‘And what about these ones?’ said Mira. ‘Can we see these too?’
She reached for the envelope but the girl flinched and squealed. Then, without warning, she grabbed my wrist.
The touch was like an electric shock. My arm shot through with pain – real pain – deep within the flesh at the point of contact, followed by a torrent of volts up to my shoulder and down my spine. My lungs filled, my eyes popped, my heart lurched, my gut churned. I found I could not move.
The reaction must have been obvious because, to my horror, Mira held out a hand to steady me. I watched it creep towards my other arm, my paralysis rendering me unable to recoil from the growing heat of her flesh. Her touch brought a fresh shock of pain that stiffened my body even more so that I now stood rigid, suspended between the two of them like a human guinea pig strung between the contacts of some mad scientist’s crude and terrible machine.
The twin points of contact throbbed with a sick, urgent pulse. It was nothing short of a nightmare. I shut my eyes and screamed like a little boy.
That is what I mean by the heebie-jeebies.
I do not know what happened next. A brief blackout. Either I broke free or my reaction caused such a surprise that they released me, but somehow I found myself cowering against the door frame. The girl blinked, confused, and ran inside. Mira staggered back with her hand to her chest.
‘Mr Hardy, whatever is wrong?’
‘My …’ I stammered, patting my coat uselessly. ‘My laminate, I have neglected to bring my laminate – blast! It explains everything, you see, but I don’t carry it with me any more because, well, I have not needed it for such a long time now. Three years, in fact. Three years! Lineker!’
I stood up and craned my neck, foot tapping. Mira’s mouth hung open.
‘Come on, Lineker, we have to go, chop chop!’
‘What?’ said Mira. ‘Why? Where are you going?’
‘Lineker!’
‘Mr Hardy, you’ve only just arrived. Come in, sit down, please calm—’
‘It’s Reginald, for crying out loud. Lineker!’ I screamed, eyes bulging. It was dark in the stairwell and twilight outside but I wanted to be out in it, anywhere but here, out and away from those two hands of hers hovering there, waiting to …
‘Lineker, will you get your bloody arse in here now!’
Lineker appeared in the doorway, tail between his legs, ears down.
‘Come on, we’re going.’
I turned, but my knee, which had been still for too long, twisted and shot through with pain. I cried out and fell upon the floor.
‘Your leg,’ said Mira. ‘It is covered in blood. Let me help you.’
I watched as those two mountainous arms descended upon me, preparing to engulf me within their hot, fleshy valleys.
‘No,’ I gasped, holding up a hand and pushing back with my good leg. ‘Please, do not touch me. I cannot have you touching me.’
‘Why not?’
‘I just can’t, it’s like, it’s like your mum with sunlight. I can’t have it, do you understand? Please, don’t.’
She backed away, clutching her hands to her breast.
‘OK,’ she said at last, the two vowels turning in a slow circle of calm. ‘But that leg requires attention.’
‘I’m all right.’
‘I believe that is a little far from the truth, Mr Hardy.’
My back found the wall and I rested there, panting. My knee felt like a Catherine wheel spitting with excruciating sparks. Mira tapped her lips for a moment, thinking.
‘How about if I wear gloves?’ she said.
I was made to sit on a sofa with one trouser leg rolled up while Mira saw to my knee. Her proximity was nothing short of torturous, but she wore a pair of blue marigolds from the kitchen that prevented any flesh-touching, and her hands worked deftly, dabbing at the wound and picking out dirt with tweezers.
‘Ouch.’
‘It’s filthy. Hold still.’
The girl was sitting in an armchair with her legs dangling, watching me.
Her demeanour had changed after my little outburst at the door. Although her eyes were still filled with scrutiny, they had lost a little of their frost. I do not believe it was pity she was feeling, but neither was it judgement. I believe she wanted to understand me.
I caught her eye and she looked away, gazing around the room instead. Mira glanced at her as she worked.
‘Do you like the pictures, Chicken?’ she said.
The girl ignored her and looked at me, then back at the walls. Mira smiled and went back to work.
