Who Runs the World?

by Virginia Bergin

  ‘. . . It’s just how things were!’ Kate is saying.

  Rape. I feel such revulsion, and such alarm.

  ‘I think we really do have to call H&R,’ Mumma says.

  ‘No!’ cries Kate. ‘You’re getting this all wrong!’

  ‘What right way is there to get this?’ Mumma says; I’ve never heard her so . . . rattled. My calm Mumma is NOT calm.

  ‘Seriously, don’t even go there,’ Kate tells Mumma. ‘It was another world, OK?’ She wipes her sweating brow; it takes a lot for Kate to sweat these days; she says age has made her bones cold. Ready for the grave, she mutters darkly as even in the heat of summer she reaches for a jumper.

  Nothing makes sense and I can’t seem to find a thing in my head to help with making sense of it. Clothes – or towels – wouldn’t really stop anyone from doing something so incredibly dreadful, would they? They wouldn’t even slow anyone down for long, would they? And slowing down isn’t the same as stopping . . . How could anyone have so little self-control?! How could anyone . . . why would anyone . . . WHY WOULD ANYONE, EVER, WANT TO DO THAT TO ANOTHER PERSON?

  ‘Did men have to never be naked too?’ I ask. It is, I feel, the last intelligent, logical question I can pull out of my baffled, horrified brain before it explodes.

  ‘Yes!’ shrieks Kate, like it’s obvious. ‘No nakedness, all right?’

  Mumma is slowly shaking her head, as confused as I am.

  ‘We don’t really understand,’ she murmurs.

  ‘You don’t need to understand,’ Kate sighs. ‘Look . . . I’m really sorry to have to be saying this. I do know how messed up it must sound to you . . . but there was a time when – argh! Things were so messed up that a woman could get blamed for what a man did. A woman could get blamed; they’d say she was too naked, too drunk, too whatever. You ask any of the old gals and they’ll tell you the same! It wasn’t right; we all kind of knew it wasn’t right –’

  ‘Kind of?’ says Mumma.

  ‘You had to be there,’ says Kate coldly. ‘And you weren’t.’

  ‘No,’ says Mumma. ‘But if you are saying that this XY is capable of rape, then we really do need to call H&R. Now.’

  ‘I’m not saying that,’ says Kate.

  ‘It sounds like it,’ says Mumma.

  ‘I’m not. I’m just saying . . . God! It’s almost impossible to speak to you!’

  My Mumma opens her arms, letting her palms rest on the table as if she is waiting to embrace whatever burden Kate has to pass on.

  Kate dabs her sweating brow, firmly, as though pressing once-was thoughts back down into her mind.

  ‘Look, why don’t you try to think about it from Mason’s point of view?’ she says.

  ‘Which is?’ I ask. I truly cannot imagine his point of view.

  ‘He’s never even seen women and girls before –’

  ‘Yes, and we’ve never seen an XY,’ says Mumma.

  ‘A boy,’ says Kate. ‘He’s overwhelmed. He’s outnumbered.’

  ‘We’re being very kind . . .’

  I nod, hard, in Agreement with Mumma. I am being especially kind, I think. (E.g. my room.)

  ‘Look . . . no one walked around naked,’ Kate mumbles. I see her thinking, hard. ‘It was . . . Courtesy,’ she says, beaming as she hits upon the word. Beaming because she knows that me and Mumma, that’s a thing we understand. That’s a thing everyone understands. How you’re supposed to treat people: respectfully, and kindly – even when you wish they hadn’t called round/weren’t saying what they’re saying/want to scream at them. And strangers and newcomers? Utmost Courtesy.

  ‘But –’ I get out, which is the cue for Kate to lose it completely:

  ‘COURTESY!’ she shrieks. ‘THE SAME AS BLOODY PLEASE AND THANK YOU! CLOTHES ARE COURTESY! YOU NEED TO LISTEN TO ME BECAUSE YOU DON’T KNOW! THIS IS NOW A RULE IN THIS HOUSE! NO MORE WANDERING AROUND STARKERS, OK?!’

