Breakdown, page 12
Lenny nods.
Tarquin looks up at me. Locks falling over one side of his face. Steel-dark eyes. Arched brows. Faint blush on his lips. ‘Here’s the flint. Light a fire. Keep Lenny warm. Make a small one in a back room. There’s lotsa fires this time of evening. Nobody’s gonna notice one more.’
He passes me the flint and steel and the oil cloth. ‘I’ll check upstairs, then I’m gone.’
I nod.
He leaves.
‘C’mon, Lenny,’ I say. ‘Let’s check the place, see what’s here.’
25
I tiptoe back into the hall. Lenny trails behind me. In that before time, rich people lived here. Down the hall, a kitchen – everything gone, except the cooking range, some shelving, old pans thrown on the floor. In the sink, a warped plastic bowl. A toolbox – rifled, rusted nails, a hammer with the shaft broken.
Upstairs, four bedrooms. A double bed in one room, the mattress all sodden and falling out at the bottom. A hole up in the roof. One of the ceilings completely fallen in. Huge damp shadows on the plaster. In another, wallpaper printed with bunnies peels off at the corners. A computer and game box still plugged into the walls, a built-in wardrobe and chest of drawers. They’ve been emptied. A blue fleece stuffed into a basket.
I pull it out.
‘Might fit you,’ I say to Lenny. ‘If you like it?’
I show him the top: there’s a big logo on it.
‘OK,’ he says. He looks at me. I dust off the hoody and shake it out. I roll up the sleeves. He looks at me.
‘Like it?’
He doesn’t answer.
‘I’m talking to you,’ I say.
‘You’re very pretty, Missa.’
‘Let’s try it on?’
He holds out his arms. I slip the hoody over them, over his head.
‘Looks good. Keep you warm.’
‘Till we get to the cottage.’
‘Yeah,’ I say, ‘till we get to the cottage.’
With the hoody on, Lenny looks different. He looks like he isn’t a Games City younger so much. He trails around the house after me. I find a blanket stuffed under a bed. OK, but it has holes in. A curtain that has been folded and kept for best. I find it downstairs, in the dining room, hidden carefully in the base of a big table. The table’s been half broken up and only the base remains. But the curtain’s still there in the cross section of the base. I lever it out with a scorched bracket from the fireplace.
The curtain’s dry and thick and heavy and made of some kind of raised, slightly shiny weave. It’s nice. If I were back at home Nan and I would make something of it, a dress with enough over for a little jacket maybe – something nice we could trade.
There aren’t going to be any more long evenings sewing dresses. Get that into your head. Look for anything we can make a fire with. It’ll be OK in the back room. Nobody’ll see the smoke. Too dark and wet out. They might smell it. I check the chimney. Still smells of soot. It’s been used quite recently. Squatters, looters maybe. We need to eat. We need to keep warm. Maybe Tarquin won’t find anything. That little plate of stew Lenny gave me last night can’t keep me going much longer.
I search the house. Whoever was here burned nearly everything up. Scorched screws, twisted hinges, lie amongst the embers in the fireplace. I collect what fuel I can. I peel off strips of bunny wallpaper and build a fire. I lay half-burnt chair legs on top of scrunched wallpaper. I prise off lengths of skirting board. Most of it’s gone. The only reason that curtain was still there was because the table base was too heavy to move.
I keep looking. I found that curtain. I got a top for Lenny. Not that the top was hidden. There aren’t so many kids around these days. They don’t make it. Lots of them get born, but lots don’t make it.
Radiation is weird. It’s there and it’s not. You can’t see it, but you can see the effects of it. Like with the children. If there were schools, like in Nan’s day, I’d understand. If we hadn’t had to burn all those books maybe they would have told me about it, if I’d been able to read them properly.
Lenny catches my hand. I stop puzzling. I carry on searching. If those people were so crafty and careful as to hide that curtain in the base of the table, maybe they were careful and crafty about other things. They’d have put stuff somewhere, bound to have.
In that long-before time, people used to think about how they were going to survive.
Nan told me.
‘It was the years after the bombings that were so bad. So many refugees. So many dead. There was no food. All the shops were ransacked. All the canned goods gone. The aid ships came from Australia for a while. And then there were the gangs and the looting.
