by Rob Ewing
It was at the end: after I was put in the Cròileagan.
My window looked out on the school; I tell her I peeled back the plastic cover, and saw them.
‘What were they doing?’ she asks.
‘They were meeting the ambulance, the police. Your dad kept giving out white cards, and the people would go in one way or the other. I remember that.’
‘How did they look?’
It feels like something I have to get right. I try to think of all the names for the ways a person can be.
‘Helpful?’
She smiles at this. I notice how puffy and dirty her hands got.
‘Lastly, I saw your dad. But it was from the side, so I didn’t see if he was happy or sad. He was helping your mum to walk. I thought they were having a hug first, but not in the street, surely? Sorry I saw that.’
Now her lips have gone dry like crinkled paper.
‘Don’t be sorry,’ she says. ‘You’ve given me something to remember. It’s a help.’
She gets up, and tries to walk with her sore leg, holding our beds to turn a circle on the floor.
‘One day this is all going to be better,’ she says. ‘We just need to get through the hard bit first.’
I don’t understand what she means about there being a hard bit. But I don’t want to ask her, either, in case I find out sooner than I want.
Before bed Alex gets one more test.
Elizabeth chooses a faraway part of his stomach from the last, while I distract him with juice.
But again – it hurts.
The redness this time begins almost at once, and gets sore enough to make Alex cry out.
‘Don’t want any more tests.’ He tucks his jumper firmly down inside his trousers. ‘Let’s find some other houses to check instead, all right?’
Elizabeth just packs away his injection kit.
We don’t get to sleep until late. It takes Mairi an age to get satisfied about bed. First she wants our type of bed: then she wants to make a nest for herself, like in her old home: using a box and blankets and last of all pulling a pillow over the door to seal herself in.
Elizabeth stays up. I hear her on our radio: going through the stations, listening for anything but static.
When I ask her again what Alex meant about Calum Ian being strange she tells me to forget it.
Back Bay
There was the day when Calum Ian and me talked about fate. That was back in spring, back when we were still working out how to stay alive.
It was just the two of us, at Message Rock. He’d thrown in a bottle – he still believed in sea-mail back then. I was on a rock, higher up. It was my job to spot the way it drifted, in case it came back into the bay.
He asked if I believed in fate. When I said I didn’t know (because I didn’t know what fate was) he said, ‘Dad said there was nothing you could do about it. Like it had to happen, no matter what.’
‘Like going asleep?’
He shivered at the sea-wind. ‘Listen: Gran met Grandpa because she was late for her bus. Fate. Aunt Clare fell down the stairs and broke her leg, then the man who pushed her in the chair at the hospital, he ended up becoming Uncle Frank. That’s fate.’
I tried to know fate from these two examples.
‘When a mistake leads to marriage?’
Calum Ian clicked his tongue. ‘More than that. Like I said: it’s got to happen. It could be something good, like meeting Uncle Frank, or bad, like this.’
He circled his arms to mean: all the world. The island we were on. The sea keeping us on it.
He threw a stone in the direction of his bottle then said, ‘Keep wondering how it could’ve turned out differently. What I could’ve done to change things. Only what if the stuff we did never made a difference?’
I gathered up pebbles for thinking. ‘You mean we shouldn’t bother sending messages?’
‘We could try. But maybe it’s the same, in the end?’ He held his head for thinking, then said, ‘You can’t change the end of a film.’
I let him go ahead on our way back to the village: so far ahead that he was just another brown dot, just another rock under the headland.
I didn’t like the thought of being part of a film. Not being able to change it. But I didn’t argue against, because I knew by then that Calum Ian had to have all the right answers.
It’s just that now I think I could’ve said more. Because a person can’t always come up with the right answers.
Especially when that person is in a hurry.
I’m about to tell you about my last good night at home with you, Mum, so listen up: because this is the memory that keeps me wanting to be alive.
In this other life you arrive home. I run at you when you open the door.
