The Guardians Read online

  “And the Conurbans despise them for living like slaves.”

  “Slaves!” Mike grinned. “Tell that to Gaudion, our butler. But if both lots do feel that way it’s just as well, isn’t it? Each satisfied with what they have and despising the others. A good arrangement all around.”

  There was a weird logic in it. Rob took a different tack. “Why do you have such primitive transport—horses and carriages instead of electrocars. They can’t be as comfortable and they can’t travel as fast.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure about the comfort. Modern carriages have a lot of little refinements, including extremely good springing. It’s a very pleasant ride. And as for speed, what’s the hurry? Everyone has time enough and to spare.”

  “I suppose so.”

  It did not satisfy him, though. It was one of the moments which made him realize that this was a strange and alien land—that the whole cast of Mike’s mind was foreign to his.

  • • •

  Gradually his den took on a slightly more comfortable aspect. There were a couple of old rugs Mike had brought, a folding chair, a box which served as a table—best of all a little portable stove fueled, like the lamp, by kerosene.

  He could cook things for himself, and it was often easier for Mike to bring him raw eggs, steaks and so on, than food from the larder. All the food here, he found, was different from that which he had been used to: it looked better and tasted better. He did his cooking in the outer chamber where the smells would disperse more readily into the open air. To be on the safe side he confined his activities to early morning and late evening. Another thing Mike had produced was a frying pan. About an hour after he had left one day Rob was using it to cook a pork chop he had brought him.

  He also had some cold boiled potatoes which he chopped and tossed into the sizzling fat. He had not eaten since a piece of game pie at midday and was ravenously hungry. He knelt beside the stove, leaning forward both to watch the cooking and sniff the delicious smell. He heard a small sound outside the doorway. He was not as alert to this as he had been—he had developed a feeling of security bit by bit—but he looked up. If it had been Mike returning for some reason he would have heard his whistle. An animal? It might be. Then there was the unmistakable sound of a footfall and in the small flaring light of the stove’s flame he could see that someone was standing outside, looking in at him.

  He froze helplessly.

  “So this is where Mike gets to,” a voice said.

  It was a woman’s voice.

  6

  Questions at a Garden Party

  SHE DID NOT COME IN, but told Rob to switch off the stove and follow her outside. She stood in the clearing and watched him emerge from the bramble thicket.

  It had been a fine day and some brightness lingered. He could see that she was about forty, of average height, with dark hair and dark eyes. She wore a coat and skirt of heavy-looking brown material and plain, flat shoes. She had a flimsy scarlet scarf at her neck and several rings on her fingers, one of them with a large blue stone.

  “I’m Mike’s mother. I’d like to know what this is all about.”

  Her voice had a slightly harsh quality. She sounded like a person used to having her questions answered, and promptly.

  “I’ve just been living here,” Rob said. “I haven’t done anything.”

  Her eyes were studying him. He realized how scruffy he probably looked and felt ashamed.

  “I want to know why,” she said. “Who you are, where you come from.”

  He told her awkwardly, stumbling over the account. She listened, not interrupting or helping him when he was in difficulties. At the end she said, “And then?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “What was to come next? You didn’t expect to live out your days in a hole in the ground, did you?”

  “We hadn’t really planned.”

  She gave a small sigh of exasperation. “No, I suppose not. I think I’d better have a talk with Mike.”

  “He doesn’t know . . . ?”

  “About my coming here? No.”

  Mike had not betrayed him. He was ashamed of thinking he might have done.

  “How did you find out?”

  “Mike has been ill. Did he tell you?” Rob nodded. “We were advised to keep an eye on him. And he’s been doing odd things—going out more and staying out longer. Then there was the matter of articles missing from the house. Food in particular. Households are better organized than you and he probably imagine. The housekeeper is accountable to me, the cook to the housekeeper, the kitchen maids to the cook. Feeding an extra mouth leaves traces.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “There’s no need. I’m telling you how I realized there was someone else on the scene. He always came in this direction. Today I found Captain tethered down by the river. If you were concealing someone, this place would be as likely as any.”

  “You knew about it? Mike said he found it. It was all overgrown.”

  “It would be, after more than twenty years. I used to come here as a girl—Mike’s father and I were cousins. We found it then.” She gazed at the brambles as though recalling that distant time. “We even camped out in it, I remember.”

  Talking like this she was slightly less intimidating. But she turned back to him, frowning.

  “We still have to decide what to do about you. It might be best for you to come back home with me now.”

  “I’m all right here. Really.”

  She was silent for a moment, undecided.

  “I suppose if you’ve been here as long as this one more night will not make much difference. I’ll come and see you again in the morning. Will you be warm enough?”

  “Mike brought some blankets.”

  “Yes, I know. Are there enough?” Rob nodded. “Then I’ll let you get back to your supper. What was it you were cooking? It smelled like pork.”

  “A chop.”

  “Then be sure you cook it properly. You must not take chances with pork. Good night, Rob.”