‘She looks to you,’ she whispered. ‘She knows you’re looking after her.’
‘I wouldn’t be so sure about that,’ I mumbled.
‘Pardon?’
I shook my head. ‘Nothing.’
‘Hmm. Either way, she looks to you.’
‘I’m just getting her to the river, that’s all.’
Mira frowned. ‘The river? And then what?’
‘I have no idea. I suppose I will attempt to get her onto a bridge, after which she can make her own way to Wembley. I drew her a map.’
Mira stopped and sat back on her heels, her mouth turned down in a great black crescent of disgust.
‘A map?’ she said. ‘You’re going to leave a little girl at the river with nothing but a map?’
‘Some water too, and some food, biscuits and what have you.’
Mira released a cry of horror and the girl jumped in fright. Her hands sprang to her ears.
‘Too loud,’ I muttered.
‘Biscuits?’ bellowed Mira.
From the corner of my eye I saw Lineker’s ears prick up.
The girl and I had locked eyes. Unbeknownst to Mira, she was performing a series of twitches as if the words she wanted to say were bouncing around inside her head, unable to escape. She was trying to speak to me.
‘Your voice, Mira,’ I said. ‘It’s …’
Mira did not hear me. Her face blazed with scorn. ‘Nothing but biscuits?’
The girl squealed.
‘Mira,’ I exclaimed, mustering as much authority as I could. ‘Please, do try to speak more softly.’
I nodded to the chair behind.
Mira turned and, seeing the girl’s discomfort, shrank.
‘Oh …’ she breathed.
‘I don’t think she likes loud noises,’ I said.
‘Forgive me, Chicken,’ said Mira.
She turned back to me, and her apologetic expression quickly regrouped into disdain. ‘Have you even been to the river lately?’ she said.
Her voice quietened as she went back to work on my knee, although her bedside manner now left a little to be desired. The girl’s face was aflutter with a dozen half-built coping mechanisms, but there was relief in there somewhere too.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I never venture north.’
‘Clearly. Well, you should know that the South Bank is no longer full of galleries, museums and restaurants. There are no bridges, and it is certainly no place to abandon a child.’
I absorbed this information, feeling glum. ‘I never asked for this,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘I never asked to look after a child.’
She turned those moonlike eyes up at me.
‘No? Well, she never asked to lose her family or have that tag strung around her neck, and I never asked to look after an old lady who shits in her bed every other night. But these are the cards we are dealt, Mr Hardy – get used to them.’
She opened a bottle and dampened some cotton wool with whatever was inside, regarding me coolly like a nurse loading up a syringe with something that might kill or cure me. I felt distinctly uncomfortable.
‘I am sorry,’ she said, ‘but this will hurt.’
She pressed the cotton wool to the wound, flooding it with an acidic sting. I braced against the pain, trying to ignore the glimmer of satisfaction in my nurse’s eyes, and searched the room for some distraction.
‘Su
ppose you, er, looted all this then, did you?’ I struggled out, referring to the artwork.
Mira removed the cotton wool and disposed of it neatly in the basin beside her.
‘Looted? No. I liberated it.’
‘That’s just a fancy word for looting.’
The furrows in her frown deepened and she trained those two brown marbles upon me, with a tight whistle in her throat.
‘And what have you been living on?’ She nodded at my chest. ‘Nectar points?’
I looked down at my binoculars, lifting them sadly. ‘I only take what’s necessary, and I make a note of everything.’ I patted my top pocket where my logbook lived. ‘All accounted for.’
‘Art is necessary, and can never be accounted for.’
Her smile returned as she rummaged in the box of first-aid supplies beside her.
‘Where did you get it all?’ I ventured.
She measured the wound and scissored some bandage and strips of surgical tape.
‘Untold treasures lie beneath this ground, Mr Hardy, wrapped up in plastic and covered in cloth. Explosions of human expression locked away in darkness. You have no idea what people keep hidden in their cellars. Beauty, life …’
She glanced up at me.
