by Rob Ewing
Calum Ian, however, thought it was rubbish.
‘Flatness is the difference between sheep and sheepskin rugs,’ he said. ‘It’s fuck all to do with souls.’
The carpets are grey, the walls white. It feels like a dentist’s. In the front room there’s a fishtank. The water has turned green. The dead fish are floating in stringy black bits of mould. I go to dip my finger into the water just to hear what the plop sounds like.
Elizabeth: ‘Don’t!’
She comes and sprays my hand with soap.
There’s a big mess in the kitchen. Wood splinters, dust, bits of ceiling. The roof’s broken down. Amongst the dust and splinters are lots of black bags, tied. I check inside, but they’re empty. They feel damp still.
Me: ‘What happened?’
Elizabeth: ‘The roof caved in.’
This person was starting to get prepared. We find pots filled with water, but not covered. The downstairs bath got half-filled, but still not yet covered. The windows of one room are blocked with cardboard and sheets.
Then in a hallway cupboard we find food hidden in a cardboard box – enough, maybe, for weeks.
Alex: ‘We can eat and eat!’
Me: ‘And eat and eat!’
At the back of the cupboard there’s plastic tubs with the most complicated labels I’ve seen. The tubs contain pink stuff, brown stuff, yellow stuff. They are called recovery drinks. Elizabeth sniffs, tastes, then mixes some with her water bottle. She tries it, then gives me some.
‘Maybe OK?’ I say.
We find chocolate bars called Maxifuel Protein. In a big box. Meal replacement, it says. Hooray! We can eat just bars! No more tins! But they don’t taste much like chocolate, more like bad fudge. I don’t like them.
Me: ‘They safe?’
Elizabeth: ‘I think they are. Still in date.’
We find the person upstairs. I was expecting a man, but it’s a woman. She’s a mystery. She’s on the toilet floor. The floor has fallen through to downstairs. Her mask has slipped to her neck, with lots of brown spots on it: sick, or blood. There are towels laid out on the floor. The towels are dirty. There’s broken glass. There’s little red and white pills spilt in the bathroom. They’re stuck to the tiles like they got glued on. She’s wearing clothes like an Olympic runner. There’s mushy spots on her skin.
We gather our shopping on the front step. Elizabeth takes her blue spray-can and sprays a B on the door.
Alex: ‘No more New Shopping. Please. Can we not just stay outside now? I don’t want to do any more.’
Elizabeth: ‘You’ve done really, really well. Thank you. No more for today. We’re done.’
Alex: ‘Are you being truthful?’
Elizabeth: ‘Yes.’
Alex: ‘Why do we have to bother?’
Elizabeth: ‘Because we need to do all we can to survive OK? Remember? Anyway, I didn’t ask you to come upstairs with me. You should’ve stayed downstairs.’
Alex: ‘It was too late. I was there.’
I fill my backpack while Alex frets, and while Elizabeth adds the house to our map of food-stores.
People are mostly dead in bed, or in the toilet, or between the two. They smell the worst of all things, worse than cats or dogs. So you get in and out fast. And you don’t look at them in case the memory of the way they look becomes long-term.
Mum always said about bad stuff on the internet: ‘Never look for bad stuff because you can’t unsee it.’
On the way back home we stop at the cool box. For the past month, since the world started to feel warm, Elizabeth has kept Alex’s injections in a cool box in the stream beside our village.
Now she takes the foil packet out and stares at what’s left inside. When I try to be nosy, she shuts the box.
As soon as her back is turned I sneak a peek inside.
Me: ‘There’s hardly any!’
Elizabeth: ‘You … We’ve loads. OK? Enough for months.’
Me: ‘But just one packet …’
Elizabeth: ‘Shut up about it.’
Then it’s sandwich time: crackers, corned beef. Corned beef is the opposite of a Wow Word as it doesn’t taste of corn or beef. Today Elizabeth has made jelly-water. Our water on its own tastes of coal and chlorine, but add a packet of jelly cubes and it tastes like sweets.
After this she gives us each a tablet, which she says is a vitamin. Alex looks very suspicious about his, and so do I.
Me: ‘Where – honestly – did you get these?’
