The Bunker Diary

by Kevin Brooks

  For the last few days I’ve been counting the seconds, mentally keeping track of the minutes and hours. I’ve been checking my time against the clock time.

  That’s how I know He’s messing with the time.

  It’s quite subtle. He slows it down or speeds it up very gradually. For example, on Monday afternoon I started timing things at two o’clock. By four o’clock my time, the clock on the wall said 3.45. OK, no big deal. I could have been wrong. But three hours later, three of my hours later, when it should have been 6.45, the clock said 5.55. And there’s no way I’d miscalculated by that much. The clock on the wall was definitely slowing down. And as the evening passed, it got slower and slower.

  Midnight came two hours late.

  I carried on counting throughout the night.

  Now that was really hard. I kept getting sleepy, disorientated, number blind. I kept losing it. But in the end I’m sure I kept a fairly accurate count. And I’m sure that the morning came two hours early.

  It did.

  I know it did.

  I felt really pleased with myself for a while, like I’d caught Him out. I’d sat down and used my head and worked out what He was doing. I’d put one over on Him. Ha! Good for me. Linus the genius. The Greatest Thinker in the World. But then I thought – Yeah, so you found out what’s He’s doing. So what? It doesn’t change anything, does it? It doesn’t get you anywhere. I mean, what are you going to do about it?

  I thought about that for a while, but I didn’t get very far, so I went to see Russell and told him all about it.

  ‘Are you sure?’ he said.

  ‘Positive. Sometimes He speeds it up and other times He slows it down. There’s no set pattern. He does it at different times and at different rates, but He’s definitely doing it.’

  ‘Well, well …’ Russell said.

  His face is getting thinner by the day. His skull seems to have shrunk, the skin sucked in like a dried-up balloon. The only part of him that isn’t shrinking is his teeth.

  He looked at me. ‘What do you think it means?’

  ‘I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking you.’

  He smiled. ‘I thought you said you’d read my book.’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘Do you remember the chapter about time?’

  ‘Yeah. Well, sort of. It was a bit hard to understand.’

  He nodded thoughtfully. ‘Early on in the chapter I mention a man called St Augustine. Ring any bells?’

  ‘No,’ I admitted.

  ‘Augustine of Hippo. He was a North African philosopher and theologian, one of the world’s most influential thinkers on the nature of time. Many centuries ago he was asked the question, “What is time?” And his reply was, “If no one asks me, I know; but if any person should require me to tell him, I cannot.”’

  Silence.

  I looked at Russell, expecting him to go on, but he just sat there staring at the floor. I didn’t know if he was deep in thought, falling asleep, or waiting for me to say something. I hoped he wasn’t waiting for me to say something, because I didn’t have anything to say. What was there to say? I mean, some old African guy tricks his way out of answering a difficult question … so what?

  Anyway, I gave it a few moments, then said, ‘Right … I see.’

  Russell raised his head. ‘Doesn’t help much, does it?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘all you have to remember is that time doesn’t pre-exist. It’s a manufactured quantity.’ He paused, breathing deeply, as if the act of speaking had tired him out. ‘The clock on the wall is nothing. It relates to nothing. It’s just a machine …’

  His voice trailed off and he put his hand to his head.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I asked him. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘It’s not nothing.’

  ‘Really –’

  ‘No, not really,’ I said. ‘You’re sick. You’ve been getting worse ever since you got here. Why don’t you tell me about it? I might be able to help.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘How do you know? I might have secret healing powers.’

  I don’t know why I said that. It was meant to be a joke, I suppose. But it wasn’t funny. It was an ultra-moronic thing to say.

  He forced a smile to his face. ‘Can you keep a secret?’

  I nodded.

  ‘I don’t want the others to know. Promise?’

  ‘Yeah, I promise.’

  He took a deep breath, then sighed. ‘It’s not what you think,’ he said. ‘I don’t have AIDS. Not that it would matter if I did, of course. Well, it would … but I think you know what I mean.’