‘The army took over. Ordered curfews. They’d shoot you on sight if they caught you out. They started building the covered farms, started removing the contaminated topsoil. People hid and hoarded. Stores of food mostly, then things they could trade – weapons, guns, seeds for planting. They built secret places into their houses and hoarded everything.’
I balance on what must once have been a beautiful sofa. Stuffing falling out of the seat. But still strong. If I were a long-ago person living here, where would I hide stuff? If people came looking, where wouldn’t they find it?
‘Let’s play a game,’ I say to Lenny.
He looks at me, blank.
‘A game?’
‘Yeah.’
The blankness doesn’t go away. ‘What sort of game?’
‘A game you can play here.’
‘It’s not big enough.’
‘Not a sport,’ I say. ‘Not football.’
‘What then?’
‘Hide and seek.’
I pass him a piece of fallen plaster. ‘Where’re you gonna hide it so nobody’s gonna find it?’
Lenny’s eyes dart around, up to the ceiling. They skid over the floor. He bites the edge of his lip. He’s thinking hard about the game. He knits his face tight. Then he leaps up and crosses the room and pulls at a piece of hardboard that’s warped and sticking out under the dado rail. It shifts and buckles out. He shoves the plaster lump in there. ‘That’s where I’m gonna hide it,’ he says.
How smart. Back in the day, that hardboard wouldn’t have been all springing up and out of its fittings. It would have been neatly slotted into the wall and painted over. I go round the room tapping on the boards. I don’t actually need to tap much. They fall out.
There isn’t anything there. I stop after a bit and let it go.
Lenny still plays the game. He makes me go and stand in the next room.
‘You don’t look,’ he says.
I don’t. Well, not at him. I creep to the window, carefully look out onto the street. I scan as far as I can see. There’s little light, just the faint moon. No sign of gangers. I listen to see if I can hear pans. I can hear them. Out there, beating a rhythm. They’re still looking for us.
A flare between two houses. Firebrands? The pan beat is nearer. Maybe one street away. Please don’t let them find this house. Where’s Tarquin? When’s he going to get back? If he’s gone out looting, if he’s trying to take out a dog, he might be gone hours. I want him back. Not just because of the food. Though my stomach is still stuck fast to my back. Like there’s a hole where it used to be.
Lenny appears with a box. Cardboard, stapled at the corners. Dust caked thick, like grey icing. Chinese letters stencilled on the sides. Inside are packets.
I can’t make out what they are. It’s so dark in here. It could be food. I rip back the old dry cardboard and pick out the packing. Thin strips of shredded paper. I lift one of the packets. I carry it to the back window. Try and examine it in the moonlight. I’ve never seen anything like it. Square and brittle and kind of crumbly. At first I think it’s biscuits, broken crackers. But I’ve never seen biscuits like this. I slit open one of the packs. Inside are thin wires of white crumbly stuff.
‘What is it, Missa?’ asks Lenny.
He reaches forwards and snaps off a piece and crunches it between his teeth. A weird look passes over his face. He tries chewing, but it looks like he can’t make it out any better than I can. I flick up another pack. I sit there trying to read what’s written on it. The light’s bad. The print’s too small. Some of the writing has flaked off.
‘Noo … ’ I read. ‘I think it says “noodles”.’
‘Noodles,’ repeats Lenny. We look at each other.
I’ve heard of noodles. About five years ago China sent aid ships packed with foodstuffs: rice, dried meat, dried vegetables, noodles. The food was supposed to be for the children. There’d been a very harsh winter. ‘A proper throwback to the nuclear ones we had after the explosions,’ Nan had said.
We were starving. So many children died. But we never got the food. The army took it. These packets must be from then. Someone must have traded for them, hidden them, meant to come back for them.
‘What is it, Missa?’
‘It’s food.’
‘It don’t taste like food.’
I turn the packet over in my hand. I crack the white stuff between my thumb and forefinger. Is it still good to eat?
‘Maybe they’re like potatoes,’ says Lenny. ‘Maybe you gotta cook ’em first.’
