The Last of Us

by Rob Ewing

  ‘I tried, tried. It didn’t come out right … If I could get back – to before … this. I’d be going on that boat. No question. What if it did sink – could it? If it did then I’d just hold onto him – we’d get on with it fine.’

  He looks at the ceiling. There’s just cobwebs, one cracked tile by the striplight.

  ‘You said, you said Dad – learn to swim first. Then I’ll let you on the boat. Let you get sailing. So you were right. The proof’s in the pudding, so I turned out to be a big fat coward after all – are you happy with that?’

  He says this last word as loud as he can, so that the racket of it seems to stay even after.

  ‘Don’t shout, please,’ says Alex. ‘It makes me cold and shivery when you shout.’

  For a long time then, there’s just his gasping-breath sound.

  The sun comes out: one ray in the edge of the room. It finds Mairi’s foot: she moves to be more in the warm of it.

  ‘Nothing else I need to try for.’

  ‘What about us?’ asks Alex.

  ‘What about you?’

  When we look up again Calum Ian has gone back outside, back to search the shore.

  I hide the nearest island by covering it behind one finger. That’s how little it is for being far away.

  Swirl of birds: going up like one bird’s wing. Coming down like one wing down.

  Mairi has opened her eyes. So has Alex. His breath smells stinky, which makes me remember: we need to give him water – so I pour my ration out for him.

  ‘Boats are coming,’ he says.

  I look behind. There’s just a grey wall, the toilet door, the drawn silver shutters from the waiting-room café.

  Me: ‘There’s no boats.’

  Alex: ‘I can hear them – they’re coming now.’

  Me: ‘I’m looking. There’s none.’

  Alex: ‘Told you there was ghost ships.’

  That is a bad thought. Can Alex see ghost ships that I can’t? I don’t even want to see Mum’s ghost any more.

  He says, ‘Did he scare you?’

  And I know it’s not ships he’s talking about. But I don’t know my best way to answer. I have to be like Elizabeth, now that she’s not here. But what kind of thing would she say? To make things better?

  ‘He’s having second thoughts.’ Then: ‘We should have a minute’s silence.’ Then: ‘Teamwork will work.’

  Alex nods, like I got it realistic.

  I notice he’s breathing fast, so I count his breaths like I saw Elizabeth doing once.

  My count gets up to twenty – but then I don’t know how fast twenty is, so have to stop.

  Looking out of the window, we see plastic bags on the slipway outside. I only realise they’re the bags containing Elizabeth and Duncan’s clothes when I see Duncan’s fiddle set alongside.

  Alex drinks more of my water, then after this I help him to the toilet because his legs got wobbly. I get him to change the clothes he wet in the night. He does it in private behind the toilet door, even though he wants to keep holding my hand on the other side.

  ‘A picture of God’s house,’ he says. ‘Only there’s a cracked bit. On the cloud, at the front.’

  Back on the bench I tuck him in, with a fresh blanket. Mairi comes closer to both of us. She pushes something across the wooden seats towards me.

  It’s one of the drawings she did yesterday. The one she scrumpled. Now it’s flattened out proper, like she had second thoughts about destroying it.

  Her eyes are keen. I think she wants praise for it, so I give her encouragement, but she keeps pointing.

  She points at the drawing – then at Alex. I look at the picture, trying to understand.

  Her finger is keeping close to the wrong yellow sun: the one she drew in her picture-garden.

  ‘Alex? What?’

  Now she points closer, at Alex’s mouth. But there isn’t a good enough clue for me to understand.

  In the end she takes her drawing back. She finds a blue pen and begins to add to it: first a flag, then a stick under the flag. Then a box underneath. Then some other flags.

  ‘It’s a boat.’

  She nods strongly – then points back at the yellow shape she drew in her garden.

  ‘You’ve got a boat in your garden.’

  When I say this she gets up and draws a tick in the air.

  It’s an effort to get the courage to tell Calum Ian.

  We find him outside, sitting on the stone pier, eyes red-circled from staring too long with the binoculars.

  ‘Show me,’ he says.

  Mairi is first to get to the garden of her old home. She goes and stands beside the rubbish we saw two days before: the hump of tarpaulin twisted with fishing rope.

