Not Alone, page 32
‘When we’re asleep are we dead for a bit?’ Harry asks suddenly, as if it’s something he has been thinking about a lot. ‘Like the man in the house by Andy and Sue, and the people in the books at the cottage?’ His face is serious and scared as he looks out at the dark around us, as if imagining all the dead people sleepwalking about in the pitch blackness.
Or rather, I realize, as he worries over Sue’s ‘disappeared’ children, the ‘sleeping’ deceased Ian and the butchered deer . . . imagining falling asleep here and having one of those nightmares you really want to wake yourself up from but can’t, whilst in real life monsters drag your defenceless body down into unfathomable terrifying darkness – lost forever – or people carve your flesh up to eat. And you’ll never wake to see the daylight and trees and mountains again.
‘Oh, Harry,’ I say, feeling horrified. ‘Is that why you’ve not wanted to sleep? I thought you were just afraid outside, away from the flat.’ That guilty lump clogs my throat. ‘No,’ I say firmly.
‘But how do you know?’
I rub his shoulder. ‘That man we saw wasn’t sleeping, I shouldn’t have said that. Dead isn’t like sleeping at all. It means the body has stopped working, like the rabbit when I broke its neck. Sleep is just resting because we’re tired.’
‘He was broken like the rabbit?’ He glances sideways at the ‘clean’ cooking saucepan, the lid clipped down against the elements, the rabbit bones safe inside it for a breakfast broth tomorrow morning.
I nod. ‘And Andy’s deer,’ I say gently. ‘All things die eventually, even if someone or something doesn’t stop them from working on purpose.’
He stares into the fire, thinking hard. ‘And when you’re dead you never wake up again?’
I shake my head.
‘Then we’re dead forever and ever like all the people in the books and all the people in all the houses?’ He sniffs, the weight of that horrible understanding on his little shoulders.
I remember sitting in the flat alone before Harry arrived, a not dissimilar numb weight of understanding hitting me. Surrounded by all that death, the one life I got to live ruined beyond repair by that storm. It made me feel like all I had left was waiting to face the void alone, one way or another.
And yet I kept trying. Each day. Surviving. For now. For myself.
And then I had to survive for Harry too.
I clutch my chest, trying to think of something good to say for Harry, so he’s less afraid. The fire pops and sizzles, and I think about our day today, and how there were really hard bits and then this little perfect good bit. Same as life overall.
‘No,’ I say, ‘that’s not right. You get to live every day, you only die once.’
Harry nods, but he’s too little still to really understand. And yet perhaps I have to try. He filled in the blanks of what I was not telling him – my fear obvious – with something scarier than the truth. I imagine him growing up, not understanding things at all, filling in the blanks with stupid or dangerous ideas because he knows no better, because I didn’t teach him. I should have told him about Before, how people lived together, how they got along and how they didn’t, how diverse human beings are, all the stuff they knew to keep us healthy, how we can get ill, how the weather works, how the Earth moves, their predictions about climate change because of how we lived, all of it. Even if I get him to Jack, I might not have done enough.
What if, one day, he thought bad rain or storms or heatwaves came down as punishment or that things with ‘magic’ rainbows and sparkle – clear rain or glossy mushrooms or glittering water – were good and safe. Like some supernatural nod of approval.
I was right to try to explain how babies are made. One day, if we make it, he’ll be a grown-up human, not a little child. I should have been raising a future adult all this time, not fearfully keeping my little boy safe.
‘Harry . . .’ I look into the fire, wondering where to start and, still, if I can bear to. ‘Those sparks are bits of plastic dust catching fire really easily – the people that are gone made plastic and it all got ground down into small pieces and spread about in the air, and everywhere. That’s what bad air is. It’s different to natural “dust” like mushroom or algae spores, or the bits of skin and clothes at our flat. Do you understand?’
Harry makes an ‘oh’ sound, as if this seems all the more magical. ‘Why did they make it? How big is everywhere?’
