Children of the Dust (2 page)

Veronica switched on the torch.

'Are you all right?'

Sarah wanted to cry, weep like a small child, pretend Veronica was her mother, cling to her for comfort like William and Catherine always did. But she and Veronica had never been close. She was just the woman her father had married, mother of William and Catherine, but nothing to do with Sarah.

'Do you think Daddy's still alive?' she asked.

'If he is,' said Veronica, 'he won't be able to come to us. There's no point in hoping, Sarah. We're on our own.'

'We don't even like each other very much,' Sarah mourned.

'Then I suggest we start,' Veronica said crisply. 'Because all we have is each other.'

Sarah bent her head.

Slow tears trickled down her cheeks.

'I can't bear it,' she said.

'I want my tea,' said William.

'What about Buster?' Catherine sobbed.

'And this is the way the world ends,' Veronica murmured. 'Not with a bang, but a whimper.'

That first evening was strange and special, as if it was someone's birthday, a change from the usual household routine. They ate by candlelight . . . fish fingers, crinkle cut chips and green beans, with thawing ice-cream for pudding . . . food which Veronica had taken from the freezer and had to be used up quickly. Water was precious and could not be used for washing up, so they wiped their plates clean with paper tissues which they threw in the empty fireplace. Milk also would not keep for long. Veronica made custard, filled a thermos of cocoa for later to save on the gas, and stood the remaining two pints in a bowl of water to prevent it going sour overnight.

Afterwards they played guessing games and Sarah read fairy stories by Hans Andersen. They tried not to listen to Buster whining outside the window, his claws scratching at the woodwork, begging to come in. Veronica said he had to stay out there, so they all sang songs to help William forget, their voices drowning the pitiful doggy sounds he made. But always, in the background, Buster remained. And the candle lasted only four hours.

It was half past eight by Sarah's digital watch, green luminous time ticking away the seconds as Buster scrabbled and whined. They must all go to bed, Veronica said, because there were only twelve candles in the packet and they could not use more than one a day. In the yellow beam of the torch they made up beds on the floor . . . William and Catherine on a mattress under the table, and Sarah in the space by the hall door. They heaved the settee from the sideboard for Veronica to sleep on and the room snapped back into darkness.

'We haven't washed,' said Catherine. 'Or cleaned our teeth.'

'You can be excused for tonight,' Veronica said.

'Can we be excused tomorrow as well?' Catherine asked.

'Yes,' said Veronica. 'Now go to sleep.'

It was a hot still night, windless and quiet: nine o'clock by Sarah's watch and probably still light outside. Unless it were dark, she thought, like Good Friday when Christ was crucified and the skies turned black reflecting the evil of mankind. She imagined the darkness covering the earth, a world where the sun ceased to rise and nothing lived, or grew, or flowered. She imagined the dust of fall-out blowing across the ruins of their civilization, burying buildings and people. It was a terrible punishment for a fifteen-year-old girl who had done nothing wrong.

Catherine and William whispered and giggled beneath the table, but then Buster returned to whine under the window again. He wanted his supper, William said, and demanded he be let in. Veronica tried to explain. One night without supper would not hurt him. He was too fat anyway. Maybe tomorrow they would let him in. But William went on asking, his small boy's voice growing querulous and tearful in the darkness. Finally Veronica shouted at Buster, loudly and angrily, told him to go and lie down. Her tone must have reached him for they heard nothing more . . . only William muttering and crying, saying how cruel and horrible Veronica was. He was going to report her to the RSPCA, but after a while he too fell silent.

'William's asleep,' Catherine announced.

'So why aren't you?' Veronica asked her.

She wanted to use the commode. Veronica put a large saucepan lid over it but the smell was still there, strong and obnoxious, lingering in the room. They would not be able to live with it, Sarah thought. They would not be able to live in the stinking perpetual dark with nothing to do and only a few hours of candlelight a day, four people trapped in one room and two of them children. William and Catherine would not be content with sitting still for the next two weeks, just thinking and talking and playing games with their minds. They would more likely drive each other mad.

