The Island Walkers by John Bemrose Page B

got the word from Doyle. His friend, after all, had barely graduated from public school, and he had never cared about current events or political matters, as far as Alf knew. He never read a newspaper. “You know what happened the last time we tried this?”
    “I know it was bad. But we gotta move on —”
    Gotta move on . He suspected that was Doyle’s argument too.
    “You don’t know,” Alf said grimly. “You weren’t here.” Meaning: you were still in the navy in ’49. You have no right to speak about what happened.
    “Different circumstances, Alf.”
    Alf threw up his hands in anger and despair. They had nearly reached the end of the bridge. Pete had to hustle to keep up. “Malachi’s a good guy, Alf.”
    “A good guy,” Alf seethed. The very mention of Doyle made him want to hit something. He felt as if Doyle and Pete had been conspiring behind his back. He spoke with angry sarcasm: “So Malachi’s a good guy. A nice guy to have a beer with. Is that any reason to follow him? Hell, good guys have been screwing up the world since it began.”
    He swung onto the dyke-top path. Pete kept right behind him, down the dirt incline that led onto the playing fields behind the arena. Two hundred yards away, sunlight boiled in the upper storeys of the mills. At the lip of the stack, a rag of smoke flapped.
    Pete said, “I mean, hell, if you think a union’s such a bad idea, why don’t you come out to one of our meetings and tell us why?”
    Alf stopped. Pete’s eyes met his frankly from under his visor. There was a plaintiveness there, a beseeching. But at the same time, over a nervous smile, Pere was challenging him, and this was new. Alf was startled.
    “You’re a fool,” Alf said. “You follow this guy and we’ll all live to rue it. Honestly, Pete, you’re a bigger ass than I thought.”
    Something changed in Pete’s gaze, something went bright and at the same time seemed to burn up in its own brightness. It was as if he disappeared. His face was still there, grinning as if he believed Alf was only joking, but Pete had gone away, sunk beneath his features like a drowning man beneath the surface of a pool. Alf turned away, joining the crowd streaming into the deep canyons between the mills.
    The stairs of the knitting mill were a mass of people, a steady thunder of shoes climbing the filthy treads. He put his head down and trudged. He had done this for eighteen years, all told. The thousands of mornings seemed to have become one morning, this morning, an eternity he was condemned to spend watching, a few inches from hisface, the wide, labouring bum and knotted calves of Millie Jennings.
    He was still furious. How many of these people had talked to Doyle? Who was taking the organizer seriously? What he could see told him nothing. Yet everything he looked at — Millie’s ugly legs, a discarded gum wrapper — seemed a clue. Every face in its bland, dreaming thickness had turned treacherous.
    The knitting room was on the top floor, the sixth. He walked towards the bench where his tools were kept, noting with disgust that someone had failed to put one of his wrenches away. A faint, chortling murmur made him look around. Sun slanted among the rows of tall machines, each bearing its circular rack of bobbins. Against the far wall, the knitters sat on their long bench, looking back at him with blank, unreadable faces. He was swept with distaste at their sullen immobility. Just then, the buzzer gave out its nasal command: seven o’clock. It was time to go to work, but the knitters did not stir. Their tardiness — it would last only a few seconds — was meant to declare that they were their own masters, even here.
    Hearing the sound again, he looked up. Under the high ceiling, a drive-belt hummed, awaiting the moment when its power would be channelled to the machines below. Inches above it, on a sprinkler pipe, sat the trapped pigeon. Alf could clearly make out its slender head, cocking sideways to look down