‘Remember when you got sick from drinking that bad water? Or when I get sick and can’t breathe? Well, the people Before made the world a bit sick . . .’ I start to tell him about how we lived, Jack and I. Where food came from, how we had power to turn on lights and cookers, how planes – like cars in the sky – flew to very far places, just how many people there were, how plastic was made and what we used it for but how we didn’t treasure it . . . How scared everyone was when they realized the rivers and seas were getting sick, how it got warmer in some places and more prone to droughts or wildfires, or more stormy in others. How it used to be so green . . .
How they started to find plastic dust in rivers, soils and even the air – and also in the vast oceans, millions of pieces per square metre, washed there like it was a great big watery garbage dump. All containing their own chemicals (poisons) to make each piece a particular colour or texture. How other poisons we threw away got stuck inside the tiny bits of plastic too, and all of it leaked out again at will. Because we really were pigs, weren’t we? How hurricanes – big massive storms – got bigger and bigger, until several huge ones all at once carried so much dust out of the ocean they covered a continent in it, then blew the toxic dust around the globe. And it will always be here – it doesn’t break down, can’t disappear. It will be in all water, all soil, all air, affecting all life. And that’s how all the people Before died – they breathed it in during the big storm . . .
Once I start, everything begins to run off my tongue. I’m not sure how much Harry will understand, but he’s listening like he does to a new story, and I figure it will all go in and the questions will come. And I resolve, this time, to answer them.
41
We stumble on, long wet days heading what I hope is north-east by walking slightly north of where the sun rose. We keep the bigger peaks on our left, hoping we’ll find the Spey Valley again soon – Aviemore somewhere along it – over the next rise or ridge. Days run into each other, the taste of cooked rabbit a dream we talk about every night as we chew tiny heathland herbs and grass seeds – most of our handfuls going in Harry’s belly, at least one of us slightly less empty. We stop now at every boulder; I focus on them as we slip-slide across scree and bog. Just get to the next boulder. And the next. We frown at the map every other one, desperately trying to match up peaks and streams, but nothing quite fits. I’m breathless now even when we stop, heart still winking its squeezing pain, making me feel faint and sick. My cough is no longer wet and bloody like it has been since Arisaig, but dry and tight and raw. We stop to sleep when it gets dark and force ourselves up when it gets light.
Over a ridge we hit the welcoming muffled quiet of a green pinewood – not old dark plantation with needle and moss floor this time, but naturally regenerated forest, with beautiful spreading wonky-branched pines of all sizes, letting in more light, and the ground lush with hummocks of bilberry and heather. We lose ourselves in the deep depths of it, free from our masks. Eating inner bark and drinking pine-needle tea. When we reach a clear spot, the trees go on to left and right, but fade out to shrubby old farmland below us, a clear arc of yellow further down in the valley that might once have been a railway line. And beyond it, a vast plateau thick with mostly green forest, surrounded by domed mountains – the Cairngorms! We consult the map, chilled fingers hovering over marked forest and railways, and I blink, giddy warmth rushing through me. I know exactly where we are! For the first time in days – since we got lost in the mist.
Harry smiles. ‘Did you find us?’
I grin, splitting my bottom lip again. ‘Yes! Overshot Aviemore . . .’ I can see glimpses of the town to the south. ‘But . . . can follow that train line I think.’ I sob, still grinning, sagging against the nearest tree, Harry patting my back as I focus on breathing.
The warm spark of hope and relief – we could have wandered and never found this – fuels the slippery trudge downhill. By midday, we’re down on the old tracks, kicking through pale gold Himalayan balsam. Seed pods explode at the slightest movement, the pink flowers bobbing. We eat the immature flowers and seeds, peeling back their unripe cases and eating scraped-out slivers of soft mush or nuttiness inside.
‘Mummy!’ Harry cries, pointing, and I grimace to straighten myself up. A blue carriage, its big dark windows marred with dust and algae, is nestled in the balsam, a blanket of vomity grass on the roof.
‘Don’t look inside,’ I whisper. Telltale awful shapes are slumped on the seats; I see snatches of desiccated hair and creamy-yellow bone before I manage to look away.
‘Why?’
I spit out the trickle of blood sitting in my mouth, and heave a dry cough as I try to speak.
‘Nasties?’ he says quietly.
