Breakdown (13 page)

We crouch together under the bleachers. Lenny's trembling so much I can feel his heart beating through his thin shirt. Tarquin doesn't speak. He wipes the blood away from his own mouth. It smears across his lip. I feel so sorry for him, but I must strike now.
Watch the eyes, Melissa, wait until they fall, wait until the load is too heavy, then attack while you have the chance.

In the shadows of the plastic seating, I watch. I pull the key out of my pocket.

Now.

‘I know you're getting out. Take me with you. The cottage is there. Careem will never catch us. I'll show you the way.'
I press the key into his hand.

Tarquin twists uncomfortably, takes the key, holds it up to the light, looks at the picture set in plastic, looks at me.

If you're gonna lie
,
make it count. Do it up front and bold. Don't hesitate. Lie your heart out. Make it work.

‘The cottage belonged to my nan. It's mine now.' I press up close to him, put my lips to his ear. ‘The pond is there,' I whisper. ‘The ducks are there. The hazelnut forest is there. The bees are back. The valley's hidden. The hills blocked out the radiation.'
Please God don't let him know too much about radiation.
‘It's OK there. We were going, me and Nan, but she got ill. I know the way.
Just get us out.
'

A shiver runs through him. I hold my breath.

Lenny draws in close, wipes his sleeve across his nose, sniffs, chin puckered tight. Tear tracks stain his cheeks.

‘
Shush
,' Tarquin warns.

‘Please don't let them take me.'

Tarquin puts his arm out, pulls Lenny close. ‘I ain't gonna.' His face's tight. His voice crushed. ‘Careem can choose some other kid. There's some that'd like it, even.'

Lenny buries his face in Tarquin's shoulder. ‘He ain't having you,' promises Tarquin.

From the racetrack below comes laughter. A dog barks. More laughter. They don't know we're out.

Yet.

Lenny's small frame convulses. The air grows tight around us. The seating above shakes a little.

‘Shush.'

‘Careem ain't thinking,' mutters Tarquin. ‘I'm his best scout. I got the shoes. I got him loads of stuff.' He shakes his head and looks at me, perplexed, betrayed. And I know I'm one of those things he got Careem.

I look back.

His eyes are saying sorry.

‘Please let's go with Missa?' Lenny's voice is all broken.

‘Where is this place?' says Tarquin, holding up the key.

I point to the letters at the bottom of the key ring. He frowns. Maybe he can't read. ‘Scotland,' I whisper. ‘It's in Scotland.'

‘But Scotland's dirty,' says Tarquin. ‘Everyone knows they nuked the place. It ain't safe. Nobody goes there.'

‘It was polluted once,' I say, ‘but it isn't any more.'

It'll be fine.
I remember Nan saying once, ‘If you leave nature alone, she'll heal herself. Time. That's all it takes. Time. And everything will grow back.'

Lenny raises his head from Tarquin's chest, sucks in his bottom lip. ‘Please, Quinny? Missa says  … ' His voice comes in gulps. ‘It's got rabbits – and them rabbits can't live in no dirty places.'

I stay quiet. Lenny will say it better than me.

And anyway this debate on whether it's polluted or not is nonsense.

Because we're not going to go there.

Because even though I've started to believe in it myself, that cottage in Scotland doesn't exist.

Seconds seem like hours, minutes like years. We hear people come and go. A sudden burst of shouting. Yells. Barks. I crouch, terrified our escape's been discovered. Then silence. Laughter. Hooting. Hollering.

And in the calm that follows I remember something.

Tunnels.

And Nan saying, ‘When I was nine years old, and they'd finished building the Olympic Stadium and were ready to play the games, they created a spectacle. A grand opening. They called it “Isles of Wonder”. All the world watched. They sat at home and watched on their tellies.'

I've seen plenty of tellies. Never one working though.

Nan said it was magical. And it wasn't just jumping around and singing and banging pan lids, either.

There were towers that rose out of the ground, and people that came out of nowhere in cars and on bikes and in taxis, then disappeared like smoke. Thousands of people and whole hospitals and power stations and giants. And I believed her.

I still do.

‘Tunnels,' I whisper.

Tarquin turns his face towards me. ‘What?' he mouths.

‘There were tunnels under this stadium. Some of them must lead out.'

He crouches low. ‘Why d'you think that?'

‘My nan told me about them.'

‘There are,' whispers Lenny.

‘You been in one?' Tarquin twists to look at him.

‘They sent me down one, once.'

‘Who sent you? Where?' Tarquin presses his face closer.

‘Them bigger boys. One of 'em said he reckoned dogs could get in. It were big and he sent me down there.'

‘Where exactly?'

‘They blocked it up wiv rubbish,' says Lenny. ‘It's under them trash hills.' He stops. His face drops.