‘Pain,’ she said.
All at once I felt raw and exposed as if a section of my skin had been torn away. Mira’s eyes flicked between mine; she was looking for a way in, I could tell.
‘What happened?’ she said, almost a whisper.
My muscles tensed. ‘That is none of your business.’
She screwed up her brow. ‘What? I mean, how did this happen? Your knee?’
‘Oh,’ I said.
The sound of Lineker’s appreciation and the old woman’s delight continued in the kitchen.
‘The fence at Camberwell Road,’ I went on. ‘They shot at us.’
‘You were fired upon?’
Her voice boomed and I saw the child startle again. ‘How close did you get? Did they come after you?’
Those frightened eyes trembling behind her, head shaking, asking me, imploring me to put a stop to the noise.
‘It was fine,’ I said, in my calmest voice. ‘We weren’t followed.’
‘Why was she in your stairwell? How did she get separated?’
‘They were ambushed. They were having a toilet break when those Purples …’
Mira straightened. ‘The BU?’
‘Yes, the BU attacked the truck she was riding in. Those army boys, I’d not seen them for years. I thought they were all dead and gone. The last time I saw anyone in green was when it all happened.’
‘You mean the bombs?’
‘Yes, the bombs, and the panic and everyone leaving and what have you.’
She nodded and gave me a curious frown as she fastened the last piece of tape – I shuddered as she brushed my shin. Then she stood up, pulling off her marigolds. ‘So you saw the BU this side of Camberwell Road?’
‘The Purples, yes.’
I tried my knee, bending it. It was still sore and stiff, but I thought I could stand.
‘They must have extended the zone,’ she said to herself, eyes darting about. ‘Taken more of the south, blocked the routes …’
I stood up, glad to feel the knee take my weight.
‘Where exactly did this happen?’ said Mira.
‘Outside my flat in Peckham. Here …’
I took out my map and showed her. She squinted at the spot I had tapped. ‘But that can’t be right,’ she said.
‘It can and it is. I should know, I’ve lived there for thirty years. Anyway, it’s starting to get dark, so we really should be getting on our way. Lineker!’
I glanced at the girl, who seemed unwilling to leave her chair. Mira was still peering at my map.
‘You mean to say you live here, on this street, in this tower?’ she said.
‘Correct.’
‘So you’re not from Collective 18?’
‘What? No, Seton Bayley, I told you. It’s written right there, see? Lineker, come on!’
‘And why is there a circle around my flat?’ she asked.
‘Because you’re one of the lights. Lineker!’
‘Lights?’
‘Yes, the others. The stay-behinds. I spotted you through my binoculars, ten of you. Well, nine now that Beardsley’s gone, of course.’
I held out my hand.
‘Could I have my map back, please?’
Lineker padded through from the kitchen and sat at my heel. Upon his arrival, the girl slid from her chair.
‘We need to go,’ I said. ‘We really do.’
Mira looked between us, rubbing the map’s edges between her fingers. She appeared to be reaching a decision. ‘I believe that Aisha will be far safer with us, Mr Hardy,’ she declared at last.
I paused. ‘Really?’
‘Yes. We have contacts at the river and further north. She has a much greater chance of safe passage with us than with you.’
You can float through most moments. Others you have to wade through. Mira’s words brought me a wave of relief but, beneath it, an unexpected undercurrent: loss. Deep, surprising loss.
I looked down at the girl. I wanted to get home and yet – there she was.
It did not even occur to me at the time to question why on Earth a little girl would be safer in the hands of a middle-aged woman and her incontinent mother than with a middle-aged man and his dog, such was the muddle of doubt in which I found myself. This push and pull must have played out on my face somehow, because Mira, turning her head a little to the left, said: ‘So long as that is all right with you, Mr Hardy?’
I straightened my neck. Cleared my throat.
‘Of course it is. Yes, you’re quite right.’
One middle-aged woman and her incontinent mother.
‘Right,’ I said, patting my pockets uselessly. ‘Right, well … are you sure?’