I’m tired but I try to pick the right words. ‘People from Before—’
‘Disappeared dead ones?’
He stares up at the nearest window and then immediately drops his head and shuffles close, determinedly looking at the ground as we pass the length of the carriage.
‘What if they wake up?’
‘They won’t, remember?’ And I feel myself needing to say more. We stop and I struggle down to his level. ‘The rabbit wasn’t a nasty, was it?’ My voice is scratchy. ‘Nothing dead can hurt you. The people inside the broken bodies are gone.’
‘Where?’
‘Nowhere. Just gone.’ I lift his mask to kiss his cheek, his face still confused by where they might go.
The afternoon is almost over by the time we emerge next to a pretty wood-clad Victorian train station and I feel a surge of excitement and relief. Just like I did with Jack after we’d arrived on the overnight up to Edinburgh, and then the local up to Aviemore for a holiday, mixed up now with a burning longing and familiar dread.
He has to be here. All or nothing.
Our best is a constant shuffle now. Everything hurts; each step of the many scrambling miles behind us feels like a triumph.
I know if I stop, it’s hard to start up again, so I focus on each step closer, feeling that magnetic pull of Jack somewhere not far away now, putting as little weight on the smarting bad ankle as possible, balancing on the large stick Harry found me. My lungs are so wheezy and painful and breathless that I concentrate on that too; breathing feels like trying to suck air in through a straw, my mask long since discarded. Going this slow, and the pain ever-present, I’m sweating and cold.
‘Mm.’ I have to stop once more, a thundering pain in my heart.
‘Come on, Mummy,’ Harry says, tugging me on again.
The houses along the sleepy high street are grey and pale pink stone and slightly battered, with pines growing up rich and green around them. I don’t know where Jack and I stayed, but it was a bed and breakfast that looked like these houses.
Yet I remember more forest. And this converted-bothy pub at the end of the high street! The air suddenly seems to smell of roasting vegetables and rich gravy. To ring with Jack’s voice and the bustle of a busy pub. I stop to rest again, and when I shake my head, the imagined scent and sound is gone.
We turn south round the corner of the pub, heading deeper into the Cairngorms Forest, which spreads out in a glorious carpet of rich green and mottled yellows and oranges. We pass a primary school with faint hopscotch squares – purple, pink and blue – still just visible beneath the leaf litter in the playground. Maybe tomorrow, we could come and play there. Past that, the pines have grown so tall and spreading that we are constantly in solid shadow.
‘Big trunks, Mummy – lots of famine food, see, don’t worry,’ Harry says, spreading his arms wide across a lichen-hairy trunk.
The air is thick with the scent of pine, and clear and still under the trees on what’s left of the road – maybe the cleanest air we’ve breathed. Even so, I hop slowly, sucking breaths in.
‘We’re doing it!’ Harry says, smiling as he zigzags next to me, touching the glossy green pine needles tipped with fiery orange and examining the yellow-streaked bracken. A pair of ravens keep cawing and following, landing in the road and then flying ahead, watching me, it feels.
A few miles down the road, we stop. A jolt of warmth and desperate hope spreads through me. The Mountain View Inn – its sign, repainted recently, visible above the door – sits amongst the Scots pines. Pale grey and pink stone, steeply gabled roof, tall gothic windows.
‘Is this the house?’ Harry whispers, tugging my hand after a while and it’s almost as if he’s woken me up. I don’t know how long we’ve stared.
‘It looks familiar.’ My voice is raspy and thin; it hurts to push the words out. I remember laughing on this very spot – it echoes inside my skull. Tears streaking down our faces. Jack weaving up the path ahead of me. We’d fished out the keys and were still trying to control ourselves as we stepped inside. I don’t remember now what made us laugh so much.
The pain in my chest only pulses hotter as I limp the last stretch to the solid pine door – there’s a carved wreath of leaves and fruits in the wood. I reach out to touch it, the pain and exhaustion-fuelled fog clearing from my mind, every part of me sharp for sound or movement, for Jack. A rusted tripwire and bell lies in a pile beside the step and the door smoothly swings open as I push on it. Tiny pieces of glass inlaid, or blown, into the wood sparkle as it moves, like dew.
