Gwyneth Jones - Life(2005)
Page 28
"He's coming back!" shouted Jake.
The flasher must have done a U turn on the other road: he must be really angry to be so persistent. The car, which she saw clearly for the first time, was a red saloon, nothing special. It stopped on the shoulder, about twenty meters behind them. The driver's door opened. "Turn the tv on," said Anna. "Find loud music. Don't open the window. Don't get out of the car. Don't look at him. Jake, lie down and hide your face."
The man came up. Anna and Spence sat with their eyes at an angle of sixty or so, not submissively lowered (which might invite attack) but unavailable to a challenging glare. Spence had hit a classical station, some woman in purple on the postcard screen singing Mozart lieder of all things. The man kicked at their doors, banged on the windows, shook the roof, pushed his face up to the windscreen. But he was alone, didn't have a weapon, and thank God he didn't think of going back to his car to fetch a wheel jack or something. He battered himself against the stonewall of loud Mozart for a few terrifying moments, and then he gave up. Horns blared as the red car made a forced entry into the traffic stream. It drove away.
"I'm sorry," said Anna, realizing how horribly her plan could have misfired.
"You should give way to them, straight off. you should never provoke them."
"I tried!"
"Is it all right again?" asked Jake.
"Yes, baby."
"You're a good boy, you were very good," said Spence, leaning over the seat to hug him.
Anna reached across and switched off the tv, an unusual move. In-car entertainment was Spence's territory. She sat with her hands at ten and two, and the traffic roared by, towards what blank wall, invisible in the darkness.
"D'you want me to drive? I think you should let me drive."
"I'm fine."
Inland Far
i
Anna and Jake had been working on the allotment. It was the end of March. Anna had been planting seeds: carrots, turnips, radishes, lettuces. She had hoed the over-wintered broad beans and earthed up the potatoes. Maybe the harvest would be better this year. Mr Frank N Furter—whom they had found still flourishing when Anna's job prospects brought them back to Bournemouth—achieved results on his plot down in the valley, in shelter, that made Anna and Spence's bumbling efforts look ridiculous. They were learning. Meantime, hunter-gatherer behavior, practiced in the Co-op supermarket on Saturday mornings, made up for the deficiencies of primitive agriculture.
She watered-in the seeds, unscrewed their tap from the standpipe by the track, and stowed everything in the buggy's shopping tray: except the spade and hoe handles, which she hid. You couldn't leave things up here. And this is called having it all, she thought, stretching to free her shoulders. Below her, coastal conurbation sprawled back from the gleaming meadows of the sea, Poole to the west and Christchurch to the east: furzy bare branches reaching up from swathes of public park and garden. With petty theft and the rottweiler tendency for neighbors, yes. Wouldn't be the same if they were shut out.
Jake lay on the ground, where a rustling barrier of last year's sweet corn sheltered him from the east wind, talking in a tiny voice and playing intently with two toy cars and a handful of weeds: a dandelion with a broken tap root, some Shepherd's Purse, a few sprigs of that infuriating little pink and white convolvulus (the worm that dieth not). She stood over him unnoticed, feasting on the dream of mind's emergence—
Behold the child among his new-born blisses, a six years' Darling of pigmy size.
See, where — 'mid the work of his own hand he lies... He's four, not six, but he is the young philosopher, dreaming and making worlds. "Time to go, Jake-boy."
He sat up and stared at her, shocked. "But I haven't had my snack!"
When you have a child, you soon learn how quickly practice becomes tradition, and how quickly tradition becomes WRITTEN IN STONE. "Okay, but we'd better get indoors. It's going to rain."
They retired inside the tumbledown shed, which smelled of spider webs and earth, and sat on an empty tin chest while Jake ate pita bread and slices of cheese. On his insistence she told him again the story of how Mummy and Daddy had once been pirates on the South China Seas. In the end they'd been shipwrecked on Bournemouth beach. They'd built this shed from the planks of their pirate ship (you could see the marks of cannonballs), and this was where they had lived until one day they found a treasure map that they'd forgotten about, recovered the gold, and used it to buy the house where Jake and Anna and Spence lived now.
"If we get very, very poor, will we go back to pirating?" asked the child, hopefully.