  I have many thoughts, all at once:

  1. Kate, as she has just demonstrated, has no time for Courtesy. Rare it is, the occasion on which she shows it.

  2. I don’t get how never being naked could have been Courtesy.

  3. I was brought up to think . . . when we can’t decide what to do, we have to think firstly about the environment (so one towel, not two) and secondly about the survival of people. I don’t understand where this naked thing fits into that or any Agreement – international, national or local – that I know of.

  4. I’ve seen the old magazines Kate and the rest of the Granmummas have. Women wore all kinds of crazy, funny things (some even see-through!). The men in those magazines? Mainly they wore suits and generally they wore a lot more clothes. Unless everyone was on the beach; in which case the breast-less men wore shorts and the women covered their breasts. Breasts are . . . breasts. They’re normal. They’re . . . Why would you cover them . . . but leave an absence of them uncovered?

  C-O-N-F-U-S-I-N-G, or what?

  Mumma and I stare at Kate.

  ‘Look, what I mean is that I’m fairly sure Mason might find naked women a bit of a shock,’ she says quietly.

  This is, it seems to me, a reasonable statement. ‘I was quite shocked,’ I tell them, ‘when I saw him naked.’

  Mumma shrugs. ‘People are often shocked by what is new to them,’ she says. ‘And then . . . they move on. They have to move on,’ she says to Kate.

  It’s such an important comment; one that we all understand. After the sickness, the whole world had to move on, didn’t it?

  ‘I can’t,’ Kate says. ‘Not on this issue. So it’s me. This is about me. Forget about Mason – who knows what he thinks and now is not the time to go asking him – this is about what I can and cannot deal with. I can see that it’s incomprehensible to you, and that makes me feel . . . very old. I was brought up in a different time. There’s hardly a day goes by when I don’t see that, when I don’t see how . . . the things I thought were normal, they were just how things were. And then everything changed. But I still feel how I feel. It’s how I was brought up. It’s hard to undo that. It’s in my head; it shouldn’t be, I’m sure . . . and you wouldn’t understand anyway. I don’t expect you to get a word of this – what would you know? – but I’m telling you . . . you can’t go starkers for a while, OK? You can’t because I can’t handle it.’

  I’ve never heard Kate speak like this. The Granmummas and their views are always treated with respect – if not for their wisdom, of which they often have plenty, then for their having survived a time so terrible none of us can quite imagine how they did it. But what Kate is saying now seems not to come from the Granmumma spirit that is so respected. It seems to come instead from a place of quiet personal confusion and distress.

  ‘You’d prefer us not to be naked when Mason is around . . . ?’ says Mumma gently, in uptalk.

  Kate has run out of puff and patience – she just nods very hard at us, eyes wild.

  ‘Then that’s what we’ll do,’ says Mumma. ‘Subject to review.’

  Kate, her quiet self immediately shoved aside, rolls her eyes at ‘subject to review’ – which is fantastically cheeky of her considering she just got her own way without proper discussion and while demonstrating blatant disrespect for at least two Global Agreements. That’s so Granmumma of her.

  ‘River . . . you need to ask him if there is anything he’d like,’ she instructs, pulling herself together.

  ‘Why me?!’

  ‘Because he trusts you.’

  ‘He does not!’

  ‘OK, so trust might not exactly be the right word, but there’s a bond there.’

  ‘Code of Honour,’ I rasp, doing a fairly brilliant, if somewhat cruel, impersonation of the creature boy.

  Kate ignores me: ‘Exactly.’

  ‘What if I don’t want to?’

  ‘Listen, Sweetie-pop,’ coos Kate. ‘I know you’re freaked out, but this is important.’

  When Kate calls me Sweetie-pop . . . I love it. I melt.

  So I ask. On my own. K
ate whispers she and Mumma will wait outside.

  I whisper, ‘NO WAY.’

  Kate ignores me and knocks at (my) bedroom door. There is no response. Mumma looks at Kate in alarm.

  ‘I don’t think he understands about knocking,’ Kate whispers. ‘Ask him if it’s OK for you to come in.’

  ‘Is it OK to come in?’ I shout.

  Silence.

  ‘Say his name,’ instructs Kate.

  ‘May-son.’ I say it very theatrically. I know I shouldn’t even before Kate bats the back of her hand at me.

  ‘Whatever,’ it croaks from behind the door.

