The Penal Colony Read online

  The bolt hit the man in the centre of his chest, so hard that he was thrown backwards, toppling out of sight. Routledge dodged the falling rock and scrabbled in his pack for the machete, then ran to the far side of the outcrop, where it would be easier to climb.

  There was no need for the machete. The tip of the bolt had emerged between two vertebrae. The man’s spinal cord had been ruptured. The bolt would have continued on its upward path and gone right through him had it not been arrested by the vanes, which, as it was, had sliced into the musculature of his chest to a third or half their depth. He was quite dead.

  Routledge came to his senses and surveyed the hillside. No evidence of another one: the man had been working alone.

  Close to, the primitive nobility lent him by his beard was revealed for the illusion it was. His face had a rather ugly, stupid cast. His ears were large and angular, pierced in both lobes; the eyes, staring blankly, were bulbous and blue. His open jaw betrayed a mouth filled with dental amalgam. Tattooed on his shoulder Routledge read the five blue letters, entwined in red, of a girl’s name. Karen. Routledge examined his hands and feet and the development of his limbs, intrigued by the changes that living wild had wrought in one of his own countrymen.

  The birds on the shore resumed their piping. He stood up. The corpse was beginning to bleed. He would not waste time or risk contaminating himself by burying it, or by putting it over the cliff. He would let it remain where it had fallen, food for the gulls, perhaps, or the buzzards. There was nothing on it he wanted: the skins, the necklace of rabbit bones, were worthless. He would not bother with the spear, but Martinson’s waistcoat, and the hat, both of which the man had left lying at the base of the outcrop, he would retrieve.

  Before climbing down, Routledge allowed himself one last look round, making sure of the hillside and the more distant scrub to the north and west.

  And, turning his eyes across the bay, he studied, at his leisure now, the pattern and appearance of the fields and walls and buildings spreading across the cloud-shadowed slope of his destination, the Village headland.

  PART TWO

  1

  “Bend over, please.”

  Routledge felt his buttocks being parted.

  “All right, Mr Routledge. I’m sorry about that last bit.” Sibley switched off the torch and replaced it on his table. “You can put your clothes on now.” He stood up, went to the far side of the room, and washed his hands in a polythene bowl from which issued the smell of pine disinfectant. “We have to make sure, you understand.”

  “What would have happened if …”

  “Well, you’d have been out, I’m afraid.”

  “Does that happen often?”

  “Quite often. But not in your case, I’m delighted to say. In fact, as far as I can tell, you’ve got a clean bill of health.”

  Routledge pulled on his brand new trousers, grey corduroy, with a broad canvas belt. Like the socks and underwear, the wool-and-cotton shirt, the blue lambswool sweater, and the workman’s boots, they fitted him perfectly, part of the issue the Prison Service had sent over with him from the mainland.

  Sibley’s room, in one of the shacks annexed to the bungalow, was equipped as a kind of surgery, with a glass-shelved cupboard containing probes and forceps and seekers. A pressure lamp illuminated the table and the file containing Routledge’s papers. On these Sibley, an apparently absent-minded Welshman of about forty, had scribbled notes at various stages throughout the examination.

  Routledge buckled the belt. “Are you a doctor?”

  “Of sorts, now. I was a vet before. And you? A quantity surveyor, weren’t you?”

  “Yes. I was.”

  Sibley closed the file and put it under his arm. “I’m to tell you the Father will see you tonight. Hurry up and finish dressing.”

  To put on clean, new clothes was a pleasure more luxurious even than the showerbath they had allowed him, with soap and real shampoo and tepid water gushing from an overhead tank improvised from a plastic drum. They had offered him a razor too. This he had declined: he had never grown a beard before, and was beginning rather to like the idea.

  So far he had been astonished by the courtesy and hospitality they were showing him. One of the men at the gate, the one who had escorted him to Appleton, had said “Well done, Mr Routledge” when he had appeared, promptly, a few minutes after the bell.

  The end of his ordeal had been unexpectedly easy. From the monastery peninsula he had made his way, without encountering anyone, back to the Village boundary and the western gate. Having ascertained that Martinson was nowhere to be seen, he had selected a hollow in the bracken a few hundred metres away and had sat there, clasping his knees, watching the sunset yielding to darkness. An hour or two later the bell – to be exact, an oil drum struck with a length of steel pipe – had sounded. The caution with which he had covered the remaining distance to the gate had been as immense as it had been unnecessary.

  Appleton had given him hot, sweet tea and a plate of cheese sandwiches, followed by a dish of yogurt flavoured with fresh raspberries. Then he had commended Routledge to the care of Sibley and his assistant.

  In the shower Routledge had been able to appreciate how much weight he had lost. The slight paunch which, with each succeeding year, had been becoming almost imperceptibly more pronounced, had all but vanished. There was less fat round his waist, too. His arms, and particularly his legs, had become more rangy-looking, as had his fingers and toes. There was an empty, sick feeling in his abdomen; he had suffered another diarrhoea attack on the way to the gate, and wondered whether he had poisoned himself by eating Martinson’s none-too-hygienic rations. When asked, though, Sibley had told him this was quite usual in the circumstances and nothing to be concerned about.