‘The electricity went off!’ I say.
You find me in the pitch-black. I expect to be rescued, for you to notice my bravery, but you don’t.
You’re wearing a clear plastic suit. I stare up at you as you rip it off, stuff it in the bin.
You find a torch, then light some candles, then go to the sink and scrub your hands for a very long time.
I feel ignored, so I can’t stop myself from moaning.
‘You don’t care,’ I say.
You make a face then pull me close.
‘You not eat yet? Huh? A bheil an t-acras ort? Let’s get something in us right this instant.’
With the gas fire on and after some food it’s better. We find the old radio in the cupboard, and listen to the local Gaelic station, then to an English BBC station on long wave.
‘Is it true people got sick?’
‘Yes.’
‘Will I get sick?’
‘No. You’re well and I’ll keep you well. We can look after one another.’
‘Will you get sick?’
‘Rona: nobody in here is sick. OK? We’re doing just fine. We just need to sit tight and stay indoors.’
I curl up in a ball for you, so that I’m sitting tight. You don’t notice, or if you do then you’re not in your usual playful mood.
You plug in our power-cut telephone, the one that doesn’t need electricity to work, then you sit in the hall and phone people.
Your voice stays quiet, like you don’t want me to hear.
I look out of the window and realise there that are no lights on in the village.
I want to go outside and look, but when I ask about it you say no, we need to get some sleep, you’re bushed.
You let me sleep in beside. Neither of us can get to sleep, so I ask you to tell about when I was born.
‘You were late,’ you begin. ‘Ten days. Everybody ready but you. Happy where you were, curled up inside, safe and warm. Liked your own company right from the start. Rona Aonranach.’
‘How did I get born?’
‘They induced me. Oh, but then … Then you were coming! Your dad was in and out. He fell asleep in the canteen, nearly missed you. Not that I could bloody sleep.’
‘Tell about my eyes.’
‘They were open right away. So I thought: Here’s a lively one, keeps her eyes open. Knows how to look after herself.’
‘What did I do?’
‘You didn’t do anything. I mean to say, you didn’t cry. Just looked at me with those big wide eyes, as much as to say: Is this it? Getting the measure of the world.’
‘Was it because I came that Dad left and went to the mainland?’
‘No, Rona. You should never think that.’
The wind moans in the phone lines outside. There’s the noise of sand crackling on the skylight, above. Outside, a car drives past quick, then another.
‘Mum?’
‘What?’
‘Has Dad phoned?’
You’re reading a book by a small torch – still, I can tell by the sharpness of your shoulder, by the way you hold your breath, that you aren’t really reading.
‘Rona, he’s one of the people who got sick.’
‘But he’ll get better, won’t he?’
/> ‘I’m sure he will. I’m praying for him.’
This makes me want to pray as well; I put my hands together between your shoulder blades and pray, so the magic of it goes through you too.
Another car goes past, sounding very fast.
Then a siren-noise, which I think is the ambulance, but which turns out to be the police.
‘Happening,’ you say, from the window.
Eight days ago
Alex’s bed is wet next morning. He stays late so he can hide the dampness of it. When Elizabeth finally stands him up he wobbles like he’s still inside a dream.
Alex: ‘It’s only sweat …’
Elizabeth: ‘Look, it doesn’t matter. It was an accident.’
Alex: ‘I said it was sweat.’
Elizabeth: ‘Here’s a flannel, OK? I got you some fresh clothes. Want a drink?’
‘I get sweaty, thirsty if I don’t get my injections.’
‘I know.’
He drinks and drinks, caving in the plastic bottle of red sterilised as he tips it high and finishes it.
The water dribbles down his chin, settling in beads on the mucky front of his T-shirt. He begins to change his clothes and we see that Alex now has three red lumps on his stomach. One is the same size as his hand in a fist.
He tries to scratch this but it hurts, so he presses around the edges of it instead.
Covering up his stomach again he says, ‘Know what my dream told me last night?’
