Nature of Ash, The (7 page)

WE’RE WOKEN ABOUT THREE
in the morning by the mother of all explosions — so close the whole apartment building rattles on its base. From the lounge window we watch in horror as the railway station goes up in flames. This is
way
too close for comfort — only a couple of blocks away from where we stand. The sky’s alight with billows of dense orange smoke, back-lit by the blaze, and the air is pierced by dozens of sirens.

Out in the harbour, the big Western Alliance warship comes to life, its floodlights beaming out, scanning the shore. It’s like watching a movie that’s thrown in every special effect it can afford. People will be dead down there, I have no doubt. Old Flashy-Coffins Bodrum and his mates are going to make a mint.

As for us — well, it’s anyone’s guess how we’ll get out of the city now. If trains are a target, then even if we catch
one up the line we’ll still be at risk.
If only
— No! There’s no point wishing for Dad’s good advice. From now on I must make decisions on my own.
God help us all
.

I manage to talk Mikey into going back to bed, but though I lie down next to him there’s no way I can go back to sleep. The sirens are constant, and now there are helicopters joining in the effort to put the fire out.

At ten to five I slip back out of bed and tiptoe to the lounge. Jiao’s pulled Dad’s chair around so she can watch what’s happening out the window. She’s got her arms around her bare knees to fend off the early morning chill.

‘Hey,’ I say, not wanting to startle her. I slip off Dad’s dressing gown and drape it round her knees. ‘Have you slept at all?’

She shakes her head, her tangled hair a crimson bird’s nest. ‘The radio says six people died and two firemen were hit by falling beams.’

I’m only wearing boxers, so before I freeze to death (or get any more embarrassed) I dash back into the bedroom to dress. Mikey’s softly snoring; purring like a cat.

I make tea, then Jiao and I look down on the carnage in the silver light of dawn. Black smoke still cloaks the inner city, and its smell has penetrated the apartment, acrid and sticky as it catches in my throat. The whole back end and roof structure of the station has collapsed, leaving only the historic brick facade on Bunny Street standing. A portal straight to hell. The platforms out behind are littered with the corpses of derailed trains — whoever did this must’ve used explosives by the bloody ton.

‘How the hell can they get away with this? It’s an outright act of war.’

‘They?’ Jiao’s eyebrow lifts.

‘Come on. Even
you
must see that it’s the UPR.’

She tucks the collar of Dad’s dressing gown under her chin. ‘Jumping to conclusions never helps.’

‘Conclusions?’ I bark it out before I can switch down my volume. ‘It’s pretty bloody obvious. They’ve been screwing with our politics for years.’

‘As you and every country in the Western Alliance have screwed with theirs.’

Fuck me
. I didn’t think she’d defend them. There’s nothing to defend. ‘That’s rich, coming from someone whose parents are treated like slaves. You’re terrified they’re going to be sacrificed as fodder to the war machine, yet you blame
us
?’

Jiao straightens, her face freezing into a deadpan mask. ‘Nothing’s ever that black and white.’

‘Oh really? Dad always said—’

‘Your father told me he could see both sides—’

‘Then he was being kind.’

There’s an awkward silence, broken only by the blare of sirens down below. Bugger asking her to come with us. Big mistake. She’s obviously been brainwashed, even though she’s helped herself to every bloody opportunity she wouldn’t get at home.

I leave her to her treachery and take a shower. It’s still over three hours until I have to meet the lawyer, but I can’t stay here. Jiao can make herself useful and see to Mikey when he wakes. I’ll go to visit Grandma: chances are she’s up.

I walk down the hill, my collar pulled over my nose to block the cloying smoke. There’s an armoured tank in the car park outside Parliament and soldiers guarding
all the doors. They stare at me with narrowed eyes as I jog past. I leg it down Lambton Quay, steering well clear of the railway station and the docks. The quay is deserted, except for the usual street people who haunt the littered alleyways and doors, and a cloud of noisy sparrows fighting over a few crumbs.

There’s still a cordon at the end of Hunter Street. Dad’s building has been picked apart during the search for bodies, and already only its twisted steel skeleton rises from the mess. I stand and stare, trying to rebuild it in my head. I can’t believe it’s gone. Mikey and I grew up in that building, doing homework in a corner of Dad’s office, then drawing and reading books till he finished up his work. We had the most massive adventures there: racing the lifts, poking round the basement, making forts out of broken desks and chairs. We knew it inside out by the time I was old enough to babysit Mikey at home. We truly thought we owned the place. Now, hardly a shred of it remains.

