‘Mars is said to be a dusty world, and far from the sun so the light is dim,’ I said. ‘To come to a world like this – to a day like this – must be a glory of light and colour.’
‘Or a dazzle, as a ski run is for us. Perhaps they wear sunglasses. Ha! That would be a sight to see.’
Verity said that the Martians generally didn’t interfere with cyclists, not identifying that most democratic of vehicles with war-making capabilities. ‘One can hardly carry a field gun on a safety cycle. Best not to go too fast, however. Speed seems to be another trigger for their attention.’
‘Not much chance of that,’ I said, gasping as we came to yet another rise.
‘They are motivated to keep us alive, the Martians. Most of us anyhow. That is the horrible price we pay. But that latitude gives us an opportunity, just a chink. We must move around, we must do things – we must farm to feed ourselves and gather fuel to keep warm, and so forth. And we can use that freedom to move to serve our own purposes.’ She tapped her temple. ‘No matter how acute a Martian’s eyes, he cannot see inside here, can he?’
In the end, we found Marriott by lunch time.
Having set off from one inn in Abbotsdale, Verity brought me to another, set on the crest of a hill on the road that runs south out of Amersham towards Wycombe. I thought it had been a coaching inn once; like many of the older buildings in the area, the inns and the churches, it was walled with flint nodules. I could see where a sign-board had been smashed off its bracket.
Outside, two men sat on a bench, lounging in the sun, dressed in grimy work clothes and flat caps, and with tankards on the bench at their sides. As we rode up the hill, they called out bawdy encouragement. ‘Can you make it, love? Look at those thighs a-pumpin’, Toby! You need a hand?’ And they made lewd grasping motions with their fingers.
Verity glanced at me. ‘Ignore them.’
I shrugged. But I saw that the liquid in the tankards was clear, like water; whatever they were drinking wasn’t beer.
I took in the countryside. We were remarkably close to the heart of the Martian occupation here. From this height I could even glimpse the periphery of the Redoubt, the big main pit they had dug into the ruins of Amersham. It was a brown scar visible beyond the spring greenery. This was to our north-east as I saw it; to the north-west I made out an extensive but shallow flood from which trees and field boundaries and a few buildings protruded, running up a valley away from the Martian camp. I imagined the Martians’ rough earthworks had damaged the local drainage, and such floods must be common.
As we dismounted the two men outside the inn got to their feet, staggering a bit, and comically doffed their caps to us. They were perhaps thirty, I thought, both tough-looking, their hair crudely cut and dirt smeared around their necks, and if their manner was drunken their eyes were oddly clear. Something wasn’t right about them, I could see that.
One of them approached me. ‘Welcome to the Flyin’ Fox, missus. I’m Jeff and he’s Toby.’
The other sniggered. ‘No, you clown, I’m Jeff and you’re Toby.’
‘I’ll give you a hand with yon jalopy.’ He made a grab with his left hand for my handlebars – and with his right for my backside. ‘Oops!’
Palm had barely made contact with buttock before I had got hold of his index finger, swivelled around, twisted the finger and forced him down on one knee, his arm bent backwards.
‘Ow! Pax! Pax! I didn’t mean no ’arm!’
Verity said calmly, ‘I think you can let him go, Julie.’ I saw that she’d set her bicycle on its stand, and stood with her jacket pulled back to reveal a glimpse of the service revolver in its holster at her waist.
The other man stood with his hands raised. ‘Let’s all calm down.’ The country burr was still there but the drunken slur was gone.
I gave my miscreant’s finger one last vicious twist, then let him go.
He got to his feet shaking his hand and tucking it under his armpit. ‘I didn’t mean no ’arm. Just keeping watch and playing a part, is all.’
‘“Playing a part”? Thought so.’ I got hold of one of the tankards and poured the clear liquid onto the ground. ‘Pure water? Even an idiot like you can’t get drunk on water – Jeff, or Toby.’
‘Neither,’ he snarled, ‘and you don’t need to know.’
Verity let her jacket drop. ‘It’s all cover, Julie, in case the Martians are watching.’
‘That’s it,’ said my assailant. ‘They got used to seeing us drunk, see, at a place like this. Rolling around and even laughing at ’em, when they come and stand over us. So long as you stay out of reach of them tentacles and nets… I don’t suppose they’s so smart as to be able to tell a true drunk from a faker.’
‘Got carried away in the performance, did you?’
‘What’s wrong with that? And where did you learn to ’urt a man like that?’
‘Paris, if you must know. I was caught up in the flight from London in the last lot, the First War, with my sister-in-law. We had to fight our way past men like you. After the War I learned how to look after myself properly.’
‘Didn’t mean no ’arm—’
‘You deserved what you got,’ Verity snapped. ‘Now, Marriott’s expecting us.’ She pushed past the men and led me without further ado into the cool shadows of the inn.
22
‘MARRIOTT’
The man we knew only as ‘Marriott’ was in the inn’s cellar. The Martians, of course, knew or cared nothing of human names, but I suppose the secrecy that surrounds such operations becomes a habit.
He was dark of complexion and dark haired, short, perhaps fifty, and he had a pronounced London accent. He poured us tea, made with hot water from a Dewar flask.
The cellar, which smelled faintly of damp, was lit by smoky candles that looked home-made, and most of it was taken up by the clutter you might have expected: stands with empty beer barrels, pipes and tubes, cartons and kegs, and a few bottles of spirit on a rack. But there were a few incongruous items: a stack of rifles, boxes of ammunition – even what looked like a machine gun. Maps had been pinned to the walls: good quality, ordnance survey. These had been extensively marked up in pencil, red and white, and stretches had been shaded blue, marking the flooded areas perhaps. And there was a kind of wireless receiver, on a side table by one wall.
Marriott sat in an office chair at a desk wide and handsome – a desk that had no place down here – we sat on stools that must once have graced the bar above. There were papers heaped up on the desk, held in place with paperweights of flint.
‘I’m sorry about the lads,’ Marriott said when Verity briefly recounted our welcome. ‘All part of the cover, of course.’ He waved a hand. ‘You can see why an inn is so useful. Even the Martians know that people come to such places at all hours. And an inn has a cellar, like this one, where we can get up to all sorts of mischief out of the Martians’ sight. But it’s all fakery upstairs, as – what did they give their names as?’
‘Jeff and Toby.’ Verity seemed restless; she got up from her stool and roamed around, peering to see the maps in the dim light, to read labelling on the boxes and crates.
‘That’ll do,’ Marriott said. ‘But we ran out of beer on the second or third night. Ha! Didn’t take us long to drink the place dry. And of course we don’t have power or even running water. But we get by.’ He grinned, self-satisfied in his little underground kingdom.
I was quickly deciding that I did not like this man, no matter how brave he proved to be, how noble his motives. With the aim of puncturing him a little, I ignored this speech and turned to Verity. ‘How did you get in contact with these characters?’