We Used to Be Kings

by Stewart Foster

‘Is there something wrong?’

  ‘It’s our dad,’ I said.

  ‘It’s our dad,’ said Jack.

  The vicar shrugged at Auntie Jean. Auntie Jean shrugged back then looked at me.

  ‘I don’t think so, my love,’ she said.

  The man just stood and stared.

  He was thinner than Dad. Dad was big, he used to play rugby for the army, but he would have lost weight after eating space food all summer. I looked around the cemetery to see where his rocket could have landed. I looked back at the gate, but in the time I had turned away the man had disappeared into the exhaust fumes from the bus.

  ‘Was it him, Tom?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘He wasn’t wearing his spacesuit.’

  —

  The man with the spade picked up the fourth rope. The ropes went taut as the coffin slid across the grass, hovered over the hole and slowly moved out of the sunlight into the dark. Jack squirmed beside me and made a noise like a cat trying to meow with its mouth closed.

  ‘Am I going to heaven, Tom?’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘But isn’t heaven up there?’ He pointed between the trees to the sky.

  —

  ‘Tom?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think I’m going the wrong way.’

  The coffin rested on the bottom. The sun went behind a cloud. I held out my hand and looked down, but Jack was gone.

  I shivered. The rain had soaked through my coat to Eric’s suit and Eric’s suit was stuck to my skin. The vicar bent down and asked me if I was OK. I told him I was cold.

  ‘Me too.’

  I looked in the hole, down the hill, up at the sky. I couldn’t see Jack, but I could still hear his voice.

  ‘Jack. Where are you?’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘Here.’

  I felt a buzz inside my head, like a wasp flying around in a can. It got quicker and quicker, louder and louder, until it reached the middle. I put my hands over my ears and tried to shake Jack loose, but the buzzing just got louder and my head started to vibrate. I screwed up my eyes. I heard Jack laughing then suddenly he stopped as the men slid another coffin out of a car and carried it across to the grave.

  ‘Tom, what’s happening? Did I split into two parts?’

  The vicar coughed, put one hand on my shoulder. I didn’t know if it was to help me or to stop him from falling over.

  ‘Friends and family. We are gathered here . . .’

  ‘He already said this bit.’

  ‘I know. Jack . . . there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.’

  ‘Our plan didn’t work?’

  ‘No. It’s—’

  The vicar bent down. I smelt strawberry medicine on his breath. ‘We can stop for a while if you like,’ he said.

  ‘I’m OK.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘You’re bound to be confused.’ He stood back up and started to read the Bible.

  ‘I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord; he that believeth in me, though he were dead . . .’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day . . .’

  ‘Did the spies get through the radar?’

  ‘Jack,’ I said. ‘I think we should be listening.’

  ‘It’s boring.’

  The vicar’s voice grew louder.

  ‘Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord . . .’

  ‘Is it important?’

  ‘I think this bit is.’

  ‘Into Thy hands, O merciful Saviour, we commend Thy servant, Miriam.’

  ‘Miriam?’

  ‘From dust were you made, O man, and to dust shall you return . . .’

  ‘Jack, I’m sorry, I tried to tell you.’

  The men picked up the ropes and lifted the coffin over the hole. I leant over and stared down at Jack’s coffin in the dark as the men let out the ropes and slowly lowered Mum in on top.

  The funeral cars seemed to slide down the hill and all I could hear was the sound of tyres picking up stones. I walked towards the gates with Auntie Jean tap-tap-tapping beside me, using her umbrella as a walking stick. She talked all the way down, only stopping three times to catch her breath. She told me that she knew what it felt like to be alone, that sometimes, during the day, or in the middle of the night, she would talk to her Eric. She said it helped her to think that he was listening. I kept walking, looking at the ground, scuffing stones. Auntie Jean followed. I knew she was only trying to make me feel better, but what she did with Eric was different – her Eric just listened, he didn’t keep talking inside her head.