  Sibley conducted him to the bungalow veranda. The guard, different from the one Routledge had seen on his first visit last week, announced his arrival and summoned Stamper, who ushered Routledge to Appleton’s small office. Appleton was not there.

  “Right,” Stamper said. “You’ll be going in now. Don’t speak unless you’re spoken to. When Mr Appleton gives you the prompt, get down on the green mat. Lie on your face and say, ‘I for ever renounce all rights except those invested in me hereafter by the Father. I formally recognize his absolute authority and in this recognition beg for admittance to the Community.’ Got it?”

  Routledge, his unease growing, needed hurried coaching before he could repeat the words without error. He was right: he had thought his treatment thus far was much too good to last. As he had suspected from the start, the Father, whoever or whatever he might turn out to be, was plainly a megalomaniac.

  There was no time for further thoughts along these lines.

  As soon as Routledge was word perfect, Stamper led the way to the large reception room or laboratory in which Routledge had been interrogated on that first night. “Ready?” Stamper said.

  Routledge nodded.

  “Good luck.”

  Stamper’s words took him by surprise. He neither liked nor trusted any of the triumvirate who had interviewed him, but he saw that he could afford to alienate none of the inmates of the Village, especially those in power, and would pretend at least to return any small gestures of friendship.

  “Thanks.”

  Stamper knocked lightly at the door, opened it, and motioned Routledge inside. Stamper did not follow. Routledge heard the door closing quietly and unobtrusively behind him.

  As before, the room was lit by three pressure lamps, but tonight the trestle table had been pushed back to the wall. In its place stood an old-fashioned wing armchair covered in tapestry, predominantly fawn, with a repeating panel depicting what the designer had imagined to be a typical eighteenth-century scene: a bewigged man in a frilled coat, wooing his beloved under a rose arbour. Even more unexpected and bizarre, Routledge saw immediately that the oblong piece of green carpet in front of it was of precisely the same colour and pattern as the hall carpet belonging to Louise’s parents
. The pattern had been unobtainable for ten years or more. During all that time, during all those unsuspecting Sunday afternoons, this companion-piece had been patiently awaiting him here on Sert.

  Appleton was standing behind the chair and to its left. Every bit of the authority he had possessed at the first interview was relinquished to the clean-faced, humorous-looking man who now entered by the second door, went to the chair, and sat down. Crossing his legs, he began subjecting Routledge to a keen and searching appraisal through the rimless lenses of his gold-framed spectacles.

  Routledge had expected someone older, heavier, more intimidating, than this fellow with his freckles and reddish blond hair. Indeed, he was no older than Routledge himself. And yet his every movement, his very bearing, gave an unmistakable impression of physical self-assurance and self-containment; the calm, refined cast of his features gave an equally vivid impression of a strongly incisive intelligence unlike any that Routledge had ever known before.

  “Good evening, Mr Routledge.” He was softly spoken, with an educated southern Irish accent. “Congratulations on passing our initiative test. I hear you came back with a crossbow.”

  “Yes.”

  “May I ask where you got it?”

  “From a man named Martinson.”

  He gave an enigmatic smile. “Is that where you got the rest of the stuff?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  “As you wish.” He smiled again, apparently pleased by this response. “Now, Mr Routledge. I have a request to make. The crossbow belonged to the Community. We lost it; it presently belongs to you. We would greatly appreciate its return.”

  “By all means.”

  “That’s very kind. Very kind indeed. I hope you didn’t object to the test too much. You understand the reasons for it?”

  “To be honest, no.”

  “It has two main purposes. The first is to find out what you’re made of. The second is to give you practical experience of life outside the Village.”

  Routledge said nothing.

  “On your first day the rules of the Community were explained to you. Do you have any questions on that subject?”

  “No sir, I do not.”

  “Kindly do not use that word here. Turnkeys are ‘sir’. Politicians are ‘sir’. In the Village a man is valued for what he is, or isn’t, as the case may be. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Get that clear before all else.” Still his composure had not deserted him; Routledge had to give himself a conscious order to renew his mistrust. “On your first day you were also invited to apply for a place in the Community. I will now ask you what decision you have reached in that regard.”

  “I would like to apply.”

  “Then there are one or two things I feel I should explain. Depending on your background and upbringing, you will find them more or less novel. If you elect to remain with us, I hope that you will not find them too irksome to live with.”

  Against his will, Routledge felt himself becoming charmed. He had entered the room in a hostile frame of mind, and yet, as the interview progressed, he was beginning to feel, despite himself, an intimation that his prejudices were in danger of slipping away. He was intrigued, fascinated not so much by the sheer magnetic force of the man’s presence as by the discovery that such a phenomenon truly existed in the world and that he was susceptible to its influence.

  “We have come, Mr Routledge, all of us, from a place where hypocrisy reigns supreme. One is not allowed to say what is, only what is deemed morally fashionable. Lip service is paid to the notion that all men are born equal and deserving of equal opportunity. Much is made of people’s rights, without overmuch attention to the responsibility which accompanies and in precise measure counterbalances each and every one of those rights. We have also come from an economy based on the system of money. On Sert there is no money. The only currency here is respect. Respect is accorded to those who in turn respect others’ rights and interests, as well as to those who are deserving in more obvious ways. Respect automatically generates consideration, which is the essential lubricant on which the mechanics of our little community depend. Clear enough?”