Anna picked fragments of horse dung and dead grass from his dark curls.
"We're not poor. We have a house with a garden, lovely holidays, new clothes and shoes whenever we need them. How can we be poor?"
"I expect you have some more gold somewhere. For emergencies."
"Ah maybe so! A pirate never divulges the hiding place of her last treasure."
"Shere Khan has an island completely made of gold. She never tells anyone where it is."
"Except for Jake. Eat your last bit of cheese."
"Yes, she does tell Jake. And Nancy, but no one else. Remind me about the parrot."
"The parrot. Well, he belonged—a parrot by the name of Bill, I seem to remember—to the wickedest ruffian in all our bad acquaintance. But I don't know what became of him."
Shere Khan was a female pirate captain who had emerged, somehow, from this story of the shed that used to be a pirate ship: with the name of the tiger lord from The Jungle Book, a dashing young mate called Jake, and a ship called The Royal Processor. It was Spence who maintained the annals, weaving ever more bizarre adventures for the wild, willful captain and her desperate crew: Jake the First Mate, Nancy the Knife and her brother Rafe, Black McGeer the pirate boffin, and all the rest. Anna wondered if he was aware of the touches of Ramone Holyrod that had crept into his characterization. Probably not. Spence had never liked Ramone much.
Looking back, he'd had a right. For a while after Sungai those Suffer Birdone. . .letters had been intensely important to Anna: dangerously important. Reckless acts, reckless deeds, wholesale shipwreck might have followed. The letters had stopped, the danger had passed, and the rabid one had vanished into her success: no contact with her for ages. She wrote flashy books, she was a feminist pundit. . . The squall arrived. Rain thundered on the shed's patched roof and rattled in the folds of the plastic sack that was taped over a broken window. Jake leaned against her, finishing his cheese meticulously. Anna closed her eyes. She was working so hard, full-time employment, and then whatever lab and machine time she could scrounge for the great mission. She looked forward to the one day a week that she spent looking after Jake (giving Spence a chance to write) as a major treat: but any time she sat down, it was hard to stay awake.
Was there still a beach lodge at Pasir Pancang? In Sungai the forests were burning. Tough things were happening in that unlucky little country. Tough things were happening in the so-called "free world" too, as the old western powers slipped ever faster into decline; the twentieth century's institutions and services vanishing into calamitous disrepair. And a clutch of grief at the heart any time you remembered the other casualties: ah, to know Jake would never hear a cuckoo's song, ringing through the Hampshire woods. She lived in a frightening world that had lost its balance of power, scrabbling for stability and finding none; and the pirate treasure might yet turn out to be fool's gold, or the expedition of the Hispaniola might founder for lack of funds. Next month might be the month when all the paychecks bounced and primitive strip-farming became her family's only resource. Yet Anna was very happy, with her husband and her child, her frugal household arts and her dream, all sustaining each other. She was back on track: working hard, tasting the sweetness of life.
* * *
After the Sungai bomb mopping-up, Parentis had transferred them to Mexico, which was where Jake had been born just about a year later. Spence had believed he could never want a child again, but the moment he agre
ed they should give up contraception, he'd felt as if he'd sprouted wings. He'd known that she'd get pregnant easily, and she did. He'd known that the baby would be a boy, and that he must be called Jacob, in honor of Anna's Spanish-Jew roots and of the first recorded attempt at genetic manipulation (the version in the bible obviously the muddled report of some dumb journalist), and that everything would be fine. And it was. Spence's Mom came south to be with them, which was brave of her considering she must have known the risk that she would be faced with awkward revelations. The shade of the baby's complexion had been distinct enough to raise comment as soon as he was born.
Spence, having acquired a black granddaddy and a big, perfect, coffee-colored son in the same hour, had only demanded "Why didn't you tell me?" "It was for the best that you shouldn't know," Mom had pleaded. "I know Manankee County!" Anna couldn't have cared less. "Look at this!" she said, laughing. "I am totally humiliated! Everyone who knows me is going to be convinced I bought the trait for a cool color scheme out of a vanity-parenting catalogue. . ."