That kid is smart. I look at the package again. I try to read the writing. There’s a section in Chinese, but at the bottom of the pack, screened onto the cellophane inside a red-lined box is written: BOIL IN WATER UNTIL SOFT.
We go back to the fireplace. I strike a spark onto the oil rag. Lenny fans the embers with a broken piece of hardboard, feeds in dry tinder, splinters of broken panelling, half burnt bits of old wood. Soon we can remove the oil rag and build the flames, feed a length of skirting on.
At the back of the house, outside the broken kitchen door, is a short patio. To one side a downspout. Under it, a collection of plastic flowerpots – silted up, careened over – have trapped rainwater. I scoop off the water, careful not to disturb the sediment, and half fill a cooking pot from the kitchen.
Lenny trails after me, watching.
‘If we boil the water well,’ I say, ‘it’s gonna be fine.’
I don’t know how much to boil. I fill the pan up and carry it to the hearth. It takes a long time. Some of the water slops out of the pan and douses half the fire. I shove a piece of brick into the hearth. I balance the pan back on it. After a long time the water heats. I put in two noodle packs. I break them into pieces and feed them in. I tip in the little dried sauce packs that go with them. I stir it and fork it down, mashing the pieces and squashing them in with an old table fork. Then we sit there.
‘How long we gotta wait?’ asks Lenny. His eyes, huge and round. He’s staring at the pot of noodles. They bubble. A frothy scud of foam builds up around the edge of the pan. They smell good. Dry and spicy. ‘Can we play another game?’ he asks.
‘What d’you wanna play?’ I say. ‘’Cos we got to watch these noodles.’
‘Let’s play living in Scotland.’
‘OK.’
‘I’m gonna be a duckling.’
‘I’m gonna be a pesky squirrel,’ I say and I throw bits of grit from the floor at him.
‘I wanna be a squirrel too,’ he says. And throws the grit back.
‘Let’s pretend we’re hens,’ I say. ‘This room can be our henhouse.’
Lenny sits up and does an imitation of a hen softly clucking.
‘What’re we going to eat?’ I say.
‘Them.’
The noodles have swollen up and filled the pot with white squiggly wires.
‘They’re our worms.’ Lenny picks up the fork and reaches forward.
‘Wait,’ I say. ‘We don’t eat from the pot when I’m cooking. Run and get that bowl from the kitchen.’
Lenny runs. He comes back with the warped plastic bowl. I slop a bit of the gluey water into it and swill it out.
‘Chuck this outside.’ I pass the bowl back to Lenny.
In a flash he’s dumped the gluey water outside and skipped back, holding the bowl out to me again. He squawks, ‘I want worms.’
I lop a load of noodles into it. The grey mess lies there all lumpy, sticking to itself, but it looks like food. And it smells OK.
We sit together, sharing the bowl. Playing at being chickens. The flames suddenly flicker, like a breeze has caught them. The steam off the noodles swirls.
Someone has opened a door, down the hall, by the front.
A floorboard creaks.
I pause my spoon before my lips. Lenny jumps up. I lower my spoon, stand up. ‘Hide,’ I whisper. ‘Be quick. I’ll stop them.’
I don’t know who it is.
I don’t know if I can stop them.
26
‘Maybe it’s Tarquin,’ Lenny says.
‘Get into the kitchen. If it isn’t, get out the back, keep on running and don’t come back. You hear?’
Lenny goes ashen grey, shakes his head. ‘No,’ he whispers. ‘I ain’t gonna leave you.’
‘Yes, you will,’ I say. ‘Someone’s got to keep on going, now we’ve escaped from the underworld.’ I cup his little face in my hands, thrust his book at him. ‘Take the Torch, like they did from Olympia.’
Lenny looks at me blankly. I push him towards the kitchen. ‘Shush. Just go.’
I stand up. The noise continues, like someone’s creeping around outside the door. If it’s Tarquin, it’s OK. If not I’ll give Lenny as good a start as I can.
I choose a pan, heavy cast-iron. I creep back to the dining room, wait behind the door, pan raised. I’ll bash their head in. I stand there poised, arm raised. The room fills with the steam of noodles, the thumping of my heart. The door creaks. If it was Tarquin he’d have spoken out by now. Surely? Someone steps into the room.
