Verity said, ‘The poor Martians! They’ve made a formidable enemy.’
‘You said three trips?’ Frank asked.
‘Yes, collecting up benighted souls like yourselves and taking them home.’
‘Home?’
‘I mean my own home – my farm is near Abbotsdale, which is a village some ten miles thataway,’ and she jerked her thumb over her shoulder, ‘in the vicinity of Amersham. First trip was out of the goodness of my heart. Second trip I picked up your Lieutenant-Colonel Fairfield. Pleasant chap, and one of the more senior officers to have survived – in this part of the Cordon, at least. And he told me that while the telephone and telegraph are out – the Martians seem to be busily cutting the wires – the field units have wireless telegraph, and that still works, and there’s some coordination going on among the survivors. Those caught within the Cordon are being withdrawn from the perimeter for now, and brought back to suitable rest stops – suitable meaning away from a Martian pit at least, for the cylinders fell throughout the cordoned-off zone, not just at the edge. I took Fairfield to Abbotsdale, and he requested I come back out for the rest of his unit – I think he was particularly keen to find you, Doctor Jenkins.’
‘Frank,’ he said heavily. ‘And we’re more than grateful that you did.’
‘Load up, then,’ she said briskly. ‘I can take a round dozen in the cart. Any of you who feel up to walking, you’re welcome to follow. I’ll come back for the rest, have no fear. I brought breakfast. I have hams, cheese, bread, and buckets of fresh milk – a couple of your strong lads can unload. Oh, and clean drinking water. Given what the Martian Smoke can do to the soil, you’re advised not to drink from streams and broken mains and such just yet.’
‘Still not quite dawn,’ Frank said. ‘But it’s as if the sun has come out. Thank you, Mildred.’
But she seemed distracted. She said softly, ‘What strikes me is how deuced young your people are.’
‘Indeed. Well, nobody old is foolish enough to go to war.’
20
AN OCCUPIED COUNTRYSIDE
After a hasty breakfast, and with the cart loaded, Mildred snapped her reins, the horses pulled with a patient, heavy plod, and the cart headed across the rough ground of the field. Frank himself rode up with the farmer – somewhat reluctantly, while there were others of his people who had no place to ride at all, but his more experienced subordinates insisted that as commanding officer he should take the lead. It felt very odd, even dream-like, to be out of cover, even if there were no Martians in sight.
As they rode they spoke softly, with Mildred asking Frank about his own background. She was interested to find out about his relationship with Walter, and had read his book; Frank later told me he felt the typical younger brother’s jealousy at this, even in such circumstances.
A hundred yards off across the field, a cluster of cows lowed mournfully. ‘I’m sure Jimmy Rodgers won’t neglect his milking, Martians or no Martians,’ Mildred said sternly.
They hit a particularly deep gully in the field, and the cart jolted violently.
Frank said, winded, ‘So you’re not troubling to use the roads, Mildred?’
For answer she pointed into the distance ahead, misty with the dawn. Now Frank saw Martians, two fighting-machines walking in the greyness, astonishingly tall – like church steeples come to life in this English countryside, Frank thought.
‘That’s why,’ Mildred said. ‘They’re everywhere – coming in from the pits at the perimeter and from those in the interior – they’re cutting roads and rail lines and the telephone wires best to stay out of the way of them altogether, don’t you think? So we’ll stay off the roads, and bypass Gerrards Cross, and then Knotty Green, Penn, Tyler’s Green, Holmer Green, on the way to Abbotsdale. It’s up hill and down dale all the way…’
Mildred turned out to be right about that. Even crossing the fields, the going was steep, all dips and climbs. The landscape had a closed-in feeling to Frank. It was like a vast green mouth, on this cold March day. He supposed a military man would fret about the lack of long eye lines.
Mildred eyed him. ‘You don’t know the Chilterns, do you?’
He laughed. ‘Less than the Martians do already, I suspect.’
She gestured. ‘Sixty miles of high ground, from the Goring Gap in the south-west where the Thames passes, to the Hitchin Gap in the north-east – as I am sure the military planners in London and Aldershot and wherever are working out as we speak. It’s like this all the way, chalk country, lots of crowding hills and narrow valleys. It seems evident to me that the Martians have seized this place to serve as a sort of base of operations. A fortified perimeter from which they can strike out elsewhere – at London, presumably. And in the meantime we’re all stuck here.’
‘We? But who is “we”?’
‘That’s one of the questions that needs to be discussed. Here’s the brief. I’ll drop off your troops in Abbotsdale, and I’ll take you to the Manor – it’s not far.’
‘The Manor?’
‘Where you will be the guest for the day of the Dowager Lady Emily Bonneville. She has your Lieutenant-Colonel Fairfield already, and other senior officers from this part of the Cordon, and she has summoned other significant figures from Abbotsdale and nearby villages – the local bobby, the postmaster, the bank manager, that sort. Jimmy Rodgers, with the largest land-holding hereabouts—’
‘There’s to be a gathering hosted by the Lady of the Manor?’ Frank had to laugh. ‘It’s all rather medieval, isn’t it?’
‘Look around you. You’re on a horse and cart, crossing a field! There may be interplanetary engines stalking around, but I rather think we are somewhat medieval now, don’t you? As for Lady Bonneville, I suspect she will have more of a problem with the Germans in your units than with the Martians. Old school, you see. On a more practical note, we have to think about the welfare of your toy soldiers. Hundreds of them, I imagine.’
‘Thousands, probably, if they survived.’
‘There’s an awful lot of you, and a lot of empty bellies. I don’t imagine you brought over much in the way of supplies?’
He thought about that. ‘There were field kitchens… No, I don’t suppose we brought a great deal. A day or two’s worth, perhaps.’
She sighed. ‘I thought so. You expected a short campaign in a well provisioned countryside, not a siege. In the short term we’ll have to rely on our stores. But soon enough – these men of yours. Mostly young, yes? Strong, fit, used to discipline.’
‘If we can maintain it.’
‘Oh, they’ll maintain it when I have them ploughing my fields.’
Frank felt bewildered. It was only a few hours since he had been cowering in a scratch trench under attack from an invading force from another world – and now here was this remarkable woman with her talk of ploughing fields. ‘You’ve thought it out, haven’t you?’
‘Ploughing?’
‘We can’t use tractors, of course; the Martians evidently won’t allow us to use motors. Hard work. And we will have to clear the fields, or some of them.’
Frank glanced around with, he would later admit to me, a town-dweller’s blank incomprehension of the countryside. ‘Don’t you feed yourselves now?’
She smiled. ‘Not for, oh, thirty or forty years I think. Not since the imports of cheap grain from Europe and America began, and the farmers went out of business. So the land was turned to foresting, or dairy cattle. Well, no more American grain for us for a while. Lucky for us that a lot of the folk around here remember the old ways…’