Softly By Moonlight

by Bron Fane, Lionel Fanthorpe, Patricia Fanthorpe

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Alien Contact

Synopsis

Brinton couldn't believe the inscription when he read it in the cold white moonlight. He was looking at his own grave. He tried to read the date but the light wasn't strong enough to be certain. He returned to the graveyard by daylight... but the grave had gone.
He left the town in horror, but the grave followed him. He was drawn to burial grounds like iron to a magnet. It was always the same. By Moonlight he saw the grave, but never the date. By day he saw nothing. One night he saw the month. Then they day; at last he saw the year. He knew he was due to die in one week. What could he do? Can a man forestall his fate? Can a mortal outwit the dark designs of destiny? Was it all in his mind? Perhaps Roger Brinton was mad? The asylum is warmer than the grave. The day before he was due to die he saw the grave again... The earth was newly turned... it was waiting for him!

Release date: February 27, 2014

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 320

Sample

ROGER BRINTON was singing. He was singing because he was on holiday. He was singing because enjoyment consisted, for him, of two things from which he derived the greatest pleasure. The first was his hand-built canvas canoe, the second, a river …

There was plenty of river. Roger Brinton was paddling up the Thames. He was the kind of man who did things seriously and well if he did them at all. Not for him the quiet beauty and the peace of the upper reaches of London’s mighty river. Brinton was the kind of man who believed in exploring a river through all its twists and turns, the good as well as the bad, from an aesthetic point of view. Accordingly, he had taken his serviceable little single seater as far as Shoeburyness, where the wide mouth of the Thames, north of the Island of Sheppey, opened itself into the southern narrows of the North Sea—a stretch of water known as either the English or the French Channel, depending upon whether you were an Englishman or a Frenchman!

From Shoeburyness Roger Brinton had begun paddling. He had a small tent with him, and although it was very difficult to find a few square feet where a man might pitch a tent, without being asked to move on by the august majesty of the law, in those eastern stretches of the industrial Thames, nevertheless, to Roger Brinton this had been part of the challenge, part of the excitement.

He had passed Tilbury, Gravesend and Dartford. He had paddled through Purfleet and eased his way past Erith. He had weaved through West Ham, and wound through Woolwich. He had penetrated Poplar, and departed from Deptford. He had battled his way through Bermondsey, sailed through Southwark, and churned through Chelsea, fiddled along in his little craft through Fulham, broken the journey at Barnes, canoed through Kew, reached Richmond, and tied up at Teddington—the modern spelling was a derivation of Tide-end-town.

From Teddington he had made his way in a leisurely fashion into Kingston-on-Thames. Having dealt to his mental and his emotional satisfaction with those reaches of the river which were not often the precincts of the holiday maker, the pleasure-boater, or the explorer he felt that he could, with complete justification, settle down to enjoy the peaceful beauty of the aesthetic Thames of Oxford and the peaceful waters of the tributaries which flowed to it from the Gloucestershire hills and vales. There were reeds rustling in the wind as he paddled past Pangbourne and it set him singing.

Thought, so the psychologists said, reflected Roger Brinton, is very largely a matter of association. We think of A which reminds us of B which reminds us of C, and so on and so on, ad infinitum. Or, in extreme cases, ad nauseum. To the man who sings alone as he paddles a canoe, the problem is not so much one of acoustics or voice production, but of finding something to sing. When all the factors are set fair for bursting into song, the mind sometimes refuses to come up with the title of a song, or a melody, which a man can sing, thought Brinton. However, the rushes triggered off the song he sought. He had reached the twelfth and final verse as he paddled out of Pangbourne:

“I’ll sing you twelve songs

Green grow the rushes O’

What are your twelve songs?

Twelve are the twelve apostles,

Eleven for the eleven who went up to heaven

And Ten for the Ten Commandments,

Nine for the nine Bright Shiners,

Eight for the April rainers,

Seven for the seven stars in the sky

And six for the Six Proud Walkers,

Five for the symbols at your door,

Four for the Gospel makers,

Three, three, the rivals,

Two, two, the lily white boys,

Clothèd all in green-O,

One is one and all alone,

And ever more shall be so!”

The rushes and reeds seemed to nod approvingly as Roger Brinton clove the waters with his paddle. It was beginning to grow dark as he reached a stretch of quiet water just to the south, and a little to the east, of Streatley, on the left bank, and Goring on the right.

He saw a stretch of inviting green river bank that looked as though it might have been made for tent pitching. With a few deft strokes of the broad, wooden blade, he nosed the canoe under the sheltering lee of bank. The bank top, with its fresh green grass, like the crew-cut hair of a craggy-faced Nature-giant, was about two feet above the canoe. The inexperienced canoeist would have been tempted to make the kind of sideways movement in scrambling out that would have capsized canoe and camp gear, but Brinton was no such character. He knew his canoe inside out and back to front. For him it was the work of a moment to scramble up onto the bank. The canoe rocked a little, but that was all.

