by Tom Bale
Part III
Complication
40
Borko wakes early, to a cool grey light beyond the shades. He pulls on a robe and pads along the hall to the edit suite, where he is disconcerted to find that, along with the sole technician on night duty, one of his guests is present. Jesse Cayner is twenty-eight, and a recent elevation to the billionaire set, following the IPO of the tech company he founded while still at Berkeley. This is his first invitation to one of Borko’s gatherings, and so far the childlike exuberance for which he is famous has proved to be more irritating than endearing.
Like slurping his buckets of Coke through a straw.
Several of the chairs in the edit suite have trackwheels set into the arms, enabling the user to manipulate the images on one of the half dozen screens. Jesse is toying with the footage from the previous night, rolling back and forth to re-experience the spellbinding moment when Sam Berry was blown off his feet by the lightning. Each time, Jesse lets out a little whoop, bucking gleefully in the chair.
Borko watches silently, unable to shake off the sense of intrusion. His guests should be here only when he permits it.
‘Ka-boom!’ The American throws out a long, thin arm and snaps his fingers several times, like rifle shots.
‘Top-class entertainment,’ Borko says, enjoying the startled jerk his words provoke; a mini-avalanche of ice cubes as Jesse nearly drops the Coke.
Actually, startled jerk just about sums him up.
As Jesse spins the chair round, Borko addresses the technician. ‘You’re putting together a highlights reel for those who missed it?’
The man nods rapidly, but the image on screen in front of him, frozen in place, shows something else: the woman, Jody, leaning precariously over the snake pit.
‘What’s this?’ Borko asks in their native tongue.
‘Sir, Mr Hussein wanted you to see.’
As if responding to the mention of his name, a door opens across the room and Naji Hussein appears, bleary-eyed but otherwise immaculate in his Savile Row suit.
‘They’re proving to be quite inventive,’ Borko says, in English.
‘Nah, you made it too easy for them,’ Jesse chips in. ‘A kid could figure out some of these traps.’
‘It’s a delicate balance.’ Borko’s tone remains mild, as though he is perfectly relaxed about being contradicted. ‘Last year we had three young men from Denmark. PhD students, no less. We expected creative co-operation, but within twenty-four hours one of them had strangled his friend after a disagreement about how best to light a fire. What followed was anarchy. The killer and the third man raged at one another for hours before going their separate ways, moping alone at each end of the compound as if content to waste away.’
‘And–’ Jesse stops to clear his throat. ‘And did they? Waste away, I mean?’
Borko gives him an enigmatic smile. ‘In a manner of speaking.’
The technician brings up the footage for Borko to view. It shows the woman wrestling the second bottle of water from the pit, helped in the final moments by the arrival of her partner.
‘The children?’ Borko asks.
‘On the beach,’ Naji says. ‘It was a good opportunity for us. The boat went in as planned. The next stage is all set.’
‘What’s the next stage?’ Jesse asks.
Borko shakes his head. ‘No spoilers.’
The American makes a sound like Awww as Naji directs Borko’s attention to the screen. ‘Watch carefully, and you’ll see how the woman examines one of the trees.’
‘Searching for fruit?’
‘It’s possible.’
‘Or they found the cameras, dude,’ Jesse says.
‘Can we hear them?’ Borko asks.
‘I regret not. The sound quality around the pit is unreliable, because of the storm. And we have three cameras malfunctioning. But we shouldn’t rule out that they have detected the surveillance.’
As Borko ponders, he is aware that the other men are anxiously awaiting his reaction. Enjoying the tension, he shuts his eyes.
It was the small boy he saw first, at the airport on Tuesday. Dylan had run free of his parents, drawn by the presence of the armed guards on the apron. From his position in the control room, Borko observed the stragglers from the Gatwick flight and zeroed in on the family: mum and dad, brother and sister. ‘Perfect symmetry,’ he’d remarked to Naji, who was fending off complaints from the airport director about the somewhat hasty nature of their landing.