  This time Calum Ian unties and untangles the rope, and pulls off the tarpaulin.

  Underneath is a long, thin red boat. Calum Ian, with a flat voice, calls it a kayak.

  I remember now that we always saw people going around our island in these. One of the teachers at the school had one, too. There was even a kayak-hire.

  The boat has the white-foam stuff from fish crates tied around its edges, plus two orange buoys, wrapped in green nets at both sides of the back of it. There’s bubblewrap in spirals along the sides, stuck down with tape, and tinsel in wavy lines along the front.

  ‘Your brother had an escape plan,’ Calum Ian says.

  Mairi nods.

  He feels along the boat. Then he looks inside the seat part in the middle. Then he tries to tip the kayak over, to check the underneath of it.

  Finally, he taps on the edge of it to listen to the hollow plastic noise it makes.

  ‘My class went out on these, at the school,’ he says. ‘Last year. But it was only the once. And I didn’t go. Dad wouldn’t let me. Because I couldn’t—’ He screws up his eyes, maybe for concentration.

  I think he’s going to cover the boat back up again, but then he says determined: ‘I need to practise.’

  Our first problem is: how do we get from Mairi’s house to the sea? Because the nearest bay is over the hill.

  First we think of shopping trolleys: there’s a garden across the street which has two. But it would be too hard to lift the boat up so high as that.

  We search the other gardens. In one I find a doll’s pram; in another, a real pram. But they’re too weak. Then we decide that anything with wheels could be good, so I get a rusty bike, and Mairi gets a kid’s walking trolley for bricks from her own home.

  But it’s the same problem as before: the bike is too high up, the boat too heavy for us to lift. And the walking trolley: too little to fit.

  Alex sits on the grass, watching. His face is sweaty. Even though he’s not helping he’s breathing like it’s hard work. I think he’s joking, but when I complain Calum Ian tells me to stop, to shut up about it.

  We get fed up, so we lie down. Alex drinks all of the pink water. Then Calum Ian clicks his fingers at me and Mairi and says, ‘We’re all going to drag it.’

  He orders both of us – not Alex – to the garden. Then he starts to pull. The boat has a handle on its very point, so Calum Ian pulls that. Then he ties three bits of washing line to the sides, so we can all pull together.

  The boat scrapes, turns, scrapes.

  It begins to slide. We pull it ten, twenty feet.

  I want to cheer, but then I remember about Elizabeth and Duncan – my heart goes cold.

  We pull it into the street. Calum Ian keeps wanting to check we haven’t scraped a hole in the bottom. Then he goes and gets the tarpaulin and we pull the boat across that, and it’s faster, but only until we get to the edge of it, then we have to start again, and again.

  We find a gap in the fence and pull it through. In the grassy field beyond the boat slithers rather than scrapes. It’s hard work. We do it by tarpaulin, grass, counting each new turn. We get bored, stop and start again.

  At the top of the hill we wait. We can see the shore, the sea, some islands. Calum Ian shields his eyes fr
om the sun and looks and looks. I know who he’s looking for.

  In the end, on the downhill, we go fast. The boat runs ahead of us, scrapes on the last bit of rock.

  Then it’s in. Then it goes too far – we almost lose hold so Calum Ian falls to grab the washing lines.

  He orders us to pull the boat back to the edge – then towards the pier, and the ferry slip. It’s the worst hard work, but we manage. Then he shouts at me for dragging it too far and nearly losing everything.

  ‘Always you! You’re the blame of everything! Why couldn’t you have been on the boat?’

  I cover my ears, which has the best effect, because he stops. Then when I uncover them he’s forgotten – or is trying not to remember what he just said.

  After this, we sit on the grass. Alex has come to join us from the house. He’s in the sun, just breathing, watching. The way he pants reminds me of a dog. But I’ve learnt from telling Duncan he looked like a pig that you don’t tell people when they remind you of animals.

  ‘Try to stay awake,’ Calum Ian says, rubbing Alex’s hair hard, punching him gentle on the shoulder.

  Alex shivers. ‘I’m tired.’

  ‘Just – don’t shut your eyes, OK?’

  We go back to Mairi’s house and find a box of kit that her brother put together: armbands, plastic bags, two lifejackets, a float, plus two smelly black spongy suits, which Calum Ian says are called wetsuits.

