Brother in the Land (5 page)

That night, lying with Ben in the cellar, I couldn't stop thinking about Kim. It was crazy. I mean, I'd known girls I'd liked before, but not so they kept me awake. I lay thinking of things I should have said. I wished I'd been cool or witty or something, instead of stammering. I hadn't even managed to say goodnight before she shut the door for God's sake. The more I went over it in my head, the dafter my performance appeared and the more convinced I became that I'd never see her again. What a twit I'd been, what a pillock.

The fact that she'd been about to kill a bloke was sort of swamped by all these other feelings, and it wasn't hard to find excuses. We were in a new game. The old rules no longer applied. There were no rules in this game; only the ones we made up as we went along. Maybe Kim was better suited to the new game than I was. Maybe I'd had no right to stop her.

I was on guard the last half of the night and I was shattered. I'd hardly slept thinking of Kim and I went on thinking about her as I stood half-frozen, peering into the dark, holding the shotgun Dad had got from somewhere. I kept looking towards Victoria Place, and every time I did I got this ache in my chest. I was like one of those love-lorn prannocks in an old movie.

Anyway, next morning began as usual. Dad came up with the cooker and his shaving-tackle. He was the last clean-shaven guy in Skipley. I went for water. I knew Kim wouldn't
be there. I kept a lookout for anybody who might be her sister, but the only woman I saw was more like someone's granny. We heated the water and I took Ben's breakfast down to him. He always had this cereal with hot powdered milk. Dad and I ate ours outside and then he shaved sitting hunched forward on his chair, looking into a bit of broken mirror propped up on mine.

Looking back it was a weird time, that first three weeks after the bomb. It was unreal. At least, it felt unreal to me and I suppose it was the same for everybody. One life had ended and the next hadn't begun. We tried to cling to the old life but it slipped away and we drifted in limbo, waiting. That day, the day after I met Kim, was the end of waiting and first day of the new life.

It started after breakfast. We'd washed the bowls and spoons and Ben had stowed them in the cellar. Dad lugged out a big square of canvas and we stood on chairs and draped it over the brickwork so that it made an awning across our little triangle. It sagged in the middle. Dad thought rain might gather there and drag the whole thing down so he pulled some lengths of timber out of the rubble to use like tent-poles. I'd just started digging holes for them when we heard the loudspeaker.

At first it was so far off you couldn't tell which direction it was coming from. I was hitting the ground with the spade when Dad flapped a hand at me. ‘Sssh!'

We listened, straining our ears. There was a quacking in the distance like a tin duck and Ben laughed out loud. Dad pressed a finger to his lips and Ben stifled his giggles. The sound came nearer, separating out into warped, unintelligible words.

Somewhere, people started to shout. Dad turned, his eyes shining. ‘It's them!' he breathed. ‘The soldiers. It must be!' He scooped Ben up in his arms and vaulted with him over the counter. I flung the spade aside and followed. We stood at the roadside, gazing up the street.

Round the corner came a blue car with a loudspeaker on its roof. And after it, whooping and capering in their rags, came a throng of people.

As the procession approached I felt a lump in my throat and my eyes filled with tears. They ran down my cheeks and I didn't care. I remembered a bit of newsreel I saw once; the Allies entering Paris in 1944. People threw flowers. I knew now how they must have felt and I wished I had flowers to throw.

The vehicle was moving at walking speed and as it drew level, it stopped. Its windows were of darkened glass; its occupants dim shapes within. There was a click and the loudspeaker crackled.

‘We represent your Local Commissioner,' it said. ‘Stand by for a Special Instruction.' There was a brief interval, during which the vehicle's motley escort clapped and cheered. The broadcast continued.

‘An emergency hospital has been set up, adjacent to Local Commission Headquarters at Kershaw Farm, and a fleet of ambulances is following this vehicle. Will those of you who are able-bodied please see to it that all burned, sick and badly injured persons are brought out of buildings and placed at the roadside. Please note that only serious cases will be dealt with. Persons suffering from minor injuries will be treated in due course. That is all.'