‘A family, sir? Is that wise?’ Borko’s aide, a worrier to the last, had been imposed upon him more than a year ago. A human choke chain, by order of the President, though Borko still pulled for all he was worth.
‘Why not? You see how young the parents look? I have a feeling that life has hit them hard. But has it taught them to cope?’
Naji said nothing. In his view, Borko had already pushed his luck with the unscheduled landing. His early departure from the mainland had been prompted by a violent argument with one of his girlfriends, a nasty little problem that another of his assistants had been tasked with cleaning up. But who cared if the British airline lodged a complaint about the intrusion into their airspace? He’d find a way to buy them off.
As for this family, he told Naji that he intended to listen to his instincts. ‘And my instincts say that my luck isn’t going to run out yet. Not this year. Not with them.’
Now a throat is cleared, apprehensively, and Borko opens his eyes, surveying the men who are waiting upon his word. He nods briskly.
‘We should be prepared for them to surprise us,’ he says. ‘Sabotage, even resistance, of a sort. After all, is there anything in nature stronger than a family unit? The parents will strive against hopeless odds, endure any suffering for the sake of their offspring.’ He smiles at Naji. ‘My choice has been vindicated, wouldn’t you agree?’
41
Sam has to remind himself it’s not personal, this tension between him and Jody. It’s got nothing to do with their current relationship, or their past history – it’s only about the situation they’re in right now.
He wants to make it up to her, but even though he’s ninety-nine percent convinced it’s what he should do, that one percent of stubbornness holds out on him.
Later, he vows to himself. After they’ve both cooled off.
In any case some time apart will probably help, so he doesn’t say a word when she announces that she’s taking Dylan and Grace to gather more blackberries.
Once they’re gone he sets to work on his project. It’s either a very clever or a very stupid idea: he can’t decide which, but he’s in no doubt that Jody will tell him bluntly one way or the other.
The conversation they had earlier keeps intruding on his thoughts. How did they come to be chosen for this? You stick a family on a deserted beach and leave them to get on with it. Why?
To see how they cope.
Badly, of course. Because modern people don’t know how to survive in the wild. So you give them half a chance, setting tests to win food and water, like in the reality shows. And to make sure you don’t miss any of the fun, you put cameras and microphones all over the place. So far, so good.
Sam rests for a moment. He’s burning hot but hardly sweating. He feels all dried out inside, like a piece of fruit that’s been cut open and left in the sun. He has so little saliva that it’s painful to swallow, and he keeps sending longing glances at the bottle of water from the previous night – the one he risked his life to fill up with rain. It’s still full, untouched, and he could guzzle it down and so what if Jody went ballistic?
‘Fucking no!’
He springs to his feet and takes himself away from temptation, flopping down on the sand close to the shore. The sun is climbing fast, the sea glittering beneath it, the mad darting flashes that suddenly, today, make him think of piano music, the work of some famous old composer, all classical and frantic.
Huh. Where the hell has that come from? He wonders if the light
ning frazzled his senses and he’s going to start seeing music or hearing smells, like some bloke in a documentary he saw once…
Anyway: think. Something’s gonna go wrong, isn’t it. You give the family a chance, but it’s a bloody slim chance in the end. Sooner or later one or more of them is going to die.
How do you dispose of the bodies?
How do you explain away the deaths?
He gazes out to sea, losing himself in the endless view. Jody’s dad Michael was a skilled machinist for most of his working life; obsessed with politics and union stuff, always doing night classes to improve his education. For the past few years he’s had a part-time job on the checkout at their local supermarket, and to the whole family’s amazement he’s really enjoying it. With that, and Jody’s mum working as a receptionist at a GP’s surgery (plus a lot of careful saving over the years) they’re doing quite nicely these days – a lot better than Sam and Jody, anyway. They own a three-bedroomed semi in Seaford, the mortgage long since paid off.