Tarquin's shoulders sink too. ‘That trash is baggy. Ain't nobody going to shift that pile a garbage without getting noticed.'

‘But there must be other tunnels,' I whisper. ‘There must be. Nan says they brought in beds and loads of them and doctors and nurses were all jumping on them. There's got to be tunnels big enough to bring in thousands of beds, all at the same time.'

‘Lenny means the old entrance to the arena. It wasn't a tunnel that ever went anywhere.'

I reach into my memory. What had Nan said? ‘There was one big main tunnel the athletes ran down.'

But that wasn't it. She showed me an old guide to the place. I try to remember what it said.
An entertainment park  …  Over a hundred miles of electrical cables installed in massive tunnels built under the park  …  pylons and vast amounts of wires to be removed from the surface – all so the park could rise like a beacon of hope, so when the flame arrived, relayed there by thousands of torchbearers, it could burn triumphant  … 

‘There weren't no beds,' whispers Lenny, tugging my sleeve.

‘Wires?' I say. ‘Can you remember wires? Loads of them, all big and round, and cables?'

Tarquin screws up his eyes, seems to be thinking. ‘Shafts of cables?'

I nod.

His expression changes. He wrinkles his lip. Down in the arena, somebody throws a bottle onto something hard. The glass shatters.

‘I know 'bout them.' Tarquin creases his forehead. ‘An' it ain't good.'

A finger of sunshine slips through the seating, lights up Lenny's face.

‘Too risky.'

‘But are there?' I hiss.

‘We ain't taking Lenny down them.'

‘I can go,' says Lenny. ‘I'll be OK.'

‘They're death traps. Even Careem don't know his way through them.'

I look at him, puzzled.

‘Nobody knows the way, or if they do they ain't telling.'

I screw my face up into a question.

‘You're talking 'bout the roguing shafts, the ones the smugglers use for dealing behind Careem's back.'

Now is the time to push him.
I can hear Nan say, ‘When your seed starts growing, it's time to hack back the weeds.'

‘Tarquin,' I hiss. ‘You saw that little girl from Limehouse. Look what they did to her! You want that for Lenny?'

He flinches.

Good. Sting him into action.

‘They used those shafts for other things too,' he says and shudders.

‘So if we don't use the roguing shafts, what then?'

‘Please let's use them shafts,' whimpers Lenny.

‘If you haven't got a better idea  … ' I force him to meet my gaze, because if his ‘better idea' is to trade me in to one of his pals for a safe passage out, he better look me in the eye and tell me.

‘Well?' I challenge.

Lenny starts shaking, his eyes fill with tears. ‘Please, Quinny,' he sobs. ‘Don't let 'em get me.'

One word from Lenny stirs Tarquin more than all my scheming. ‘Wait, then,' he hisses. ‘Wait, and be ready. I'll check.' He hugs Lenny close, whispers something into his matted hair, and like a flash he's gone.

‘Ready for what?' I wonder.

And I hope I know the answer.

I can't think. Can't stay still. Can't move. I'm all jammed up under the terraces. And Lenny's trembling. The muscles in my legs have gone weak. My chest is full up with something that crushes it. I can't hardly breathe.

If Tarquin can get us out.
Oh please God let him get us out.
If Tarquin knows where the shafts are. If they're big enough for us. If we can get into them. Squeeze past the wires. Find our way.
Please let us find our way.

Nan says there are different kinds of courage. ‘Some of it is getting out there and fighting back, some is not letting anyone take you for an idiot. But there's another kind of courage too. A much harder one.

‘Staying strong on the inside, holding your fear to yourself. Not burdening others with it – especially when they depend on you.'

I look at Lenny scrunched beside me in the gloom. That's the kind of courage I need right now. My heart pounds. My hands sweat. Will Tarquin find them?
What if he can't? What if the old electricity shafts are collapsed, or flooded? What if he doesn't realise? What if we get down there and never get out?

Dying down there in the dark.

I hold Lenny tight. He sniffs, chews his lip, brushes the back of his hand across his eyes.

And we wait. And Tarquin doesn't come. Lenny's shivering. I put my arm round him. Poor little kid. I place my lips next to his cheek, kiss and whisper, ‘There's a loft in the cottage, and it's got this little bed with a soft mattress and it's got a warm patchwork quilt on it and underneath the bed in bright-coloured boxes are toys.'

I never had many toys, just one doll and some old bricks made from bits of timber.

‘It's got dolls with pink faces and an old stuffed-up teddy bear and a train set.'

I've never seen a train, but they are there; I know the army use them to take food north. And there're coal trains too. I heard they come in at Paddington Station.

‘There are engines and tracks and coaches and  … '

‘You'll be wiv me?' whispers Lenny, clutching my fingers.

