‘It’s good. It’s very good.’
He felt honey-coated, bubble-wrapped. He looked around him at the cars and lorries, some super-magnified child’s game in the moment of its abandonment. His head beat with the lack of sugar in his blood. But he tried to think. He’d seen something that teased him, like a scab not quite ripe for picking. He looked at Becky and Aidan. He looked at the lorries. The cars. A red car, maybe sixty yards down the road. Dented, windscreen cracked, layered with dust, but it had a sheen about it, an immaculateness that was missing in the others. Lady driver, he thought. Careful owner, full service history. He stood up, shakily.
‘Richard,’ Becky said, in that voice, that nurse’s voice she had down pat.
‘It’s OK,’ he said. He wondered if he’d lost much blood. But the wound had only scored his chest. No major blood vessels there. Perhaps just a fine fighting scar on his ribs to impress any bonehunters of the future.
There was a shrivelled figure in the driver’s seat, ageless, sexless, dwarfed by heat. There was a pair of softened crutches, bowing over a singed passenger seat. Something plastic on the dashboard wrinkled to a coin-sized disc. Disabled badge?
He checked the odometer. Less than 15,000, although the car was over three years old.
Where were you going?
Jane went round to the back of the car and tried the boot. Locked. He lifted the back seat but there was no jack to be found. He replaced the seat and rubbed his face.
Where had you been?
Between the seats was an armrest, folded into a well. He put his finger through the loop and pulled it into position. In the well was a plastic tab. He opened it; a little door to the boot, handy access to bits and bobs to save you from stopping mid-journey.
Just a little runaround. Something to get me down to the shops.
Cardboard boxes. Maybe half a dozen of them. He called to Aidan. ‘Come and help. I need a super-strong boy with little hands.’
Two of the boxes were filled with perishables. Vacuumpacks of ham, beef, chicken. Yogurt. Butter. Milk. Bread. Ice cream. The stink of it made Jane’s eyes water. ‘Ripe Christ,’ he said. ‘That stuff is ready to make an evolutionary leap.’
Aidan said, ‘Ice cream,’ as if he had never heard the words before. ‘I like ice cream.’ He began to cry.
The other bags contained tins. Lots of them: beans, spaghetti hoops, red salmon, Toast Toppers, pineapples, tomato soup, Coca-Cola, 7-Up, Stella Artois. There was a box of Rice Krispies. A pack of sugar. Energy bars. Jane stopped Aidan’s tears with a can of strawberry-flavoured long-life milk.
‘Nearly as good as ice cream, yes?’ Jane asked him.
‘Actually, yes,’ Aidan said. ‘Actually. Very refreshing.’
They ate until they felt stronger. The sponge of their muscles receded. The vignetting in their sight disappeared. They could breathe more deeply, more freely. Even breathing could become too much effort. A bad sign, if they needed one, Jane thought, replenishing their packs.
They walked on into early evening. It began to rain. They pitched camp. Jane slept so deeply that he could remember no dreams when he wakened, although his eyes were crusted and there were tracks through the glaze of blood on his cheek: he had been crying in the night. Almost as soon as they had packed up and were moving on they found a road sign that had been uprooted and was face down on the hard shoulder. Aidan helped him to lift it.
‘My God,’ Jane said. ‘My God.’
LONDON 38
14. DESCENT
Aidan skipped across chevrons at a slip road. Becky walked a little way ahead of him, to his right. Jane brought up the rear, pushing the wheelbarrow. He was itching to get rid of it. There was no need any more. Their packs were full, the road was coming to an end. Within three days they would be in London.
He was hunched over the barrow, his breath coming in short, shallow scoops. Becky kept admonishing him, telling him to stand up straight and breathe normally, but the pain in his chest wouldn’t allow it. One foot in front of the other. Twelve miles a day. Three days. He imagined Stanley standing at the balcony, watching out for him. He will be here, Mummy. He will.
Whenever he felt his mind bending towards dark things he rescued himself with thoughts of Stanley. In this way he believed he was confirming Stanley’s survival and reminding himself what it meant to know order, to be human. He thought of taking his son to the fair in Hyde Park. Stanley must have been around three. Jane had been disgusted by the prices, but to see his son laughing to the point of losing control was worth ten times what he had paid. He had decided to let Stanley be in charge after that. They would otherwise have gone home and watched TV, but he didn’t want to be locked inside with Cherry tutting and shaking her head all afternoon. They had walked – slowly, very slowly – for miles. They stopped often, to look at the scrollwork on the iron frame of a bench, to watch the kites being flown, to trace the pattern of bark on a tree, to honk at the geese on the Serpentine and dodge the squirrels who barred their path aggressively, expecting nuts. They played peek-a-boo at the statue of Peter Pan and Stanley demanded to be picked up so he could pat the head of the bear at the end of the path near the Italian Gardens. They played on the pirate ship and Stanley made Jane laugh so hard when he said ‘Shiver me timbers’ that Jane’s nose began to bleed.
They stopped off at Baskin Robbins for ice cream on the way home. Stanley was nodding into his raspberry sorbet. Blond hair. The cowlick over his left ear that would not stay down. ‘Daddy, um, when we get home which toy do you want to play with? Walter or red Power Ranger? You can have Walter if you like, but I love Walter the best.’
He was snoring almost before he finished his sentence. Jane scooped him up and carried him onto a bus. They got off at Maida Vale and Stanley was deeply asleep, head on Jane’s shoulder, melded to it, as though this configuration of muscle and bone had been waiting all these decades for just this one boy.
Cherry had been at him the moment his key found the lock. Needs his sleep. Worn him out. A three-year-old boy can’t. A three-year-old boy shouldn’t. You. You. You.
He’d let it all slide past him, moved slowly past her and put Stanley to bed. Best day of my life, Stanley. Thank you, mate. Night-night.
They followed the hard narrative of the road, navigating their way around its punctuative tragedies. Jane found himself thinking how it had gone for them, these car-bound travellers, long-distance or quick hop, going to or returning from. No time to get away. They must have seen what it was, perhaps had the vision melted into the back of their skulls before life was struck from them. He remembered an old annual he had been given for his birthday, something that had bothered him greatly when he was a boy. It was supposedly filled with adventures and excitement, but all he saw were nightmares. Nuclear war. Man-eating polar bears. Innocent aliens hunted for sport.
There had been a story about a man who tests a dream machine; his dreams are relayed to a screen for scientists to view. He dreams he is on a spaceship moving faster than anything in the galaxy. He reaches the end of space and sees what is beyond it. But something goes wrong. There is an explosion. His body dematerialises. The scientist dies and his assistant, blinded by the explosion, calls out vainly to find out what was revealed, but, as the last panel explained, It was not for living men to tell.
The scientist’s body had been in close-up, his mouth open, his eyes open, strangely pimpled. It had stayed with Jane for months, that image. It was with him now.