I was some weeks in this melancholy condition, not knowing how I could make my escape and indeed despairing of it, when I was sent on a message to the next farm. On the way back I met Audrey, at the sight of whose young beauty I forgot the despair which latterly had seized me. I rushed to her and caught her up in my arms and kissed her. Thereupon she said she would never go back, but would stay with me forever. I could not deny her, for I had found in her the incentive which I had lost in my growing indifference to my fate. She was but a child, and the only gracious being I had met in this ill-fated country. Hand in hand we wandered until dusk, when I hid her in the hay-loft and returned to my duties.
I was severely chidden for my long absence and ordered during the next week to wear the Skirt of Punishment, a garment of the shape fashionable among women at the time of the great change. Poor Audrey could not help laughing when she saw me in it, but having no other clothes I had to put off all thought of escape until I was released from punishment. Never before had I realised how cramped the mind could become from the confinement of the legs. My week in a skirt came very near to breaking my spirit. Another four days of it and I believe I should have grovelled in submissive adoration before my tyrant. Only my nightly visits to Audrey kept me in courage and resolution.
VIII: A STRANGE WOOING
The youngest of the women in the homestead was the last to speak to me. She was dark and not uncomely, and I had often noticed her at the readings smile rather fearfully at her own thoughts. Once my eyes had met hers and I was shocked by the direct challenge of her gaze. At the time I was disturbed and uneasy, but soon forgot and took no notice of the woman except that I felt vaguely that she was unhappy. But soon I was always meeting her. I would find her lurking in the rooms as I came to scrub and clean them. Or she would appear in the lane as I came home from the fields, or I would meet her in the doorway, so that I could not help brushing against her. A little later I missed one of my stockings as I got up in the morning and had to go barefoot until I had knitted another pair.
One night as I was creeping off to my poor Audrey, now deadly weary of her close quarters in the hay, to my horror I met this woman clad in her night attire. She vanished and I went my way thoroughly frightened. I told Audrey to be ready to come with me next day, for we were spied upon and could not now wait, as we had planned, until my little thefts from the larder had given us a sufficient store of food.
Nothing happened the next day and I gave up my determination to ransack the larder. That night as I opened the door I found the woman pressed against it, so that she fell almost into my arms. She clung to me wildly, assured me that I was the most beautiful man she had ever seen, and tried to press me back into my room, her tone, her whole bearing conveying an invitation about which it was impossible to be mistaken. It chilled me to the heart, coming as it did so suddenly out of the coldness engendered by the rigid separation of the sexes and the deliberate humiliation of men in that woman-ridden region. As gently as I could I put her from me, though it was not so easy, and I rushed out into the night. I could not tell Audrey what had happened, but as soon as I saw her I felt that the moment for our escape had come. If we did not seize it I should be denounced and tickled, if not worse. We crept away and made straight across the fields and at dawn hid in a wood.
IX: THE RUINED CITY
I was relieved to hear from Audrey that there were no newspapers. She told me that a man from her farm had run away but was never found. There were always new men coming, because it was impossible for them to obtain food except what they could kill. In the summer there were always men wandering about the country, but they came back in the winter and were glad to work for their board and lodging. I soon understood this, for when we had exhausted our store we were often a whole day without a morsel passing our lips, and I began to see the foolhardiness of my attempt at liberty. Again and again I besought Audrey to leave me, but she would not. She could always have obtained a meal for herself had she gone alone to a house, but wherever I went I was asked for my registered number, and at first had not the readiness to invent one. At last I told one woman I was 8150. She asked me what district and I did not know. On that she bundled me out and I was lucky to escape detention. When I asked Audrey about the registration she said all men were registered with a number and a letter. The men on her farm had been L.D. Next time I said I was L.D. 8150, and when asked my business I said I was taking my young miss to the nunnery at O. Either my answer was satisfactory or Audrey’s beauty was the passport it would be in any normal country, for we were handsomely treated and given a present of three cheeses to take to the nuns.
We ate the cheeses and were kept alive until, after a fortnight’s journey, we came on a dismal mass of blackened buildings. We entered the city, once world-famous for its textiles, and never have I been so near the hopelessness of the damned. The remains of a dead civilisation; decomposing and festering; grass grew in between the cobbles of the streets; weeds were rank; creepers covered the walls of the houses and their filthy windows. Huge factories were crumbling away, and here and there we came on immense piles of bricks where the chimneys had tumbled down. For miles we walked through the streets and never saw a soul until as we turned a corner into a square we came on a sight that made me think we had reached the lowest Hell.