The War in the Air

THE EPILOGUE

It happened that one bright summer’s morning exactly thirty years after the launching of the first German air-fleet, an old man took a small boy to look for a missing hen through the ruins of Bun Hill and out towards the splintered pinnacles of the Crystal Palace. He was not a very old man; he was, as a matter of fact, still within a few weeks of sixty-three, but constant stooping over spades and forks and the carrying of roots and manure, and exposure to the damps of life in the open-air without a change of clothing, had bent him into the form of a sickle. Moreover, he had lost most of his teeth and that had affected his digestion and through that his skin and temper. In face and expression he was curiously like that old Thomas Smallways who had once been coachman to Sir Peter Bone, and this was just as it should be, for he was Tom Smallways the son, who formerly kept the little green-grocer’s shop under the straddle of the mono-rail viaduct in the High Street of Bun Hill. But now there were no green-grocer’s shops, and Tom was living in one of the derelict villas hard by that unoccupied building site that had been and was still the scene of his daily horticulture. He and his wife lived upstairs, and in the drawing and dining rooms, which had each French windows opening on the lawn, and all about the ground floor generally, Jessica, who was now a lean and lined and baldish but still very efficient and energetic old woman, kept her three cows and a multitude of gawky hens. These two were part of a little community of stragglers and returned fugitives, perhaps a hundred and fifty souls of them all together, that had settled down to the new conditions of things after the Panic and Famine and Pestilence that followed in the wake of the War. They had come back from strange refuges and hiding-places and had squatted down among the familiar houses and begun that hard struggle against nature for food which was now the chief interest of their lives. They were by sheer preoccupation with that a peaceful people, more particularly after Wilkes, the house agent, driven by some obsolete dream of acquisition, had been drowned in the pool by the ruined gas-works for making inquiries into title and displaying a litigious turn of mind. (He had not been murdered, you understand, but the people had carried an exemplary ducking ten minutes or so beyond its healthy limits.)

This little community had returned from its original habits of suburban parasitism to what no doubt had been the normal life of humanity for nearly immemorial years, a life of homely economies in the most intimate contact with cows and hens and patches of ground, a life that breathes and exhales the scent of cows and finds the need for stimulants satisfied by the activity of the bacteria and vermin it engenders. Such had been the life of the European peasant from the dawn of history to the beginning of the Scientific Era, so it was the large majority of the people of Asia and Africa had always been wont to live. For a time it had seemed that, by virtue of machines, and scientific civilisation, Europe was to be lifted out of this perpetual round of animal drudgery, and that America was to evade it very largely from the outset. And with the smash of the high and dangerous and splendid edifice of mechanical civilisation that had arisen so marvellously, back to the land came the common man, back to the manure.

The little communities, still haunted by ten thousand memories of a greater state, gathered and developed almost tacitly a customary law and fell under the guidance of a medicine man or a priest. The world rediscovered religion and the need of something to hold its communities together. At Bun Hill this function was entrusted to an old Baptist minister. He taught a simple but adequate faith. In his teaching a good principle called the Word fought perpetually against a diabolical female influence called the Scarlet Woman and an evil being called Alcohol. This Alcohol had long since become a purely spiritualised conception deprived of any element of material application; it had no relation to the occasional finds of whiskey and wine in Londoners’ cellars that gave Bun Hill its only holidays. He taught this doctrine on Sundays, and on weekdays he was an amiable and kindly old man, distinguished by his quaint disposition to wash his hands, and if possible his face, daily, and with a wonderful genius for cutting up pigs. He held his Sunday services in the old church in the Beckenham Road, and then the countryside came out in a curious reminiscence of the urban dress of Edwardian times. All the men without exception wore frock coats, top hats, and white shirts, though many had no boots. Tom was particularly distinguished on these occasions because he wore a top hat with gold lace about it and a green coat and trousers that he had found upon a skeleton in the basement of the Urban and District Bank. The women, even Jessica, came in jackets and immense hats extravagantly trimmed with artificial flowers and exotic birds’ feather’s – of which there were abundant supplies in the shops to the north – and the children (there were not many children, because a large proportion of the babies born in Bun Hill died in a few days’ time of inexplicable maladies) had similar clothes cut down to accommodate them; even Stringer’s little grandson of four wore a large top hat.