We creep into a hallway, letting the door close quietly behind us, Harry pulling free of his mask. We can still hear the creaking and soft rustling of the pines and the cawing of the birds outside, but it’s muffled. The hallway is dark, all the doors shut, perhaps to keep in the warmth.
Harry sticks to me as I move forwards. A skylight casts a grey glow over the banister rail. At first I think the pale wood has rotted, but as we step closer, I can’t help reaching out to touch it. A twisting river is carved along the first span of horizontal rail – the golden grain flowing and rippling, and around it, beautifully detailed roses, trees, mountains, two figures holding hands, the sun setting over a sea. I can almost smell the delicate sweetness of roses. There are turrets and castles – their names inscribed finely beneath each. The tartan-carpeted stairs are soft underfoot. I stop every few to clutch my ribcage and catch my breath. To press my fingers along the tiny shape of a canoe in the river carrying two figures. Harry is scratching at the collected dust in the lines of a carved bear, rearing up between trees.
I shake my head and he snaps his hand back to my waist.
Upstairs, the doors are shut too, and dread hardens my stomach. It seems airless up here; I’m gasping, body tingling from lack of air, lungs desperate.
‘Is it OK, Mummy?’ Harry tugs at my hand, making me wince. ‘Sorry.’
I nod and hobble down the hallway. At the end, there’s a room marked ‘Norefjell’ with tiny carvings around it: of mountain peaks, a sprig of heather, a dipper perched on a river pebble, a beautiful fish. My stomach gives another lurch. Tears threaten to blur my vision and I blink them away as I reach for the handle, fingers trembling over the tarnished metal.
‘Shouldn’t we call out?’ Harry whispers. ‘So we won’t be a surprise?’
I nod, but my throat won’t work.
The door moves smoothly on its hinges and we step inside. The room is gloomy, heavy purple curtains shut, the air dry and smelling of wood. I stare, refusing to blink, willing my eyes to adjust. Harry is at my hip, clinging to my belt. The four-poster is there. Dark, carved wood, drapes missing. The headboard is upholstered in Scottish thistle fabric. The bed is unmade, greyed sheets runkled and tangled. There are shoes at the foot of the bed, a pair of fur boots, one tipped on its side. I bend to touch them – supple leather on the inside, soft thick fur on the outside, seams hand-stitched with thick waxed thread. Some clothes are strewn in the corner of the room: jeans, a few T-shirts, pants. Blinking, tears sting out from my crusty eyelids.
I hurry as best I can round the corner. The bathroom too is empty. Towels are draped over the sides of a cast-iron bathtub as if to dry off. Harry leans away, pointing at the big brass paws of its feet, as I try the dripping tap, surprised when clear water flows out, groaning in the pipes in another room.
‘I don’t like it in here,’ Harry whispers, pulling at my sleeve.
I turn back towards the bedroom.
There’s fear nipping at me now. It might not be Jack at all, and what will happen when not-Jack comes home, which could be any minute?
And what if Jack was here. What if this is years old, and I’ll find him in a downstairs room hanging from—
Stop it.
I try to breathe, suck the air in and push it out. My heart pumps with its squeezing hot pain.
I brush my fingers over the table and the posts of the bed – they come away caked in dust. I shake my fingers free of it and pull us both back. The sheets are greyed. The boots are dusty. The spread of the dust in the room is light and regular though, not eddied around the window frame.
We stand there uncertain in the doorway. The house creaks around us.
‘OK,’ I croak, ‘we’ll just explore a bit.’
I open each room with a wave of fear and hope, holding Harry back, just-in-case. Downstairs in a sitting room that’s dark and snug, the walls are covered in thick tapestries in regal blues and reds too fancy for a house like this. The floorboards, too, are covered in thick rugs, with big soft Chesterfield sofas angled round a fireplace. There’s a wooden train set in the corner – brightly painted – the little train trucks linking together with tiny brass hooks. There are little sprigs of pine cuttings, stiff yet still green in a pile next to them, like tiny fallen trees. I shiver at the sight, feeling guilty and greedy yet hopeful. Turning to see a half-finished wooden cradle in the corner.
