Black Feathers

12

When Gordon heard the crunch of tyres on gravel, he ran out to see what his father had brought back from the latest “supply mission”.

For the last few weeks Louis Black had taken weekly trips as far as Bristol and Gloucester to buy goods of all kinds. The cellar was already stacked with bottled water, candles, torches and batteries, dynamo-powered radios, medical kits, ropes and bungees, tarpaulins, tents, waterproofs and other spare outdoor clothes. There was even an inflatable dinghy. The shed was full of timber, all manner of tools, vast coils of hosepipe and several car batteries.

This trip had yielded a more precious bounty. More precious to Gordon, at least. He could barely stand still when he saw the entire pickup burdened with all kinds of food.

“Wow. We’ll be stuffed!”

“That’s hardly the point, Gordon,” said his father. “The idea is to eat a little bit for a very long time. When this lot is unloaded and put away, we all need to sit down and have a talk. Come on, grab some stuff.” Louis shouted into the house. “Girls, you come and help too. Quickly now.”

Sophie Black moved slowly and quietly, her face pale and blank. Gordon lifted what he was able to: a few cans in both arms or some bags of flour or sugar. Angela was last to arrive and did the least to help, as usual. Their larder, well supplied even at the worst of times, soon looked like a canteen storage room. Gordon helped to line up the tinned goods in rows: beans of all kinds – including baked beans with sausages, he was pleased to note – sweetcorn, chopped tomatoes, chickpeas, potatoes, mushrooms, spaghetti, and even tinned sponges, rice pudding and custard. Gordon could just about drag along the sacks of rice, oats and other dried goods, each in ten-kilo bags, but it was Louis who hoisted them to the top shelves away from rodents. Various kinds of flour and sugar were stacked in bags eight deep on the next shelf down. Long-life milk, powdered milk, condensed milk and all kinds of seeds and nuts were ranked beside them. As the larder filled and everything in it was arranged into order, Gordon realised he was the only one excited about the latest “haul”.

Sophie Black put the kettle on, and when a pot of tea was sitting under a woolly bobble hat in the middle of the kitchen table and rounds of hot buttered toast lay piled on a plate beside it, Louis Black called everyone to sit down with him while they snacked and slurped hot milky tea. Sophie sat down last, reluctant, it seemed. Gordon watched his parents carefully, noting that his dad only started to speak when he’d received some silent eye-signal from his mum.

Louis took a deep breath and cleared his throat. Gordon thought his dad looked… embarrassed and, for the first time ever, unsure of himself. He’d never known anything other than strength in his father. Seeing him like this was like losing his protection against the world. Only for a moment, but it was a terrible moment. He scooted nearer to Jude on the refectory bench and reached for her hand under the table. On the other side of it, next to their father, Angela shook her head in minute disgust.

“It seems that things have changed in the world. Even in this country,” Louis began. “It looks like the Ward are here to stay. You’ve all seen the news.”

They had. The Ward were the only party that looked capable of steering the country back to stability. In the previous election, their MPs had swept to victory in constituencies across the entire country. People were frightened. They wanted order restored. The Ward looked like an answer to their prayers.

Recession had been biting for years. Businesses folded every day and several banks had collapsed. Unemployment was soaring to record highs. The health service was now so badly funded it could only provide emergency care. Following the floods of the previous two years, the UK had a refugee population of close to a million and no way to look after them other than charity. Many of the homeless now wandered the country trying to stay alive. Crime was commonplace, the police ill-equipped or ill-disposed to do anything about it. Countries the UK had previously relied on for supplies of food were no longer exporting; they needed the food for their own people. Forgotten diseases had reappeared and spread, tuberculosis, diphtheria and rickets among them. Successive flu epidemics had wiped out tens of thousands of people in Europe and steady rises in temperature had seen malaria cases being treated in Cornwall, Wales and the west coast of Scotland. Glasgow, Newcastle, Birmingham and parts of London had suffered riots when water, electricity or gas had been cut off, sometimes for days at a time. Fuel prices were rising daily. Hauliers were the worst hit by this and most people couldn’t afford to use their cars any more. An increase in solar activity had affected satellites, phone networks and even the internet. On two occasions, the world wide web had been inaccessible for several hours. People were calling it a new dark age: the Black Dawn.