  I didn’t, but I nodded anyway.

  ‘It’s a brain tumour,’ he said simply. ‘A primary brain tumour. Grade-four astrocytoma. I get very bad headaches …’

  I didn’t know what to say.

  I said, ‘Oh.’

  Russell just looked at me.

  ‘What’s going to happen?’ I said.

  ‘Well, the position of the tumour …’ He put his hand to his head. ‘It’s here, deep within the brain. Surgery is too hazardous. The risk of damage is too high.’

  ‘What kind of damage?’

  ‘Major damage. Partial paralysis, loss of speech …’

  I’m not sure what happened to me then. I went a bit funny. As Russell carried on talking to me, telling me all about his tumour, my mind began to shift. I felt weirdly out of place, awkward and uncomfortable, too close, too far away, too young …

  I can still feel it now.

  I’m listening to him, but in a strange, disconnected kind of way. You know, when you’re listening to somebody and your mind starts drifting away? I hear the words he’s saying, but they’re triggering the wrong things in my head. Like when he says partial paralysis. Just for a second I thought he said Corporal Paralysis – Major Damage, Corporal Paralysis – and in the same instant an image flashed into my mind, the cover of an old comic book. The comic was Sergeant Fury. Dad’s favourite. He’s got loads of old comics. He loves them. Collects them. War comics, superheroes, all the old Marvel comics. I used to read them all the time when I was a kid. I know them off by heart. I know all the covers. I can see them in my mind.

  This time though, instead of seeing Sergeant Fury in my mind, gritting his teeth and heroically hurling a hand-grenade, I see this decrepit old black man slumped against a bombed-out tank. His eyes are shocked white and his head is shrinking and a loose-helmeted medic is crouched down beside him, saying, ‘The position of the tumour … here, deep within the brain … surgery is too hazardous. The risk of damage is too high …’

  ‘Linus?’

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘No, it’s me. Russell. Are you all right?’

  I looked up, my head suddenly clear again. ‘You’ve got cancer?’

  ‘A brain tumour, yes.’

  ‘Is it curable?’

  He shrugged. ‘With the best treatment possible I might have another year or so, maybe less. But down here, without medication, who knows? It could be a month, two weeks …’

  The room fell silent. Our eyes met for a moment, and in that moment I knew he’d be dead very soon.

  I said, ‘Is there anything I can do?’

  He shook his head. ‘I need painkillers, steroids. I’ve asked for them, put them on the shopping list –’

  ‘He won’t give you anything.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is it getting worse?’

  ‘Some days are better than others … some days …’ His voice faded, and I thought for a moment
he was dozing off again, but then he took a deep breath, straightened up, and smiled at me. ‘Hey, now,’ he said. ‘Don’t look so glum. It’s not as bad as all that. Just think of it as a change of timescale. That’s what I do. You see, if you take a line, a world line, a lifeline if you like …’

  He chatted away about different dimensions and relativity and stuff for a while, but I couldn’t concentrate.

  I was too depressed.

  He’s right though. About time. The clock on the wall is nothing. It’s just a machine that makes three bits of metal go round in a circle. The Man Upstairs isn’t messing with time, He’s just messing with a machine. The only thing the clock affects is the accuracy of the dates in this diary. That’s why I got mixed up when Bird arrived. I’d thought it was a Monday when he got here, but he said The Man had got him on his way home from work the day before, which I’d thought was a Sunday, which didn’t make sense. But it probably wasn’t a Monday after all. It was probably a Tuesday, or even a Wednesday.

  God knows what’s happened since then. How many days have I lost? Or gained? For all I know, today could be Wednesday, or Monday, or Thursday. But, like I said, what does it matter? Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday … they’re only words, they don’t have any real meaning. Down here is down here. A day is a day. The time is now. That’s all there is to it.

  Wednesday, 15 February

  Things are beginning to get back to normal. Bird and Anja have got over their hangovers and got used to not smoking again. They’re both still edgy and snappy all the time, but it’s a controlled edginess now. It’s not so spiky.

