Lateef countered my arguments by pointing out the increased frequency of interrogations, and that so far we had managed to avoid personal violence against ourselves, whereas other refugee groups had suffered beatings, imprisonment and rape at the hands of military bodies.
His contention was that this was because we were manifestly defenceless.
I told him that I was prepared to accept any and all consequences of my being found in possession of the rifle; that if we were taken for interrogation I would hide it at once, and that if I was caught actually holding or using the rifle I would absolve the rest of the group from any knowledge or complicity.
Lateef seemed satisfied that this undertaking of mine effectively disposed of any disadvantage to him or the others, and in due course gave me the ammunition.
I took the weapon to pieces, cleaned and lubricated it, and learned how to sight it. Unwilling to waste any of the ammunition, or to draw attention to ourselves by the sound of its explosion, I did not fire it. A man in our group who knew something of rifles told me that it was powerful and accurate, and should be used with discretion.
In the days that followed I appreciated that there had been a subtle shift of emphasis in the way in which the group organized itself. I came to town in the early afternoon, while arrangements for the day’s festivities were in their last stages. The square in the centre of the town had been emptied of cars, and people walked across the open space as if unaware that on normal days the town was jammed tight with the traffic passing through towards the coast.
Most of the shops which opened on to the square had laid out wooden stands in front of their windows and laden them with goods. Several men worked on the tops of ladders, attaching coloured bunting across the streets. Nearly every window ledge was decorated with a handful of flowers.
At the wide end of the square, in front of the council offices, there was a small fairground, consisting of a children’s roundabout, a helter-skelter, a row of swing-boats and several prize-booths.
As I waited outside my hotel, a large coach stopped in a nearby sidestreet and about fifty or sixty passengers climbed out and trooped into a mock-Tudor restaurant on the far side of the square. I waited until the last one was inside, then walked in the opposite direction until I was out of the town centre and in residential sidestreets.
When I returned the festivities were in full swing.
I caught my first sight of the girl as she stood by a display of handbags outside a leather store. It was the fashion at that time for girls to wear clothes made of very light material and with skirts several inches above the knee. She was dressed in pale blue and wore her hair straight and long. To me she was very beautiful. As I crossed the square towards her she moved on and was lost in the crowds. I waited by the leather shop, hoping to catch another glimpse of her, but was not able to. After a few minutes I changed my position and stood in the narrow alley that ran between the shooting-gallery and coconut-shy.
I returned to my hotel after an hour and ordered some coffee. Later, I went back into the square and saw her profile against the side of one of the lorries that transported the fairground equipment. She was walking at right angles to my line of sight, staring thoughtfully at the ground. She reached the steps outside the council offices and walked up them. At the top she turned and faced me. Across the square we gazed at one another. I walked towards her.
I reached the bottom of the steps and she turned and went into the building. Not liking to follow her, I went up to where she had been standing and stood facing into the building. Behind me, I heard an abrupt explosion and a scream, and the sound of several people shouting. I did not turn. For about two minutes the square was noisy with the sound of shouting and music. Finally, someone thought to turn off the music that was being relayed by tannoy into the square, and silence fell. Somewhere a woman was sobbing.
Only as the ambulance arrived did I turn to face the square and saw that an accident had happened on the roundabout. A small child was trapped by its legs between the platform and the motor in the centre.
I waited for the child to be released. The ambulance men did not appear to know how to go about it. Finally, a fire-appliance drove up and three men using an electric saw cut through the wood of the platform and freed the child’s legs. The child was unconscious. As the ambulance drove away, and the music started up again, I realized that the girl stood beside me. I took her hand and led her away from the centre into the streets along which I had walked earlier.
Her beauty took away from me my ability for glib conversation. I wanted to flatter her and impress her, but the appropriate words would not flow.
We returned to my hotel in the evening and I bought her dinner. When we had finished eating she became distracted and told me she had to leave. I saw her to the door of the hotel but she would not allow me to escort her any farther. I went into the hotel lounge and watched television for the rest of the evening.
The following morning I purchased a newspaper and learned that the child had died on the way to hospital. I threw away the newspaper.
I had arranged to meet Isobel in the afternoon and had until then in which to pass the time. For most of the morning I watched the men dismantling the pieces of the fairground and loading them on to the lorries. By midday the square had been emptied of equipment and the police were allowing normal traffic to pass through.
After luncheon in the hotel I borrowed a friend’s motorcycle and took it out on to the main road. Half an hour later in a buoyant mood, I met Isobel. She was wearing the pale-blue dress again, as I had requested. Again we walked, this time leaving the town and finding several paths through the countryside. I wanted to make love to her, but she would not allow me to.
On our way back to the town we were caught unexpectedly in a summer shower, which soaked us thoroughly. I had planned to entertain her with another dinner at the hotel, but instead we hitched a ride back to her house. She would not let me go inside with her. Instead, I promised to return to the town during the following week. She agreed to see me then.
As I went into the foyer of the hotel one of the porters told me that the mother of the child had committed suicide in the afternoon. It had been she, according to the porter, who had encouraged the child to stand on the roundabout as it was moving. For a while we discussed the tragedy, then I had a meal in the hotel restaurant. Afterwards I went to the local cinema and watched a double-feature horror programme. In the interval I noticed Isobel sitting a few rows in front of me, kissing with a young man approximately her own age. She didn’t see me. I left at once and in the morning I returned to London.
In one village I discovered a transistor radio. Its batteries were flat. I took them out of the back of the radio and warmed them slowly the next time I was near a fire. While they were still warm I put them back into the radio and switched it on.
At that time the BBC was broadcasting on one wavelength only, interspersing long sessions of light music with newsreports. Though I listened until the batteries went flat two hours later, I heard no bulletin about the fighting, nor about the plight of the refugees, nor about any political subject whatsoever. I gathered that there had been a plane-crash in South America.
The next time I had batteries for the radio, the only channel I could find was Radio Peace … broadcast from a converted iron-ore ship moored off the Isle of Wight. The output of that was limited to prolonged prayer-sessions, Bible-readings and hymns.
We were running short of food again and Lateef made the decision to approach a near-by village and arrange a barter. We consulted our maps.
From experience we had learned that it was good general policy to avoid any village or town with more than about a thousand inhabitants, or situated anywhere near a major road. We had found that a high percentage of such places were either occupied by one faction or another and were subject to martial law in practice as well as theory, or else that a small garrison or camp would be maintained. As this effectively took from our sphere of operations most towns and villages, we were obliged to obtain the bulk of our supplies from isolated hamlets and solitary farms and houses. If we were fortunate enough to find somewhere that would provide us readily with what we needed, then we would either make an encampment near by, or keep on the move in the immediate neighbourhood.