I don’t wait. He who hesitates is lost. I bring the pan down.
A hand catches my arm, twists. I drop the pan. It clangs to the floor.
‘Hey, it’s me.’ Tarquin yanks me towards him, doesn’t let go.
I didn’t know I was holding my breath. We stand there for a split second, almost touching.
Lenny lets out a little whoop, darts back from the kitchen, throws himself at Tarquin, drags him to the fire.
‘You nearly brained me.’
‘Why didn’t you call out?’
‘What if the gang had found you an’ was waiting for me to get back?’
‘We got worms,’ says Lenny. He holds out the bowl, slops noodles at Tarquin.
And I don’t know what’s come over me, but I haven’t even picked my spoon up. I’m holding back. And I’m smiling.
Lenny stuffs a broken board and a drawer from an old chest on the fire. He fans the flames with his hand. Then with a sheet of cardboard. The smoke billows out into the room and curls up over the mantelpiece. The flames gutter in the hearth. Shadows flicker on the walls.
‘White wiggly worms,’ says Lenny.
‘You’re soaking,’ I say.
Tarquin squats down by the fire, hunches his back, holds his palms to the heat.
I put my hand on his. ‘And cold.’
‘It’s snowing out.’
We sit tight together, cross-legged by the fire, eat noodles. Gloopy and slippery and soft. They taste of some distant forgotten flavour. Something I can’t quite fix. Something belonging to Nan’s world. Hot spice and salt.
They taste good. I’m pretty sure they’re OK. They boiled for a long time. Nan says you can eat almost anything if it’s been boiled for over five minutes. Except poison. I’m not worried. I’m too hungry to worry.
And I’m happy.
I don’t question it. We got out. We found food. We built a fire. Tarquin’s back. We’re safe. We escaped from the underworld. The noodles fill me up. My stomach must’ve shrunk to the size of a snail. Suddenly I feel a bit ill. It’s not the noodles. It’s just that I haven’t had anything for a long time.
‘They’re out everywhere,’ says Tarquin. ‘I didn’t get no chance to get nothing much.’ He tips out a few potatoes. They’re small and have been pulled too early.
‘How bad is it?’
Tarquin glances at Lenny, sees he’s not watching. Then he shakes his head. Lenny lifts up his eyes, looks at Tarquin.
‘Where’d you find that?’ Tarquin pulls the hood of the fleece down over Lenny’s head. Lenny swats his hand off. Tarquin laughs.
‘Missa found it upstairs,’ he says.
‘Lenny found the noodles,’ I say.
A smile radiates from Tarquin. ‘Clever Lenny. Where’d ya find ’em?’
Lenny beams back. ‘Behind them panels in the wall.’
‘Anything else there? Behind them panels?’ Tarquin says.
I look at Lenny. He looks at me.
‘We never checked,’ I say. ‘Once we got the noodles.’
‘Look sharp then,’ says Tarquin.
Straight away Lenny puts his spoon down, races out of the room. I hear his feet patter down the hall. The door to the front room squeals. So that’s where he found the noodles.
I look at Tarquin. He’s still smiling. His face softened by the firelight. He looks almost handsome. If only I could freeze time. If only we could stay like this, sitting by the fire, food to eat, the night ahead.
I reach out and touch his hand.
‘Tarquin?’
He raises his eyes and looks at me. They are so huge and dark and soft, like Lenny’s.
‘Yeah?’
I don’t know what I want to say.
‘They’re out there everywhere, Melissa.’
‘It’s bad?’ I know it is.
‘They’re checking all the streets.’
‘This one?’
‘Careem means it.’
‘How long before they get here?’
‘Maybe at dawn.’
‘I see.’
‘I ain’t never seen so many posses out in one night.’
Lenny comes back. ‘There’s more, but I can’t get it.’
Tarquin shovels noodles into his mouth, puts the bowl down. ‘Show me where.’
Lenny races off. Tarquin follows. I pick up the bowl, place it near the hearth to keep it warm. I follow them to the living room.
Another high-ceilinged room. Smashed chandelier. Tall sash windows. Radiators twisted off the walls. Parquet tiling all warped and half gone. Polished marble fireplace, carved in intricate swirling designs.
