The Peacock Cloak

of incomers in Churchill Camp and the Tre Morfa settlement. In Cambridge you could almost imagine that you were in a place called England, and not in that strange contested place called the Eastern Occupied Territories.
    Four cars passed through the checkpoint. There were three young Logrian soldiers there as usual with an armoured personnel carrier. They asked for papers, peered into the vehicles, looked at luggage, asked people what their business was. It was slow and tedious but there were no special problems until the fifth car reached the front. Perhaps the driver was known to them, perhaps he was deliberately provocative, perhaps the soldiers simply felt in the mood for a change of routine, but for whatever reason suddenly the mood changed. The soldiers shouted at the young red-headed driver and his girlfriend get out – “Now! Now! Let’s go, Saxons!” – and proceeded to empty his suitcases out onto the road and poke through the contents with their rifle barrels. The man protested loudly. His girlfriend began to weep.
    Thomas looked at Jenny and saw the little spark of humour and hope fading once again in his wife’s eyes.
    “We should have started earlier,” she said flatly. “We should have known things would be slow just now.”
    She clenched and unclenched her hands.
    “Damn, damn, damn !” she hissed. “We’re s o stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. We should have known .”
    Things had been tense since the deal between the Logrian government and Blair. Rejectionists on both sides had accused their leaders of selling out and had begun to react with violence. It was obvious, at least with hindsight, that the soldiers were going to be on edge.
    The day was getting warm.
    “Why aren’t we at the hospital yet, Tom?” whimpered Doreen in the back of the car. “I’m so hot. And I’m going to need the toilet soon.”
    Then the red-headed owner of the suitcase made the mistake of shoving one of the soldiers. The soldier, a Spanish-looking boy ablaze with the full bloom of adolescent acne, rammed him back against the personnel carrier, shoving his gun into the young man’s face. The man’s girlfriend screamed and the soldier backed off a little. The woman then went to pick up the contents of the suitcase that were strewn over the road, only to be ordered to stop. When she ignored this, another soldier came forward and very roughly pushed her back so she stumbled and fell. At this drivers and passengers from other cars began to get out and protest.
    “What do you think you’re doing?”
    “Leave the girl alone!”
    “What’s happening Tom?” Doreen called out. “Why can’t we go now? What’s all this waiting for?”
    “It’s all right mum,” Thomas said, “It’s just the soldiers…”
    “What soldiers? Why are there soldiers here? Are we having a war?”
    It was no good trying to explain to her. She lived her life at a time before the occupation began, when the country called Logres didn’t even exist except in storybooks.
    “It’s just… the police. Just the police, mum, that’s all.”
    The soldiers were badly rattled by all the people getting out of their cars. For a moment Thomas actually felt sorry for them. They were only boys, after all, younger than Jenny and Thomas’ own son William, and there were only three of them there, alone in a hostile land where many people would cheerfully kill them.
    Suddenly one of the soldiers fired some shots in the air and everyone dived for cover.
    “Get back in your cars and wait!” the soldier shouted. “Do you understand? In your cars now !”

    Another half-hour went by. Eventually the owner of the suitcase and his girlfriend, still unable to get through, jumped into their car, did a U-turn and roared back the way they had come with much squealing of brakes and grinding of gears. The next car crawled forward. There were another three before Thomas and Jenny’s turn. Behind them another twenty vehicles were waiting. Even with all the windows wound down it was now very hot indeed.
    “I need the toilet,” Doreen whimpered, “I can’t wait any more.”
    Thomas got out of the car and called to the soldiers in Brythonic.
    “Excuse me. It’s my mother. She’s eighty-two. She needs to go to the toilet. Could we just…”
    “Are you deaf or something, Saxon? I said stay in your fucking car.”
    He got back in. After a few minutes a spreading stench told him his mother hadn’t been able to hold on.
    It was quarter to one by the