to stand by the door.
“What’s it mean?” Martha asked, going to her husband. He put his arms about her waist and gave her a worried frown.
“Croucher must have changed his mind in some way. Yet it may be perfectly okay. I did ask to see the Churchill records, so perhaps he is trying to show he will co-operate with us.”
“But Pitt is so different, too. Last night he was telling me about his wife, and how he had been forced to take part in this massacre in the centre of Oxford…”
“Perhaps his promotion has gone to his head…”
“Oh, it’s the uncertainty, Algy, everything’s so — nothing’s definite, nobody knows what’s going to happen from day to day… Perhaps they are just after the truck.”
