Figures in a Landscape Read online

  FIGURES IN A LANDSCAPE

  by

  BARRY ENGLAND

  With a new introduction by

  CRAIG RUSSELL

  VALANCOURT BOOKS

  Figures in a Landscape by Barry England

  First published London: Jonathan Cape, 1968

  First Valancourt Books edition 2013

  Copyright © 1968 by Barry England

  Introduction © 2013 by Craig Russell

  The publisher is grateful to Tom Adams for permission to reproduce his cover painting and to Mark Terry of Facsimile Dust Jackets, LLC, for the reproduction used for this edition.

  Published by Valancourt Books, Richmond, Virginia

  http://www.valancourtbooks.com

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without prior written consent of the publisher, constitutes an infringement of the copyright law.

  Cover by Tom Adams

  INTRODUCTION

  Barry England was born in 1932 in London, the son of an eminent doctor. After attending Downside School, he spent his National Service as a subaltern in the British army, mainly in the Far East. This short—and apparently often gruelling—experience of the military world wielded a huge influence on his future writing career. After leaving the army, England trained as an actor at RADA, supporting himself as a cartoonist and by magazine journalism. His first play, End of Conflict, was staged in 1961. England clearly felt at home in his role as a playwright, and authored another military-themed play, Conduct Unbecoming, which garnered critical acclaim and secured his reputation. He also worked as a screenwriter, writing extensively for British television at the time when the single play was the main artistic form on the medium.

  But it is for his debut novel, one of only two written by England, that he is best known. First published in 1968, Figures in a Landscape received great critical praise and was shortlisted for the inaugural Booker Prize, losing out to P. H. Newby’s Something to Answer For.

  Figures in a Landscape begins with a literal leap into the unknown: two bound men plunge headlong through a column of prisoners and guards and over a precipice. Both men are in pursuit of the same goal: freedom. For one, Ansell, freedom is just an idea, a concept; for the other, MacConnachie, it is a ‘palpable animal need’.

  Thereafter, the novel becomes a story of pursuit: the two escapees in pursuit of freedom and the single black insect eye of a helicopter in pursuit of them. The conflict—along with the enemy and the country through which they escape—is never identified.

  In fiction, physical journeys very often serve as metaphors for spiritual or emotional ones, and this is certainly true here. Ansell’s and MacConnachie’s journey—the goal to get back to their own lines 400 miles away—is twofold: they travel across an alien and unremittingly hostile environment—the landscape of the title—while also traversing the chasm of personality between them. MacConnachie is the older, tougher, more resolute and cynical professional soldier, ‘a man too dangerous to be liked’; while Ansell is younger, uncertain, more reflective—always fearful that he will disappoint the older man who has given him his chance to be free. MacConnachie is a collection of basic instincts, Ansell is the reasoner. Ansell’s journey begins with a single question: why did MacConnachie choose him as his escape partner? The answer emerges as the journey progresses and the relationship between the men develops. Forced not just to cooperate, but to rely on each other’s different psychologies and skills, the dynamic between the two protagonists drives the book as much as their desperate flight.

  For the fleeing men, the most basic existential needs become obsession: water, food, shelter. The landscape they cross becomes a sensory experience with the experienced MacConnachie using his military training to read every topographical feature, sensing sustenance, threat and concealment; stretching his consciousness out into the landscape, ‘sending out’, as England describes it, ‘his instinctual scouts to probe the territory’.

  England sketches the landscape with language as sharp, hard and uncompromising as the landscape itself. In their desperate race for freedom, the two men scrabble, clamber and claw their way across this alien hostile environment, alternately stifled by claustrophobic heat and tight-packed brush or exposed and vulnerable on sun-baked open ground, always watchful for the relentless hunter in the sky.

  Figures in a Landscape is a remarkable novel. England managed to strip down and oil his writing like a soldier would his rifle. At the same time spare and stark yet vivid and visual, the pace is relentless, compulsive. Yet England somehow was able to write a novel that satisfies those usually contradictory imperatives of keeping the reader turning pages while maintaining a high literary standard.

  Much of the original praise for Figures in a Landscape focused on its place in the canon of ‘escape fiction’. I think this does the book a huge disservice. It is true that escape, flight and pursuit are the engines that drive the novel, but there is much more to this compelling work than that. Woven through the pared-down writing are almost Sartrean themes and a complexity that never slows the pace. As a writer, I find myself now analysing how England managed to do this, how much was accident and how much design.

  Such thoughts did not occur to me when I first read the novel as a teenager in the early seventies. I lost, and was lost for, a day and a half in compulsive reading. I am on record as having declared that England’s novel was one of a handful that convinced me to become a writer, so enthralled was I with the idea that an author could mesmerize and transport a reader to another place, time and experience so completely.

  The experience of reading this book is so immersive, so total, that, as you read, you too become one of the Figures in the Landscape.

