The World in Winter by John Christopher
Abonitu shrugged. ‘Go ahead, then.’ He turned to Andrew. ‘Surely, if we steer north by the compass …’
‘There’s probably nothing else we can do now.’
The engine started again, drowning the distant sound of the other craft. They plunged ahead, but with the mist all round there was little evidence of motion. Andrew, for the first time, felt tension beginning to mount in him. It was true that these waters no longer carried shipping, but there was always the chance of icebergs; a collision with one of those at something better than forty knots could only mean disaster. And there were reefs around here. Their course had been planned to take them clear of the Channel Isles but that did not necessarily mean they would be clear of the jagged rocks exposed at low water.
There was brightness, a softening and a glow, lost and caught and lost again. For a moment he saw the water clear for perhaps twenty yards ahead. The mist was patchy. Oddly enough, the brief moments of visibility were more frightening than the grey blankness had been. Andrew said to Abonitu:
‘I don’t like this.’
Before he could reply, the veil split again, the split this time widening and showing open water all round them. The mist stood off on either side; by some atmospheric freak they were in a channel between two banks of fog. The roar of engines dropped as the driver slackened off the throttle. It was an automatic act, indicating, Andrew guessed, his reluctance to plunge back into darkness from this oasis of light. The Hovercraft came round, too, as he swung on the control bar, moving slowly along the lane of visibility which ran in an easterly direction from their original course.
Abonitu said: ‘If we go far off course it may be difficult to find the others again.’
There was floating ice ahead; nothing substantial, but it was the first they had seen since leaving the French coast. Cakes of it spun away from the Hovercraft’s jets. Andrew stared out over it. He thought the channel was narrowing. After a few minutes, he was certain. On either side the mist rolled closer. This time it was the driver himself who stopped the engines. Silence immediate, and clear cut. Andrew listened but there was no sound at all except the slap of waves. The rest of the squadron was out of earshot.
The driver said nervously: ‘I can’t hear nothing. You hear anything?’
‘I think we should press on to the north,’ Abonitu said. ‘If we do not find them before dark …’
There was silence while this sank in, followed by a burst of argumentative chatter. Andrew made an effort to master his annoyance at their volubility and their unconcealed nervousness. He saw Abonitu shrug his shoulders. Then he saw something else: further on the mist was lifting again. The view was still hazy, but there was a visibility of two or three hundred yards. He pointed this out to the others. The driver said with relief:
‘O.K. We push on.’
‘That’s still west,’ Abonitu warned. ‘We’re going off course.’
No attention was paid to this. The engines started up again and the Hovercraft began to move; not at full speed but at between ten and fifteen knots. The mist continued to thin out in that direction and, after a time, on the starboard bow also. About a quarter of an hour after re-starting the engines they came out into clear air.
The line of mist stretched north-east and south-west behind them. In front the sea was open to the horizon; and on the horizon there was a smudge of land.
‘An island,’ Abonitu said. ‘One of the Channel Isles. But which one, Andrew?’
‘Jersey or Guernsey, I should think. Too big for Alderney.’
The buzz of comment and suggestion broke out again. The general drift emerged quickly enough. After a couple of hours on the water and the encounter with the mist, there was a strong inclination to get back on land. Abonitu argued the importance of trying to regain contact with the rest of the force before nightfall, but without much conviction. Unless they went back into the mist, they would be bound to deviate further from their original course. In the end, he dropped his opposition. The Hovercraft slid on, at full throttle now, towards the distant island.
They met more floating ice a mile or two offshore, but the shore itself was relatively ice-free; the tides were fierce here and would keep the ice from accumulating. As they approached they saw what at first looked like icebergs, but proved to be granite reefs coated and festooned with ice. South of these, though, there was an easy approach to a shelving beach. They made their landfall there, halting the Hovercraft in the lee of a sea-wall. This, too, was of granite, but granite shaped into blocks and the blocks set together by human hands. There was no sign of life, and the wall, in one place had been breached by the sea.