  Fred’s up and about again. He doesn’t look too bad. A bit hollow-eyed, a bit twitchy, but that’s about all. He seems to have got over the withdrawal symptoms a lot quicker than last time. I don’t really know how heroin works or what it does to your body, but I guess it didn’t take him so long this time because he hadn’t been taking it that long.

  The rota’s creaking back into operation too. The place is getting cleaner and it doesn’t stink of cigarette smoke any more. We’re still not talking very much, but at least everyone’s sober and straight.

  Normal.

  Here’s a normal day.

  07.00: I wake up sweating. It’s too hot. Sometimes He turns up the temperature at night. Other times He turns it down and I wake up shivering, but this morning it’s too hot. I lie in bed thinking. Thinking of other times, when I was a little kid, when Dad was at home, when Mum was …

  Angry.

  I always remember her angry. Angry or irritable. Or both.

  I remember the garden too. The garden of the house we lived in before Dad got rich. The scrubby lawn, the hedge, the crumbling rockery, the fir trees … I can see it all, as clear as a bright-blue sky. At the far end of the garden there are two tall fir trees and a hedge of thick green privet. Wood pigeons call from the fir trees – hoo hoo hoo, hoo hoo … hoo hoo hoo, hoo hoo. I remember the hedge as a jungle. I remember summer. Slow-worms are resting in the sand and roots of the hedge. Slow-worms. Sleek brown tubes with skins of varnished leather. I sit cross-legged in the hedge-dirt watching them. They’re not worms, they’re not even snakes. I know that because I read my animal books. Slow-worms are legless lizards. They have hidden nubs of arm and leg bones to prove it. I sit in the dirt, scratching my arse, absently crumbling a clod of earth in my fingers, watching the slow-worms, and I remember Dad’s joke.

  Q: Why did the viper vipe ’er nose?

  A: Because the adder ’ad ’er ’andkerchief.

  I remember Dad’s mouth, his smile, his straight white teeth. His bristly moustache. And I sit here in the dirt, rubbing the palm of my hand on my knee, singing a whispered song to myself (to the tune of ‘Three Blind Mice’): ‘Hell-o Slow, hell-o Slow, what do you know, what do you know …’ – rocking back and forth like a praying mantis – ‘… what do you know, Mis-ter Slow, what do you know, where do you … GO!’

  And on the word GO! I make a grab for one of the slow-worms, but I’m not quick enough.

  I was never quick enough.

  All I ever got was a handful of leaves and dirt.

  08.00: the light comes on and my memories fade. I get out of bed and dress in my tattered clothes. Big T-shirt, padded shirt, hood, baggy pants, getting baggier by the day. Hi-Tec boots. I go to the bathroom, wash, clean my teeth, slip the sheet over my head and use the lavatory. I walk back down the corridor, nod a silent greeting to Anja as she passes by the other way, and go into the kitchen. Make coffee. Sit down, wait for the lift to arrive.

  08.45: Jenny comes in. We talk. She has a rash on her leg, tiny bites. I make a mental note to add lemons to today’s shopping list. I seem to remember that lemon juice is good for flea bites.

  08.55: Fred wanders in, shirtless, scratching his belly. He doesn’t say much. He ruffles Jenny’s hair. I tell him I want to see him later. He says OK, makes a cup of coffee, wanders back to his room.

  09.00: the lift comes down. Food, juice, fruit, milk. Jenny helps me put it all away.

  09.30: it’s Bird’s turn to make breakfast, but he forgets. Jenny makes toast. We eat together. I make some coffee and take it in to Russell. I want to talk to him about something, but his head is bad, so I leave him alone and go back to the kitchen.

