elaborately incurious. All words of thanks had for him connotations of insincerity, dislike, dishonest design. He could speak none of them. ‘Hope you win that treble chance,’ he mumbled. The lad gave him a hand down.
7
Workmen were tinkering at a score of prefabs on either side of him. There were acres of these, laid out in unbroken parallel lines. If you were in an aeroplane, and got your height a bit wrong, it would look like one of those awfully military cemeteries. Routh shivered. It would be horrible to live in such a place. It would be like annihilation. You would come to think that you were just like other people. There could be nothing worse than that.
At the same time he envied the workmen their anonymity. He realized that he looked queer among them, a hurrying figure with nothing to do with the place. As far as his eye could see, there were only these workmen, all geared into this antlike, squalidly impressive communal effort, and himself, a piece of loose grit in it – something lawless and on its own, slipping through the cogs to an irregular and problematical fate.
There was now a metalled road under his feet. And solitude around him. He stopped, alarmed. The workmen had vanished, because in this part of the new estate their work was done. He could hear their clatter behind him. And far ahead he could see different signs of life: patches of grass and flowers, a scattering of television aerials, washing fluttering on a line. Ahead of him people had already moved in. But round about him there was an intermediate stage in the growth of this mass building: rows of these little houses, blank, empty and unquickened. He felt, just because they were so empty, that anything might come out of them. He might turn his head for a moment and there, standing in each little doorway, might be one of his own hidden fears. It was another tableau that would build itself into his evil dreams of the long tunnel.
The empty road in front of him was a regular chequer of sunlight and shadow. Each house cast its identical black cube of shade; and monotonously, just past this, was a shorter finger of shade from the sort of glorified dog kennel provided as an outhouse. He was near the end of the uninhabited block or belt – he could even see what looked like a main road ahead – when he found himself at a dead halt, quivering like a horse that has pulled up in its stride. For a second he was at a loss to account for his own action. And then he saw. Thirty yards ahead of him, the regular pattern of shade was broken. Between two of the cubes, instead of the expected blunt finger, lay an irregular mass of shadow, as if of something crouched low with an uplifted arm. He dragged himself forward, his breath shortening with every step. He read taut muscles, poised limbs into the enigmatical shape. He managed one more stride. Close beside one of the outhouses was the twisted trunk of an ancient apple tree. Its boughs had been lopped, but through some failure of energy it had not been grubbed out. A few shoots were springing from it. There was reason for it to cast a shadow instinct with life. It was the only thing left alive in all this wilderness.
Routh ran. He almost stumbled over a sticky-mouthed child on a tricycle – an intrepid explorer from the inhabited country ahead. There were voices – kids screaming, women gossiping, a baker’s boy shouting at a horse – and gusts of music from the Light Programme. A few men, already at home from work or out of it, were pottering about their prefabs, obliterating what small patches of earth they had under useless little concrete paths and bird baths. Routh spared them a glance of contempt as he ran. They took no interest in him whatever. Probably they thought he was running for a bus.
And so he was. For straight in front of him was a red double-decker, comfortingly urban in suggestion, waiting at its terminus – its side scrawled with a slogan exhorting the prefab population
7
Workmen were tinkering at a score of prefabs on either side of him. There were acres of these, laid out in unbroken parallel lines. If you were in an aeroplane, and got your height a bit wrong, it would look like one of those awfully military cemeteries. Routh shivered. It would be horrible to live in such a place. It would be like annihilation. You would come to think that you were just like other people. There could be nothing worse than that.
At the same time he envied the workmen their anonymity. He realized that he looked queer among them, a hurrying figure with nothing to do with the place. As far as his eye could see, there were only these workmen, all geared into this antlike, squalidly impressive communal effort, and himself, a piece of loose grit in it – something lawless and on its own, slipping through the cogs to an irregular and problematical fate.
There was now a metalled road under his feet. And solitude around him. He stopped, alarmed. The workmen had vanished, because in this part of the new estate their work was done. He could hear their clatter behind him. And far ahead he could see different signs of life: patches of grass and flowers, a scattering of television aerials, washing fluttering on a line. Ahead of him people had already moved in. But round about him there was an intermediate stage in the growth of this mass building: rows of these little houses, blank, empty and unquickened. He felt, just because they were so empty, that anything might come out of them. He might turn his head for a moment and there, standing in each little doorway, might be one of his own hidden fears. It was another tableau that would build itself into his evil dreams of the long tunnel.
The empty road in front of him was a regular chequer of sunlight and shadow. Each house cast its identical black cube of shade; and monotonously, just past this, was a shorter finger of shade from the sort of glorified dog kennel provided as an outhouse. He was near the end of the uninhabited block or belt – he could even see what looked like a main road ahead – when he found himself at a dead halt, quivering like a horse that has pulled up in its stride. For a second he was at a loss to account for his own action. And then he saw. Thirty yards ahead of him, the regular pattern of shade was broken. Between two of the cubes, instead of the expected blunt finger, lay an irregular mass of shadow, as if of something crouched low with an uplifted arm. He dragged himself forward, his breath shortening with every step. He read taut muscles, poised limbs into the enigmatical shape. He managed one more stride. Close beside one of the outhouses was the twisted trunk of an ancient apple tree. Its boughs had been lopped, but through some failure of energy it had not been grubbed out. A few shoots were springing from it. There was reason for it to cast a shadow instinct with life. It was the only thing left alive in all this wilderness.
Routh ran. He almost stumbled over a sticky-mouthed child on a tricycle – an intrepid explorer from the inhabited country ahead. There were voices – kids screaming, women gossiping, a baker’s boy shouting at a horse – and gusts of music from the Light Programme. A few men, already at home from work or out of it, were pottering about their prefabs, obliterating what small patches of earth they had under useless little concrete paths and bird baths. Routh spared them a glance of contempt as he ran. They took no interest in him whatever. Probably they thought he was running for a bus.
And so he was. For straight in front of him was a red double-decker, comfortingly urban in suggestion, waiting at its terminus – its side scrawled with a slogan exhorting the prefab population
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