Elizabeth: ‘Shopping.’
Me: ‘New or Old?’
Elizabeth: ‘Just shopping.’
Me: ‘Did you get them from a bad house?’
Elizabeth: ‘Just because something comes from a bad house doesn’t mean it’s actually bad.’
Me: ‘I’m not keen.’
Alex: ‘Is it safe for diabetes?’
Elizabeth looks surprised, like she hadn’t thought of this. She digs out the boring book she always carries and reads it, frowning. In a long time she looks up.
‘It doesn’t mention vitamins … truthfully then, I don’t know. I think it’ll be all right.’
Me: ‘Polar bears have too many vitamins in their livers. You should check it isn’t made of polar bear.’
Elizabeth: ‘I think it would say on the packet. Like with cod liver oil for instance.’
Me: ‘And hot dogs, for instance.’
Elizabeth: ‘Smart arse.’
In the end we flick our vitamins into the stream. Elizabeth looks sad about it, but doesn’t stop us. It’s good fun, and I want to flick more, but she won’t allow.
‘We’re not getting enough fruit,’ she says. ‘I did a project last year about sailors in the olden days. They got something called scurvy. That’s where you need vitamin C. Your gums and skin start to bleed. Well, Calum Ian and Duncan have very red mouths, don’t they?’
Me: ‘That’s because they’re always sucking petrol for their stupid bonfires that never work.’
Elizabeth doesn’t disagree.
Me: ‘Know something? I got reminded there about our hot dogs. Remember, that the boys took? Well I want them back. It still gets me fed up that they stole them.’
Elizabeth: ‘Best forgotten.’
Me: ‘No it isn’t. I bet they have hundreds of stuff in their house. I bet they eat all night until they’re sick.’
Alex: ‘If I get sick the thingamabob that hangs down my throat comes out.’
Elizabeth: ‘Rubbish, it only feels like it does.’
Me: ‘I think we should go to war with them.’
Elizabeth: ‘Nobody’s going to war. We all need to stick together. Remember – what’s going to work?’
We deliberately don’t say – teamwork.
When Elizabeth and Alex go back home I lie and say I’m going for a walk.
It’s not usual for me to go alone, but she looks fed up or in a sad mood again so I get away with it.
I know their garden right away. I know their street even, because of all the black bits from fires.
Six of the posts along one fence, charred and burnt. Burnt black spots of grass, like a spaceship landed and bounced. A whole front garden, burnt in a square. A kid’s plastic go-kart half-melted into glue.
They haven’t burnt their own garden. The nameplate says R. MACNEIL. I spy around the windows like Ruby Redfort on a mission. They must be upstairs.
A sprinkled heap of coats in the hall. The carpet looks worn, but then I see it’s dried mud. Two pairs of wellies, neatly together. There’s a family smell, stronger than Duncan’s even, sort of like gammon crisps.
The living room’s a mess. Bits of fishing rod, nets, lines, lumps of metal. There’s a lot of empty cereal packets. Standards are slipping, Mum would say. There’s shopping baskets on the floor full of games, DVDs. Some of the DVDs have been melted, by Duncan I guess.
A jar on the table, full of brown muck, with darts in it. What’s that all about? It smells bad.
They must be
out. I do an actorly halloooo up the stairs, but nobody shouts back.
I go upstairs. The first room must be Duncan’s: it’s a mess across the floor and smells of socks. The next room is very tidy, with even the bed made. Posters of football players, blue bedsheets, boxing gloves.
But then I realise that they’re not sleeping in either of these rooms because there’s another room: with a big bed for adults. On top of this bed are two sleeping bags, with a pillow at one end and a pillow at the other.
So many beds, they didn’t know which to choose. Calum Ian’s teddy is a monkey. Duncan’s is an Eeyore with all the stuffing coming out. Their pillows are manky, with brown bits and spots of blood on Duncan’s.
I look around the room. Duncan’s fiddle books, like he was reading them before bed. Then inside Calum Ian’s sleeping bag I see a drawing book.
The first drawing is of five kids, made up like a family. A man and a wife, one big son, middle daughter, little son. All holding hands.