Beyond the canoe, four or five feet from the river’s edge, grew a graceful willow, and it was again only the work of a moment for Brinton to tie the two painters swiftly to the gnarled old roots, strong as steel hawsers, which projected above the ground. The gentle rains of nearly a century had worn away the soil, leaving the roots like some statuesque octopus, proud, weather-beaten, but undefeated by time or erosion.

As soon as the canoe was secured Roger set about collecting his tent. He had had considerable practice in far less congenial environments than this. The riverside turf was of an ideal texture for tent erection. It did not stubbornly refuse to take the pegs, but seemed to absorb them into itself and hold them like a friendly green hand steadying the guy ropes.

Inside his bivouac Roger Brinton lay resting in the twilight. He was hungry as well as tired, yet for the moment he wanted to lie and rest the arms that had paddled and the back that had supported the arms. The weariness that he felt was a healthy, wholesome weariness. He was pleased with the progress that he had made during the day. He lay, enjoying his well-earned rest. Gradually the tiredness ceded its place to hunger. The hunger made itself increasingly acute. Roger Brinton got up. He took a tin of soup from his pack. He heated the soup on a small methylated spirit burner, scarcely larger than a bar of chocolate. He poured the soup into a plastic mug, and drank with relish and enjoyment. His clasp knife punched holes in the top of a tin of beans, the tin replaced the soup can on top of the miniature meths burner. From time to time he gave the beans a solicitous stir. Steam, and an appetising smell rose from the tinned beans. Experience, and the tactile sensation in his fingertips told him that they were hot enough; holding the side of the tin in the insulating thickness of a fold of his pullover, he closed the knife blade and flipped open the tin opener side. A few swift, practised movements and the tin was opened. He produced a spoon from his pack. It was a well-worn stainless steel implement, that had stood him in good stead on many an expedition of this kind. He ate the beans with relish and enjoyment.

Three oranges and a slab of bread and cheese concluded his repast. He made himself a cup of coffee as the last of the methylated spirit gave up its heat and the flame died away into that strange limbo of forgotten things which seems to be the ultimate destiny of transient matter.

Brinton normally felt sleepy after a meal, particularly after a meal and a hard day’s paddling, but the air was fresh, sweet and clean and he felt a strangely wide awake feeling creeping over him. He felt replete and he felt tired but he also wanted to wander and look. It was rather a whimsical feeling, for there was something of the amateur philosopher in Roger Brinton.

He rose slowly, packed up his gear, and saw that the moon was rising. It was a summer’s evening, warm and fine, the kind of evening when no man really likes to sleep; the kind of evening when soft and exciting adventure seems to linger in the warmth of the air, adventure of the mind, adventure of the soul. Brinton got up and began to wander slowly along the river bank. He looked at the moonlit river, and in the distance he heard a church clock. He counted the strokes … nine … ten … eleven. He waited to see if there would be another. There wasn’t. Eleven o’clock. Brinton put a hand to his beard. Eleven o’clock on as perfect a summer evening as a man could imagine. Eleven o’clock and no feeling of sleepiness, only a desire to explore, a desire to look at this magic world of moonlight and silver. This magic world of soft, gentle shadows, a world of peace, a world that was beautiful as it slept.

Brinton felt rather like the sandman walking wakefully among a world of sleepers. His steps were taking him in the direction of the church clock. He was not walking very fast. Little creatures of the night rustled by the river bank. The faint splash of a water rat drew his attention to a line of ripples in the silver surface of the Thames. The rat swam sturdily, purposefully to the opposite bank. Brinton walked on, wondering what the rat’s purpose was …

He thought of himself in his canoe pushing purposefully up the Thames. The rat had a purpose; he had a purpose, but his purpose reflected back upon itself. He paddled for the safe of the satisfaction that it gave him. His objective was to reach the uppermost limits of the great river. He tried to go a stage further in his thinking. Why did he want to reach the uppermost stages of the river? It was only a goal he had set for himself, an objective that was self-inflicted. Was the rat’s objective self-inflicted? Was it responding to some inner motivation? Or to some external stimulus, or to a combination of the two? Had the rat any choice, or was it merely obeying urges and instincts? Was it responding to the field of its environment, or was it exercising its ability to choose? The rat was conscious as far as an external observer could tell, but was it self-conscious? Was it able to say or to think “I am”?

It was an interesting train of thought that was running through Roger Brinton’s mind as he reflected on the rat. The moonlight reflected on the water. The rat disappeared on its errand on the further bank. Brinton continued his leisurely stroll. The wind, scarcely more than a gentle breeze, warm and soft and pleasant, murmured among the rushes, and Roger found the words of a familiar tune going through his mind again. He began humming ‘Green Grow the Rushes-O’ to himself.

ROGER BRINTON heard the clock towards which he was walking chime without any real sense of purpose, chime the quarters, sprinkling them on the sleeping villag. . .