He had not thought the trail would be so short, but he understood why his Mom had lied and concealed the evidence. Spence's biological granddad, dead grandmother's first husband—the mean one, who had been a drunk and walked out when Mom was a baby, and of whom there were no pictures—had conformed to a shameful stereotype. All the black people Spence had ever heard of from Mom were gifted, hardworking, good-looking, wonderful family people in steady employment. . .that she didn't know particularly well. She liked to view the world through rose-colored countercultural lenses. Could he blame her? Nature or nurture, Spence was a little that way himself. After she'd flown back to Illinois (having Mom in the house for the first weeks of their child's life was a cross Anna had borne with the patience of an autistic angel), he'd felt the new information bedding down into him, grounding him. He wasn't going to get Roots fever, but it was good.
Actually, I am Spartacus.
So they went back to England, Anna resumed her doctoral studies and made ends meet with part-time lecturing, and Spence became a househusband, the way they'd always planned. They spent every penny of their foreign legion pile on a nice old house in Bournemouth, drawn to the place by old contacts and nostalgia, and settled down to live happily ever after, poor as church mice, decorating inventively with papier mache and thumbtacks, cooking the food of the poor that they had picked up on their travels (nasi campur, ful mesdames, megadarra, mongo, gado-gado, anything tasty and cheap), entertaining their friends with world-music tales.
* * *
The winter that they moved into their own house, Jake was eight months old. There was a new flu speeding across the continent, but they were young, Jake was a splendidly healthy baby, and they were still in ex-pat mode, ignoring the news channels. They were blase about the pandemic scare. Spence went down sick on one of his writing days. He got up, complained of a stiff neck and a headache, and seemed in no hurry to get to his desk. He came to the door to see Anna and Jake out, as they left to do some errands, said, "I feel weird," and crumpled to the floor. It was lucky it was one of Anna's Jake days, or he'd have been lying there when she came home from work. "I'd have managed," he protested, as she put him to bed. "I'd have crawled through somehow—"
Anna went downstairs, having settled Jake for his nap with Werg the bear and his bottle. It was a pity Spence was ill, because she and Jake could have done some Christmas shopping. She phoned in sick for her evening's employment (an adult access-to-HE course), switched on a lamp because the room seemed gloomy, and sat on the sofa, the good old folded-futon sofa from Leeds, with the satinized cotton cover in faded gold and sprigs of red—now dignified by a pine frame and three cushions for which Spence had machined the covers with his own hands. She thought about assembling materials for a Christmas decorations session. Glitter glue, poster paints, tissue paper, scissors. . .and sat looking at the pattern of the cushion nearest to her, until she gradually knew she'd been staring at it for a long time, that her head was aching, and she was very cold, cold deep inside. She had lost core temperature. Time was no longer passing in her brain, and her body had begun to shake, but she couldn't move of her own volition. The pattern on the cushion cover absorbed all her attention, she fell into it. Oppressed by a burden that filled her mouth and weighed down her limbs, she entered a thick-walled, rubbery maze where the passages grew narrower and narrower, but she went on, squeezing her way into a tightly packed interminable darkness.
When she woke, the first thing she knew was that she felt horribly uncomfortable. She had fallen forward with her face over the side of the couch. There was a half-dried sticky murky patch on the rug; she realized with a shock of alarm and shame that she must have vomited. She tried to get up, felt the clogging weight in her pants, and recognized the stench of feces. She freed herself of the filled pants, and staggered across the room to close the curtains: it was dark outside. She dumped her underwear in the kitchen bin, crawled to the bathroom and cleaned herself up, impelled through the hideously effortful actions by an animal need to restore herself to order. It was only when she'd washed and put on a dressing gown that she saw her watch face and discovered with utmost terror that a day and a half had passed of which she knew nothing.
The half-decorated rooms were cold and silent. She ran up the stairs. Their bedroom smelled of shit, piss, and vomit. Spence was lying on his back, his beaky nose standing upright, his eye sockets and the skin around them darkened, his cheeks drawn and pasted with stubble, the corners of his mouth crusted. He stirred and opened his eyes. What time is it, he whispered. She didn't answer. She ran to the baby's room. He was lying in his cot, quite still, face down. He'd kicked off his blanket, and the room was cold. She took a step into the room. Jake rolled over and sat up. He stared at her, his eyes were huge and wild, she knew that he had passed through grief and terror into a hell of despair. He had cried and cried, and no one had come: he held out his arms, with a whimper of pleading, surely whatever he'd done they would forgive him now? Anna stumbled over and picked him up, his body warm, his arms clinging. He buried his face in her neck, with a deep sigh.