That was the Sunday costume of the Bun Hill district, a curious and interesting survival of the genteel traditions of the Scientific Age. On a weekday the folk were dingily and curiously hung about with dirty rags of housecloth and scarlet flannel, sacking, curtain serge, and patches of old carpet, and went either bare-footed or on rude wooden sandals. These people, the reader must understand, were an urban population sunken back to the state of a barbaric peasantry, and so without any of the simple arts a barbaric peasantry would possess. In many ways they were curiously degenerate and incompetent. They had lost any idea of making textiles, they could hardly make up clothes when they had material, and they were forced to plunder the continually dwindling supplies of the ruins about them for cover.

All the simple arts they had ever known they had lost, and with the breakdown of modern drainage, modern water supply, shopping, and the like, their civilised methods were useless. Their cooking was worse than primitive. It was a feeble muddling with food over wood fires in rusty drawing-room fireplaces; for the kitcheners burnt too much. Among them all no sense of baking or brewing or metal-working was to be found.

Their employment of sacking and such-like coarse material for work-a-day clothing, and their habit of tying it on with string and of thrusting wadding and straw inside it for warmth, gave these people an odd, “packed” appearance, and as it was a week-day when Tom took his little nephew for the hen-seeking excursion, so it was they were attired.

“So you’ve really got to Bun Hill at last, Teddy,” said old Tom, beginning to talk and slackening his pace so soon as they were out of range of old Jessica. “You’re the last of Bert’s boys for me to see. Wat I’ve seen, young Bert I’ve seen, Sissie and Matt, Tom what’s called after me, and Peter. The traveller people brought you along all right, eh?”

“I managed,” said Teddy, who was a dry little boy.

“Didn’t want to eat you on the way?”

“They was all right,” said Teddy, “and on the way near Leatherhead we saw a man riding on a bicycle.”

“My word!” said Tom, “there ain’t many of those about nowadays. Where was he going?”

“Said ‘e was going to Dorking if the High Road was good enough. But I doubt if he got there. All about Burford it was flooded. We came over the hill, uncle – what they call the Roman Road. That’s high and safe.”

“Don’t know it,” said old Tom. “But a bicycle! You’re sure it was a bicycle? Had two wheels?”

“It was a bicycle right enough.”

“Why! I remember a time, Teddy, where there was bicycles no end, when you could stand just here – the road was as smooth as a board then – and see twenty or thirty coming and going at the same time, bicycles and moty-bicycles; moty cars, all sorts of whirly things.”

“No!” said Teddy.

“I do. They’d keep on going by all day, – ‘undreds and ‘undreds.”

“But where was they all going?” asked Teddy.

“Tearin’ off to Brighton – you never seen Brighton, I expect – it’s down by the sea, used to be a moce ‘mazing place – and coming and going from London.”

“Why?”

“They did.”

“But why?”

“Lord knows why, Teddy. They did. Then you see that great thing there like a great big rusty nail sticking up higher than all the houses, and that one yonder, and that, and how something’s fell in between ‘em among the houses. They was parts of the mono-rail. They went down to Brighton too and all day and night there was people going, great cars as big as ‘ouses full of people.”

The little boy regarded the rusty evidences acrosss the narrow muddy ditch of cow-droppings that had once been a High Street. He was clearly disposed to be sceptical, and yet there the ruins were! He grappled with ideas beyond the strength of his imagination.

“What did they go for?” he asked, “all of ‘em?”

“They ‘AD to. Everything was on the go those days – everything.”

“Yes, but where did they come from?”

“All round ‘ere, Teddy, there was people living in those ‘ouses, and up the road more ‘ouses and more people. You’d ‘ardly believe me, Teddy, but it’s Bible truth. You can go on that way for ever and ever, and keep on coming on ‘ouses, more ‘ouses, and more. There’s no end to ‘em. No end. They get bigger and bigger.” His voice dropped as though he named strange names.

“It’s LONDON,” he said.