The car moved on, amid a fresh burst of cheering. I followed it to the bottom of the street then walked back, buoyant with relief. Knots of people were emerging from the ruins, carrying their sick and wounded. Soon the street was lined with them, slumped in arm-chairs or lying on doors and mattresses while relatives hovered near, waiting for the ambulances.

I was amazed how many people there were. Most of them must have remained hidden for the past three weeks in the shells of their houses, because I'd seen very few on the streets or round the well, and the number coming to us for food had hardly altered.

Dad had returned to the job of erecting the poles. I joined him, working happily now that the worst was over. Little Craig Troy appeared and he and Ben played together in the rubble, their shrill voices in our ears as we worked.

It was over an hour before the first ambulance appeared. It wasn't an ambulance, but a canvas-covered military truck
with red crosses painted crudely on its sides. It worked its way slowly down the street, stopping every few yards to pick up casualties. As the injured were lifted aboard, relatives clamoured round the tailboard, asking questions in loud, excited voices. When might they visit? How long would this or that patient be gone? What about the dead? All questions were met with shrugs, shaken heads or tinny don't knows.

When the truck was full, the tailboard was slammed shut and the vehicle sped away, scattering spectators. Groans and exclamations followed it from the relatives of those left behind, but shortly afterwards a second truck appeared, and when it eventually rumbled away round the corner, no casualties remained in our street.

People hung about for a while, talking. Dad and I put the finishing touches to our awning, while Ben and his playmate played at soldiers and casualties with a cardboard box for a truck. If they'd known what was happening up at Kershaw Farm, they'd have played at something else.

If the soldiers hadn't come it would have been a long day. I'd have hung around thinking of Kim, worrying myself daft over whether she'd turn up at the well or not. As it was, it was evening before I knew it.

I got the bucket and walked up the street, happier than I'd been since the bomb. Happier than I was before it in a way, because before the bomb I didn't know I was happy.

As I walked, I thought about the people up at the hospital. For three weeks they'd waited in the ruins famished, cold, in pain. We'd heard their cries in the night, but there'd been nothing we could do. Now I pictured them in rows of warm, clean beds; their wounds dressed and their hunger satisfied; drifting to sleep under nurses' watchful eyes. Even those with radiation sickness, who were sure to die, would slip away easily, their minds numbed with sedatives.

And that wasn't all, I told myself. Soon, the less grievously injured would be taken care of; perhaps they'd set up clinics where you'd be able to go, even if you only had toothache or something. And after that there'd be feeding-centres, like it said in the book, with hot meals for all. No need to sit up half the night, guarding the stock.

It made a comfortable picture. I remember I sighed as I imagined it. And the fact that I was on my way to see Kim was the icing on my cake.

She hadn't arrived when I got there. There were two guys in the cobbled yard. I loitered by the archway that led into the yard.

I was just beginning to worry when I turned, and she was there. Same dress, dangling a bucket. Something turned over in my chest and my face burned.

‘Oh, hi Kim,' I said lightly. This time I'd be cool.

‘Hello,' she said. ‘Been waiting long?'

‘Just got here. Thought you'd been and gone.' Cool.

She shrugged. ‘What were you hanging about for, then?'

‘Waiting for them.' I nodded towards the two men. They were coming through the arch with their water.

We went through into the yard. I stood watching as she lowered the bucket. There was this bucket that was there all the time. It was on a rope. You hauled the water up in that and tipped it into your own. When she had the bucket full I took hold of the rope. She didn't let go and we pulled together, our hands and hips touching. The rope could have been two miles long and the bucket would still have come up too soon for me.

My run of luck wasn't over, either, because when I started to haul my own water up she took hold and pulled with me. Hand and hip. Cool on the surface, hot inside.

‘Think I'll walk back your way,' I said, casually.

She smiled. ‘Miles out of your way,' she mocked. ‘Nobody waiting for the water?'

‘Dad,' I said. ‘He can wait.' I went to pick up both buckets. She grabbed hers and pulled it away, slopping a little.

‘I can manage,' she said. ‘I'm not paralysed, you know.'

I shrugged. ‘Being a gentleman, that's all.'

‘Haven't you heard,' she said. ‘Gentlemen are out. Cavemen rule, okay?'