And Michael’s own dad, Jimmy Lamb (Jimmy Greatgramps, to the kids) is still hanging in there at eighty-six. Widowed, and not in the best of health, he lives in a retirement home in Ramsgate. Jimmy was also a big union man in the sixties and seventies; now, prompted by his son, he’s taken to the Internet with an enthusiasm that surprised them all. The last time they visited he was going on about the sites he’d signed up to – Avaaz and 38 Degrees, Amnesty and Greenpeace and the Good Law Project – and how proudly he was adding his name to various campaigns: fighting for a living wage, getting rid of tax havens, saving the glaciers and the bees and the rainforests.
Jimmy treated them to tea and cakes in the grand lounge at the home, which has stunning views over a huge marina, and laid out his theory for why people so often choose the coast when they retire. ‘It’s the limitless horizon. When you stare out to sea, it’s like a glimpse of infinity.’
At the time, Sam vaguely recalled how the astronaut in Toy Story was always talking about ‘infinity and beyond’, so he guessed infinity must be the name of a planet or a distant star. Then, a few days later, Jody mentioned it to her dad, who snorted and said, ‘Infinity? It’s, what, twenty miles and there’s a bloody great continent in the way. Silly old bugger!’
After that, Sam looked up the definition of the word and felt a bit stupid. But now he has a sense of what Jimmy G was getting at. This is infinity right here: the blank blue sea and the blank blue sky, like two gigantic sheets of plastic pressed together but never quite touching. And with that, it does come back to him, the way he felt last night. How enormous the planet is, how tiny we are upon it. A drop of water, a grain of sand, a human existence–
His head lolls then jerks; he’s dozing off in the heat. His tongue feels like an off-cut of carpet. He slaps it against the roof of his mouth, trying to find enough moisture to swallow. I’m all out of spit, he thinks, and it makes him laugh. Dangerous, punch-drunk laughter.
‘What are we celebrating?’ says a voice behind him. ‘A penalty competition, is it?’
Jody has switched to autopilot, too shaken by the risks of conflict with Sam to think straight about anything. After leading Grace and Dylan back to where they found the blackberry bushes, she allows Dylan to hold the carrier bag open while she and Grace pick the fruit and place it inside.
Every few seconds, like a late-night billboard, a vital message flashes in her brain: I love Sam!
I do love him, yes. But what does it mean if I have to keep reminding myself?
She thinks of Kay Baxter, and her quiet desolation when she was asked whether she regretted not leaving Trevor. Every single day. How horrific, to reach middle age and realise you no longer want to be with your partner. It hurts to admit that Jody has had similar fears herself, although never to the extent that she considered doing anything about it.
Perhaps she should have. After all, at the age of twelve or thirteen she’d never imagined ending up with someone like Sam. He was one of the rowdy kids, the disruptors, whereas she was always a diligent, conscientious student. At the back of her mind lay the assumption that when she got married it would be to someone with the same mindset, someone who’d worked hard and gone to university – as she had hoped to do – before settling into a well-paid white-collar profession.
She hadn’t thought too closely about her ideal future partner – other than in terms of shallow things like looks and body – but as with most of her friends, a prosperous lifestyle was taken for granted. Otherwise why dream of a future at all?
A smart spacious house with an en suite and a decent garden; the mortgage manageable and always paid on time. Kids, eventually, once they’d seen a bit of the world… At twelve or thirteen, Jody couldn’t imagine anything worse than getting pregnant before her education was complete.
Now she blinks a few times. Dylan snaps into focus, rustling the bag as he peers inside to see how much they have. A couple of metres away, Grace is standing like a flamingo, raking her lifted foot back and forth over the swelling on her leg.
Jody feels a crushing shame. Okay, so her life didn’t exactly go to plan, but what does that matter when she’s been blessed with two such beautiful children?
If Sam leaves me, I might have no choice but to start again.
Lately Jody’s been tormenting herself with the idea that he has found someone else. The possibility of losing him has made her see how much she values their relationship – even if she hasn’t yet found a way of expressing that to him.
