by Rhys Thomas
They headed for the shop. The shopkeeper was sitting behind the counter, reading a newspaper.
‘Hello, Mr Asher,’ he said.
Henry’s father stared at the lines of near empty shelves.
‘Not much left, I’m afraid.’
‘So I see.’
He scanned the few dented tins of fruit and some broken boxes.
‘Our deliveries haven’t turned up today.’
‘Don’t you have anything else?’
The shopkeeper straightened his tie and shook his head regretfully. ‘What you see is what I have. If they haven’t turned up by lunchtime I’m going to go down the wholesaler’s.’
‘But . . . don’t you have any stock?’
‘It’s all gone.’
‘But we were told not to panic.’
The shopkeeper shrugged. ‘You know how people are,’ he said. ‘Most of them didn’t listen. I opened up this morning and everything went. Even the stuff in the back.’
Henry’s father felt his face grow hot. He didn’t have much food in the house.
‘Why on earth would they buy everything?’
‘It’s the illness, isn’t it? People are scared.’
‘But it will all blow over.’
The shopkeeper looked past Henry’s father to his two grandchildren, then back again. He wanted to tell him something.
‘Children,’ said the old man. He gave his car keys to Edward. ‘Why don’t you go and wait in the car? I won’t be long. I just need to have a chat with Mr Chancery.’
Edward and Mary did as they were told. Henry’s father approached the counter. ‘What is it, Tom?’
‘My wife is dead.’
The old man thought about this fact for a moment. His legs felt weak. He leaned against the counter. ‘My son is dead,’ he said.
‘Which . . .’
‘The youngest one. Henry.’
‘James, I . . .’
The old man was staring at the confectionery stand. There were a few packets of sweets left. He picked them up and placed them on the counter. ‘I’ll take these. For the kids.’
The men made eye contact.
‘Sure,’ said the shopkeeper. ‘Take them.’
‘How much are they?’
‘James, please. Just take them. Here.’ The shopkeeper reached under his counter and produced a loaf of white bread. ‘Take this as well.’
The old man smiled. ‘Thank you, Tom.’
‘Go to the supermarket. They’ve still got stock. Suppliers don’t dare not turn up to them,’ he said with a cynical smile.
‘OK. Thank you.’
‘Did you watch the Prime Minister on the telly?’ The shopkeeper blew air between his lips and shook his head. ‘Something’s not right with all this. I don’t know what it is, but something’s not right. Four thousand people, he said. My niece works in a hospital and she said that they’ve had thousands of deaths in her hospital alone. And another thing – people started dying on Friday. Why does it take his lordship till now to appear?’ He leaned forward. ‘They’re not telling us something. Remember that news about Russia? Nobody’s heard anything from them in days. What’s that all about? How can you not hear from a whole country?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I remember the Cuban missile crisis. Do you remember that?’
‘I do.’
‘Can you remember the fear?’
The old man did remember.
‘Christ. It’s all coming back to me. All of that. Every time a plane went over, wasn’t it?’
James laughed. ‘It really was. I went to a church to pray, you know. And the damned thing was locked. Can you believe it?’
Tom smiled. ‘So,’ he said.
‘So.’
‘Take care, James.’
And then he did something strange. He extended his open hand. James took it in his own and the two men shook hands.
They left as soon as the Prime Minister’s speech was finished. It was almost dark. Miriam had said nothing to Joseph of what she had witnessed outside the church. She packaged it away, along with the memory of Sophia’s body. But she did not do the same with the memory of Henry. That, she kept close. When she had lain awake last night, thinking of her children in Cornwall, the children she was increasingly feeling she had abandoned, Henry’s ghost sitting on the edge of her bed had given her some solace. Her grief was bringing her an inverted sense of comfort. She was not ready to package him away just yet.
The streets of London would never look the same again. Having the veil of familiarity lifted gave everything a new and dangerous edge. It was becoming clear that normality was beginning to fade from the world. Strange sights greeted them at nearly every corner: burned-out cars, people lying in the street – at one point a sycamore tree had been chopped down and was lying lengthways on the pavement.
‘What are we going to do about the kids?’ she said aloud.
‘It’s completely your decision.’ Joseph’s answer was quick. He had clearly anticipated the question, which only heightened Miriam’s guilt.
‘Do you think they should come to London?’
Joseph kept his eyes on the road ahead. ‘Maybe.’
‘I don’t think we can just go to Cornwall and uproot our lives. The kids are supposed to be in school. That’s what they said on the radio.’
‘It’s your decision.’
‘But what do you think?’
‘I think it’s up to you.’
They came to a line of traffic. Miriam sat back in her seat and glanced out of the window. The houses here were tall and thin, leaning over the road as if in a fairy tale. A man emerged from one of them. In his arms he carried a body that he laid gently down on the wide pavement. Miriam shifted round and placed the palm of her hand on the inside of the window. The man stood up, reached into his pocket and took out a box of matches. The strength went out of his neck for a moment and his head sagged over his chest. She knew instantly that he had been stricken by the illness. That new, alerting sense that she felt was tingling once again, as fact-like as pain. There was that inexplicable gravity around him.
