Vail (26 page)

In another part of the building, beyond the panel of controls with the levers and winking lights, I found out what it was.

Bales of compressed glutinous cattle cake came tumbling down a metal chute onto a conveyor belt which carried them to a bay where they were picked up and stacked ten high by a mechanical
grab. Stupid of me not to have realised before, – but the plain fact was that I had become accustomed to the new meaning of the acronym ‘UCP' and all but forgotten the old one. I should have known that beyond the wire ordinary people were still eating tripe and pigs' trotters.

It had been a miserable, gloomy, depressing day to begin with, and this being the 22nd December, the shortest day of the year, it was very nearly dark by three o'clock in the afternoon when I set off across the bare fields. Behind me the red light on top of the silo glowed like a ruby.

I felt almost happy, I think. At least I was outside the wire and I was free. I could return to the north and settle back into some sort of normality. If I grew a beard people might not even recognise me. Most likely I would sink back into my old drinking habits, hanging round my old haunts, fraternising with my old cronies. There didn't seem a lot else to do.

If I kept heading east, I thought, trudging across the fields in the darkness, I should strike the A1 in about an hour, just south of Grantham.

*
Hastily amended in later editions to HARRODS' SPIRIT AT NO. 10.