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mid-afternoon, I was nearer the back than the front and perhaps fifteen miles from here. Perhaps more. I’m not sure…” he trailed off. Nilda gave her son a look, prompting him to be the one to ask something to keep the older man talking.
    “Did you see anyone you knew?” Jay asked.
    “Knew? A handful. And some I recognised but couldn’t name. Few spared me a second glance, and none spared me a word. Certainly no one came to my aid. And then there were too many people to spare the time to look around. For a while, it was all I could do just to avoid walking in to the back of someone or trip over the feet of someone else. It was strange, not at all the way that I thought people would act. There was no camaraderie, just this nearly tangible focus on getting to the destination. There was a woman, an old woman, far older than I. She had a little shopping cart, you know the two-wheeled kind with a tartan pattern? One of the wheels had come off, but she was resolutely dragging it along. That scraping rasp cut through the noise of stamping feet and through my exhaustion. I helped her as best I could, and as much to have that noise cease than out of any sense of duty. And that slowed me even more. She’d been on the evacuation route for four hours and had only managed three miles. She just wouldn’t give up that trolley. Nor would she tell me what was inside. It was heavy, mind you, and clinked a bit. Not as though metal was rubbing against metal, but that softer tinkle of delicate china.”
    “Why’d she bring that?” Jay asked.
    “As I said, she wouldn’t tell me. Not directly. But I think she, and others, they took what was important to them, not that which would be vital to their immediate survival. It was ever thus. Around four o’clock, an Army half-track started making its way along the northbound lane, travelling in a direction opposite to us lambs. They were blaring out a message over their speakers, telling the slower people to get into the left-hand lane, the faster into the right. I waved to the vehicle, trying to get their attention. I thought they had ignored me. Certainly they gave no indication they’d noticed our plight. Yet a few minutes later, perhaps ten, perhaps twenty, a string of lorries came up the road behind us. They were picking up the stragglers, you see, and one of them stopped for the old lady. They took her, but not me.”
    “Didn’t you want to go with them?” Jay asked.
    “I did. They asked if I could still walk. I said ‘yes.’ In which case, they said, that was what I had to do. I kept on. Night was starting to draw in. I didn’t check the time. I didn’t want to know how long I’d been walking, not when there was seemingly no end in sight. It must have been after six. I’d just gone through Carlisle, but there was hardly anyone behind, nor in front. I was almost alone, walking at a near crawl. I sat down by the roadside to rest. It wasn’t long before another vehicle came up. Again, I asked for a ride, and again I was turned down. They told me, no, they ordered me to keep going. They said there was no room. I could see that there was. But you know, ultimately, it was their spite that saved me. And I did get the location of the Muster Point out of them. It was five miles east of Gretna. On the border between England and Scotland,” he added in response to Jay’s blank expression. “The route left the motorway just a mile further on from where I’d stopped. So it was ten miles walking by road, or six if I went in a straight line. I continued walking, but only until the vehicle was out of sight. Then I left the road.”
    “I thought you said the road was walled in.”
    “It was, but there were gaps. Sometimes it was barricaded with concrete, cement, and double-thick chain-wire fence. But they clearly hadn’t enough of it. Every few hundred yards the impregnable wall would stop, the gap filled with riot-barriers or rolls of chicken wire. It was easy enough to get out.