The Africans, including the driver, climbed off the Hovercraft and scrambled up through the hole in the sea-wall.
Abonitu jumped down, his boots crunching ice and pebbles. ‘Well, we are on English soil, Andrew.’
‘Not English. British, perhaps. The Channel Isles had their own government.’
‘What difference? Come on. We might as well follow the others.’
They emerged on to a road, plainly visible as such beneath its covering of snow. The snow lay even and unmarked. On the other side there was open land, a field perhaps, and, further off, houses. They gave no signs of habitation. The nearer ones had obviously been abandoned for some time. The landscape’s desolation matched that of the Brittany coast they had left behind them. Andrew had a feeling of despair: it would all be like this, all a winter ruin. He had known there was no hope of finding her, but the knowledge was starker, barer now.
Abonitu touched his arm. ‘That looks like a pillbox over there. You think they built defences against sea attack?’
Andrew shook his head. ‘Not the islanders. The Germans. They occupied the islands during the last war, remember.’
There was general agreement on the desirability of brewing up coffee; the portable stove was brought up and snow was collected for melting. One of the Africans stood watch on top of the sea-wall. Andrew himself looked out to sea at intervals, but with no real expectation of seeing the rest of the squadron. One would hear them, anyway; the silencers had been abandoned for better working efficiency.
He was staring seawards when a cry was raised:
‘Folks coming.’
He turned round. A group was advancing towards them along the road from the south. There was more than a score of men, mostly carrying rifles. A little in advance of the rest was a man on horseback. An attendant trudged alongside him through the snow: he seemed to have no weapon, but he was holding a short pole from which fluttered a rag of white.
‘They look peaceful,’ Abonitu said. ‘But keep your weapons at the ready.’
The newcomers halted about ten yards from the Nigerian party. The horse, Andrew saw, was a cart-horse not a cavalry steed, but it made the impression that presumably was intended. Even on his feet the rider would have been a big man; on horseback he towered over the others, dominating the scene. He looked to be in his early forties; he had a heavy black curly beard, streaked with white. The fur coat he was wearing looked as though it might have been made up out of two women’s coats. His voice was the only thing not in keeping – thin and reedy and cracking a little, though not, Andrew guessed, with nervousness.
He said: ‘All right, Colonel. Do your stuff.’
The man with the white flag was older, in his late fifties or early sixties. He was badly clad, and looked cold. He said, in a tired voice but one that retained the clipped military accent of the British officer class:
‘I present His Excellency, the Governor and Bailiff of Guernsey. Kindly state your purpose in making an unauthorized landing on these shores.’
Abonitu said: ‘We are part of the Nigerian Expeditionary Force to Britain.’ The word was lightly but unmistakably stressed. ‘We are temporarily detached from the rest of our squadron and seeking shelter for a while. We intend no harm, and shall do no damage.’
The man on horseback ignored him; his eyes were on Andrew.
‘You??
‘The same as the rest,’ Andrew said. ‘I’m a member of the expedition.’
‘Moving on soon?’
‘In the morning, at the latest.’
‘That thing you’ve got there. That’s a Hovercraft, eh?’
From where they stood, the craft was out of sight behind the sea-wall. Probably they had been seen while still out to sea. That would account for the promptness with which this investigating force had appeared.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s a Hovercraft.’ He thought it advisable to pick up Abonitu’s cue. ‘Part of a squadron.’
‘And you got lost, eh? Engine trouble?’
‘We ran into sea-mist.’
‘Not used to the sea, I reckon.’ He gave a piercing whistle through his teeth. ‘You don’t keep much of a watch, either.’
There were scrambling noises. Heads appeared above the sea-wall, figures in the gap which they had used to get up from the beach. A man with a sporting rifle jumped up easily beside the sentry on the wall, and stood grinning at him. Andrew understood what had happened. While the main party had been advancing along the road, under the flag of truce, another party had been sent silently along the beach. They were cut off from the Hovercraft. They would have to fight their way back to it, and they were outnumbered and surrounded.
