They both stood there in silence.
Giles was okay. Benny could see how the guy could be obnoxious, and he’d noticed the slight tics the man had, his tendency to be cruel, but he was no worse than some of the other suits he’d see on the Tube late at night.
Lots of talk, but no action. God, he’d seen far more creepy guys with far more power. Down here, everyone was vulnerable. Giles was scared and confused, and that could come out as a little crazy.
As their bodies ran out of food and water, weren’t they all going a bit nuts? He’d seen some stuff, and they were nowhere near that yet.
We just need to keep clear heads. He thought of Stevie.
“As long as we can keep our heads clear, Giles, we’ll get through this, you’ll see.”
Slowly the two climbed the steps to Megan, who had returned to her step. They took their own places and sat to look where Charles had been.
They sat in silence for an hour. It might have been two.
24
“So, how long was it we can go without food or water?”
It wasn’t a question Giles wanted to ask, but the gnawing emptiness in his stomach, combined with the dry gritty pain that accompanied every swallow, forced him to break the silence. He was sure every one of them was thinking the same right now.
He’d already started drinking his own urine, but it didn’t make him any less thirsty.
There was a general ache across his whole body. It felt like his brain was drying out like a sponge left out in the sun. Any liquid or cushioning in his skull had long since drained away.
“Isn’t it five days without food, and eight days without water?” Megan said. “Or, is it the other way around?”
Benny stared down at the ground, tracing circles into the ground with his fingertip. As if he was trying to ignore the question.
“Well, however long it is, we haven’t got any of either. My head is hurting like crazy and my throat is so parched I can hardly speak. Don’t we have anything between us?”
“I’d go for a steak right now,” said Megan. “Medium rare, with the fat leaking into the chips. A huge pint of lager. No girly glasses. I mean a pint, a huge pint.” She mimicked pouring the beer into her throat in one greedy gesture. Once she’d finished the imaginary pint, she sighed with a satisfied smile.
Giles loved the vision, and even Benny looked up from the floor.
“One of those big German steins of beer for me,” said Giles, holding up both of his hands as if carrying and swinging a two-litre jug in each one. “Here’s your weissbeer, and your bratvurst will be along in just a few minutes.”
It was an awful German accent, but both Benny and Megan smiled at Giles’ attempt. The atmosphere became almost jovial, and Giles was glad he’d created a smile in the other two. He wasn’t such a shit.
Anything to take his mind off the feeling of hard stones rolling around in his stomach.
“And what will it be, Frau Megan?” he continued. “For desert, the Black Forest gateau, or simply a single scoop of ice-cream?”
“The gateau, of course,” sighed Megan, looking up at the roof as if the menu was written there. Giles imaged a thick and creamy chocolate cake. He could almost taste the cherries.
“Ah, of course Frau Megan. A little 1980s, but a slice of Black Forest gateau it is.”
“With cream.”
“Jawohl, with cream naturally, for your slice and for Herr Benny?”
Benny could hold his stony face no longer.
“Sod the cream,” he said. For a second or two his voice sounded genuinely angry. “Just bring out the whole fucking cake. And three massive spoons.”
They all laughed. Genuinely laughed. The chamber echoed with the sound and it felt like it was the first time for two days that they had let their guard down. They allowed the absurdity rather than the nightmare of their situation to take over.
Giles was pleased with how his little skit had gone down. Funny didn’t always have to be about birds with big tits, or giving her one or some smartarse comment about some overpaid footballer. Just shared amusement about a terrible situation they were all in, and not at someone else’s expense. It was refreshing.
But Giles allowed the silence after the shared laugh to last a few beats too long. Benny’s addition, ‘three spoons’, hung in the air between them all and reminded them they had once been four.
An awful thought entered Giles’ head, but he pushed it away before it properly formed. But reason told him the other two must be thinking the same thing. It was grotesque, but someone now had to say it. And since it was Giles who’d started the whole food conversation in the first place, perhaps it really ought to be him that allowed the thought to escape.
“Do you think that Charles maybe brought anything to eat with him,” said Giles, trying to find a tone that bridged between their jovial spirits just now and the seriousness of their true situation. “He was the kind of guy who’d take a packed lunch to the library?”
“Oh Giles,” said Megan.
“Or a flask or something,” said Giles.
“He didn’t have a bag, though,” said Benny, revealing he too had been thinking along the same lines. “He didn’t turn anything out on the step. And when we took him down, I didn’t see or feel anything.”
“But you didn’t go through his all his pockets?”
“No, Giles, I didn’t go through a dead man’s pockets. I only picked up his notebook.”
“So, maybe - I don’t know - maybe he was carrying some sandwiches or something. A chocolate bar?”
Megan recoiled at the thought. “I don’t know if I could eat the food from a dead man. And definitely not some two-day-old cheese sandwich. Or a mouldy apple.”
“It’s just food,” said Giles.
“Yes, but it’s yesterday’s food. No, the day before. And it’s been squashed against his… his corpse. His body, all this time.” She shivered again, sickened at the thought.
“It’s not like we have a choice,” said Giles despite the rising sickness in his own throat.
