“And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity,”
he murmured.
I looked bard at him. His grave, reflective expression turned suddenly to a grin.
“Or do you prefer Shelley?” he asked.
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Come on, let’s find some food.”
“Coker,” I said as we completed the meal sitting on a store counter and spreading marmalade on crackers, “you beat me. What are you? The first time I meet you I find you ranting-if you will forgive the appropriate word-in a kind of dockside lingo. Now you quote Marvel to me. It doesn’t make sense.”
He grinned. “It never did to me, either,” he said. “It comes of being a hybrid-you never really know what you are. My mother never really knew what I was, either-at least she never could prove it, and she always held it against me that on account of that she could not get an allowance for me. It made me kind of sour about things when I was a kid, and when I left school I used to go to meetings-more or less any kind of meetings as long as they were protesting against something. And that led to me getting mixed up with the lot that used to come to them. I suppose they found me kind of amusing. Anyway, they used to take me along to arty-political sorts of parties. After a bit I got tired of being amusing and seeing them give a kind of double laugh, half with me and half at me, whenever I said what I thought. I reckoned I needed some of the background knowledge they had, and then I’d be able to laugh at them a bit, maybe, so I started going to evening classes, and I practiced talking the way they did, for use when necessary. There’s a whole lot of people don’t seem to understand that you have to talk to a man in his own language before he’ll take you seriously. If you talk tough and quote Shelley they think you’re cute, like a performing monkey or something, but they don’t pay any at-tendon to what you say. You have to talk the kind of lingo they’re accustomed to taking seriously. And it works the other way too. Half the political intelligentsia who talk to a working audience don’t get the value of their stuff across-not so much because they’re over their audience’s heads, as because half the chaps are listening to the voice and not to the words, so they knock a big discount off what they do hear because it’s all a bit fancy, and not like ordinary, normal talk. So I reckoned the thing to do was to make myself bilingual, and use the right one in the right place-and occasionally the wrong one in the wrong place, unexpectedly. Surprising how that jolts ‘em. Wonderful thing, the English caste system. Since then I’ve made out quite nicely in the orating business. Not what you’d call a steady job, but full of interest and variety… .Wilfred Coker. Meetings addressed. Subject no object. That’s me.”
“How do you mean-subject no object?’ I inquired.
“Well, I kind of supply the spoken word just like a printer supplies the printed word. He doesn’t have to believe everything he prints.”
I left that for the moment. “How’s it happen you’re not like the rest?” I asked. “You weren’t in hospital, were you?”
“Me? No. It just so happened that I was addressing a meeting that was protesting over police partiality in a little matter of a strike. We began about six o’clock and about half-past the police themselves arrived to break it up. I found a handy trap door and went down into the cellar. They came down, too, to have a look, but they didn’t find me where I bad gone to earth, in a pile of shavings. They went on tramping around up above for a bit, then it was quiet. But I stayed put. I wasn’t walking out into any nice little trap. It was quite comfortable there, so I went to sleep. In the morning, when I took a careful nose around, I found all this had happened.” He paused thoughtfully. “Well, that racket’s finished; it certainly doesn’t look as if there’s going to be much call for my particular gifts from now on,” he added.
I did not dispute it. We finished our meal. He slid himself off the counter.
“Come on. We’d better be shifting. ‘Tomorrow to fresh fields and pastures new’-if you’d care for a really hackneyed quotation this time.”
“It’s more than that, it’s inaccurate,” I said. “It’s ‘woods,’ not ‘fields.’”
He frowned.
“Well, damn me, mate, so it is,” he admitted.
I began to feel the lightening of spirit that Coker was already showing. The sight of the open country gave one hope of a son. It was true that the young green crops would never be harvested when they had ripened, nor the fruit from the trees gathered; that the countryside might never again look as trim and neat as it did that day, but for all that it would go on, after its own fashion. It was not, like the towns, sterile, stopped forever. It was a place one could work and tend, and still find a future. It made my existence of the previous week seem like that of a rat living on crumbs and ferreting in garbage heaps. As I looked out over the fields I felt my spirits expanding.
Places on our route, towns like Reading or Newbury, brought back the London mood for a while, but they were no more then dips in a graph of revival.
There is an inability to sustain the tragic mood, a phoenix quality of the mind. It may be helpful or harmful, it is just a part of the will to survive-yet, also, it has made it possible for us to engage in one weakening war after another. But it is a necessary part of our mechanism that we should be able to cry only for a time over even an ocean of spilt milk-the spectacular must soon become the commonplace if life is to be supportable. Under a wide blue sky where a few clouds sailed like celestial icebergs the cities became a less oppressive memory, and the sense of living freshened us again like a clean wind. It does not, perhaps, excuse, but it does at least explain why from time to time I was surprised to find myself singing as I drove.
At Hungerford we stopped for more food and fuel. The feeling of release continued to mount as we passed through miles of untouched country. It did not seem lonely yet, only sleeping and friendly. Even the sight of occasional little groups of triffids swaying across a field, or of others resting with their roots dug into the soil, held no hostility to spoil my mood. They were, once again, the simple objects of my professional interest.
Short of Devizes we pulled up once more to consult the map. A little farther on we turned down a side road to the right and drove into the village of Tynsham.
TYNSHAM
There was little likelihood of anyone missing the Manor. Beyond the few cottages which constituted the village of Tynsham the high wall of an estate ran beside the road. We followed it until we came to massive wrought-iron gates. Behind them stood a young woman on whose face the sober seriousness of responsibility had suppressed all human expression. She was equipped with a shotgun which she clasped in inappropriate places. I signaled to Coker to stop, and called to her as I drew up. Her mouth moved, but not a word penetrated the clatter of the engine. I switched off.
“This is Tynsham Manor?” I asked.
She was not giving that, or anything else, away. “Where are you from? And how many of you?” she countered.
I could have wished that she did not fiddle about with her gun in just the way she did. Briefly, and keeping an eye on her uneasy fingers, I explained who we were, why we came, roughly what we carried, and guaranteed that there were no more of us hidden in the trucks. I doubted whether she was taking it in. Her eyes were fixed on mine with a mournfully speculative expression more common in bloodhounds, but not reassuring even there. My words did little to disperse that random suspicion which makes the highly conscientious so wearing. As she emerged to glance into the backs of the trucks, and verify my statements, I hoped for her sake that she would not chance to encounter a party of whom her suspicions were justified. Admission that she was satisfied would have weakened her role of reliability, but she did eventually consent, still with reserve, to allow us in.
“Take the right fork,” she called up to me as I passed, and turned back at once to attend to the security of the gates. Beyond a short avenue of elms lay a park landscaped in the manner of the late eighteenth century, and dotted with trees which had had space to expand into full magnificence. The house, when it came into view, was not a stately home in the architectural sense, but there was a lot of it. It rambled over a considerable ground area and through a variety of building styles, as though none of its previous owners had been able to resist the temptation to leave his personal mark upon it. Each, while respecting the work of his forefathers, had apparently felt it incumbent upon him to express the spirit of his own age. A confident disregard of previous levels had resulted in a sturdy waywardness. It was inescapably a funny house, yet friendly and reliable-looking.