He said, striving to lend his voice authority:
‘This is a peaceful scientific expedition. We’re not a military body.’
‘But you’ve got guns, eh? Nice-looking automatics. Plenty of ammo, too, I reckon.’
He exchanged glances with Abonitu. The other Africans had been badly disconcerted by the emergence of the force behind them, but Abonitu looked unworried. It was he who said:
‘We have weapons for defensive purposes only.’
The man on the horse said amiably: ‘I was talking to the white man, Sambo.’ To Andrew, he said: ‘That smells like coffee you were brewing up when we came along. Haven’t smelt that in months.’
‘We’re tightly rationed,’ Andrew said. ‘But we’ll be glad to spare you a couple of tins.’
‘That’s very civil. Tell you what, you come and be my guest tonight. You’ll do better than camping out in the snow.’
His eye on Abonitu, Andrew saw him nod his head slightly. The situation, from their point of view, was desperate enough; it was obviously better to try to talk their way than fight their way out of it. Another idea struck him. He said:
‘Are your headquarters far from here,’ – he paused slightly – ‘your Excellency?’
‘Other side of the island. Three miles, maybe.’
‘Perhaps we could run you round there in the Hovercraft?’
The bearded face grinned down at him. ‘That’s a fine idea, providing you can take my men as well.’
He had thought that, once they were on the Hovercraft, there might be some opportunity of establishing a supremacy, but the Africans were too unready and the Governor’s men too alert for the risk to be worth taking. Andrew took the controls himself, the usual driver raising no objection, and the Governor stood at his side watching intently. He had left the horse and a handful of his men on the road to make their way back overland: the remainder came with him, keeping a close look-out over the Africans, whom they outnumbered three to one.
They put out a hundred yards or so to sea and traversed the northern tip of the island. There were places where it would have been possible to take the craft on shore and cut across country, but Andrew ignored them. It was important, he felt, to give as little indication of the vessel’s power as need be. With the same motive, he refrained from opening up the engines. They cruised at under ten knots, and as a result it was almost an hour before they came to the harbour of St Peter Port. The sun was almost down and mist, which already shrouded the smaller islands to the east, was coming up from the sea and rising among the terraced houses of the town.
The important thing was that there was a living town here. They could see movements in the streets – there was even smoke rising from a chimney somewhere – and faces looked down as the Hovercraft eased into the inner harbour. The tide was right out and the harbour bottom lay exposed, mud littered with cracked shelves of ice. Andrew brought the craft alongside the sloping granite ramp that led up to the town, and cut the engines.
‘Come ashore,’ the Governor said. ‘We’ll put a guard on for you. A good one.’
It was a difficult moment. Andrew said:
‘I’d rather leave the men here.’ He caught the Governor’s wary eye, and said firmly: ‘I’ll bring my lieutenant, but I’d feel happier leaving the others on board.’
‘O.K., Captain. Bring your lieutenant, and leave the others.’ The acquiescence was immediate and showed, Andrew realized, that the Governor did not, at this stage, want violence if it could be avoided. ‘We’ll put a guard on as well,’ he went on. ‘She’s the kind of job should be looked after, eh?’
Abonitu said to the others: ‘Stay here. We’ll be back in the morning.’ He went to the stores and brought out two pound tins of coffee. ‘Hope you’ll accept these, your Excellency,’ he said gravely.
‘Take the coffee from Sambo, Colonel,’ the Governor said. ‘Coffee after dinner tonight. Take you back to old times, eh?’ He laughed. ‘You can come and have a sniff at my cup.’
They made their way to the Governor’s residence, which proved to be a small second-class hotel in the town, still having the A.A. and R.A.C. recommendation signs swinging outside.
‘I lived in Government House for a bit,’ the Governor said. ‘Too damn big and draughty for the winters we have now. You can’t keep it warm. This place is different.’ He led them into what seemed to have been a cocktail bar, nodding his head to the saluting sentry on the door. There was a fireplace, and a fire stacked up with sawn chunks of furniture. ‘Take your things off and sit down, eh? Make yourselves at home. Drop of Scotch, Captain?’