  Kate turns the handle and shoves me in . . . to my room, where the creature boy lies in my bed, looking sick and sorry for himself and generally stinking. I leave the door wide open behind me. I might have to run.

  ‘We were wondering if there is anything you’d like. Or anything you need.’

  I don’t say it in a way that you’d describe as being nice. A part of me . . . So maybe I don’t feel OK about being so rude – and Kate and Mumma are sure to tell me off about it, but I somehow cannot find it in myself to be more polite or sincere to this thing boy.

  ‘Like what?’ it croaks.

  How would I know? I’m thinking – in a panic, truth be told. I just thought I’d ask the question, get the answer and get out. I conduct a speed-rummage in my brain for the things I like when I’m sick.

  ‘Well, you know . . . maybe some books?’

  OH NO. WHY DID I SAY THAT? I AM NOT LENDING IT MY BOOKS.

  ‘Picture books?’ he asks . . . with the tiniest twinkle of curiosity?

  ‘No . . . books with words.’

  ‘Can’t read good.’

  Oh, how I envy Mumma and Kate, who – out of sight – will be free to faint from shock. I compose myself.

  ‘Or . . . some flowers?’

  He looks at me as though I am weird and mad and even more strange than he is.

  ‘Soup?’

  I have the eeriest feeling it doesn’t know what soup is.

  ‘Or . . . a bath?’

  At my final offering, a flicker of what could be interest crosses his hairy face.

  He clears his throat. ‘Imma think about that,’ he says.

  ‘Well . . . great!’ I say, Kate-and-Mumma-listen-how-nice-I’m-being loudly. I make a last attempt to sound sympathetic. ‘So you think, and just let us know if there’s anything else you want.’

  Outside, one of the cows starts up bellowing – probably Dandelion, she’s always got something to say – and the boy grips hold of the bed-sheets, legs twitching to go.

  ‘It’s just a cow,’ I tell him.

  He looks at me and – oh! – what I see on its face is Littler One fright.

  ‘You know, moo.’

  ‘I been hearing a whole lot of things,’ he says, eyeing me.

  ‘Like what?’ I don’t even mean to ask that, not really; it’s just . . . who doesn’t know how a cow sounds?

  ‘Things.’

  I have to think, really hard . . . if he doesn’t know what a cow sounds like, it wouldn’t know . . .

  ‘So you probably heard the cockerel.’

  He just looks at me. Does that word mean anything to him?

  ‘Cock-a-doodle-doo!’ I do my best Littler-One style cockerel impersonation. ‘Or the sheep – you know: baaa! – or the pigs – hrr, hrr, hrr – weeeeee.’

  It’s grinning at me – full-on grinning.

  ‘Are you laughing at me?’

  ‘Nope – well, you know, some.’

  ‘I think the only thing that’s funny is someone not knowing what a cow sounds like.’

  ‘That ain’t my fault, is it? Where I come from we ain’t got no cows.’

  ‘Everyone has cows.’

  ‘A Unit don’t. A Unit’s got no animals ’cept the ones running it.’

  ‘What?’ There’s the tiniest creak from outside the room and I remember Mumma and Kate are outside. ‘Look, just let us know, OK? There must be something you’d like. Something that would make you feel better.’

  I’ve done my job. I’ve asked the question. Unable to bear the confused frown on its face, I turn to leave.

  ‘River, wait!’ it croaks.

  ‘Yup?’

  ‘I never saw no gym room here.’

  I don’t know really what it means. ‘I don’t think we’ve got one of those.’

  ‘Well, where’d you keep your ’quipment?’

  ‘Equipment?’

  ‘You know, treadmill, weights . . .’

  What on Earth is he talking about? ‘I’m not sure. I’ll find out,’ I tell him – preferable to say that than ask what he means; Kate might know.

  ‘I need to get back in training.’

  ‘OK . . . Anything else you’d like?’

  ‘Well . . . d’you think they’d issue me with a game box?’

  NO IDEA. WHAT ON EARTH IS IT TALKING ABOUT?

  ‘I’ll find out about that too.’

  I try to leave again.

  ‘River?’

  ‘Yup?’ I say, over my shoulder.

  ‘Thanks,’ he says, in a small voice.

