Chapter 11

The land is warm beneath the sun's high hand, the light falls prone and further shades the seasons” pastel scatter; this road, here made golden by a recent shower, steams like a burnished causeway to the sky. We move quickly and alone, coursing through the surfaced, climbing writhes of stagy, sun struck mist, trailing our exhausts like broken puppet strings amongst the avenues of trees. The softly steaming roads are quiet and still, if not empty; we pass ditched carts and trailers, trucks fallen on their sides or angled into culverts, wheels cocked to the air, noses stuck down into the watery troughs. More trucks, buses, vans, pick ups and cars make chicanes of the road's long straights, their bodies burned out, or overturned or simply left. All speak of the crowds who've passed this way, discarding these metal carapaces like tenderbodied crabs on the floors of seas, moulting off their past anatomies. We weave through their lifeless desolation like a needle through a frayed tapestry of ruin.

Piles and trails of abandoned possessions further block the road, and here you see the wretchedness of the refugees” imagination, if not their lives themselves, by what they thought at first to bring, and then discard; electrical goods, cheap ornaments, potted plants, whole libraries of records, gaudy piles of magazines made sodden by the rain… as though in their sudden panic they seized upon what was nearest them at the time when the realisation dawned that staying put was no longer such a good idea.

There are no dead bodies I can see, but here and there are piles and trails of clothes, strewn by wind or animal across the fields and the surface of the road, sometimes by chance arranged in a rough semblance of a human shape and so attracting the startled eye. We drive straight over much of the wreckage, scattering pots and pans, lampshades, boxes and plastics casings. We bounce over the heaped, bedraggled clothes, scattering them behind.

Our driver sweeps and swerves, seemingly aiming for certain items of wreckage missed or left in the wake of the jeep in front; he whoops and laughs as he disposes of another derelict household effect or catches a pan left spinning in the front jeep's wake. His naked flesh has stippled with cold, but he does not seem to notice. His olive bandana ripples in the wind, his sunglasses glint. The lieutenant sits with one leg drawn up on the sill of the door, her long gun's stock resting on her lap beside her radio, barrel raised to the wind like a whip. The soldier in front of me sits similarly,” and checks and re checks his gun, snapping magazines out then in, out then in.

Occasionally he leans forward and, with a small rag produced from a pouch at his waist, oils a few more square millimetres of the weapon's gleaming surface. Dressed in long, laced boots, bulkily rustling fatigues and a quilted jacket that I think was once white but which has been smeared with paints impersonating every colour of mud from brown to black to red, yellow and green, he wears a metal helmet similar to the lieutenant's but with the words DEAD INSIDE scrawled on the green cloth cover, in what looks like scarlet lipstick.

Behind and above me, Karma wears a pair of plus fours liberated from a farm topped by a fur coat from one of our wardrobes, worn over his combat jacket; the hands clutching the stirrup handled rear of the machine gun are cocooned in skigloves, one of which has had the top half of the index finger removed to allow better access to the gun's trigger. On to his metal helmet's fabric cover are sewn medal ribbons awarded to one of my ancestors.

The soldier in front of me rattles out the magazine once more. He inspects the gleaming rounds nestling inside, turns the tapetwinned clip over and repeats the process, then snicks it back into place again. I can smell the gun's oil. He starts to sing; something vaguely recognisable as popular, from several years ago. The lieutenant reaches into a satchel by her feet something on her hand catches my eye and I think of the bag of jewels you held at your feet in the carriage then sits back and clips a couple of hand grenades on to the front of her jacket. The grenades” square cut faceted surfaces make them look like plump bars of dark chocolate. She lights another cigarette.

I have seen hunts not so different from this. Four wheel drives with air conditioning instead of jeeps with machinegun mounts, horse boxes rather than trucks, shotguns, not automatics. Still we float along just so; for either set the cast is much the same. The lieutenant. possesses her own style, sweeping along, sunglassed, lips clenched around a cigarette, staring forward. Her men too have their own combat chic. They inhabit odd items of sometimes inappropriate military gear a brigadier's cap, some gold but grubby epaulets stitched on to a combat jacket, an ostentatious show of rotund black hand grenades plastered everywhere across a gilet like badges on a vest. Others sport pieces of civilian property a gaudy waistcoat worn beneath the camouflage, another martially dubious hat that may have been a yachtsman's, a ring pull from a drinks can worn as an earring many worn, I suspect, as much for their assumed good luck value as for any supposed expression of individuality.

And in some ways we are outdone. Our hunts were frivolous; mere games for those with the time, land and resource to spare for such pursuits. The lieutenant's purpose is more serious, her mission bearing an import greater than any we displayed; more than the life or death of a few feeling animals hangs in the balance now. All our fates, and the castle's, are piled together upon the scale's swung platform, awaiting a judgment delivered not by any judiciary, however partial in its view, but by naked force of arms.

These levelling times remain unfair, and commonise, demote, in such a civilised, cultivated countryside, what should be free from vulgar threat. Such sick suspense and mayhem all around, seem to me to belong in cruder climes, where less has been built up to be brought down. But therein lies our original mistake, perhaps; each inaugurating side in this could not believe we would reduce ourselves to the savagery we have embraced.

I wonder at the history of the lieutenant and her men. They seem at least semi soldierly, for all that they are obviously irregulars, looking out only for themselves, not part of any larger force nor paying any conspicuous allegiance to a greater cause. Still, their vehicles, it occurs to me. are army, or ex army. Most of the bands of fighters now roaming the land little more or less than bandits we've heard favour, or have no choice but to requisition and employ, ordinary four wheel drives, or pick ups. In contrast, the lieutenant's men have proper military trucks and jeeps, and their weapons seem of a piece: several heavy machine guns, automatic rifles, rifle grenades, matching automatic pistols. I had thought they might add my shotguns and rifle to their arsenal, but if they have, such weapons are patently not their first choice. They seem, in retrospect, quite disciplined too. Were they a regular army unit, once?

I decide to ask. I look at the lieutenant, sitting, staring ahead, eyes hidden behind the black sunglasses. She turns her head briefly as we pass a road junction and a canted but still legible signpost, then looks forward again. I ponder the best way to approach. She takes out her silver cigarette case, opens it and selects one. I lean over towards her, past Karma's intruding knees. “May l?” I ask, pointing at the case as she is about to close it.

The mask that is the sunglasses regards me; I see my own distorted reflection. Her lips twist. She holds the case out towards me. “Sure. Help yourself.”

I take a cigarette; we bend towards each other as she lights mine, then hers. The cigarette tastes acrid and harsh; it must have dried out over a year or more ago to become so bitter. I had wondered where the lieutenant found her tobacco, surmising there might still be some link, however circuitous and unsafe, however much the preserve of smugglers and the desperate, to wherever peace and a semblance of prosperity might still prevail, but these dry tubes have surely been raided from ruined shops or taken from the fleeing dispossessed; no hint here of a fresh supply.