“Hold on,” Benny interrupted. “Even if he had solid food, well he’s down there after the toilet area. If he had a sandwich, not only would it be days old but it probably wouldn’t even be safe to eat. Would it?”
Giles snapped. “Safe to eat? Compared with what?” He stood up and waved his hands around the echoing chamber. “Compared with sitting here and dying of hunger? People have done much worse than eating a day old sandwich. People have survived. People have had to… eat each other.”
“Giles,” Megan said suddenly, cutting him off from the very thought, trying to erase the very notion from her mind. She shook her head and drew her palms across her eyes, weary from the discussion. It had been so much fun a moment ago.
“Look Megan, I can’t believe that I’m agreeing with Giles about anything at all, but for once perhaps he has a point. Charles may have had a snack bar or something. Some well wrapped sandwiches. He was definitely the type.
“I’m not saying I’m going to gobble up whatever he’s got, but if he had something edible, non-perishable, I guess I could just about stomach a bit. We won’t know unless we try. And the longer we wait to try, well the less edible anything he has is going to be.”
Giles watched, surprised by Benny’s solidarity.
A point to you Giles. A few more and you might score.
“We’re just going to look,” Giles said, looking around at the other two as if it was a committee decision. “Then consider our options.”
Benny’s smile rose again, almost to the level of the humour they’d shared a moment ago.
“What’s all this talk of we?” he said. Then Benny put on his own poor German accent. “You are ze chef in this restaurant, Herr Giles. We are looking forward to what you will prepare for us?”
Hah, your round Giles. Make mine a double tequila. You wanker.
Giles felt his face go slightly pale with the realisation. Someone was going to have to go down an
d search the pockets of Charles’ corpse, a turn or two down from their own toilet waste.
And he had just volunteered for the job.
The first thing that rose even just a handful of steps down away from where they gathered was the stench. When you desperately needed to go, Giles supposed, you didn’t notice the smell so much. Any anyway, then there was little choice but to hold your nose and contribute to the now growing toilet area.
But this was different. The smell was not only so obnoxious as to be unbearable; the stench carried with it a sticky cloyingness that congealed in the throat. It was all-encompassing and impossible. And not only was Giles going past the toilet area and further down, he was going down past all that putrid muck specifically in search of food.
Giles held his single sleeve up to his nose and mouth, and turned away. No, it wasn’t worth. He’d rather starve. It wasn’t the grumble in his stomach that made him continue, but the sense of embarrassment among the others for not carrying out the search he’d promised.
Do it! Do it! Do it! All the way Giles. Drink! Drink! Drink! Hooray!
Giles held his breath and couldn’t bear to look as he picked his way through, finding patches of concrete as yet unsullied. Twice he could feel his empty stomach and parched throat retching and had to stare resolutely at the wall for a moment, keeping his whole body still so as not to step in something. How could they have produced so much?
This last thought pushed him on a few last steps until he was clear of it all, the smell slightly relenting again to just a generalised smell of crap and the grime and the sweat all of them had got used to living in. He shook himself down, as a dog shakes off dirty water. The worst was over. All he had to do now was…
Before he’d completed the thought, a light grey mop of hair came into view. Charles.
Giles found the sight of a dead body intriguing rather than disgusting, certainly not as putrid as the scene he had just passed through. When Benny and he had taken the body down earlier, it had been functional. The man had not been real.
But now Giles had to face that Charles had been alive. And now was dead.
Regret.
Was that what he was feeling now?
The hankie Benny had placed across Charles’ face had slipped away, leaving the older man exposed. Charles’ face was marble white, with traces of blue arteries pressed close to the skin, making his skin look a little like a ripe cheese. But his face was incredibly still. His eyes were tightly closed and, it seemed to Giles, he was entirely expressionless. Charles didn’t look ill at ease or in pain, he didn’t look satisfied or scared. He didn’t even look asleep. He looked vacant, empty. No one home.
Giles waited for some quip to enter his head, an echo of a voice from his crude workmates. Surely they’d have a joke about this situation. But all remained quiet. He was glad.
“Nothing else is out of bounds, boys, however crude. So, why so coy about death? You assholes.”
Charles’ body remained folded up, the way the two had left him. Standing there above him, Giles felt a momentary jealousy. If death was a long, peaceful, comfortable sleep - away from this place, away from the troubles that could press down onto you like a fallen wall - then maybe Charles was better off.
What had been this man’s story? His wife had left him, that much Giles remembered. He’d been sacked from school, and Giles suspected why. But Charles seemed sad. Resigned.
Giles wished he’d listened properly to the man. Given him a chance. It wasn’t as if Giles always put his own hands where they were invited: school, work, nightclubs. What was the difference? A no was a no, right? A momentary twisting of Giles’ stomach rose from deep inside.
He’d made fun of this guy, and what was he? A puny, defenceless and - admit it - obviously already quite ill man. The old bugger had been an easy target, a plaything for Giles without a chance to defend himself.
And for what? Showing off? Playing top dog? Giles cursed the voices in his head. After all, Giles’ and Charles’ stories weren’t dissimilar.