I cuddle him closer. ‘Yeah, I'm gonna be with you, and I'm gonna clean up potatoes and carrots and I'm going to make you a stew with those veggies, and I'll put a big fish in that stew.'

‘That Tarquin caught in the pond?' whispers Lenny.

I nod. ‘That Tarquin caught in the pond, and we're gonna sit round a little wooden table in the kitchen and eat.'

Lenny sighs and shivers and holds on to me.

Overhead someone clumps up and down on the terrace. The seats shake. I stop whispering, hold my breath.

Lenny goes pale. The footsteps move off.

‘We're going to get outta here, ain't we, Miss?' He whispers so quietly I can hardly hear him.

‘Melissa,' I mouth at him, hoping to dodge the question.

‘Ain't we, Missa?' He's almost desperate.

I nod, clasp his thin body.

‘We're gonna be like that relay team,' I say, ‘that brought the fire to Games City. We're gonna be the torchbearers. That's what. Nobody ever stopped them.'

‘Torchbearers?'

‘Yeah, the Olympic flame. They brought it in through the tunnels. And we're going to carry it out the same way.'

‘'Cos it was dark in them tunnels?' he says, confused.

I nod. ‘Because it was dark and when it's dark everyone needs a light to follow.'

Nan told me all about the original Olympic Torch. I tell Lenny just like I'm reading it from one of her old books.

‘Prometheus snuck into the heavens and stole fire from the Gods. He was a terrific thief and nobody caught him. He snuck out again and gave the fire to mankind.'

‘So they could roast dogs,' adds Lenny, nodding his head.

I hug him tight. ‘And after that, the ancient Greeks knew fire was sacred. They kept eternal flames burning in front of their temples. They had rituals of torch relays to symbolise the taking of the fire from the Gods, and the Olympic flame was the most sacred of them all.'

‘Was that in a stadium like ours?' whispers Lenny.

‘No, it was lit in front of the ruins of the Temple of Hera in Olympia. A high priestess lit the flame and passed it to the torchbearers, who carried it, kept it going – to hold back the underworld.'

Lenny is all ears. ‘The underworld?' he whispers.

I whisper, ‘The Olympic Games in London were part of the golden age. Athletes were nobler, stronger, ran more swiftly in those days and the light from the Torch never went out  … '

‘Never?'

‘Maybe it went out just a little bit. Later on.'

‘When Careem came?'

‘Yeah, but we're gonna light it back up.'

He nods, snuggles closer.

‘We're gonna hold back the underworld,' I say. ‘We'll carry the Torch that'll never go out – just like them.'

One leg has gone to sleep. I ease it sideways.

‘But we ain't got a torch, Missa.'

‘We've got a symbolic torch, though.'

Lenny nods his head, but I can tell he doesn't get it.

‘The book is our Torch,' I say, with a sudden flash of genius.

Lenny puts the book very carefully on my lap. ‘You ain't gonna burn it, though, are ya?'

‘No, it's gonna be like a torch to guide us, not a real flame.'

‘OK.' Lenny looks relieved.

‘And you can carry it,' I say, pressing it back into his hands.

He's much happier about that. He holds on to it tight.

Why isn't Tarquin back yet?

Lenny begins to tremble. I try to keep talking. I force myself to tell more stories. In all of them Lenny and I are heroes, like Prometheus. We sneak our flame out of Olympia, through dark tunnels, for the good of mankind. We fulfil the task set us by the Gods.

The task set us by the Gods.
‘To regenerate the souls of men. That is the undertaking, my child. That was the task laid upon Melissa, the nymph of the mountains. Until she could fulfil it, the land of milk and honey could never be hers.'

I start to tremble too.
Oh Nan, I need your courage now.
I bite my cheek, force myself to continue: ‘And the Torch lights the way to our secret valley, filled with sunlight. And when we get there, we put it on a sacred plinth, open at the page of tens.'

Lenny grips the book. His eyes huge. ‘It really is our Torch, ain't it, Missa?' he whispers at last.

I nod, scarcely trusting myself to speak.

‘Miss,' he whispers.

‘Melissa.'

‘Gonna hide the Torch down me vest, so it's really safe.' Lenny nods solemnly at me, his head all wobbly on its scrawny neck.

He thrusts the little book down his top. And suddenly I want to laugh. The regeneration of mankind in a valley in Scotland that doesn't exist. The fire of the Gods stuffed down a ragged vest, next to the beating heart of a scraggy kid.

It's so bizarre, it gives me a kind of courage that the old stories can't. I smile and squeeze his cheeks and tell him how we're gonna do it, and how when we get there we find those hazelnut trees are full of pesky squirrels stealing our nuts, and how we're gonna set traps for them and skin them and make squirrel pie and fix him a coat  … 

And then we hear a soft noise.