'Veronica?' Sarah said quietly. 'What are we going to do?'

'Go to sleep,' Veronica muttered.

'I'm not a baby!' Sarah retorted. 'We've got to talk.'

'Not in front of Catherine.'

'She's asleep. I can hear her breathing. We'll never stand living like this, Veronica. We've got to have some sort of plan.'

'What do you suggest?' Veronica asked her.

'I don't know.'

'Then we'll have to manage as best we can. Live each day at a time and try not to think of it.'

'We'd be better off dead!' Sarah said bitterly.

'Don't talk like that,' Veronica begged.

'It's true!' said Sarah. 'There's only one thing worse than dying in a nuclear war, and that's surviving! We haven't started yet! Even if we live through the next fourteen days there will be nothing left at the end of it ... just ruins and radiation sickness ... no one to help us, no means of living. Even the soil and water will be contaminated! We'll die anyway, so what's the point in trying to survive now?'

'What's the alternative?' Veronica asked quietly. 

'We could get something from the chemist's.' 

'Commit suicide, you mean? Is that what you want to do?'

'Don't you?' Sarah asked. 

Veronica sighed.

'If it were only myself I think I wouldn't hesitate. But I've Catherine and William to consider. It mightn't be as bad as we think, and they might still have a future. I've got no right to take it away, Sarah.'

'What about me?' Sarah asked.

'I can't answer for you,' said Veronica.

Sarah chewed her finger nails. A sick heavy feeling lodged in her stomach, a dull acceptance that was worse than fear. She sensed that the future held no hope, at least not for herself. But Veronica was compelled to live for the sake of William and Catherine, and so too was Sarah, because that was the only purpose she had left.

Sarah awoke in the stinking stifling dark to the sound of Buster howling around the walls and William asking to get up. It was not time, Veronica said. But Sarah's watch showed ten minutes past ten. It was Tuesday morning, the late beginning of another day, and Veronica was trying to delay the start of it. 'Go back to sleep!' she said curtly. But William had slept already for thirteen hours and would not sleep again, not with Buster yelping outside.

'He wants his breakfast!' William said angrily.

'And I do,' said Catherine.

'We have to get up sometime,' Sarah said.

Veronica switched on the torch. In her crumpled clothes, her hair dishevelled, she rose from the settee and crossed the muddles of the floor. There were tear-stains on her face and reflections shone on the blank television screen. A photograph of Sarah's father watched from the mantelpiece as she washed in a bucket of cold water and ran a comb through the tangles of her hair. Then she lit the second candle, switched off the torch, and lifted the blanket that draped the table.

'All right, you can come out now. Wash your faces and hands in the end bucket and find something to wear.'

You said we didn't have to wash,' Catherine reminded her.

'So get yourself dressed then.'

'I want to stay in my house.'

'You can't stay in there all day!'

I shall stay in here for ever and ever,' Catherine said stubbornly.

'I'm
going to let Buster in,' said William.

'You're to leave him where he is!' Veronica snapped.

'You said he could come in!' William argued. 'Tomorrow, you said. And this
is
tomorrow!'

'He can come in later,' Veronica promised.

'I want him to come in now!'

William stamped his foot.

'Do as I tell you!' Veronica scolded. 'And come away from that door!'

'I hate you!' William screeched.

Sarah wiped her face with a wet flannel, pulled on her jeans and a T-shirt as Veronica cooked bacon and sausages and sliced tomatoes over the camping stove. Already the situation was beginning to get on Veronica's nerves. Catherine behaved well. She tidied her house below the table, made a table-cloth with a spread-out newspaper, and ate her breakfast with two slices of bread and a mug of tea. But William refused to change from his pyjamas. He sat and sulked in the corner by the settee as Buster howled outside and the sausages and bacon congealed on the plate.

'I don't want no breakfast!' William said savagely. 'If Buster's not having any then I'm not having any neither! So there! And you'll be sorry then when I'm starved to death!'

'Don't count on it!' Veronica said brutally.

