“Where are you speaking from?”
I gave her the address of the telephone-box as printed on the plaque in front of me.
“Hold the line a moment.” She closed the connection and I waited. After about three minutes she came back on. “The station nearest to you is in Warnham, about three miles to the south of you. Thank you, caller.”
The line cleared.
Sally was waiting for me outside the box and I related to her the substance of the conversation. As I did so, we both became aware of the sound of heavy diesel-lorries, and a few seconds later seven troop-carriers passed us. An officer was standing in the rear of one of them and he shouted something to us as they passed. We were not able to hear him. I recall a feeling of vague reassurance at that moment, even though it was the first time I had witnessed actual troop-movements.
When the lorries had passed I was able to identify the state which had caused my earlier disquiet. It was that we were the only people around.
While living in the tent, our only contact with other people had been on those occasions when-we had visited shops to purchase food. Even then, we had all observed a slackness which had not been noticeable before the trouble began. But now Sally and I were as if alone.
We began our walk to Warnham, and within a few minutes saw more signs of military activity and civilian inactivity that caused us both alarm.
A mile from the telephone-box we passed through a village. We walked the length of the street without meeting anyone, but in the windows of the last house we saw the shape of a man. I waved and called out to him, but either he did not see me or did not choose to, and he moved out of sight.
Outside the village we encountered an emplacement of heavy artillery manned by several hundred soldiers. There was a rough, but guarded, barbed-wire barrier between them and the road, and as we approached it were warned to move on. I tried to speak with the soldier, and an N.C.O. was called. He repeated the injuction, adding that unless we were out of the neighbourhood by nightfall we would find our lives in danger. I asked him whether they were Nationalist troops and received no reply.
Sally said: “Daddy, I don’t like guns.”
We moved on towards Warnham. Several times jet aircraft flew overhead, sometimes in formation, sometimes alone. I discovered the remains of an old newspaper and tried to read it to learn what I could about what was going on.
It was a privately printed tabloid and one which I felt sure was illegal. We had heard on the radio two weeks before that the operations of the press had been suspended temporarily. I found the tabloid to be virtually unintelligible; badly printed, abominably written, disgustingly slanted towards an overt racist xenophobia. It spoke of knives and leprosy, guns and venereal disease, rape, cannibalism and plague. It contained detailed instructions for the manufacture of such home-made weapons as petrol-bombs, coshes and garrottes. There were items of ‘news’, such as mass rape by Afrim militants, and raids by loyal military forces on Afrim strongholds. On the back page, at the bottom, I learned that the paper was published weekly for civilian consumption by the British Nationalist Army (Home Division).
I burned it.
The approach to Warnham Station was guarded by more soldiers. As we came into their view Sally’s hand took hold of mine and gripped it tightly.
I said to her: “It’s nothing to worry about, Sally. They’re just here to make sure no one tries to prevent the trains running.”
She didn’t reply, perhaps detecting that I was as alarmed as she at their presence. It meant, in effect, that the trains were still running, but that they were under military control. We walked up to the barricade and I spoke to a lieutenant. He was polite and helpful. I noticed that on his sleeve he had a strip of cloth on which was stitched: Loyal Secessionists. I did not refer to it.
“Is it possible to get a train to London from here?” I said.
“It’s possible,” he said. “But they don’t run very often. You’ll have to inquire, sir.”
“May we pass through?”
“Of course.”
He nodded to the two soldiers with him and they pulled back a section of their barricade. I gave the officer my thanks and we walked up to the booking office.
It was manned by a civilian wearing the normal uniform of British Rail.
“We want to go to London,” I said. “Could you tell me when the next train’s due?”
He leaned forward across the counter, put his face close up to the glass panel and looked through at us.
“You’ll have to wait till tomorrow,” he said. “There’s only one way to get a train here and that’s to ring through the day before.”
“Are you saying that no trains stop here?”
“That’s right. Not unless someone wants ‘em to. You have to ring through to the terminal.”
“But suppose it’s urgent.”
“You have to ring through to the terminal.”
I said: “Is it too late to get a train to stop here today?”
He nodded slowly. “The last one went through an hour ago. But if you’d like to buy your tickets now, I’ll ring through to the terminal for you.”
“Just a minute.”
I turned to Sally. “Listen, love, we’ll have to sleep tonight in the tent again. You don’t mind, do you? You heard what the man said.”
“O.K., Daddy. But can we definitely go home tomorrow?”
“Yes, of course.”
I said to the clerk: “How much are the tickets?”
“Ninety pence each, please.”
I pulled out of my pocket what remained of our money and counted it. We had less than a pound.
“Can I pay for them tomorrow?” I asked the clerk.
He shook his head. “Got to be paid in advance. If you haven’t got enough now, though, I’ll take a deposit and you can pay the rest tomorrow.”
“Will this be enough?”
“Should be.” He dropped the change into a drawer, reckoned the amount on to a register and passed me a slip of printed paper. “Bring this and the rest of the money tomorrow. The train’ll be here about eleven in the morning.”
I glanced at the slip. It was just a receipt for the money, not a ticket. I thanked the man and we went back outside. It had started to drizzle. I wasn’t sure how I was going to obtain the rest of the money by morning, but already a half-formed determination to steal it if necessary had come to mind.
At the barricade, the young lieutenant nodded to us.
“Tomorrow, eh?” he said. “That’s happened to a lot of people here. Are you refugees?”
I told him we were, though I had not previously applied the word to our predicament.
“You should be all right in London,” he said. “Our lot are getting things organized there.”
He gave me the name and address of a group in London who were trying to find accommodation for the homeless. I wrote it down and thanked him. He expressed concern about what we were to do tonight.
“I could have offered to find you a billet,” he said. “We’ve done it before. But there’s something on. We might be moving out tonight. What will you do?”
“We’ve got camping-equipment,” I said.
“Oh, that’s all right then. But if I were you, I’d get as far away from here as you can. We’re being mobilized. The Nationalists are only a couple of miles away.”
Again I thanked him and we moved on. Both Sally and I had been comforted by his outgoing nature, by his apparent willingness to assist us. But what he had said had given us cause for alarm and I decided to heed his warning. We walked another three or four miles to the south before trying to find somewhere to camp. In the end, we came across a suitable place on the side of a low hill, screened on three sides by woodland