The man lifted his head up again and slowly pushed out the matchbox. He took a match, cracked it to life and threw it towards the open door of his house. Its tiny flame extinguished immediately and the match fell dead on to the steps. He lit another and threw it. Again the flame faltered and died. Joseph eased the car forward. The man threw another lit match at the house.
‘What’s he doing?’ she whispered.
‘Trying to burn his house down by the looks of things, the poor fucker.’
‘Jesus, Joseph, what is this thing?’
The man throwing the matches removed his sweater and placed it delicately on the pavement. Crouching down, he struck another match and dropped it on to the cloth. It kindled and smoked until small flames began to dance over its surface. He lifted the sweater and walked up the steps into the house.
‘Oh my God,’ said Miriam.
The man reappeared at the large bay windows at the front of the house. Through the glass they saw him hold his torch against the curtains and slide the large window upwards to let in air. The curtains became orange lines of moving light and the man disappeared.
He came out of the front door again, the sweater gone. He went down the steps, removed his shirt, set fire to it and threw it into the open doorway. After that he sat down on the pavement and crossed his legs. He was sitting next to the dead body he had brought out. He turned his head towards it, looked at it, and became still as the smoke billowed out of the window and he was lost beneath it.
Her mother’s house was on a quiet street in north London. Joseph parked and Miriam ran up the garden path to the front door. Only the very last embers of light remained in the day. There was no answer at the door. She peered through the living-room window. The room was empty. She pressed her forehead against the glass, and scenarios of where her mother might be ran through her head unchecked and ferocious.
A faint noise came from the side of the house, like an animal mewing. Cautiously Miriam peered round the corner. The space between her house and next door was dark but there, sitting against the wall, in the murk, was the shape of a woman. Her legs were tucked up under her chin.
Miriam gestured for Joseph to come over. The woman sitting in the shadows was too large to be her mother. Her mother was tall and thin, this woman was dumpy.
‘Are you all right?’
Miriam tried to make her voice sound confident. The woman did not answer. She did not even acknowledge that she had heard Miriam. Instead she just sat there, making the strange mewing sound again.
‘What’s there?’
Joseph was behind her.
‘It’s a woman. I think it’s my mother’s neighbour.’
Miriam took a step towards her. Joseph grabbed her arm.
‘She might be violent,’ he whispered.
‘I know her.’
‘She’s fucked. Leave her.’
Anger swelled up inside her fast and hard. She spun round and pushed Joseph back to the front of the house.
‘What’s the matter with you? How can you be so heartless?’
Joseph’s face changed. His cheeks reddened and his mouth hinged open.
‘That woman helped bring me up. You’re not in charge of me, Joseph.’ She felt herself shaking. ‘You’re Henry’s brother, not mine.’ As she spoke she felt a deep and slimy tension ooze out of her in slicks. It had been welling behind an invisible wall for days, for years.
‘So that’s what you think?’ His face was hurt and confused. ‘That I’m trying to, what, own you?’
Miriam wanted to stop but couldn’t.
‘Look at you. Why do you think Henry didn’t want to bother with you? You’re bitter and angry and you only care about yourself.’
Her fists were clenched. She could feel her voice wavering.
The two of them looked at one another for a long time. Slowly the redness drained from Joseph’s face. His eyes deadened and his expression became impassive again. He opened his mouth, thought about what he was going to say, and continued: ‘I’ve always resented you,’ he said calmly and conclusively. ‘I don’t know why I bothered trying to help.’
He turned and walked away across the lawn of the front garden. Miriam watched, determined not to call after him. She watched as Joseph climbed into his car and drove away. Chemicals in her blood made her feel faint.
‘It’s all falling apart,’ said a slow voice.
Miriam spun round. Her foot slipped on the raised edge of the path and she stumbled on to the front lawn.
The woman who had been sitting against the side of the house was now standing at the corner, half in shadow, half in light, her arms limp at either side, her shoulders hunched over like an ape’s, her small, chubby fingers extended to the ground.
‘Dorothy,’ said Miriam. ‘You scared me.’
The woman was nearing eighty. She was not wearing any makeup and her round face, which had always been so happy, was haggard. Her jowls drooped either side of her double chin.
‘How are you?’ She felt pathetic. It sounded so banal.
Dorothy considered the question. ‘I’m going to die soon.’ Her voice didn’t sound her own. It was her voice, but not. It was slower and deeper, more thoughtful. Every syllable was clear and measured.
‘You’re not going to die.’
‘Yes I am.’ She was wearing the same apron she had worn when Miriam was a child. ‘I know it’s going to happen. I don’t mind. I don’t care. I don’t have anything in my life worth living for anyway.’
‘You’re not going to die,’ she said again.
‘Yes I am, Miri.’
‘They’ll find a cure.’
Dorothy shook her head slowly. ‘There’s no cure for this.’ She touched her chest, indicating her heart. ‘You don’t know what I’m talking about. You can’t possibly know.’
Miriam looked at her and powerful forces of sympathy and affection collided inside her. The old woman’s face was vacant as it stared wide-eyed at something invisible in the middle distance.
‘I never really did anything with my life,’ she said.