“And it’s all empty now and left alone. All day it’s left alone. You don’t find ‘ardly a man, you won’t find nothing but dogs and cats after the rats until you get round by Bromley and Beckenham, and there you find the Kentish men herding swine. (Nice rough lot they are too!) I tell you that so long as the sun is up it’s as still as the grave. I been about by day – orfen and orfen.” He paused.

“And all those ‘ouses and streets and ways used to be full of people before the War in the Air and the Famine and the Purple Death. They used to be full of people, Teddy, and then came a time when they was full of corpses, when you couldn’t go a mile that way before the stink of ‘em drove you back. It was the Purple Death ‘ad killed ‘em every one. The cats and dogs and ‘ens and vermin caught it. Everything and every one ‘ad it. Jest a few of us ‘appened to live. I pulled through, and your aunt, though it made ‘er lose ‘er ‘air. Why, you find the skeletons in the ‘ouses now. This way we been into all the ‘ouses and took what we wanted and buried moce of the people, but up that way, Norwood way, there’s ‘ouses with the glass in the windows still, and the furniture not touched – all dusty and falling to pieces – and the bones of the people lying, some in bed, some about the ‘ouse, jest as the Purple Death left ‘em five-and-twenty years ago. I went into one – me and old Higgins las’ year – and there was a room with books, Teddy – you know what I mean by books, Teddy?”

“I seen ‘em. I seen ‘em with pictures.”

“Well, books all round, Teddy, ‘undreds of books, beyond-rhyme or reason, as the saying goes, green-mouldy and dry. I was for leaven’ ‘em alone – I was never much for reading – but ole Higgins he must touch em. ‘I believe I could read one of ‘em NOW,’ ‘e says.

“‘Not it,’ I says.

“‘I could,’ ‘e says, laughing and takes one out and opens it.

“I looked, and there, Teddy, was a cullud picture, oh, so lovely! It was a picture of women and serpents in a garden. I never see anything like it.

“‘This suits me,’ said old Higgins, ‘to rights.’

“And then kind of friendly he gave the book a pat —

Old Tom Smallways paused impressively.

“And then?” said Teddy.

“It all fell to dus’. White dus’!” He became still more impressive. “We didn’t touch no more of them books that day. Not after that.”

For a long time both were silent. Then Tom, playing with a subject that attracted him with a fatal fascination, repeated, “All day long they lie – still as the grave.”

Teddy took the point at last. “Don’t they lie o’ nights?” he asked.

Old Tom shook his head. “Nobody knows, boy, nobody knows.”

“But what could they do?”

“Nobody knows. Nobody ain’t seen to tell not nobody.”

“Nobody?”

“They tell tales,” said old Tom. “They tell tales, but there ain’t no believing ‘em. I gets ‘ome about sundown, and keeps indoors, so I can’t say nothing, can I? But there’s them that thinks some things and them as thinks others. I’ve ‘eard it’s unlucky to take clo’es off of ‘em unless they got white bones. There’s stories – ”

The boy watched his uncle sharply. “WOT stories?” he said.

“Stories of moonlight nights and things walking about. But I take no stock in ‘em. I keeps in bed. If you listen to stories – Lord! You’ll get afraid of yourself in a field at midday.”

The little boy looked round and ceased his questions for a space.

“They say there’s a ‘og man in Beck’n’am what was lost in London three days and three nights. ‘E went up after whiskey to Cheapside, and lorst ‘is way among the ruins and wandered. Three days and three nights ‘e wandered about and the streets kep’ changing so’s he couldn’t get ‘ome. If ‘e ‘adn’t remembered some words out of the Bible ‘e might ‘ave been there now. All day ‘e went and all night – and all day long it was still. It was as still as death all day long, until the sunset came and the twilight thickened, and then it began to rustle and whisper and go pit-a-pat with a sound like ‘urrying feet.”

He paused.

“Yes,” said the little boy breathlessly. “Go on. What then?”

