Wild Jack (12 page)

At any rate, although he did not volunteer much information, he did not snub her. She went on, in a small soft voice, saying what a terrible thing it was, and he found he did not mind that, either.

It was something, she said, which had always been a nightmare with her. She had imagined it hundreds of times, and it had pursued her in dreams. She mostly thought of it as happening at school—of someone coming in to the class and telling her to report to the Headmaster, of going into his study and seeing his face, much graver than usual. And then being told—it was always both of them killed together, usually in a car smash.

Once launched she needed no encouragement to go on. She told him about her life at home, and he was a little surprised. She was an only child. Her father, a plasterer, was very strict—he did not allow her out later than ten in the evening, half past nine
in winter. Her mother, it seemed, was ill a great deal. She had to get her own breakfast in the morning, and do housework before she came to school.

It did not strike Neil as the sort of home life one would be particularly terrified to lose; nor her parents as justifying such anxious devotion. Her life in fact seemed fairly wretched compared with the one he had known in Dulwich. Yet he had never had the sort of fears she described. Did that mean he had failed to appreciate what he'd got? He felt a vague guilt, and had a panicky moment of wondering if that was why it had happened—if the God in whom he mostly didn't believe had read his ungrateful mind, and casually sent down destruction.

But he had no time to brood on it because at that point Hendrix joined them. He ignored Neil, and said to Ellen:

“I thought I told you I'd see you outside the library at half past?”

His tone was truculent. Ellen did not reply, but looked at Neil. He had an impulse to tell Hendrix to push off, but it was easily controlled.

Hendrix said: “And haven't I told you about hanging about with other fellers?”

He was not just truculent, but bullying and contemptuous. Ellen looked at Neil again, in direct appeal this time.

Neil had no fear of the other. He was bigger, possibly stronger, but Neil was fairly sure he was no boxer while he had done quite a bit. If this had happened a couple of months ago he knew what he would have done—told Hendrix to shut up, or he'd sort him out.

He supposed really that was what he ought to do now, but he could not be bothered. Neither the girl nor Hendrix meant enough to be worth his getting involved. The girl, after all, had chosen Hendrix in the past, or let herself be chosen by him. It was not his concern, but if he fought Hendrix and beat him it might become so. Her eyes stayed on his face, but he said nothing.

Hendrix said, openly contemptuous of Neil as well:

“Come on. Leave this London wet. It's Geography first and I didn't have time to do any prep last night. We'll go and get yours.”

Neil watched them go off together. He was a bit surprised he could feel so detached about it.

• • •

He walked back through the churchyard in the late afternoon. The air was windless, warm for early summer, and the crab apple trees were loaded with blossom. Although many of the graves were old, the inscriptions on the stones rendered illegible by time and weather, some were new, and he passed two graves freshly mounded with flowers. The churchyard represented one of the few ongoing enterprises the town still possessed, the only one really.

Neil thought of Ellen and her nightmares, and wondered about them. Perhaps they did not stem, as he had assumed, from love of her parents, but the reverse. Perhaps that was why the daydream was so persistent.

He wondered too what the future would bring, for her and Hendrix. Most likely nothing: they were very young and there was no reason to suppose anything permanent, like marriage, would come of it. Though it might, of course. Hendrix enjoyed bullying, and Neil had an idea that a part of Ellen, at least, liked being bullied. Maybe they
would
marry, and she could change her nightmares to imagining her husband being killed.

Again his thoughts surprised him. He looked up at the sky, nearly cloudless, where—he was fairly sure again—no invisible vindictive God lurked, reading minds and fashioning thunderbolts to toss down. The church was grey and squat, brooding over its generations of worshippers. All around were the quiet houses with, at this moment, not a person in sight. A car revved up the High Street and roared on towards Hastings, leaving velvety silence behind.

Rye was a quiet town after London, but a Babylon compared with Winchelsea. He thought again how glad he was to be here, but thought that even here there were too many people. It would be nice to live on a desert island, with only a parrot for company. Though the parrot wasn't really necessary, either: the sound of the surf or the wind in the palms would be company enough.

His grandmother came out of the kitchen as he let himself in at the front door. She fussed him as usual, and he accepted it as usual, but refused her offer to make him a snack. She was a great believer in nourishment, and seemed to regard the day in school at Rye as roughly equivalent to an ascent of Everest. In the end he escaped on the double plea of not being hungry and having heavy Physics prep to do. She believed in prep as well, though she thought he worked too hard.

That wasn't true, in fact; he was still coasting for the most part, after Dulwich. He worked away steadily, though, glad to have something to occupy his mind so completely but undemandingly. Apart from Physics, there was English and History . . . witches putting the frighteners on Macbeth, Judge Jeffreys decorating the west country with gibbeted rebels. Violent death was something you might as well get used to; it had been around a long time. And only a fool looked for explanations of justifications.

When he had finished he sat for a time, looking out. His room was at the top of the house and quite big. It ran from the front of the house to the back; his bed was under one window, and the desk at which he sat under the opposite one. This looked over the street, if anything so green and flowery could be called a street. Someone drove a car up, and parked it. Mrs Mellor from over the road passed slowly along his field of vision, and disappeared. A tabby cat succeeded her, and all was quiescence again.

Below and faintly he heard the theme music of BBC television news. He might as well go down and watch as not.

In the sitting room his grandfather and grandmother were in their accustomed armchairs, with the third between them left empty for him. Neil stopped in the doorway, to see if there was anything interesting on. It was only something about the Calcutta Plague starting up again, this time in Karachi.

Also by John Christopher

From Aladdin

THE TRIPODS SERIES

The White Mountains

The City of Gold and Lead

The Pool of Fire

When the Tripods Came

THE SWORD OF THE SPIRITS TRILOGY

The Prince in Waiting

Beyond the Burning Lands

The Sword of the Spirits

The Guardians

The Lotus Caves

A Dusk of Demons

In the Beginning

Empty World

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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This Aladdin paperback edition May 2015

Text copyright © 1974 by John Christopher

Cover illustration copyright © 2015 by Anton Petrov

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Cover designed by Karin Paprocki

Interior designed by Hilary Zarycky

The text of this book was set in Venetian 301.

Library of Congress Control Number 2015932420

ISBN 978-1-4814-2007-5 (hc)

ISBN 978-1-4814-2006-8 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-4814-2008-2 (eBook)