  He tries one on. It’s way big. His arms and legs look fat, crinkled. Mairi tries on the boots and gloves.

  ‘OK – right. Don’t think too much,’ Calum Ian says, to himself, talking fast. ‘Use yer guts – not yer brain, Dad said. Also, remember he told you – don’t be stupid lad. Forget the fear. Quit being a scaredy-cat.’

  Me and Mairi hold the boat so he can get in. It seems very wobbly – especially when his body begins to shake – then Mairi remembers.

  She goes to her house and comes back with a brown plastic bag. In the bag are rubber rings.

  She points to the sides of the boat; Calum Ian shrugs.

  We spend a lot of time blowing up the rubber rings. I see stars from blowing too much. Calum Ian keeps checking his watch. Finally he tucks them in the sides, underneath the green net holding the buoys.

  ‘I’m going to do it,’ he says.

  He pushes the boat off; I help. The boat wobbles, he cries out, then uses the paddle for steadying. In a minute the net snags on a rock – it comes undone, and the buoys and armbands float free. Calum Ian tries to tie them back on, but it’s too hard to paddle with lots of extra junk, so in the end he just throws them away.

  In the small shelter beside the slipway he practises: going forwards, back, forwards. If he paddles on one side he turns that way; the other, it’s the opposite.

  ‘Watch if I need help, all right?’ he says.

  I sit beside Alex and wrap a sleeping bag around his legs, then Mairi’s. All the islands have white beaches, green hills. They look too far across the water.

  Calum Ian goes way out, then turns again. It takes him longer to pull himself around on the way back, which I think must be due to having tired arms.

  I help him drag the boat onto the slipway.

  ‘It’s bloody tough,’ he says, getting out. ‘You couldn’t do it. The waves are bumpy coming back. We won’t be coming that direction, maybe that’s all right, then? Help me out. Get me the map. How long to the next island?’

  We put out our map with the orange cover on the ground. Calum Ian measures with his finger, following the wavy line the ferry takes. Two-and-a-half fingers.

  ‘How far d’you go just now?’

  He looks at the map: then points to the end of his finger. Then I see that it’s not even his finger he’s pointing at, but his fingernail.

  ‘More practice,’ he says. But he looks at Alex: who’s lying down, sleeping again. We can see his breathing, the blanket going up and down.

  ‘Help me load the boat,’ Calum Ian says.

  In the front store of the kayak we put my things, plus Mairi’s things. In the back, Alex’s and Calum Ian’s.

  Then it’s time. Calum Ian goes in first, then Mairi, crouched between his legs.

  But then there isn’t room for me and Alex: not even if we go deep within, down past Calum Ian’s feet, which is anyway too scary.

  Calum Ian gets out, sits in a crumple. His hands are shaking – so I get out and look in our rations, find a sweet. He eats it, looking up at me, slowly chewing.

  ‘Thanks,’ he says.

  He orders us out of the kayak. Then he unpacks the front store, leaving the store’s rubber hat off. He puts a lifejacket on Mairi – and asks her to sit inside.

  Mairi does it, but only very slowly. I have to sit in the back one. It’s a squash, but we manage.

  Finally Calum Ian helps Alex to fit inside the main hole, just in front of his own seat.

  We push off – but nearly straight away the boat sinks low. Calum Ian can’t steer it – it turns in a circle then tips, too far – then we’re in the water.

  I’m stuck – the water pushes around my middle – but then I come back up. Mairi has already come out: I drag her back onto the stone slip, she’s crying, choking.

  Calum Ian is shouting desperately: he’s trying to find Alex, who’s still underneath.

  We pull the boat all the way onto the stone. It seems to take too long – then Calum Ian’s got Alex, he’s out, coughing, dark with being wet.

  Calum Ian just sits. He stares at the faraway islands. Stares like they’re the very end of the world.

  We unzip the sleeping bag. Calum Ian wraps it across all of our shoulders.

  ‘Dad used to say – if a thing wasn’t difficult, then it wasn’t worth doing,’ he tells us.

  Everyone thinks about this. Then Alex answers, ‘Difficult things are not much fun.’