Rescue Werg the bear, who had fallen under the cot. Get Jake some water. Go back to Spence, leave them together in the warm soiled bed, bring a bottle of milk formula, more bottled water, clean bedding. Feed Jake, give Spence the water. Clean them both up, notice that the house was really cold; in fact there was gas but no electricity, was it the end of the world? Phone the group practice. When she finally got through to David, their doctor, he told her that if they were all now awake and warm, then the killing coma had spared them, they were going to be all right, and that he'd get an ambulance round as soon as possible.
The ambulance never turned up, but David had been right: the worst was over. It wasn't the end of the world, the power came back the next day. Jake never showed any signs of getting sick. The three of them lived in that bed for the next many days, Anna and Spence taking it in turns, watch on/watch off, to be the nurse. Christmas was not much celebrated that year. The Ice Flu (or the Mammoth flu, because it froze people, or the White Storm, because of its swift and deadly passage around the northern hemisphere, before it plunged south) killed an acknowledged four hundred thousand people in Europe alone. Some of the estimates for the final toll reached a quarter of a billion. This was a news item that would be recorded in memory, even by Anna the oblivious, and would leave a scar on history that would take years to fade. But Anna's mother and father, and Spence's Mom, and Anna's sister Maggie and her second husband (also the first, divorced one) and their children, and Frank N Furter and his current beautiful girlfriend, and Rosey McCarthy and Wol, and their families, and Marnie Choy and Simon Gough and his family, and Ramone Holyrod and Lavinia Kent, and KM Nirmal, and Daz Avriti: they all survived. The disease burned itself out. Human life, in its vast numbers, closed over the gaps in the ranks, which meant nothing except to those who had lost faces they knew, and everything went on much as before.
* * *
In winter the creatures in his ears fought battles and did deals with his enemies, which caused Jake great discomfort and made him cry and stay awake all night. In the summer he traveled, over the narrow seas on a big boat like the one Mummy and Daddy used to have when they were pirates, and lived for weeks on the golden roads, with the slugs and the snails and the waterskaters and the dragonflies: in every city a cathedral, a museum, a river, an electricity station where they could feed the car, and a playground with swings and a sand pit. In Chartres, the car park wound in a snail spiral underground. In Rome he played splash with his mummy all around the fountains, including the Trevi where they bought their breakfast from a shop and Jake had a STUFFED TOMATO and ate it on a slippery blue seat, like a swimming pool: here mummy got in trouble for splashing someone and they had to run like rabbits. In Liguria he lost his Thomas Engine; in the Piano Grande in Norcia he collected sheep bones and saw a Humming Bird Moth; in the vastness of the Campo Santo at Santiago de Compostela Jake himself was lost. He cried, but he knew he would be all right. Someone would find him and take him home, and he'd be their little boy, like Thomas was now safe being somebody else's engine, but what would his mummy and daddy do, how could they live without him? But a policeman found out who he was and brought him to his daddy, CONFIRMING that good things happen. He ventured onto the half built bridge at Avignon alone, while mummy and daddy watched from the barrier, because it was daylight robbery, he was annoyed because they were laughing but he came back dancing on his toes, because he had seen a tiny, a tiny tiny tiny little fish, in the river. In a place called Salamanca, his mummy told him something that made her very proud, it was where her granddad and grandma came from, Jake's granddad in Manchester's gone-to-heaven Daddy and Mummy. In Amsterdam, a disaster happened. They lost the world, the bag that came out with Jake whenever he left the house (or, when traveling, the car), which had held a changing kit in the time of nappies and still held everything Jake needed: his cars, his beaker, his bread and cheese, his lids, his felt-tips, his paper, his babywipes, his spare pants. Thank The God Who Makes Mistakes they had accidentally left Werg the Bear back in the yurt, their summer palace, or there would have been hell to pay, because the world, unlike Jake in Santiago, was never seen again and had to be recreated from nothingness.