Perhaps she should be glad she’s not in her fifties, weary and defeated like poor Kay Baxter. At twenty-six she could start over, if she really had to. She hopes it won’t come to that. Patch things up, and who knows what the future might bring? Sam’s no City hotshot, but thanks to his uncle he’s learning a lot about running a business. It’s possible that one day he’ll strike out on his own.
And then there’s her job at the shoe shop. The manager, Carol, is always encouraging her to look ahead to when the kids don’t need her so much. ‘It comes round sooner than you think. And you could run a store like this with your eyes closed.’ So maybe, if she and Sam can stay together and work hard, they’ll one day earn enough to buy that house of her dreams.
First, though, they have to get out of here.
Grace suddenly falters, a handful of blackberries falling to the ground as her shoulders slump. A sob escapes from her throat. Jody moves towards her and sees a streak of blood running down her leg.
‘Darling…’
‘I feel sick.’ Weeping, she accepts her mum’s embrace. Dylan backs up a couple of steps, watching with big solemn eyes. His lips wobble. Not you, too, Jody prays. Because if both her children break down, there’s a fair chance she will collapse with them.
‘It’s all right. It’s all right.’
Grace is suddenly angry, pushing her away. ‘Stop saying that, Mum.’ Another sob, then a brutal swipe of her nose against her forearm. ‘I w-wanted to own up but I couldn’t, and now I’m being punished.’
‘What do you mean? This isn’t punishment, and I’m sure you haven’t–’
‘I have!’ Grace insists. ‘It was Keeley’s fault. Keeley and Liv. They were making fun of Jalilah, because she’s just joined the school and she’s from Syria, and Keeley said her family were terrorists, and it made Jalilah cry and I didn’t want to join in, I honestly didn’t, but if I’d told Keeley to stop she would have said stuff about me, and I was… I was too scared not to do it.’
The torrent of words runs out, and for a moment Jody has no idea what to say. Bullying is a constant worry, but only in terms of her children being on the receiving end. It has never crossed her mind that one of them might victimise someone else. She feels shocked, and disappointed – until she recalls some of the tricky compromises that became an essential part of her own survival kit at school.
‘Don’t worry, I’m sure Jalilah understands. Maybe we could invite her to tea when we get back?’
‘She won’t want to com
e.’
‘She might. Anyway, I’ll speak to Keeley’s mum–’ Jody breaks off, because Dylan has been edging away from her. She waggles her finger in a Come here gesture but he’s looking past her, off to his right. All the colour has drained from his face.
‘The lady…’ he says.
Gasping, Jody spins to look, even while she tells herself that it’s silly to indulge him. This isn’t a real person and it’s certainly not a ghost: it’s just the product of his vivid imagination. Though that’s enough, perhaps, to fire up her own imagination – because doesn’t she see, through the trees, a thin and pale blur, moving deeper in the undergrowth? Her gaze flicks past it and back, but by then it has vanished.
42
Sam turns to see Jody trudging towards him with a bag of blackberries, the kids bumping along beside her, clinging to her dress as if afraid to break off contact.
‘What do you mean, “penalty competition”?’
‘This.’ She gestures at his construction. ‘It’s a goal, isn’t it?’
He looks again, and can’t help laughing. He used two of the stakes plus a couple of sturdy branches, driven into the ground to form a rectangle. Then he draped the net over them, pinning it down with rocks on three sides but leaving it open at the front. Seeing it through her eyes, he has to admit it does look like a goal.
‘It’s a trap,’ he says.
‘What for?’
‘Birds. We put something in as bait – coconut, I suppose.’ He points to the bungee cords attached to the stakes, trailing away across the sand. ‘Soon as a bird goes in after the bait, you pull on the cords and bring the net down over it.’
Her sceptical expression hasn’t changed, so he adds, ‘Once I get a fire going, we can cook what we–’
‘Dylan saw the woman again,’ Jody cuts in, as though she’s already bored with his idea.