Me: ‘Say it.’
‘It told me I didn’t have any weakness. That I wasn’t scared of zombies, or bad men. Or dogs. And even though I had diabetes, it didn’t count.’
Alex looks at us confident – so confident that we can’t argue back, to say that it does count, that a person can’t just dream away their weaknesses.
Still, he maybe sees that we’re unsure, because he gets the same doubt in his eyes that I feel and says, ‘When you die you have worms up your nose. Sad to say, I haven’t lost my weakness for that.’
As I don’t have an answer he just sags his body and adds, ‘The injections aren’t working.’
‘You should ask Elizabeth. She’s the boss.’
He looks across at Elizabeth, who’s now gone to the window and is peeping out through the blinds.
‘I did. She won’t tell. But I know. I’m not a very stupid boy, I know already.’
‘They’re coming,’ Elizabeth interrupts, coming over to shake Mairi from her nest-bed. ‘Alex, be beside me. I want the two of you out of sight.’
I go to hunker down in the dusty back corner of our bunk beds. Mairi kneels under the table. In a minute we hear voices outside. Then inside. I put a finger to my mouth to warn Mairi to be quiet, in case there’s a war, but Calum Ian doesn’t even come looking for us.
Instead, I hear him talking to Elizabeth. She doesn’t tell about her leg. I think the telling might be about me, yet when I listen at the door I realise it’s about Alex.
Calum Ian: ‘Think we should just give him some, seadh? What else is there? You’re too scared of taking chances, if that’s all—’
Elizabeth: ‘It’s gone bad. It’s giving him sores in his skin. And there was only half a vial, anyway. The stuff inside is worse than useless – we can’t use it.’
‘What about the radio?’
‘I listened all night. I’m fed up listening. We listen and listen and for what!’
Arm by arm I let myself creep out. Mairi stays crouching in her place, watching to see what happens.
Elizabeth is bent down, with Calum Ian standing over her. She’s holding Alex. Her body is shaking.
Something about the look of her – some oldness in her eyes – reminds me of the last time I saw her mum.
‘Is there something wrong with you?’ he’s asking.
‘No. It’s nothing.’
Calum Ian keeps himself close to the door. I can smell him: he stinks of petrol again. His white T-shirt and trousers are grey-smudged from smoke.
‘Now look at her.’ He’s pointing at me. ‘You were the one said we had to stick together. And what did this one do? Back when I got the worst news ever of my life? Pulled a knife on me then ran away.’
‘Leave her alone.’
I look for the knife he tucked in his belt yesterday, but can’t see it. The brothers have on their backpacks. It’s not hard to guess what’s inside his.
‘She’s keeping secrets from the rest of us. Aren’t you? And where’s the other one? Miracle-girl with no scars. How many worlds would that be the chance in? You hiding her back somewhere, she scared?’
‘Leave them both alone.’
‘So she’s not going to die then. Maybe it doesn’t matter for her that she doesn’t have scars. But what about us? What about her making us sick? Did you think about that? Did you not even think she might be a trap?’
Elizabeth holds her ears. Her hair hangs down in long wet threads, falling onto her lap.
‘Stop it. Stop.’
This word she says over and over. She won’t cry, she’ll never cry. But her body is shaking.
I look at Calum Ian: and begin to see him as the type of person who’s strong when someone is sad, or weak, which I think could be the worst kind.
I’m getting ready to find the best way to throw all my anger back at him when Duncan says: ‘We’ve got a boat.’
This makes Calum Ian stop. This makes him look less like he owns us, owns all of the room.
He looks at Calum Ian and says: ‘You were going to tell, weren’t you? You just lost your temper there. Weren’t you Calum? You never meant it. We – him as well – we came to tell, for helping.’
Right away Calum Ian is furious at Duncan: ‘Come away out,’ he says.
They go out. We watch from the window. We can see them arguing. Duncan seems smaller, much smaller, maybe more scared than we feel here.