Only the Ward, representatives of which had appeared in many countries when things began to look irretrievably bleak, promised solutions to all of these problems. The multinational corporations, threatened by economic collapse in every market, began to invest in influence rather than simple profit. Somehow they needed to secure their positions for the future. Lobbying and then infiltrating government wasn’t enough. They bought their way into the police and the army and their management structure and organisational skills began to look like a practical solution to many of society’s problems. People saw real passion in the Ward, the ability to answer questions with a simple yes or no and the gumption to follow through on things they promised. Their Expulsion Bill of the previous year, returning millions of migrant workers and their families to their countries of origin, was the most radical political act in living memory. After that, support for the Ward grew exponentially.

To Gordon all this had been no more than pictures on a screen. They were stories about other people and nothing to do with him. Now, before his father said another word, he knew the stories had reached Hamblaen House, that the Blacks had become part of the news.

“Most people are in favour of the Ward and it’s dangerous to say you don’t agree with what they’re doing. But your mother and I don’t agree with it. We oppose the Ward and everything they stand for.”

Angela rolled her eyes at what she took for melodrama.

“I’m not joking, Angela Black. This is the future we’re talking about. Yours too. If someone doesn’t stand up to these people, they’re going to turn the UK into a wasteland. The Ward have only one desire: to enslave us while we’re on our knees.”

Louis looked at Sophie and extended his hand to her across the table. She offered hers and he squeezed it hard.

“I’ve seen what the Ward are capable of. They’ve opened a branch in Monmouth – a substation, they call it. People go in there and they don’t come back. Amelia Porter… she–”

Sophie shook her head.

“Don’t, Louis.”

He dropped his head for a moment, stared into his now lukewarm tea.

“What is it, Dad?” asked Judith. “What happened to Amelia?”

Louis looked up, stared into Judith’s eyes until she looked away.

“It doesn’t matter. What I’m trying to tell you is to stay away from the Ward. Far away. Don’t even let them see you if you can help it.”

Angela made a face of disbelief.

“I’m absolutely serious, Angela. If you see them, you hide. Understand?”

Everyone nodded. Angela started to get up from the bench.

“Sit down, Lella. There’s something else.”

For a moment, Gordon thought Angela would ignore their father and go to her room. Finally, she gave in.

“The thing is, I’ve…”

Louis looked from face to face around the table, unable to speak. Then he laughed.

“Oh, Christ. Look, I’ve shut the business. I’ve been thinking about it for a while. It was either that or go bankrupt. I thought it was better just to stop trading. Ha, what a joke. There’s no trade out there anymore.”

He ran his hands through his hair, a manic gesture he rarely displayed. His voice dropped to just above a whisper.

“We’ve all had good lives up here. But things are going to change. We won’t starve and we won’t end up like the people you see on the news every day, but from now on pretty much everything we do will be geared towards surviving what I suspect will be some very unpleasant times. If we work together, we’ll do fine. I want you all to promise now that you’ll commit yourselves to keeping this family afloat. Not just with getting food and water but with keeping each other’s spirits up. If we pull hard, make a team effort, we’ll be OK. I know we will.”

The silence around the table was dour. Much of what Louis said that afternoon didn’t really sink in for any of them until the changes he was talking about hit home. But Gordon hated the silence because it meant people were thinking about their answers rather than doing what they should have done.

“I promise I will keep this family floating,” he said.

Louis smiled in a kind way but Angela laughed and would have followed up with words if her father hadn’t silenced her with a vicious sideways glance.

“Me too,” said Jude.

“Me too,” said Angela without any sincerity at all.

Louis looked at his wife. Everyone did.

“Sophie?”

She didn’t speak. She merely went on looking into her tea mug as though she had other things on her mind.

“Sophie, you have to say it. We all do.”

She looked up, unable to hide that she would rather be anywhere else but here, in any other time.

“I promise to keep this family afloat.”

Louis nodded, but Gordon guessed he would have more to say to Mum when no one was around.

“I promise, too,” said Louis. “And not only that, I promise to protect you all.”