  The rest of the day drags on. The clock is set on slow. I talk to Fred, check on Russell, help Jenny with the cleaning. I lie down and think some more about the garden. I remember my clothes, my pale-blue shorts, my brown striped T-shirt, my sandals. I remember clutching a bamboo cane and a bottle of orange squash in my dirty hands, and I remember my daydreams. My imaginations. The garden is Africa, America, a desert plain of uncut grass, with rabbits’ ears and ragged red roses. I remember plucking a rose thorn, licking it, and sticking it to my nose, making myself into a rhinoceros. Then, imagining rhinos and lions, I whip my bamboo cane at a big red ball, miss it, and the thorn falls off. I kick the ball and it sails up and over the rockery into a bed of red-hot pokers, flattening a full-bloomed stem. I glance quickly at the back door to check that Mum’s not looking, then I scurry back up the garden to see if I can fix the broken flower. But I can’t. So I snap it off and stuff it deep down into the base of the hedge. I know that Mum won’t look in there, because she’s scared of the slow-worms.

  But what if she does?

  And now my heart is hot with the memory of what happened early one summer when I stripped all the petals from Mum’s pansies and she got really angry again.

  ‘You little sod!’

  Nasty eyes.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing? What’s this?’

  She’s holding up a jam jar full of murky water. Bits of stick and pansy petals are suspended in the pale-brown goo. Insects too. And grass. Bugs. Leaves. Moss. Woodlice. Worms. Snails. A slug. Stones. Gravel. Mud.

  What’s this? A garden concoction, that’s what it is.

  What do you think you’re doing? I’m collecting things in a water-filled jam jar and mixing them all up, just to see what happens. That’s what I’m doing.

  ‘What is it?’ Mum snaps.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Come here.’

  I can’t move.

  ‘Come here!’ She shoves the jam jar into my hands. ‘Get rid of it. Go on … now!’

  I start to cry. ‘Where?’

  ‘Just get rid of it.’

  I take it up the garden path and start to empty it by the roses.

  ‘Not THERE!’

  I see her standing in the doorway, a cigarette burning in her hand, and I don’t know what to do. I’m scar
ed.

  ‘Just leave it,’ she spits. ‘Put it down.’ She draws hard on her cigarette. ‘PUT IT DOWN!’

  I place the jam jar gently on the lawn, taking care not to spill it. The murky water rolls in the glass. I see bits of insects, beetle-wing boats, a black slug floating like a whale …

  ‘Come here.’

  I shuffle down the path. My eyes are stinging. I need a wee. Mum grabs my arm and swings me round and slaps the back of my thigh.

  ‘You little shit.’

  And again – whack! – really hard.

  ‘Get upstairs.’

  I go up to my room and cry my heart out.

  Sometime later she brings me biscuits and a glass of milk.

  ‘Linus?’ she says softly. ‘Linus?’

  I can’t speak. I’m trembling.

  ‘It’s all right now,’ she whispers. ‘Everything’s all right. I won’t tell Daddy. Daddy doesn’t have to know …’

  I don’t know if any of this is true.

  I can’t sleep. I’m trembling.

  Friday, 17 February

  Yesterday I tried to escape.

  It didn’t work, and now we’re all suffering for it.

  Before I tried it, I wrote down what I planned to do in a page of my notebook and showed it to the others. Jenny thought it was a good idea. Bird and Anja thought it was a waste of time. Russell thought it was too risky. Fred didn’t seem to think much of it either, but at least he was willing to give it a go. And eventually he persuaded the others to give it a go too. He can be very persuasive when he wants to.

  So yesterday evening, about half an hour before the lift was due to go up, we got started.

  While Jenny and Fred were in the kitchen, cooking up some bacon, I took a roll of bin liners down to the bathroom and began filling one with whatever rubbish I could find. At a prearranged signal, Jenny ‘accidentally’ knocked over the frying pan, spilling bacon fat on to the cooker, and screamed Fire! Then she ran back to her room. As the flames spread on the cooker, Bird and Anja came running out of their rooms, shouting at the tops of their voices. Meanwhile, Fred had broken a leg off one of the dining-table chairs, dipped the end in the burning bacon fat, and set light to it. He quickly wrapped his head in a sheet, got up on the table and started poking the burning table leg at the grille in the ceiling.