  There was a taxi waiting when we reached the gates. Auntie Jean opened the door, I climbed in and she sat beside me in the back. The seats smelt of beer and cigarettes. I wound down the window and put my head out as we went down the hill, past the park, into town.

  We stopped at roadworks by the hospital. The smell of tarmac drifted out of a barrel and made me choke. I looked up at the building. The sun was reflecting in the windows with clouds rushing from the top to the bottom like the world had slipped onto its side. I searched for the room Mum used to be in, top row, three in from the end, the one with the dull orange light that turned everyone into shadows. I thought of her lying in her bed, covered in bandages with two slits cut away for her eyes, two more for her mouth and nose, and two tubes coming out of her and going into a machine.

  A yellow digger passed by. My head rumbled against the glass, but I couldn’t hear its engine, all I could hear was the hiss, click, clunk of Mum breathing into the machine – twelve times a minute, 720 times an hour, 17,280 times a day. I tried to remember holding her hand, it was smooth and warm, but it didn’t move – hiss, click, clunk. Hiss, click, clunk—

  I’d sat in a chair by her side. She wasn’t very big when she was stood up, she looked even smaller when she was lying down. I looked at her face, it wasn’t smooth and white like I remembered it. She had a wrinkled red mark that ran like a zip from her eye down to her neck. And her hair had gone frizzy, turned from blonde to brown like it did when she came back from town after getting caught in the rain – hiss, click, clunk. Hiss, click, clunk – the doctors and nurses circled at the end of her bed and whispered in the dark. They said something about three days, something about burns and something about more drugs. I didn’t know what any of it meant, but from the way they shook their heads I knew they didn’t think Mum was going to get better.

  I told them they were wrong, that if they’d sat with Mum for as long as I had they would have seen her jerk her hand ten times a day and blink five times every hour. And she was getting better, she was breathing into the machine. I remember a doctor crouching down and rubbing my head. I remember him smiling and touching my arm, I remember my body went empty when he spoke.

  ‘Tom, your mum’s not breathing into the machine, the machine is breathing into her.’

  The lights turned green and the taxi drove on. My eyes began to water in the wind. I saw the taxi driver watching me in his wing mirror. I wiped my tears on my arm. I think he smiled.

  We followed the river out of town. Sometimes it disappeared behind buildings, the milk depot and the petrol station, and sometimes we had to go around roundabouts, but it wasn’t long before the road met up with the river again. I remembered Dad walking this way to town. I thought of all the hot days that I had watched him from our hill and all the hot nights that me and Jack had spent waiting for him to come home. If he hadn’t gone to the moon none of this would have happened. He would still be here, Mum would still be here and Jack would be sitting next to me in his Chelsea kit kicking the front seat and not running around inside my head.

  I thought about all the times we went to hospital when Jack was little, when he woke up not being able to breathe in the middle of the night. I remembered his chest going up and dow
n. I remembered him gulping air and I remembered him laughing at me as he ate hospital jelly in an oxygen tent. And I thought how much I wished he was sitting beside me. Now I was the only Gagarin left.

  I turned and looked at Auntie Jean; she was asleep with her head back on the seat. Her mouth was wide open like she was eating an apple. She started to snore. I thought about what it would be like to live with her. She wouldn’t be able to take me to football, and, at weekends, I could only listen to it on the radio. It wouldn’t be as exciting as watching it on TV.

  The taxi’s indicators clicked as it turned into our road. Everything was quiet as we drove past the houses, all their curtains were drawn, all their windows were shut and as we got closer to my house I closed my eyes and smelt the smoke again.

  Four days after the funeral Auntie Jean said she was tired. I heard her talking while I was walking around amongst the pieces of melted plastic and twisted metal in our back garden. It was early, the sky was full of birds. I crept over to the fence.

  ‘I’m so tired,’ Auntie Jean said. ‘I just can’t sleep.’

  I peered through a gap in the fence and saw Auntie Jean talking to a rose bush on the other side. There was a whisper but the words got mixed up with the sound of the radio from the kitchen. She cupped her hand around her ear and leant forward.