‘Very welcome,’ Andrew said. ‘Thanks.’
‘Colonel! Scotch for me and the Captain. You can lick the cork.’
The Colonel brought drinks from behind the bar for the two men. There was no suggestion of offering one to Abonitu.
‘Let’s have a look at that bottle, eh?’ said the Governor. The older man brought it to him and held it up in silence for inspection. ‘Got to watch the level,’ the Governor said. He grinned. ‘Pinching my whisky’s punishable by death, but you’ve got to watch it all the same. Here’s to your very good health, Captain.’
‘And yours, your Excellency.’ Andrew sipped the whisky. It was a pungent malt, possibly Laphroaig. ‘Do you have much of this left, sir?’
The big man winked. ‘That would be telling. Enough for me and my special friends for a year or two. I can offer you a claret with your dinner tonight, as well. The Colonel used to be quite a one for claret in the old days, eh, Colonel? He can pour it well. I let him have the bottle once she starts running dregs, but he still pours it well. How are things down in Africa, Captain?’
Andrew said: ‘Not too bad.’
‘You’ll need to watch it down there. All those blacks. They’ll bear watching, eh?’ He downed his whisky in a gulp. ‘Come on, Colonel. You can see an empty glass when it’s under your nose, can’t you?’
By the time dinner was ready, the Governor had downed six large Scotches – he had ordered Andrew’s glass replenished twice – and was speaking more loudly and less precisely. At one point, he went out noisily to the lavatory, leaving Andrew and Abonitu alone with the Colonel. Andrew said to him:
‘Your rank, Colonel – that’s an official one, I take it.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘But the Governor – he’s not had military experience? Not as an officer, anyway?’
The Colonel hesitated. ‘Not prior to the Fratellini Winter.’
‘What did he do before that?’
The hesitation this time was even more protracted. He had been a commanding figure once, A
‘He was in my employ. A gardener and handyman.’ He looked at Andrew bleakly. ‘The connection has been a useful one to me, as you can see.’
Dinner was announced by a young woman in a maid’s dress. Andrew had expected uniformed flunkies and this surprised him. The caress the Governor gave her as she came up to his chair explained things. He said to the Colonel:
‘Take Sambo along to the kitchen and see he gets some grub, eh? Then you can come back and look after us.’
They ate in what had been the hotel dining room; the décor was typical and one wall still carried a framed list of instructions on times for meals. The maid served them with a rich-looking brown soup in which lumps of meat floated.
‘Seal meat,’ the Governor explained. ‘We get quite a few around the islands these days. Not bad if you can get it cooked properly.’ He drank with splashing vigour. ‘Not bad, eh? There you are, Colonel. Sambo fixed up?’
‘Yes, your Excellency.’
‘You can start pouring that claret, then.’
The maid returned with small dishes of fish in a white sauce. The Governor waved his away.
‘Give me some more soup.’ He nodded at Andrew. ‘You get tired of fish, eh? You want any more soup?’
‘No, thanks. I’ll have the fish.’
‘Just as you like.’ The Colonel carefully poured a few drops of claret into the wine glass by his plate, and he lifted it and sucked the wine in. ‘Pour it out, Colonel.’ To Andrew, he explained. ‘I never used to like wine, but once you get used, it’s not bad, eh? Have a go at yours, Captain.’
Andrew said: ‘It’s very good.’
‘Eat your fish, then. Leave some room for the next course, though. It’s a special one.’
It was meat, well roasted and cut into slices from, Andrew guessed, a shoulder. But it was not beef. He looked inquiringly at the Governor, who was watching him with drunken amusement.
‘I can’t place it,’ Andrew said.
‘Polar bear! We’ve had a few reported – they come down on the bergs – but this is the first we’ve killed. Not bad, eh? There’s a lot of meat on him.’