‘Dorothy, please.’ Miriam put an arm around her.
‘I always said I would. Not to anybody else, but to myself. I promised I would fall in love and get married one day.’
‘But you did get married.’
‘I didn’t love him. We both just settled for each other. I had to marry him because he was my last chance. It’s funny, isn’t it? The things people do so they are not alone.’
There was a low garden wall behind them. Miriam took Dorothy to it and they sat down.
‘You have not wasted your life. Don’t you know how much everyone loves you?’ She looked at Dorothy’s face in profile. Her left eye was milky with a cataract and Miriam felt an enormous pang of sorrow.
‘I used to get so worried when I was lying in bed just thinking about it, but it’s gone now. It’s strange but I feel like all my wishes have just vanished. But I don’t feel sad. It’s odd but now they’re not there, I don’t feel as bad as I used to. You’d think it would be the other way round, wouldn’t you? But it’s not. My wishes were making me sad. I understand that now. They were never going to come true and yet I clung to them like they were precious diamonds when really they were nothing but blocks of dust stuck together, weighing me down.’
Miriam felt Dorothy’s warmth next to her. The old woman was sad, but not in the same way as Henry. Whatever this was, it was different for everyone. She imagined a great monster in a deep, dark cave somewhere, collecting trophies of humanity and storing them greedily in its nest.
‘I know what death is going to be like,’ said the old woman. ‘It’s going to be like I’m looking through a large circle that will get smaller and smaller and then it will be gone. I’ll fall back inside my mind and then I’ll die.’
Dorothy fell quiet and all Miriam could do was stay by her side. They sat there in silence. The night came in and the distant sounds of sirens never stopped. And then Miriam let go of Dorothy. She was on her feet and sprinting across the lawn. Tears flooded from her eyes uncontrollably. Her throat was heavy with moisture.
‘Mum,’ she cried.
Her mother saw her only daughter coming towards her and opened her arms. Miriam pressed her mouth against her mother’s shoulder and cried.
‘Shush, shush, shush,’ her mother said. She stroked Miriam’s hair.
The scent of her mother’s perfume wafted into her nostrils and its old familiarity made her cry harder. ‘Mum,’ she said again. Just saying the word made her feel safer. ‘I’m so scared,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t know what to do.’
‘I should never have left them.’
Steam rose in a swirl from her cup of coffee. Her hands were cupped round the ceramic, the warmth sinking into them. The house was quiet with Dorothy asleep in the bedroom upstairs. They were sitting at the small table beneath the only window.
‘You did the right thing.’ Her mother smiled at her. She looked smaller and frailer every time Miriam saw her.
‘I wasn’t thinking straight. I just . . . Joseph said . . .’
She stopped and looked down at her cup. It wasn’t Joseph’s fault. She had gone along with it. She had left them. Guilt leaked into her chest. She pictured Edward after she had broken the news to him about Henry and how his body had slowed down. An image of him walking through a park at night in pitch blackness came into her head. Phantoms surrounded him, crossing behind him as silvery streaks of light. And there was nobody to protect him.
‘I’ve got to get them back.’
Her mother said nothing.
‘Do you think it’s safe?’
‘It’s safe.’ The old woman reached across the table and clasped her fingers over Miriam’s hand. ‘Feeling guilty won’t do anybody any good.’
Miriam felt so hollow. She rose from her seat and went to the kitchen cabi
nets. ‘Have you got any aspirin?’
Her mother didn’t reply immediately, and then her voice came, soft and gentle.
‘Henry wouldn’t want you to be afraid.’
Miriam paused, her hand stopped on the round, wooden handle of one of the cabinets and the latticework that kept her body rigid sagged and slumped. She closed her eyes.
‘He just . . . died.’ ‘He’s not really dead, Miri,’ she heard her mother say behind her.
Miriam tucked her top lip into the bottom one and swallowed. She did believe that, she really did, but as her mind showed her once again the image of Henry lying dead in the darkness of the pre-dawn there remained a gaping and unexplained hole.
Her mother had moved towards her. Miriam felt her presence at her shoulder. She turned.
‘Come here,’ her mother said, and took her into her arms. ‘It’s OK.’
Miriam cried again, more deeply this time. ‘It all happened so fast,’ she sobbed. ‘There was no warning. I didn’t know.’ The tips of her mother’s fingers pressed into her back. ‘It’s not fair,’ whispered Miriam. ‘It’s not fair.’
Henry’s father replaced the telephone receiver and took a deep breath. He was unsure whether he should take his grandchildren into such a dangerous situation. He did not want to be complicit in anything that could lead them into harm. And yet they were not his children. The choice was made. They would go to London.
‘Granddad.’ Mary was holding her second finger up to him and turning it back and forth. ‘My finger hurts.’
He looked at his granddaughter. There was so much life in her. It was bursting out of every pore.
‘Let me have a look,’ he said.
Mary climbed on to his lap and brought her finger right up to his eyes. He had to lean his head back to see the injury clearly.
‘There’s nothing wrong with it.’
Mary pouted. ‘But it hurts.’
He took the finger between his own. ‘Perhaps I should bite it off,’ he said.