We left the yard.

Her crack about cavemen had reminded me of the soldiers. I said, ‘You were wrong about the soldiers: they did come.' I looked sideways at her. The water was heavy and she walked tilted over to the right. She frowned.

‘They came,' she said. ‘But don't you think it was a bit funny?'

‘What, taking the casualties away? What's funny about it?'

‘There's this old couple,' she said. ‘Next door but one. The old woman's burned all down one side. We took her out this morning, and they loaded her in with a lot of others. The old guy was upset. Maureen, that's my sister, asked when he could go up and visit his wife. The soldiers just shook their heads. Didn't say any time, or that visiting isn't allowed or anything. And when she asked again they sort of pushed her aside and moved off. It didn't seem right to me.'

‘They'll be fantastically busy,' I said. ‘There must be thousands of casualties. There'll be no time for frills like visiting.'

‘That's another thing.' She kicked a stone and watched it skip along the flags. ‘How the heck do they intend to look after thousands of people? What sort of hospital can you build in three weeks? I think they had something to hide, and that's why they wouldn't answer Maureen.'

‘Rubbish!' I hadn't meant to talk to her like that, but she seemed intent on messing up what till now had been a perfect day. I was about to tell her so when a commotion broke out behind us. We turned.

A man was coming along the street. A cripple. He dragged one leg and hung onto things, moving in a series of jerky swoops from one support to the next; shouting in this high, cracked voice. He was too far off for us to make out what he was saying.

As we watched, a couple of men came out and grabbed him and sat him down on the bonnet of a burnt-out car. He went on shouting, waving his arms about and trying to get up. One of the men called out and a woman came running. The man said something to her and she sank down on the pavement with her hands over her ears, shaking her head.

‘Something's happened!' cried Kim. ‘Come on.' She put down the bucket and began running back towards the group round the car.

I stood gazing after her while dread spread like cold water across my guts. I couldn't move. I remember thinking: Perhaps if I stand very still it'll be all right. It'll be all right.

I didn't even put the bucket down. She looked back when she reached the car but she was too far away for me to see the expression on her face.

She was talking to them. The men on the bonnet had quietened down but the woman still sat doubled up on the ground. Kim bent and touched her hands but she didn't respond. Kim started walking towards me, slowly, till I could see her eyes. They weren't looking at me. They weren't looking at anything. When she came up to me she didn't speak, but lifted the bucket and walked on. I transferred mine to the other hand and hurried after her.

When we came to her gateway, she turned in without speaking and I called after her, ‘Kim?' The cake had crumbled into dust and the icing was melting.

She stopped and turned. When she spoke her voice was dead, like her eyes.

‘They shot them, Danny,' she said. ‘Every one of them. People heard shots and ran up the road. They saw an earth-mover and some pits. Guys in fallout-suits opened fire on them. That man back there got clear.' She paused, biting her lip and gazing at the ground. ‘That won't be the end of it,' she continued in the same, flat voice. ‘Now that they've killed off the sick, they'll be after somebody else – old people maybe, or kids. And after that, somebody else and somebody else, till it comes down to us. Us or them.' She looked me up and down, assessing my chances. ‘Cavemen versus gentlemen is no contest,' she said. ‘We've got to be as hard as they are, Danny boy – or harder. See you.'

I stood watching till the door closed, then made my way homeward in the dusk. Fires flickered in some of the houses. Cooking smells hung on the air and I caught fragments of conversation. Somebody played a mouth-organ, and a loud guffaw burst out from the darkness beyond a frameless window.

I pictured them, these invisible people, happy as I had been, imagining their loved ones safe and warm. Knowing the reality, the sick, going to their deaths with our cheering in their ears, I attempted indifference. Compassion belonged to the old life. Hardness was the thing.

So they're dead, I hissed. So what?

Then I thought about this old man, waiting for his wife to come home, and how she was beautiful to him, even though she was just an ugly old woman. He'd wait and wait and never see her again, even though he'd wait forever if he could. And I started to cry, and trailed along humping the bucket while tears ran down my face. Cavemen versus gentlemen. Hardness versus compassion. No contest.