  • • •

  Rob thought about what he should do. His chief impulse was to get away while he had the chance. He could be miles from here by the time she returned. He was better equipped than he had been for living rough, not only physically and mentally but with the different things Mike had given him. The knife alone would make a tremendous difference. It was better to go on the run again than to wait here for the inevitable. She had said things could not go on like this—an adult was bound to look at it in that way—and the obvious alternative was to send him back to the Conurb.

  It was the thought of Mike which held him back. He had come to depend on him, and not just for material help. He wanted to talk to him about it. The idea crossed his mind of going up to the house, somehow getting in and finding him. That was impractical, though. He would almost certainly get caught which would only make matters worse. And even if he were not, he would never find Mike’s room in a house that had so many.

  His uncertainty was decided by the weather. He went into the clearing after supper and found that a drizzle of rain had started. When he looked again later it was much heavier, a drenching downpour. He retired to his lamplit cell, and to bed. If he were to make a break he could do so in the morning.

  But in the morning the rain was coming down steadily and looked as though it had been doing so all night. The brambles scattered droplets down on him when he pulled them aside and everything outside—the clearing and the wood—was soaked and dripping. He went back in, dispirited and uncertain. He still had time to get clear because it was unlikely that anyone would come up from the house until the rain stopped. But if he did get away, what object could he have? He might be better fitted for living rough but he was also more conscious of the drawbacks. There was not much future, as Mike’s mother had pointed out, in living in a hole in the ground.

  After a couple of hours the rain stopped, and soon after there was blue in the sky. Rob took his things and went up to the stream to w
ash. There was a sheltered spot with a shelf of flat rock overlooking a pool. He was coming back when he heard Mike’s whistle. He stopped, and heard it again. He had to make up his mind. He went forward slowly and into the clearing. The sun had broken through and the grass was beginning to steam with heat. Mike was there, his mother with him.

  “You’re still here? I wasn’t sure if you would be,” Mike said.

  Rob wondered if there was a touch of disappointment in his voice. It would have solved a problem for Mike, too, if he had left during the night. He nodded.

  “I’m still here.”

  “We need to talk,” Mike’s mother said.

  Her face, in the full light of day, was more wrinkled than he had thought. It was a strong face, with deep eyes set close to a long straight nose. She had a mole on her right cheek. She was wearing a costume something like the one she had worn the previous day, but in a heathery-blue color. The scent she was wearing teased his nostrils.

  “This isn’t going to be easy,” she continued.

  Her eyes studied him and her voice with its slight harshness labeled him a nuisance. He glanced toward Mike who looked at him noncommittally. Rob said, trying to keep the resentment out of his voice, “It’s all right. I can move on.”

  “Move on where?”

  “Somewhere. I’ll manage.”

  “You’re only a boy,” she said. “I doubt if you’re Mike’s age. And there is nowhere to go, anyway. We live in a civilized world and people have to fit in. The best thing would be to go back to the place you came from, to the Conurb.”

  Rob shook his head. “No.”

  “I thought of reporting you,” she said. “For your own good. You have had troubles over there. Everyone does, everywhere. You would settle down and get used to things. We all have to adjust.”

  He was silent. He ought to have gone while he had the chance, but as long as she had not reported him yet there was hope. If he could persuade her not to do anything for a few days, a few hours even . . .

  “I want to ask you again: will you do it—go back voluntarily?”

  “No, not voluntarily.”

  She gave a small shrug. “Well, that’s that. Mike and I have had a talk about you. An argument, in fact.” She looked at her son with a faint smile. “He takes you very seriously and he wants to help you. The question is: how?”

  He wondered about the argument; she did not seem like a person who would yield easily. He remembered the illness Mike had had, and what he had said about brain fever. She might be indulging him deliberately—might have been told to. Not that there was anything wrong with Mike’s brain as far as he could see.

  “If I could stay here for a little while . . .” he said.

  “There is no point in that,” she said crisply. “We must have a proper solution. If you’re not to go back to the Conurb then you must live in the County. We can’t fit you in among the servants—there would be too many questions asked. So we’re left with fitting you into the family.”

  “But I’m not . . .”

  “You’re not gentry, and there are a number of ways in which it shows. Your speech, for instance. And we have to be able to account for your origins and background. You need to have a story that makes sense but is difficult if not impossible to check. I think you will have to be a distant cousin, a very distant cousin.”

  He was impressed by the assurance with which she spoke. It was fantastic but he had a feeling that it could work, if she said so.

  “Your coloring is dark,” she continued. “You could pass for someone who has lived in the East. The son, for instance, of a cousin of mine in Nepal, whom she has decided to send to school in England following her husband’s death. Nepal would do very well. The king has discouraged Western visitors and settlers for many years, and those Europeans who live there are largely out of touch with home. Any small errors in speech or manners would be assumed to be due to that.”

  “Do you have a cousin?” Rob asked. “A real person?”

  “When you address a lady,” she said, “you say ‘ma’am.’ That’s probably true even in Nepal.”

  He felt himself coloring. “I’m sorry . . . ma’am.”