When Calum Ian comes back again his voice sounds sent to how it was when we found his dad.
‘You better follow me,’ he says. ‘But I want to say that it was his idea. I want to get that told right now.’
We follow him through the village: to the shops, to the House of Cats, to the church, to the pier.
Elizabeth is slowest of all, so that I wonder if she woke up the wrong way, without her energy.
Two boats got tipped over in winter. Another two stayed the right way. They’re all tied to the big ferry pier. Their nets got snagged, and the mast of one boat fell on top of another. The first one sank, and in the shallow water the bottom of it sticks up like a whale’s back.
Past these turned-over boats, in the sheltered space above the beach, are the boat sheds.
The door of one shed has been broken open. It smells inside of oil, rotted seaweed, mud.
Calum Ian turns on his torch to show us around.
There’s an orange boat: not big-sized, made of rubber. It has boards to sit on, plus two paddles, which look snapped, but are in true fact folded. The engine motor is grey: Duncan calls it an outboard.
‘Uncle Frank’s rib boat,’ he says. ‘Went out loads with him – and Dad – checking the creels. We had to work it, made sure we could – on our own, find the way. It’s ready to go, petrol in as well. Checked it the other week. Isn’t that right, Calum Ian, didn’t we check?’
Calum Ian doesn’t say.
‘So … so we can use it. To leave the island, right? We get medicine for the wee man, we can use it.’ Duncan shows us how to fix the paddles, how to make them straight.
Elizabeth puts a hand down on the rubber rim of the boat. Then says, ‘Why didn’t you tell us? About this?’
It isn’t Duncan she’s asking – but his brother.
Calum Ian scrapes the broken door open: all the way to the edge until the hinge of it groans.
‘Have a closer look then,’ he says. ‘Go on. You’ll see. You get cracking, drag it out and see.’
He doesn’t help us when we take hold of the rope going around the edges and pull. We drag one way, then
the other, until the boat sucks, scrapes, comes unstuck.
When we get the boat outside we see that the bottom of it is dirty with mould and grey water. There’s a plastic milk carton cut in half on a piece of thin rope, which Duncan says is for bailing out.
We stand staring for a minute. Then Alex asks, ‘How do we get it bigger?’
It’s a question that sounds small-kid, or wrongly put, until we realise that it’s not.
The boat lost its air. The sides of it get blown up – and they’ve gone halfway to being flat.
When Elizabeth says it needs inflated Calum Ian barks: ‘You think we didn’t know? Anyhow, we tried already. There isn’t a place to blow it up: not on the side, or on the top or underneath.’
‘You use a pump?’
‘No, we used our breath … ’course we used a pump.’
‘Was just wondering—’
‘You find one then, you’re the leader! You’re the doctor’s daughter, who knows everything there is to know.’
Elizabeth holds up her hands for not needing a fight.
‘Let’s float it. Let’s float it and see.’
We clear a path through the rubbish on the shore, then together drag the boat to the water.
It folds with the first wave, but only a little. Otherwise it sits high enough for a person to get in, maybe even two.
Duncan climbs inside. We steady the boat for him, then he warns us away and stands at the back as he tries to turn the engine on.
His third shot makes the propellers roar.
Birds go up. The noise, the smell of engine: it’s like the adults came back, just to this here. It feels like victory: we left the island already, we are the winners!
While we cheer, Duncan turns the engine’s handle, so that the boat spins, makes waves, churns, roars.
Calum Ian runs in to give him orders: ‘Go easy, don’t rev it on the bloody sand! You’ll wreck the propellers, stop ya eejit!’
After twenty seconds of revving Duncan turns off the engine. Nobody talks: we’re still amazed by the churn, by the petrol smell – which reminds me so much of adults that I want it turned on again right away.
Duncan jumps out and wades over to us, then grabs Calum Ian by the neck and rubs his head, then goes around to shake all our hands, including mine and Mairi’s, even though Mairi tries to hide.