  Craig Russell

  June 3, 2013

  Craig Russell is the author of the best-selling and critically acclaimed Jan Fabel thrillers set in Hamburg, and the Lennox thrillers set in 1950s Glasgow. His novels have been published in twenty-three languages around the world.

  FIGURES IN A LANDSCAPE

  With their hands tied as usual behind their backs, they had just been paraded through the streets of a small village for the edification of the local population. While they were being formed up for the march to that night’s camp, MacConnachie had come suddenly close and whispered harshly:

  ‘If I go left, will you come?’

  Ansell, remembering a hundred humiliations at MacConnachie’s hands, had stared at him in astonishment.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Will you come?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When I move—follow!’

  That was the extent of their planning. They had been beaten for talking.

  Stumbling along in the fierce heat, Ansell struggled to make his brain think clearly: what have I committed myself to? what have I done? His bound arms ached at his back, his anguish of mind feeding on his torment of body. Through glazed eyes he saw MacConnachie look back towards him, and his stomach contracted with fear at the thought of what lay ahead. Not an hour before he had committed himself to a man he feared because that man despised him.

  Now one of the Goons screamed at MacConnachie to face his front and MacConnachie swore back. The other prisoners murmured in anger and fear, terrified that MacConnachie would make trouble. MacConnachie spat on them with con­tempt.

  They hate him, Ansell thought. They’ve all given up, you can see it in the way they shuffle along, heads bent in submission. MacConnachie alone remains stubborn, and they hate him for it. They’d kill him if they could—anything to be rid of that unbend­ing reminder that they were themselves once men.r />
  He is right. We must get away now or we never shall. But how can we hope to survive? And why pick me?

  It was late afternoon. The prisoners moved raggedly in column of threes along a narrow mountain track, choking on the thick dust that their feet threw up; the weight of the sun pressed con­stantly over them. The air was suffocating and still, the Goons no less tired or dirty than the men they guarded.

  To their right, the massive shoulder of the mountain soared up to a hidden peak; on their left was a sheer drop. Ansell had no idea how deep it was or what lay at the bottom. MacCon­nachie, he knew, was no better informed than himself since, from the right-hand column, he would have had even less opportunity than Ansell to peer over the edge, and Ansell had had none. He was racked by a terrible sense of having committed himself beyond his capacity; as though, by surrendering to MacConnachie’s will, he had made a promise he would be unable to keep. He felt sick with the fear of letting MacConnachie down. Try as he might, he could not feel that he yearned for freedom as MacConnachie did, with his entire body. To him it was an idea, however desirable; to MacConnachie, a palpable animal need.

  The Goons were all around them, a small group to front and rear, and down each flank a single file of guards keeping pace. All were armed with burp guns. Why in the name of God doesn’t he do something? Ansell thought. His stomach fluttered in anticipation. He kept remembering the violence in MacConnachie, the crudeness and force, the unpredictability of a man too dangerous to be liked, and his legs trembled at the recurring realization that MacConnachie had chosen him. He is so much the stronger, Ansell thought; he knows the country and he speaks the language. He had that—thing about physical phenomena; that instinct.

  What does he need with me?

  MacConnachie put his head down, swung left and charged through the ranks of stumbling men, scattering his former com­rades in every direction. One of the Goons at the edge of the precipice saw him coming and, alight with fear, struggled frantically to unsling his weapon. MacConnachie dived full length and, catching him in the face with the crown of his head, carried him over, both of them falling from view. Ansell ran forward, shut his eyes, and jumped after them.

  For a moment all orientation was lost to him. He tumbled and spun dizzily, completely unaware of what was happening to his body, of whether he fell by the feet or the head. The wind tore at his face, forcing his eyelids apart and his mouth open. He tried to cry out but the echoing din deafened him. He was on the point of vomiting. The next moment he was twisting and turning his trunk in a ludicrous attempt to pull his bottom out through his bound arms. He couldn’t breathe. He screamed with terror. Then he hit the water with a stunning crash.

  He came to the surface at once, unsure he had ever been under it, and began to pump his back legs with the frantic disorder of a mutilated insect. He had no idea in which direction he was swimming.

  ‘Ansell! Ansell!’

  He came suddenly upright and found that he could stand. He started to cough.

  ‘Here!’

  MacConnachie was fifteen feet away. He had the Goon’s head trapped between his knees, and was drowning him. The man thrashed about, swimming downwards.

  ‘Find the gun!’

  Ansell floundered towards him through the warm, brown water.

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘I don’t know—look for the bastard!’

  In a curious, enforced slow motion Ansell danced about, feeling the tacky sludge with his feet, trying to find something hard in all that ooze. MacConnachie rode out a last contortion from the Goon and then released the body, which bobbed a moment and slid from view. Ansell said,

  ‘They’re shooting at us.’

  ‘I’m not blind!’

  The bullets fell about them with the dead violence of dropped stones, barely breaking the surface of the water as they passed through it. From far above, faint popping noises sounded.

  ‘Here! Over here!’