With a longer look I see that the family is us. And Calum Ian made himself the dad, and Elizabeth his wife.
Feeling disgusted but still laughing, I punch Duncan’s pillow. But it feels hard, nearly breaks my hand – I find a fishing trophy hidden under it.
The trophy has his dad’s name, next to Silver Darling – One Day Winner.
Underneath Calum Ian’s pillow – there’s a camera.
It’s got batteries. It’s working. It takes me ten or twenty seconds to work it out. AUTO to get snappy, to look.
I take a picture of my knees, both feet, then my big toes.
Then the back of my throat to show the thingamabob that Alex was talking about. That looks weird.
I choose GALLERY, and find loads of other pictures besides the ones I just did. There’s one of Calum Ian and his mum. Duncan and his mum. Then the boys and their little sister Flora, who was nearly at school. Then a picture of their mum on the front step with a big stomach, holding around it with proud hands.
I go through the photos, up and down. The dates go from March to November last year. By December everything bad had started to happen, so the family snaps here must be the last they took.
In a box at Calum Ian’s side of the bed are some real pictures. A marrying one of his mum and dad. He’s wrapped them in clingfilm for keeping good.
I put the camera back, and go back downstairs. Their kitchen is like after a bomb. Skyscrapers of dirty plates and cups. Maybe Elizabeth was right about using paper plates. And mouldy tins in a bin overflowing.
Then I find that the cupboards are completely stuffed with food – which they should have shared. There is about a hundred packets of digestive biscuits! Plus crackers galore! And UHT milk, in proper-sized cartons!
Then I see our tins of broth and hot dogs, already opened, eaten.
And I get very, very angry.
I’ve been told by Mum about anger. If you close your eyes and count to ten it either doesn’t matter or you’ve forgotten. Anger is like adverts that way. Also, don’t let your mum brush your hair if she’s angry. And if she’s angry and asks ‘Do I look stupid?’ do not answer.
I think about this, but I’m still mad. So I take one packet of biscuits and open them and stamp them into the floor. Then I take two cartons of milk, and pour them onto the biscuits. Then I take a tin of soup and open it and pour the soup over the kitchen chairs. Then I find crisps: when we thought crisps were extinct. I eat as much crisps as I can, then throw the rest around like confetti.
Then I get the best idea. I go upstairs and take the camera out from under Calum Ian’s pillow. Then I go for and press OK then MODE MENU then CARD SET UP then ALL ERASE. ARE YOU SURE? GO OK.
I take one picture of me smiling, then leave.
To put the cherry on the cake I borrow Calum Ian’s spray-can and spray a big gold on their front door, adding extra curly bits to show I was only joking:
When I get home I find out that’s where the MacNeil brothers have been.
Everyone is standing around Duncan like he’s become very important.
His face looks queer. It’s red on one side and so puffy his cheek droops and you can’t see his eye.
Me: ‘You’re turning into a pig.’
Duncan looks sad about this, but too tired for fighting. Elizabeth glares at me and kneels between us.
‘Does it hurt?’ she asks.
Duncan doesn’t mention if it does. Calum Ian says, ‘I’m always warning him, I’m forever warning him, but does he listen? His fingers were manky when he was picking at his scabs. He’s an eejit; he needs back in Cròileagan.’
Nursery was years ago for Duncan – so it’s not kind to tell him this. His good eye grows the spike of a tear and his mouth turns down.
Elizabeth goes to her bedside cabinet and takes out three of the books from her boring book collection. The first is called Medicine for the Rural Doctor. The second, Clinical Medicine. The third, A Colour Atlas of Dermatology. This is an atlas not with maps but with pictures, and of faces and bodies. Two of the books have her mum’s name written on the inside. On the other she’s written: Belonged to Dad.
Elizabeth: ‘The redness, it sort of stops in the middle … Is there a problem where it can stop like that?’
Calum Ian: ‘Look at these!’
Me: ‘Some of those pictures are scary.’
Alex: ‘I’ll get a wrong dream …’
Elizabeth: ‘Let me mark the page – stop, give them back.’
Me: ‘That’s rotten!’