  ‘What’s that?’

  I heard a snipping sound. Mrs French stood up on the other side of the bush with a pair of scissors in her hand. She puffed out her cheeks and wiped sweat off her brow.

  ‘It’s this damned heat, I can’t sleep either.’

  Auntie Jean shook her head.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s the boy . . .’

  ‘Oh . . . Poor lad. It’s terrible for those left behind.’

  I pressed my eye against the fence. Auntie Jean nodded.

  ‘I know . . . I know.’

  Mrs French lifted her scissors and cut a head off a rose.

  ‘Will he be staying with you?’

  ‘No, he can’t stay . . . He doesn’t stop talking.’

  Mrs French smiled. ‘Well, it’s good he can talk to you.’

  ‘No . . .’ Auntie Jean put her hand up to the side of her mouth. ‘To himself,’ she said, ‘to his brother . . . I heard him through the wall.’

  Mrs French dropped her scissors. Auntie Jean walked down the garden, squeezed through a gap between the bushes and joined Mrs French on the other side. Music played on the radio. I saw their mouths move but I couldn’t hear what they were saying.

  A gust of wind whistled around me, blew pieces of burnt paper up into the air. Puffs of black ash blew from our windowsills. I slid down the fence, closed my eyes and wrapped my hands around my head. The wind blew harder, I peeped through my fingers. The ash mixed with the paper turned the sky grey and blocked out the sun.

  ‘Is she sending us away?’ Jack asked.

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘What about if Dad comes back? How will he find us?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘How do we tell him we moved? How will the postman know where to deliver his letters?’

  I told him to be quiet, that I was trying to listen, but he kept repeating the same thing over and over again.

  ‘What about Dad? What about Dad?’

  I squeezed my head tighter.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I shouted. ‘Jack, I don’t know.’

  There was a bang, the fence shook behind me. I looked up and saw Auntie Jean rushing down our garden path towards me. I put my head on my knees.

  ‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘You’ll be OK.’ She crouched down by my side.

  ‘Will I?’

  She nodded.

  ‘And Jack?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘And Jack?’

  She put her arm around me and took me back inside. I didn’t hear her reply.

  I stayed in for the rest of the day. Auntie Jean said she was tired, that she’d just listen to her radio, maybe do some knitting. I sat on the settee, sometimes looking out of the window, sometimes watching the clock on the mantelpiece. For a second I thought of going outside and playing football, but I couldn’t take a penalty and be in goal at the same time. And all the time I was thinking Jack was there chattering away inside my head.

  I looked at the clock again; only five minutes had passed. I looked at Auntie Jean, saw her looking at me. We did that all afternoon, looked at each other without talking, then she’d smile, check her watch and look out the window like she was waiting for a bus. I didn’t want to leave our house behind but I knew I couldn’t stay with her, I couldn’t sit with her in silence because it just made the voice in my head even worse. It was great to have Jack back but there was no escape, I couldn’t turn him on and off like a TV. A lump grew in my throat. I stared out the window and thought about a time when me and Jack were with Mum and Dad and we were all happy.

  Dad had taken the day off work and we’d had a picnic out on the lawn. Mum was lying on her back with her hair spread on the grass as she tried to catch the sun. Dad made rabbit shadows with his hands, made them jump across her body. Me and Jack started to giggle. Dad put his finger up to his lips. Then he made another rabbit jump from Mum’s feet and nibble her ear. I put my hand over my mouth. Jack laughed out loud. Mum opened her eyes, squinted at the sun.

  ‘What are you up to?’ she asked.

  Dad stood up straight, put his hands by his side like he was on parade.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said.

  ‘Are you sure, Corporal?’ said Mum.

  Dad looked at me and Jack without turning his head. His eyes started to water, a smirk grew across his face and turned into a grin. He lifted up his hand and pointed at me and Jack.

  ‘It was them,’ he said.