“A sound of carts and ‘orses there was, and a sound of cabs and omnibuses, and then a lot of whistling, shrill whistles, whistles that froze ‘is marrer. And directly the whistles began things begun to show, people in the streets ‘urrying, people in the ‘ouses and shops busying themselves, moty cars in the streets, a sort of moonlight in all the lamps and winders. People, I say, Teddy, but they wasn’t people. They was the ghosts of them that was overtook, the ghosts of them that used to crowd those streets. And they went past ‘im and through ‘im and never ‘eeded ‘im, went by like fogs and vapours, Teddy. And sometimes they was cheerful and sometimes they was ‘orrible, ‘orrible beyond words. And once ‘e come to a place called Piccadilly, Teddy, and there was lights blazing like daylight and ladies and gentlemen in splendid clo’es crowding the pavement, and taxicabs follering along the road. And as ‘e looked, they all went evil – evil in the face, Teddy. And it seemed to ‘im SUDDENLY THEY SAW ‘IM, and the women began to look at ‘im and say things to ‘im – ‘orrible – wicked things. One come very near ‘im, Teddy, right up to ‘im, and looked into ‘is face – close. And she ‘adn’t got a face to look with, only a painted skull, and then ‘e see; they was all painted skulls. And one after another they crowded on ‘im saying ‘orrible things, and catchin’ at ‘im and threatenin’ and coaxing ‘im, so that ‘is ‘eart near left ‘is body for fear.”

“Yes,” gasped Teddy in an unendurable pause.

“Then it was he remembered the words of Scripture and saved himself alive. ‘The Lord is my ‘Elper, ‘e says, ‘therefore I will fear nothing,’ and straightaway there came a cock-crowing and the street was empty from end to end. And after that the Lord was good to ‘im and guided ‘im ‘ome.”

Teddy stared and caught at another question. “But who was the people,” he asked, “who lived in all these ‘ouses? What was they?”

“Gent’men in business, people with money – leastways we thought it was money till everything smashed up, and then seemingly it was jes’ paper – all sorts. Why, there was ‘undreds of thousands of them. There was millions. I’ve seen that ‘I Street there regular so’s you couldn’t walk along the pavements, shoppin’ time, with women and people shoppin’.”

“But where’d they get their food and things?”

“Bort ‘em in shops like I used to ‘ave. I’ll show you the place, Teddy, if we go back. People nowadays ‘aven’t no idee of a shop – no idee. Plate-glass winders – it’s all Greek to them. Why, I’ve ‘ad as much as a ton and a ‘arf of petaties to ‘andle all at one time. You’d open your eyes till they dropped out to see jes’ what I used to ‘ave in my shop. Baskets of pears ‘eaped up, marrers, apples and pears, d’licious great nuts.” His voice became luscious – “Benanas, oranges.”

“What’s benanas?” asked the boy, “and oranges?”

“Fruits they was. Sweet, juicy, d’licious fruits. Foreign fruits. They brought ‘em from Spain and N’ York and places. In ships and things. They brought ‘em to me from all over the world, and I sold ‘em in my shop. I sold ‘em, Teddy! me what goes about now with you, dressed up in old sacks and looking for lost ‘ens. People used to come into my shop, great beautiful ladies like you’d ‘ardly dream of now, dressed up to the nines, and say, ‘Well, Mr. Smallways, what you got ‘smorning?’ and I’d say, ‘Well, I got some very nice C’nadian apples, ‘or p’raps I got custed marrers. See? And they’d buy ‘em. Right off they’d say, ‘Send me some up.’ Lord! what a life that was. The business of it, the bussel, the smart things you saw, moty cars going by, kerridges, people, organ-grinders, German bands. Always something going past – always. If it wasn’t for those empty ‘ouses, I’d think it all a dream.”

“But what killed all the people, uncle?” asked Teddy.

“It was a smash-up,” said old Tom. “Everything was going right until they started that War. Everything was going like clock-work. Everybody was busy and everybody was ‘appy and everybody got a good square meal every day.”

He met incredulous eyes. “Everybody,” he said firmly. “If you couldn’t get it anywhere else, you could get it in the workhuss, a nice ‘ot bowl of soup called skilly, and bread better’n any one knows ‘ow to make now, reg’lar WHITE bread, gov’ment bread.”

Teddy marvelled, but said nothing. It made him feel deep longings that he found it wisest to fight down.