The book is something you can’t stop looking at, even if you close your eyes. The pictures make me laugh and gasp. But then Elizabeth is shushing us, and I realise that we must have forgotten about looking after Duncan. He’s holding his hood up high over his face.
We look as seriously as we can. Elizabeth goes through all the pictures. Then she puts a plastic strip on Duncan’s forehead which glows red for hotness.
Elizabeth: ‘He has an infection.’
Duncan: ‘Don’t tell me it’s bad, please …’
Elizabeth: ‘Is your eye sore?’
Duncan: ‘How can an eye be sore? It’s just sore if you get a stick in it or something. Your eye can’t get sore.’
Elizabeth: ‘Around the edges? Your eyelid?’
Duncan: ‘Oh aye. That’s sore.’
In the end we can’t decide if Duncan has Rosacea, Forehead, or Acne Vulgaris, Cystic, Face, or Herpes Zoster, Ophthalmic distribution, or Erysipelas, Face or Impetigo Contagiosa, or Dermatitis / Eczema, Secondary spread face.
Calum Ian: ‘It all looks the same.’
Me: ‘Could it be all of them at the same time?’
Elizabeth: ‘I don’t think so. That’s not likely.’
Me: ‘Then just some of them?’
Elizabeth: ‘Don’t know.’
Calum Ian: ‘I thought you did know? I thought you were the doctor’s girl, who had learnt everything before going to big school? That’s what we believed. Or what you wanted us to believe.’
Elizabeth looks hard at the book. Then she asks us for an extra moment, and goes out into the garden.
Alex eats a biscuit and stares at Duncan as if he were a dinosaur in a museum. I look at Calum Ian and say, ‘You actually like Elizabeth, don’t you? Bet you draw pictures of her at home where she’s the mum and you’re the dad and we’re the kids. Bet you do.’
Calum Ian’s face changes and changes: the last change turning out to be the worst.
‘Where you fucking been, Gloic?’ he says. Then: ‘You fucking stay away from our house, all right?’
Too late – I’m thinking.
For about the first time, though, I have doubts about what I did.
I go to the window. Elizabeth is in the corner of the garden. She’s talking with nobody there.
When I go outside she stops. When I ask who she was talking to she says, ‘Nobody.’ She looks shy again when I ask if it was her mum or dad.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ I tell her. ‘It’s
natural. I talk to other people all the time.’
‘I know you do,’ she says.
We stand staring at her book. It’s open on a page, of a sad boy with angry skin and terrible bumps on his face. The illness he has is called Smallpox, Scarring of Face.
Me: ‘Is that the illness we all got?’
Elizabeth shakes her head.
‘It looked a bit like that. But I checked before. The illness we had isn’t even in the book.’
The wind hushes and shushes across the grass. Elizabeth looks at me funnily. Then she takes my hand and says, ‘We need to go up to the hospital. He needs antibiotics. I don’t want to go there on my own.’
The hospital was built on its own rocky shore. Mum used to call it a cottage hospital, but that’s false because it’s not a cottage. It’s not a hospital either: more like a long house, or a small fish factory. Part of it was a nursing home, which is where my granny lived before she died. Her window had a good view of the bay. You could spy kayakers or seals or birds or ferries from it.
We go in a side door. There’s a glass corridor, where I waited once while Morven my cousin had her wrist set. Then some doors into the hospital. It used to look spic and span, but now it’s messed up with bits of card and plastic and old clothes on the floor. There’s brown spots all over the place, brown tracks where the wheels went. There are no flies inside; maybe the doors help with that.
The dentist’s room is first. It has a big chair like a torture or captain’s chair. The next room has big blue footballs and rails on the walls like gym-rails.
Elizabeth continues to the white room. The white room has white cupboards beside a bed for sick folk. The floor’s a mess of smashed bottles, ripped-up packets. Nearly all of the cupboard doors are splintered or broken open.
There’s a fridge. We open it only enough to know it stinks. Elizabeth opens the cupboards and begins to collect packets of pills. She lines them up in rows, so we know what they are. This is OK fun, especially when all the packets start to look like buildings in a city. I find a pen and draw wheels on one packet, then drive it crazily around a road in the street I’ve made.