  ‘No.’ Calum Ian hands around his packet of sweets. ‘You’ll get your fun again soon, Bonus Boy.’

  He stares at the sea. I want to tell him I realised the sea is like fire: if you stare at it too long it stops making sense. But I think he already knows it doesn’t make sense.

  ‘Never saw Elizabeth’s house,’ I say. ‘We went to everyone else’s, but never hers.’

  Calum Ian squeezes water from his trouser leg. Then he takes off his shoes, squeezes water from his socks. He looks at me for once without being angry, or annoyed.

  ‘We walked past her house,’ he says.

  ‘Why didn’t she say? We could’ve gone in.’

  He looks at my neck. I see him make a sad face at the bruises he left there.

  ‘First time, she was worried about you. You’d gone off alone. Remember? Then the second time – that was just yesterday. When we were pushing the prams. We didn’t stop because she told me not to.’

  ‘She didn’t want to stop?’

  ‘Alex is more important, she said.’

  It’s a lot to understand. No human being could resist going to their own home – no kid, especially. I ask where, and Calum Ian says that her house is beside the big hill, Cuialachmore, after the first village with a forest.

  When I get my courage I ask him, ‘Did you like Elizabeth?’

  He takes off Alex’s shoes, wrings his socks out. Then he does the same with mine, then Mairi’s.

  ‘More than I wanted to tell her.’ He goes back to the rucksack: says, ‘If I see her again – I’ll tell her.’

  I am given a pair of Duncan’s old trousers to wear. Alex and Mairi are given dry T-shirts.

  I start to feel warmer again. Calum Ian dries off his own T-shirt by laying it on a rock.

  ‘I used to think all the grown-ups had died,’ I say. ‘But maybe you’re the very last.’

  He looks pleased that I’ve said this, but then not much. It’s like when the sun goes behind a cloud.

  I look at the clouds, out over the sea. They go blue as it gets further. I train my eyes for an orange boat, but I know that it’s impossible. They’re dead.


  Calum Ian scratches a stone on the ground, throws it away. ‘Now I don’t know what to do.’

  I press his shoulder in a friendly way.

  ‘You’ll figure it out.’

  This doesn’t make him look happy.

  ‘This time,’ he says, ‘this time I don’t want to make the decision. I’d rather there was a bigger person. Then it won’t be me to blame if it all goes wrong. I’m sick of being in charge.’

  We all go quiet, then I say: ‘So I’ll be in charge. Tell me what needs deciding.’

  It’s a very long time before he answers: ‘We can’t all go in the boat.’

  His voice sounds flat, small-kid to me. That’s what happens when you say you’ll go in charge: everybody else sounds smaller compared to you.

  I think about it carefully.

  ‘Firstly.’ I click my fingers for an idea. ‘If we can’t all go in, maybe some of us should go outside.’

  Answers sound smart when you say them. But Calum Ian doesn’t answer. It takes me a while to realise that by not answering he’s not deciding.

  ‘Right – OK, not safe,’ I say. ‘Maybe someone has to swim. With armbands, we could tie a rope, drag them behind?’

  Nothing.

  ‘OK. The water’s too dark, plus too cold. Bad idea.’

  We all look at the islands. I try to bring them closer with my eyes – it’s called reeling in. Then I close my eyes to bring them closer by concentration. It doesn’t work.

  ‘You think Elizabeth and Duncan are watching?’

  Calum Ian doesn’t answer. He jangles a hollow cowrie shell in his hand like it’s a dice.

  ‘I can paddle the boat,’ he says. ‘I think I can do that. But it looks too dangerous to put anyone in the hatches.’

  ‘But we can’t all fit in the middle big hole.’

  ‘Correct.’

  Calum Ian stands and faces us. He clears his throat. He maybe wants to appear adult, but with his too-big wetsuit and dirty face, he doesn’t much.

  ‘Two of us need to stay,’ he says.

  We all listen. Alex’s breathing is mixed with the sound of the waves.

  ‘Maybe Alex is too sick to go?’

  ‘Come on – it can’t be Alex staying. He’s the reason we need to go in the first place. He goes – that’s final.’

  Mairi sits up. She starts to cry. Then she runs to the kayak and gets in – right in deep.