For a time the old man resigned himself to the pleasures of gustatory reminiscence. His lips moved. “Pickled Sammin!” he whispered, “an’ vinegar… Dutch cheese, BEER! A pipe of terbakker.”

“But ‘OW did the people get killed?” asked Teddy presently.

“There was the War. The War was the beginning of it. The War banged and flummocked about, but it didn’t really KILL many people. But it upset things. They came and set fire to London and burnt and sank all the ships there used to be in the Thames – we could see the smoke and steam for weeks – and they threw a bomb into the Crystal Palace and made a bust-up, and broke down the rail lines and things like that. But as for killin’ people, it was just accidental if they did. They killed each other more. There was a great fight all hereabout one day, Teddy – up in the air. Great things bigger than fifty ‘ouses, bigger than the Crystal Palace – bigger, bigger than anything, flying about up in the air and whacking at each other and dead men fallin’ off ‘em. T’riffic! But, it wasn’t so much the people they killed as the business they stopped. There wasn’t any business doin’, Teddy, there wasn’t any money about, and nothin’ to buy if you ‘ad it.”

“But ‘ow did the people get KILLED?” said the little boy in the pause.

“I’m tellin’ you, Teddy,” said the old man. “It was the stoppin’ of business come next. Suddenly there didn’t seem to be any money. There was cheques – they was a bit of paper written on, and they was jes’ as good as money – jes’ as good if they come from customers you knew. Then all of a sudden they wasn’t. I was left with three of ‘em and two I’d given’ change. Then it got about that five-pun’ notes were no good, and then the silver sort of went off. Gold you ‘couldn’t get for love or – anything. The banks in London ‘ad got it, and the banks was all smashed up. Everybody went bankrup’. Everybody was thrown out of work. Everybody!”

He paused, and scrutinised his hearer. The small boy’s intelligent face expressed hopeless perplexity.

“That’s ‘ow it ‘appened,” said old Tom. He sought for some means of expression. “It was like stoppin’ a clock,” he said. “Things were quiet for a bit, deadly quiet, except for the air-ships fighting about in the sky, and then people begun to get excited. I remember my lars’ customer, the very lars’ customer that ever I ‘ad. He was a Mr. Moses Gluckstein, a city gent and very pleasant and fond of sparrowgrass and chokes, and ‘e cut in – there ‘adn’t been no customers for days – and began to talk very fast, offerin’ me for anything I ‘ad, anything, petaties or anything, its weight in gold. ‘E said it was a little speculation ‘e wanted to try. ‘E said it was a sort of bet reely, and very likely ‘e’d lose; but never mind that, ‘e wanted to try. ‘E always ‘ad been a gambler, ‘e said. ‘E said I’d only got to weigh it out and ‘e’d give me ‘is cheque right away. Well, that led to a bit of a argument, perfect respectful it was, but a argument about whether a cheque was still good, and while ‘e was explaining there come by a lot of these here unemployed with a great banner they ‘ad for every one to read – every one could read those days – ‘We want Food.’ Three or four of ‘em suddenly turns and comes into my shop.

“‘Got any food?’ says one.

“‘No,’ I says, ‘not to sell. I wish I ‘ad. But if I ‘ad, I’m afraid I couldn’t let you have it. This gent, ‘e’s been offerin’ me – ’

“Mr. Gluckstein ‘e tried to stop me, but it was too late.

“‘What’s ‘e been offerin’ you?’ says a great big chap with a ‘atchet; ‘what’s ‘e been offerin you?’ I ‘ad to tell.

“‘Boys,’ ‘e said, ‘’ere’s another feenancier!’ and they took ‘im out there and then, and ‘ung ‘im on a lam’pose down the street. ‘E never lifted a finger to resist. After I tole on ‘im ‘e never said a word…”

Tom meditated for a space. “First chap I ever sin ‘ung!” he said.

“Ow old was you?” asked Teddy.

“‘Bout thirty,” said old Tom.

“Why! I saw free pig-stealers ‘ung before I was six,” said Teddy. “Father took me because of my birfday being near. Said I ought to be blooded…”

“Well, you never saw no-one killed by a moty car, any’ow,” said old Tom after a moment of chagrin. “And you never saw no dead men carried into a chemis’ shop.”