  MacConnachie appeared to have found the gun for, although the churned-up water was impenetrable, he was scowling down at it with fierce attention, slight movements of his head and shoulders indicating that below the surface he was performing some sort of cautious jig. Ansell wallowed over to where he stood.

  ‘Got my right foot under it. See if you can lever it up.’

  They faced one another, two men at the centre of a river, with their arms bound tightly behind their backs and bullets all around.

  ‘I can’t find it.’

  ‘Put your foot on my leg and follow it down.’

  As the toe of Ansell’s boot came down MacConnachie’s shinbone, he felt the heel knock the gun from the top of MacCon­nachie’s foot.

  ‘You stupid . . . !’

  ‘I’ve still got my foot on it.’

  ‘Get it underneath—lever it up.’

  As he said this, MacConnachie turned his back to Ansell and lowered himself into the water, reaching behind him with grop­ing fingers into the slime. Ansell could feel the metal slithering about on the toe of his boot. Don’t let it slip, he prayed, don’t let it fall. He eased it up with infinite caution.

  ‘I’ve got it!’

  ‘Easy, easy . . .’

  MacConnachie was leaning right back now, only his face above the surface, his hair trailing like weed in the water. This time, it was his water-clumsy fingers that knocked the gun to the bottom again.

  ‘Oh sweet God Almighty!’

  In a rage of frustration he turned about, plunged his head down into the filth and reappeared a moment later, the gun clamped between his teeth, his face plastered with muck and slime. This action released a vile stench which rose in bubbles to break on the air.

  He grunted frantically until Ansell, interpreting him, turned his back and reached behind him for the gun. The next moment it was in his hands and they were floundering towards the bank, bullets slapping the water all about them.

  Then Ansell fell. So great was his anxiety not to let MacCon­nachie down that he clutched the gun as though it could save him, forgetting to compose his features. Mouth open, breathing in, he swallowed.

  His next clear apprehension, moments later, was of being seized by the scruff of the neck and dragged through the shallows, vomiting and retching. Then, at the touch of solid ground, his legs started to function again and MacConnachie, able to open his jaw to release him, shouted,

  ‘Give me the gun!’

  ‘I’m all right!’

  But MacConnachie took it and ran for the nearest cover, crouching low. Ansell followed. They fell against the earth and lay there, gasping.

  Hunched awkwardly on to his left side, MacConnachie peered up at the mountain. No scent of danger came to him from that direction. In any case, common sense told him that eight hours of heavy downhill labour lay between their late captors and them­selves. But on this side of the river he could feel the faint, per­sistent tug of distant alarm, and he turned his attention to their new territory.

  Immediately ahead lay a small area of pimple and scrub. This gave way almost at once to the first slopes of a range of hills that stretched from left to right to fill their entire field of vision with solid undulation. Somewhere beyond these hills, though hidden now by the nearer crests, stood the peaks of a vast moun­tain range that had become his objective the moment he had sighted them two days before. Once in those mountains, they would have a chance; the initiative would pass from the Goons to them. But first they had to establish their break. Then they had to get there. He rose and said,

  ‘Come on. We must move.’

  ‘Which way?’

  ‘Into the hills. We must be in high ground by nightfall.’

  Now that he had recovered, Ansell felt ashamed and frighten­ingly exposed. He rose and followed MacConnachie with relief.

  ‘Sorry about being sick.’

  MacConnachie grunted without interest. He had assumed the poised, characteristic posture that Ansell had seen so often before: the curious animal lope of a man sensing the ground ahead
, probing it not only with eyes and ears, but with that strange inner device which Ansell neither possessed nor understood, but which he had learned to envy and trust. Feeling, as he always did, released by this, he began to think ahead, saying,

  ‘What about water?’

  ‘What about it?’

  MacConnachie didn’t turn but continued to scent the ground ahead, as Ansell himself sought constantly for danger to the flanks and rear.

  ‘We must have some.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘We can’t go too far from the river.’

  ‘We’ve got to get out of the first box of search.’

  ‘There may not be a village up there for miles.’

  ‘There isn’t.’

  Ansell accepted this without question: if MacConnachie said there was no village, there was none. The fact that MacConnachie had never walked this ground before was immaterial to his par­ticular abilities. Ansell said,

  ‘Then we’ve got to stay close enough to raid a village down here. There’ll be plenty of them on the river.’

  For some moments MacConnachie walked on in silence; then he said,

  ‘Damn, you’re right.’

  Silence fell again. Ansell was unable to discern movement of any kind on any quarter. He found it curious and disconcerting that they should appear, in the circumstances, so utterly alone. He felt threatened. Suddenly MacConnachie pulled violently against his bonds.

  ‘We’ve got to get our hands free! We’ve got to!’

  ‘I know.’

  They had reached the beginnings of the foot-hills now, and their movements took on a new rhythm as they started to climb.

  To the front their field of view was dangerously limited: they could see to a false crest at the top of the slope but, apart from the tips of the hills beyond, nothing more. They walked in the soldier’s most ill-starred territory, the low ground, and it made them uneasy. MacConnachie said,