Read Online No Man's Land by Pete Ayrton - Free Book Online

Finished!
    But not yet! Oh no, not yet. Not yet, not now, nor ever. Not while life was life, should they lay hold of him. Never again. Never would he be touched again. – And because they had handled his private parts, and looked into them, their eyes should burst and their hands should wither and their hearts should rot. So he cursed them in his blood, with an unremitting curse, as he waited.
    They gave him his card: C.2. – Fit for non-military service. He knew what they would like to make him do. They would like to seize him and compel him to empty latrines in some camp. They had that in mind for him. But he had other things in mind.
    He went out into accursed Derby, to Harriett. She was reassured again. But he was not. He hated the Midlands now, he hated the North. People here were viler than in the South, even than in Cornwall. They had a universal desire to take life and down it: these horrible machine people, these iron and coal people. They wanted to set their foot absolutely on life, grind it down, and be master. Masters, as they were of their foul machines. Masters of life, as they were masters of steam-power and electric-power and above all, of money-power. Masters of money-power, with an obscene hatred of life, true, spontaneous life.
    Richard Lovatt knew it. They had looked into his anus, they had put their hand under his testicles. –That athletic young fellow, he didn’t seem to think he ought to mind at all. He looked on his body as a sort of piece of furniture, or a machine, to be handled and put to various uses. That was why he was athletic. Somers laughed, and thanked God for his own thin, underweight body. At least he remained himself, his own. He hoped the young athletic fellow would enjoy the uses they put him to.
    Another flight. He was determined not to stop in the Derby Military Area. He would move one stage out of their grip, at least. So he and Harriett prepared to go back with their trunks to the Oxfordshire cottage, which they loved. He would not report, nor give any sign of himself. Fortunately in the village everybody was slack and friendly.
    Derby had been a crisis. He would obey no more: not one more stride. If they summoned him, he would disappear: or find some means of fighting them. But no more obedience: no more presenting himself when called up. By God, no. Never while he lived, again, would he be at the disposal of society.
    So they moved south – to be one step removed. They had been living in this remote cottage in the Derbyshire hills: and they must leave at half-past seven in the morning, to complete their journey in a day. It was a black morning, with a slow dawn. Somers had the trunks ready. He stood looking at the dark gulf of the valley below. Meanwhile heavy clouds sank over the bare, Derbyshire hills, and the dawn was blotted out before it came. Then broke a terrific thunderstorm, and hail lashed down with a noise like insanity. He stood at the big window over the valley, and watched. Come hail, come rain, he would go: forever.
    This was his home district – but from the deepest soul he now hated it, mistrusted it even more than he hated it. As far as life went, he mistrusted it utterly, with a black soul. Mistrusted it and hated it, with its smoke and its money-power and its squirming millions who aren’t human any more.
    Ah, how lovely the South-west seemed, after it all. There was hardly any food, but neither he nor Harriett minded. They could pick up and be wonderfully happy again, gathering the little chestnuts in the woods, and the few last bilberries. Men were working harder than ever felling trees for trench-timber, denuding the land. But their brush fires were burning in the woods, and when they had gone, in the cold dusk, Somers went with a sack to pick up the unburnt faggots and the great chips of wood the axes had left golden against the felled logs. Flakes of sweet pale gold oak. He gathered them in the dusk, in a sack, along with the