The War Against Chaos by Anita Mason

Author:Anita Mason
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781448208982
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2019-11-23T00:00:00+00:00

9

‘There have been Diggers in these tunnels for about thirty years,’ Tapper told Hare as they sat together for the evening meal. ‘The main thing we have to worry about is vitamin deficiency. Fortunately, those who stocked the place left enough vitamin pills here to last us a century.’

‘Who did stock the place?’

‘I’ll explain it all later,’ said Tapper.

He had made the same reply to Hare’s questions several times. Hare had seen enough to realise that the tunnels were far more than storage rooms. There were long dormitories, containing iron-framed beds with thin, patched mattresses and dark grey blankets oddly like the one he had dreamed about in the days before he joined Ezra’s marginals. There were huge bathrooms, white-tiled sections of tunnel, from the walls of which projected crusted zinc pipes terminating in flattened nozzles like snakes’ heads, while in the middle stood a row of porcelain basins fitted with heavy brass taps. The basins and the wall tiles were crazed with thousands of tiny blue veins. The water came from an underground stream, Tapper said. There were storage tanks as well, but the supply had never dried up. Near the bathrooms were the latrines, holes in the ground set over an abyss, from which rose a pungent smell. Hare had peeped into the kitchens, too. Vast cooking utensils hung from meat hooks, and on scrubbed tables stood cliffs of dinner plates. The sinks were like coffins.

In reply to his baffled and reiterated question, ‘What is all this for?’, Tapper had merely said, ‘I’ll explain later.’

Sitting next to Tapper at the long table, Hare looked around him. The dining hall was another natural cavern, but trouble had been taken to make it homely. Lights in cracked green lampshades hung from an artificial ceiling. The walls were whitewashed and decorated with bright abstract patterns.

In this space were set a number of wooden tables at which sat something like three hundred people. They were all dressed in the same extraordinary assemblage of rags, beside which the dress of Ezra’s household appeared stylish. Scraps of shirt and scraps of sheet were sewn together without regard for colour or shape or anything except the area to be covered, and it was impossible to tell the sex of the wearer from the apparel because men were as likely to be wearing tunics as women to be wearing trousers. The commonest single item of clothing was a dark green jacket with a lot of straps and pockets and buckles on it. This, decorated to the owner’s taste with stars, animal shapes and other devices, was being worn by about forty of those present. It had – strangely – the look of a uniform, and Hare saw that all those wearing it looked very young: not one of them had a beard, although several seemed to have bits of brown paper stuck to their chins.

Between the tables passed people bearing large pans of food. These were set down at intervals and the food was ladled out.

‘We take it in turns to cook,’ said Tapper.

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