  ‘It was you,’ I said.

  ‘It was you,’ said Jack.

  Dad laughed, stamped his foot on the ground. Me and Jack got up and he chased us as we ran around in circles. Mum took off her shoes and joined in. It was Dad chasing me and Jack, and Mum chasing him. Our circles got faster and bigger. I heard Mum giggle, I could hear Dad laugh as he reached out with his hand and tried to grab the tail of my shirt. I shouted to Jack.

  ‘He’s catching us,’ I said.

  Jack’s eyes were wide open like a mouse’s. We broke out of the circle, ran across our lawn and onto Auntie Jean’s. We jumped the path onto Mr Green’s and Mum and Dad followed. I could still hear him shouting, hear him laughing, he was getting so close I could feel his breath on my neck. Jack started to slow.

  ‘Got you!’

  Jack screamed and curled up in a ball on the grass. I ran on.

  ‘I’m still here, still going to catch you.’ Dad tugged on my shirt again. I tried to run faster but Dad’s laugh made me laugh, made my breath run out, turned my legs to jelly. I started to fall. He grabbed me, wrapped me in his arms and we fell to the ground together. He started to tickle me, then stopped as Mum and Jack caught up with us and fell on top.

  I rested my head against the window and wished we could all be together now.

  A snoring sound made me jump.

  I turned around. Auntie Jean had fallen asleep on the settee. I left her there sleeping and went upstairs. The bedroom door was ajar. My suitcase was lying open on the bed and my shoes were in a plastic bag on top. Jack asked where we were going. I told him I didn’t know but wherever we were going it looked like we would be leaving soon. I packed the rockets. Jack helped me pack the planes.

  It was while we were flying the Spitfire that I heard the front door click open, then slam. I went to the window and watched Auntie Jean shuffle up the garden path, then cut across the bottom of our hill. For somebody who was tired she was moving very fast.

  She knocked on Mrs Green’s door and went into her hallway. I waited five minutes until I saw her again in Mrs Green’s sitting room looking out the window at me.

  Mrs Green drank tea.

  Auntie Jean just stared.

  Mrs Green ate biscuits
.

  Auntie Jean ate her fingers.

  I could see that she was right, she really was tired. While I had one person in my head, she had two of us talking in her house. But I didn’t think she was physically tired, I think she was just tired of being our auntie. If she had given me and Jack a chance she might have got used to it. She liked Jack when he was alive, he hadn’t changed much now that he was dead. He still wanted to play with his Action Man, he still wanted to run to the shops, the only difference was that when we bought gobstoppers we had to cram them all in my mouth because they couldn’t go in his.

  But Auntie Jean had got jumpy. On the last evening I stayed with her she couldn’t stop her newspaper from shaking. I asked her what was wrong.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ she said. ‘I’m just getting old and when people get old they get colder.’

  ‘But the weatherman said it’s been the hottest summer.’

  She put her paper down and smiled. But it wasn’t a real smile. It was a smile where her lips moved while her eyes stared into space. I wanted a hug, something to make me feel better, but as I sat looking at her I realised that I would be gone in the morning and I would never see her again.

  Chapter Six

  THE MOON HAS disappeared and the sky has turned grey. We stand in the middle of a circle with mist around our knees, surrounded by the trees that trapped us as we slept through the night. We can’t see a gap to get out.

  We can’t see the tracks where we came in.

  Shush!

  What?

  We’re thinking.

  Are we?

  We pick up our bag and start to run. The trees get further apart until we run out into a field. We jump over a gate and run up a track with grass growing in the middle until our path is blocked by a gate. We climb over, run across a yard into a barn.

  A million chickens—

  ?

  A thousand?

  A hundred chickens cluck inside.

  We run through the middle. They run for cover. We try to jump over them but every time we land they seem to be under our feet. One flies through the air, smashes against the barn wall and lands in a pile of straw.

  Its wing flaps.

  Its head hangs down.

  Is it dead?