  “Better. Yes, I do have a cousin there. Her name is Amanda and her husband did die last year. She has no children but no one here knows that. You had better keep your Christian name, but you will be Rob Perrott, not Randall.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Mike’s father has been told the full story of course, and has given his approval. But we shan’t take Cecily into our confidence. She is young and might say something wrong without meaning to.”

  “It’s going to be a lot of trouble for you.”

  She did not deny it, but said, “You can make it easier by learning things quickly. There will be a lot to learn.”

  • • •

  Rob was supposed to have come from Nepal to London Airport, and from there to the copter station at a small town fifteen miles away. The subterfuge was necessary, Mrs. Gifford explained, because of the servants who would naturally be curious about the new arrival. Mike would take him to the station and the Giffords would pick him up in the carriage.

  Mike brought up two horses and they rode together across country. It was for Rob an uneasy and uncomfortable journey. The second horse according to Mike was an elderly hack with no spirit at all but he found it alarming all the same. Mike gave him advice and criticism which did not help a lot. He realized that he was going to have to learn horse riding if he were to live in the County, and the thought was depressing.

  He was feeling altogether more depressed than seemed reasonable. He told himself how lucky he was. He had not been sent back to the Conurb, and was not having to live as a hunted fugitive. Instead he was being given a home, a background, a family. It was a staggering piece of good fortune.

  But against this he had a sense of helplessness, of being at the disposal of others. He was absolutely dependent on their charity and would have to fit in with their requirements. Mike was all right, but Mrs. Gifford scared him and the thought of a Mr. Gifford who had not even bothered to come up to the cave to see him was no more reassuring. He knew that although it had not been stated, he was on probation. The whole thing might be a trick, intended to last only as long as Mike was away from school. When Mike went back the Giffords might simply hand him over to the police.

  The copter station was not actually in the town but near it. Copters seemed to emerge from and disappear into a green empty field. Mike explained that the station had been built in an artificial hollow so that it would not spoil the landscape. Landscapes were taken very seriously in the County. A small grove to one side concealed the place where carriages waited, and they tethered the horses there before going down a curving ramp. The landing field was circular, about a hundred yards across, with covered sides. There were service pits for the copters, waiting rooms, an inn, a coffee shop and a shop selling small articles for the traveler. People sat on cushioned benches or strolled about, the women in long dresses, the men in tight-fitting dark suits.

  “That’s the washroom where you can tidy yourself up,” Mike said. “I’ll leave now. Mother and Father will be along in about half an hour. I’ll take the horses and hack home. All right?”

  Rob nodded. “Fine.”

  The washroom had a white-haired attendant in a gray uniform with silver buttons, who showed him to a cubicle. There was a lot of dark wood and gleaming mirrors, and a marble basin into which water gushed steaming from flaring brass taps. Rob washed and brushed himself. His reflection looked at him from the mirror. The clothes he had been given were a fairly good fit. Drab compared with dress in the Conurb, the only brightness in his case a green bow tie, but the cloth had a richer, more expensive feel to it.

  He felt funny giving the attendant the tip Mike had specified, and stranger still when the old man, accepting it, touched his peaked cap. He supposed he would get used to this sort of thing eventually. He went out to wait f
or the arrival of the Giffords.

  • • •

  The house was even more impressive inside than out. There was so much space, so many rooms, such expanses of polished wood floor. All the furniture looked hundreds of years old and Mike told him that most of it was. There were skilled craftsmen in the County who made painstaking copies of old styles but much of what there was here had come down in the family from its original period. The walls, instead of being plastisprayed in colored patterns were covered with decorated embossed papers, with surfaces that were silky to the touch. There were displays of flowers in bowls or vases—not synthetic but real, cut in the garden and arranged each morning by Mrs. Gifford. Paintings hung in ornate frames that showed a dull gold, many portraits of men and women in ancient dress. Mike’s ancestors, he realized.

  There appeared to be an endless number of bedrooms leading off the first-floor landing. He was given one next to Mike’s, sharing a bathroom with him. It was pleasantly and simply furnished and looked across the lawns to the river. It had an open grate and a wood fire was burning there when he was shown in by a servant. It crackled, spitting occasionally, and had a tangy smoky smell. He was standing looking at it when Mike knocked and came in.

  “Everything all right?” he asked.

  “Yes.” Rob pointed to the lumoglobe on the wall above the bed. “I thought you used oil lamps?”

  “We do, downstairs. Not in the bedrooms. Not in the servants’ quarters, either.”

  “Why?”

  “Well . . . everyone does. It’s customary.”

  “Customary,” Rob was to learn, was a word much used and generally accepted as unquestionable. But now he asked:

  “Why the mixture? Why not have everything old-fashioned, or everything modern?”

  Mike hesitated. “I’ve never really thought about it. As I say, it’s customary. Some things are used, some not. Take machines. There’s the road layer, and farmers use machines in the fields. The servants have electrical gadgets to help with cleaning and all that. My father uses an electric shaver, though some men—most probably—shave with soap and water. There’s no hard and fast rule. You just—well, you know what’s suitable.”