Giles looked again at the old man’s emotionless face. He wanted to reach out and touch. To lay his hand over his forehead. But that felt somehow intrusive. Insensitive. In life, Giles hadn’t earned the familiarity to be tender with Charles. And now it was too late.
Instead, he kneeled down to touch the older man’s hand. A handshake was what he had in mind, a ‘sorry old chap, I’ve been an idiot, let me buy you a drink’. Not that Giles had ever said anything like to that to someone who was alive.
Is that moths I see coming out of your wallet, Giles?
“Fuck off,” Giles whispered.
Giles reached his fingers out gently and rested them on the back of one of Charles’ hand. Two fingers, then three. The skin was cold to the touch. Not, as Giles had expected, so cold as if Charles’ body has come out of a fridge. Just as hard and lifeless as the tiles and the concrete and the steps all around them both. When you touch other people, they are warm and full of energy, but at the time you never notice it. It was only when you felt the opposite did the sheer aliveness of people become so apparent.
By now, Giles had gently rested the whole of his palm over the back of Charles’ still hand. He gently rocked his hand side to side, the closest gesture to a shake.
“For what it’s worth, Charles,” he whispered. He patted the old man’s hand a few times, almost in a matey way, and tried to lighten the tone of his voice. “Sorry to have to do this to you, old chap.”
As he moved to the job in hand, he felt the rise again of slight sickness in his stomach. Giles would have to concentrate if he didn’t want the nausea to win over. He patted the old man down over the top of his jacket. First the top breast pocket, which was empty, and then the side pockets. In one of Charles’ pockets he felt a rattle and dug tentatively inside to pull out a canister. He popped the lid and looked down on a dozen tiny white tablets. Obviously not recreational. Most likely to be statins or beta-blockers. Something to keep the heart beating and the blood thin.
He bounced the canister in his hand a few times, then without allowing himself too much thought, pocketed the pills. More use upstairs than down here.
In the same pocket he found a small notebook but resisted the temptation to open it and read, remembering that Benny had already done so. He replaced the book back in Charles’ pocket.
Giles rolled the man’s stiff body over slightly to feel the outside of the man’s other jacket pocket, before delving inside to turn out its pockets. A thick wallet with a pass for the British Library, a twenty-pound note and a passport photo of a nondescript older lady that, Giles thought, could have been anyone’s mum.
Felicity. He patted the old man’s body again, remembering Charles’ words in the dark the night before he died. ‘She left, I’m alone.’
Some loose change toppled from the pocket and disturbed the silence as a few coins rolled down a step or two. Giles fished inside the pocket again. But apart from a few ancient balls of fluff and a biro, there was nothing there.
He moved to the main’s inside jacket pocket, but here was nothing there either. This was a futile exercise. Felicity would have made his packed lunch. Slipped in a snack for Charles for his library visit.
But Felicity was gone. She’d left. That was all.
Tentatively, Giles moved his hands down to the sides of Charles trousers, disturbing the stench of the urine that had stained his trousers. Avoiding the urine, which had barely dried in the staircase's humidity.
Giles felt his left pocket first. Nothing. This was a man who travelled light, not weighed down by all the accoutrements of life that a high intensity supposedly rewarding job in the City offered. Meaningless stuff. Giles’ iPad, sitting in his drawer at work was no better for writing than this biro when it got down to it. And a biro didn’t need a battery or power source, something decidedly absent down this staircase.
On Charles’ left hand, Giles saw the man’s wedding ring. A simple gold band. Only some things really mattered. D
espite himself, Giles glanced down at his own empty wedding finger. All the rest is just stuff.
In Charles’ right trouser pocket, Giles felt a moment of quiet excitement. There he felt a light bulge and the promise of sandwiches or a squashed bun. It wouldn’t be very appetising, but it would be something to eat. And more than any of the rest of them had. He fished inside, but pulled out only a damp handkerchief.
Megan had been the one to stop to check if Charles was alright. And hadn’t she said she was already late for an interview? She’d promised to stay with him until help came.
There was a time when Giles might have done that. A time long, long ago. He looked down again at Charles’ wedding ring. He placed his palm over the dead man’s hand again.
He waited for a moment and thought some more. The boys had been relatively quiet down here, in a situation which required meaning, sensitivity, some tact, some consideration. He thought of Lisa and how she had helped him. Calmed the voices. Lifted the depression.
Giles was out of his own medication, but perhaps trying to concentrate on kindness and being thoughtful, maybe that might keep the darkness in check.
He stood and moved back upwards to the others and told them he’d found nothing to eat on Charles’ body.
25
The only problem Megan had with Rachel was that she always found college so easy.
After they’d become friends - if that was what they were, Megan was never sure - they would occasionally compare notes. Megan didn’t share everything she could have. It was her work and she had to really try at it. Just like her GCSEs.
But Rachel seemed to take it all in her stride, showing no obvious stress or desperation, finding it all too easy. And her work always ended up so perfect.
Rachel didn’t even need to do what Megan did. Rachel always seemed to do everything better. She was more creative with ideas. More instinctive with business. Sharp with the maths. God, she even had neater handwriting.
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