Someone had to get through to William. Someone had to explain about Buster and persuade him to eat. But Veronica was in one of her moods, brooding and silent, eating her breakfast at the far end of the settee. It had to be Sarah. It had to be Sarah who put aside everything she felt, who dug deeper than grief or worry into the still quiet centre of herself, and did what Veronica could not.

She sat on the floor beside her small half-brother and took him in her arms. He was the only reason she would go on living and she gave him all she had . . . her pity, her comfort and her love. And perhaps she had never loved William before, but she loved him then. And she told him what he needed to know. Outside there was dust, falling like snow, and if they opened the door to let Buster in the dust would come in too, and kill them. He had to be brave and strong, do what Veronica asked, and eat his breakfast. 

'Will the dust kill Buster?' William inquired. 'Yes,' said Sarah.

'Why tell him that?' Veronica said angrily. 

'Because it's true,' said Sarah. 'And he has to know.' 

It was odd how easily William accepted that Buster was going to die — how he could talk of it without tears or emotion and eat his breakfast as he did so. And when the room snuffed back into darkness it was William who shouted, 'Go away, Buster! You can't come in!' 

'Poor little Buster,' Catherine sobbed. 

'Jesus will look after him,' Veronica told her. 

Jesus would not give him food and water, Sarah thought. And nor could she and Veronica sit there and let Buster die. Not even Veronica could be that uncaring. Underneath she would be feeling it, suffering it, the slow sad lingering hours and days of Buster's life. Sarah knew that in the end she would give in and go outside. For a gold cocker spaniel
Veronica would die.

And then Sarah would be left alone to keep William and Catherine alive, foraging among the ruins of the village when their food supplies ran out. She tried not to think of it, but in the hot dark room there was nothing else to do but think. She could find in her thoughts no hope or consolation, but neither did she dread the time that was to come. Perhaps she was beyond fear. That moment when she had taken William in her arms had awakened something inside her ... a calm and strength as she had never known before. She felt there was something in her own being which nothing could destroy, that whatever occurred, however terrible, Sarah knew she could bear it.

There was nothing left that Sarah could want for herself, or even hope for. What remained of her life belonged to them ... to William and Catherine and Veronica, people trapped with her in the wailing, whining, grieving, bickering dark. She was adrift in a black sea of time, awaiting her cue to placate, or comfort, or mediate. Knowing how to pity she did not need to forgive . . . the stench of human excrement, Buster's sad doggy song going on and on, William's anger and frustration, and Veronica's moods of violence and despair.

'Why
can't I watch television?' William asked.

'Because there's no electricity!' Veronica snapped. 'How many more times do I have to tell you?'

'Then why don't you switch the lights on?' William said furiously. 'Then we'll have electric, won't we? And I can watch television then!'

Sarah tried to explain. She told him about power stations and power lines and the effects of nuclear war. There were no mains services ... no lights, no water, no television, no schools, no hospitals and no delivery vans. The world as they had known it was gone. William listened and questioned and finally, in his own five-year-old language, he understood. There would be no chocolate, no Atari space games, no trips to the supermarket, no cowboy films, no birthday parties and no Father Christmas, ever again. Just ruins and dust, cold baked beans for dinner when the gas ran out, and twelve more days of almost total darkness. And not even Veronica could change things, Sarah said. She might be his mother, and she might be grown up, but she could not put things right. 

'So you mustn't blame her because you can't watch television,' Sarah reasoned.

For several minutes William thought of it.

'In the dark,' he concluded, 'you can't do nothing much.'

'Blind people can,' Catherine said smugly.

'Blind people have white sticks!' William said scornfully.

'Not all of them,' said Catherine. 'Mrs Wetherby doesn't, and she can do most things. If we were blind we could do most things too. We could find your Tonka truck, William. And my Barbie doll.'

Sarah held her breath. Catherine was only eight but her child's imagination had seen a way to live in the dark without eyes. They did not have to be helpless. They could hear sounds, distinguish things by touch. They could restore order to the chaos of the room, clear the floor and learn to move about. They could play the blind game. It would give them a purpose, fill the empty hours between one meal and the next. And a stake from the potted begonia could be William's white stick.