  “Yes.”

  “We are all convicted criminals, abandoned and left to rot. Yet by coming here each of us is given a completely blank sheet. If you like, we have become innocents once more. We have been denied the pleasures of the mainland, but we have also been released from its demands.”

  These words struck a chord: Routledge remembered his own thoughts in the darkness of the cave.

  “Our leader, at present myself, is styled the ‘Father’. It is only a name. The leader is not a patriarch. He is not God. The men under him are not children. Is that clear too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Nor is this a democracy. It is a meritocracy. Each man has his place in it, determined solely by his own conduct and character. What yours will be I cannot say. You may end up plucking puffins, or you may end up as leader in my stead. Understood?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you still wish to apply? Consider carefully now.”

  “Yes. I wish to apply.”

  Appleton gestured at the floor. Routledge hesitated before, self-consciously, getting to his knees. Appleton gestured again, somewhat impatiently. Routledge let himself down until his face came into contact with the green tufted pile of the mat.

  “Well?” said the man in the chair.

  “I … I for ever renounce all rights except those invested in me hereafter by the Father. I formally recognize … I …”

  Routledge had forgotten the words.

  “His absolute authority,” Appleton hissed.

  “I formally recognize his absolute authority and in this recognition beg for admittance to the Community.”

  “You are one of us now, Mr Routledge. Please get up.”

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  When the interview had ended and the Father had retired to his own part of the bungalow, Appleton took Routledge into his office, a square, cramped room furnished with a shaky laminate-surfaced table and lined on two sides with shelves. Appleton had brought one of the pressure lamps. He hooked the handle over a wall-bracket, motioned Routledge to be seated in the battered easy chair, and sat down himself behind the table.

  “This won’t take a minute,” he said. “As it’s so late, we’ll have our main talk in the morning. Please be here at six o’clock.”

  His authority had returned.

  “You’ll find we tend to rise and go to bed earlier on Sert, especially in summer. It saves paraffin and candles.”

  Especially in summer. There came to Routledge’s mind the first true inkling of the immense period of time, season after season, year after year, during which he would be stuck on this rock.

  Appleton gave him a moment’s scrutiny before going on. “I just want to mention a few points of etiquette. As the Father has told you, we have no currency in the Community, other than respect. A man’s place is hard-earned and he does not take kindly to lack of recognition of that place. Certain standards of behaviour have therefore evolved which are very different from those obtaining on the mainland. The Father’s name is Liam Michael Franks. At no time will you call him anything but ‘Father’. Address other members of the Community by their title and surname. When you know someone sufficiently well he may allow you to call him by his surname used alone, except in the presence of inferiors, when it is usual to adopt the formal mode. Intimate friends may use forenames if they wish, but this is not often done. Unless he volunteers the information, it is considered impolite to ask a man about his criminal record. When a man of superior rank enters the room, you stand up. This can be tricky in the beginning, and it will be understood if you make some mistakes. For the first twenty-four hours in the Community, you are our guest. After that you must work in accordance with the rules; in other words, as directed by the Father. If you do not work properly you will receive no food and you may be denied accommodation. If you persist
in not working you will be expelled. Expulsion is final and irreversible.” He sat back. “I think that just about covers it for tonight.”

  “May I ask a question?”

  “That depends what it is. You’ll have plenty of opportunity to ask questions tomorrow, and on any topic you like.”

  “Did the Prison Service send over my personal effects? I had some photographs of my family.”

  “They’ll probably come on tomorrow’s drop, or next week’s.” Tomorrow was Tuesday, helicopter day. “Now,” he went on, “you’ll be staying with Mr King, your guardian, until suitable accommodation is made ready. That’s one of the things we’ll be talking about in the morning.” Appleton stood up. “Mr King is expecting you. Your issue has already been delivered to his house. I’ll take you there. You might not be able to find it in the dark.”

  The shack was much as Routledge had remembered it, except that it seemed King had made an attempt to tidy up. The pallet was still there, although the sleeping-bag had been replaced with grey blankets, and another blanket, folded, had been provided as a pillow. It did not look very comfortable, but at least it seemed clean.

  King said, “Can I offer you something, Mr Appleton?”

  “No, thank you all the same, Mr King.” Appleton moved back to the door and opened it. “Six o’clock, Mr Routledge. Don’t forget.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Mr King has a clock. Well, good night, then.”

  King secured the door behind him and gave Routledge a half smile which Routledge interpreted as evidence that King, while not relishing the idea of sharing his accommodation with another, would do his best not to show it.

  “You’re a bit of a celebrity,” King said. “Word’s got around about the crossbow. They’re saying you took it off James Martinson. Are they right?”

  “Yes. I suppose they are.”

  “Did you go to Old Town? By the way, do take a seat.”

  Routledge decided to leave vacant the chair indicated, for it was the one King had occupied on the first night. Instead he sat down on a low stool by the hearth.