  You’re welcome or My pleasure would be a more Courteous reply, but I’m so surprised to be thanked I can’t get the right words out.

  ‘That’s OK,’ I reply, also in a small voice.

  CHAPTER 15

  SANITARY

  For anyone who’s thinking about keeping a boy, my advice would be: don’t.

  Having a boy in your house is no fun at all.

  In fact, it’s the opposite of fun.

  Please note: I am saying ‘boy’ instead of ‘XY’ or ‘it’ or ‘thing’ or ‘creature’. I am even trying to think it. I am making an effort. It is not easy.

  Kate could indeed understand every word Mason spoke and said that she would obtain a ‘Game Box’, an item several of the Granmummas are, apparently, ‘bound to have’ – which is news to me. And I end up at Lenny’s that night, asking whether she’s got such a thing as:

  ‘A treadmill.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘A running machine.’

  ‘What on Earth do you want one of those for?’ she asks.

  ‘I want to get fit.’ That’s what Kate told me to say. It sounds weird.

  ‘What? Why don’t you just do more work?’ says Lenny, genuinely perplexed.

  ‘And it’ll help me study. You know . . . oxygen . . . exercise.’

  I’m vague on the specifics. It’s biology, isn’t it? Machines are my thing.

  ‘You can always come and muck out Milpy,’ she says. ‘That should focus your mind.’

  Lenny takes care of Milpy and machines, animals and broken things. Every young person in this village spends time with her, learning about creatures and how to fix stuff. In the once-was, the Granmummas say, it was mostly men who did the fixing of things. That seems pretty weird to me, and not just because there were men involved. I mean, why would it be mainly XYs that did that? How did that ever happen? (But I don’t not get it in a way that seriously troubles me; unlike Plat, I’m not interested at all in finding out. It’s just how it was: too bad, so sad etc.) Then when all the men had died or gone, if a thing got broken, you’d just go and get another one. When I first heard that, I was shocked because it was so unimaginable, but the population had halved, so there was plenty to go around – and plenty for years to come as the number of people continued to decline. Lots of things that used to get made didn’t get made and more and more things got broken, until Mumma’s generation grew up and got us organised. Re-organised, Kate would say – and that’s right and fair and true, because if it wasn’t for the Granmummas, there’d be no ‘us’ to get organised.

  Anyway, animal care aside, now no one grows up without knowing how to do stuff and, unlike the ha-ha-harvest experiment, ‘Repair & Maintain’ is permanent. Cars, washing machines, turbines, solar panels – even Littler Ones like Sweet know how a plug should be wired . . . and around he
re it’s Lenny who teaches that, because the Mummas are too busy and the Granmummas . . . are the Granmummas. There’s not a thing that goes on they’re not running or at least involved in, apart from R&M.

  ‘We did our bit,’ Kate says, every time she hands me whatever broken thing she wants fixed.

  To be honest, R&M is a kind of refuge. It’s the next-best thing to our free time on Tuesday nights. It’s the time and place when we just get to do stuff. It’s not like school, where no matter how keen you are, you feel the weight of pressure to do well upon you. We are told it’s an honour to feel that pressure because we will take – we have to take – our world forward. We learn that before we even learn to wire a plug.

  ‘Look, I really don’t know about this,’ Lenny says, scooping back the wild curls of her hair as she picks her way through the vast storage barn where she keeps machines and once-was gadgets of all kinds for parts. Kate says it’s like Raiders of the Lost Ark in there. I don’t know what that is and I’ve never bothered to find out, but Lenny’s barn is a place of once-was mechanical and electronic wonders and curiosities. It’s my idea of heaven.

  ‘River, really, why do you want this?’ says Lenny, hunting in her pockets for a hair tie.

  ‘Because of . . . why . . . I said.’ Kate said to say another thing if things got tricky: ‘My Mumma is fine about it. She Agrees.’

  I’ve never done that before, but If Lenny gets funny about it, you’ll just have to play the Mumma card, Kate said . . . and Mumma winced – so hard – and then nodded. Kate told me what to say but – UGH! – this is as weird and as unpleasant as lying to Plat. I feel I could faint – like a boy! – just saying it, I truly do, so I prop myself up on the nearest object.