‘Yes, I am quite sure. But where will you go?’
‘Us? We’ll go home, of course. Where else?’
Her face looked as if I had just declared myself king of England.
‘We’ll be on our way then, Lineker,’ I said. ‘Be home before midnight, I expect. Thank you, Mrs Dhaji.’
I looked down at the girl again, enduring another surge of that same loss as if I was standing too close to a precipice and fumbling for the appropriate words to say at such a juncture. In the end, I just said, ‘Right,’ and turned to leave.
But I froze before I reached the door. ‘Miss Dhaji,’ I said, turning back.
‘Yes?’
‘Who are Collective 18?’
She smiled. ‘Those are nice binoculars, Mr Hardy,’ she said, nodding at the pair around my neck. ‘But I have something a little more powerful upstairs. Would you like to see it before you leave?’
Stars
LINEKER
I fucking love that old woman. Love her. She’d be by new best friend if I didn’t already have one, or an old best friend, of course. No change there. Nope. Reg, my master, till death us do part and all that.
Although he’s not been his old self, our Reg, has he?
You can’t blame the poor bloke; it’s been a right busy few days. But that moor-sack smell of his, it’s there all the time now, swelling and shrinking, never disappearing. And he’s nervous too. He jitters and jumps like his skin’s full of frogs, biting his nails and mumbling things to himself wherever we go. I can’t watch him too much in case I get it too, whatever he has, that fucking twitch of his. Can’t stand it. And the shouting. I’ve never seen him shout like that before, and certainly not in my direction. ‘Bloody arse!’ he said to me. Fucking charming! Made me drop my tail like a dead snake that did, especially after I’d been so happy with all the … phwoar, fuck me, yeah, so this old bird. She’s fucking lovely. A proper queen.
Firstly, there’s the smell of her. Unbelievable! Lemons, pickles, mothballs, eggs (rrrripe), charred lamb and a whole cellar of spice caking her flappy old
skin and setting every single one of her bodily aromas aglow with the warm winds of Delhi. And that’s just the start; that’s just the tip of her. Her past reeks. I can smell 100,000 shadows of moments passed; some in the sands of far-off shores, others in market squares, empty halls and lusty hovels. Beautiful.
You might think your years are behind you, but they’re not. They follow you around, those ghosts.
Then came … food.
An endless supply of food. Morsels, chunks and titbits rained down on me one after the other like the droppings of heaven. Each time she gave me another bit of chicken or potato or that other sticky thing – no fucking clue what it was, never touched the sides – I thought: Got to be the last one that, got to be, you can’t be that lucky but not to worry you’ve had a good innings here, Lineker, mustn’t grumble, holy shit, here comes another!
And then do you know what she did? She poured three ladlefuls into a huge bowl and laid it down on the floor for me, all steaming and glorious. I had to look at it for a while, just to make sure it was real. Pour moi? I thought, gawking. She winked and scratched my head.
‘Go on,’ she said. So I did, I went on. I stuck my snout in her grub.
Terrific, lovely, smashing, stinking grub. Thank you, thank you a thousand times, Your Majesty.
I admit, I completely missed the scent of her cooking at first. Normally I would have picked it up from miles away, but even as we stopped outside and Big Tits stood up, I was oblivious to all that heaven sizzling away upstairs. The problem was that I was so engrossed in the girl’s smell ghosts and all their stories that it passed me by. I was lost in The Howl. It’s all part of the connection, I think, this bond that’s growing. I feel like I’m being drawn somewhere, pulled along almost, like I’m a raft that’s come loose on a raging river, getting faster and faster.
If so, why? Is it The Howl? Where is it taking me?
Great questions to ponder when you’re looking up at the stars. Which I am, my friends, I am.
Reg is sticking out of the attic window with Thundertits, peering through her telescope and being all scientific and stuff. Fuck knows what’s going on in that bonce of his. Amazing things though, I shouldn’t wonder. Equations, measurements, projections and quantifications, assessments and examinations of all kinds. God only knows.
The Last Dog on Earth Page 13