At the supermarket in Willis Street, the shelves are all but bare. The fresh produce has gone, and they’re down to their last few bags of rice and flour. Only the luxuries like toiletries and gourmet food haven’t been sold — surprise, surprise. No one can afford to buy that stuff except the very rich.

‘Any fresh bread?’ I ask the skinny dude behind the counter.

‘Over there.’ He points to a rack by the near-empty freezers. ‘Nine bucks a loaf.’

‘You’re shitting me?’ Yesterday the price was just under seven, and even that’s a bloody rip-off.

He shrugs. ‘Don’t blame me. They reckon it’ll rise
to twelve before next week.’

I flag the bread and buy two bags of rice instead, slipping one into each pocket of my coat. Another fourteen bucks down the tubes. Jeannie’s plan to get the hell out of here is starting to look sensible: at this rate we’ll be broke and starving by week’s end.

The buses don’t seem to be running, so I walk all the way to Newtown, wishing it was
me
who’d just been bought new shoes. Mine are rooted thanks to the cross-harbour swim, and they’re cheap shit anyway, like everything I own. I cut through the Buckle Street gardens, picking a bunch of pink camellias for Grandma — flowers are the one thing still guaranteed to make her smile. By the time I reach her rest home, I’m sweaty and light-headed — and hungry as. I have to ring through to the night nurse to open up. She’s shitty and unhelpful, clearly not pleased I’m here so early, but I pull the ‘My dad’s dead’ card and she lets me in.

Grandma lives right down the end, in one of the only rooms in the whole damn complex that gets year-round sun. Dad chose it specially, insisting Grandma loved to curl up in a sunny spot and read — I never had the heart to point out that she hasn’t read a proper book for the past three years. Her brain is fucked. Completely addled. Occasionally the clouds inside her head part and she’s still there, cowering inside. It’s freaky and heartbreaking to see — especially ’cause at those times she’s horrified by where she is.

I pop my head around the corner of the doorway, not knocking in case she’s still asleep. She’s sitting in her armchair by the window, listening to the radio, though I doubt she’s taking it in. She’s dressed in a thin nightie,
and there are goosebumps on her scrawny arms.

Now I knock, to warn her that I’m here. ‘Hey, Grandma. It’s me, Ashley.’ She looks at me, but there’s no sign of recognition. I’m used to this, have learned that so long as I don’t frighten her it’s okay to stay. Sometimes, though it’s really rare, she’ll suddenly say my name and smile like she remembers me — that’s such a buzz.

I unhook her tatty candlewick dressing gown from the back of her door and help her put it on. It’s just like helping Mikey dress when he was small: stiff, awkward arms not quite knowing what to do. Next I show her the camellias. Place them in her lap so she can touch them. Her hands are thin, like wrinkly claws, her fingernails ridged and horny — though, to give the nurses credit, they’re filed and clean. She pulls a petal from a bud and goes to put it in her mouth. I take her hand. ‘No, Grandma, they’re not for eating.’

Her gaze slides to my face, and she gently traces my features with her fingers. Just like Mikey at the morgue with Dad. It makes me want to cry.

‘Handsome,’ she says, and pats my cheek. Then she wags her spindly index finger at me. ‘You naughty man.’ She giggles like a flirty girl.

There are dead flowers in the vase on her windowsill, no doubt brought by Dad, so I chuck them in the bin and try to arrange the camellias. Dad came here twice a week, even though she’s not his mum. He said she had nobody else, that he would never let her die alone. I always thought it was sweet the way he stuck with Grandma despite Mum’s death. Now it makes me wonder: if Mum
is
alive, what the hell is she doing leaving Dad to cope? To pay?
Jeezus.
It’s not just me and
Mikey who she turned her back on, but Grandma too.

‘Dad’s dead, Grandma,’ I blurt.

Her forehead wrinkles into deep-etched waves. ‘Dead?’

‘The UPR planted a bomb and blew him up.’ It’s stupid, I know she can’t understand this, but I have to tell her anyway — the words are boiling up inside. ‘And now they’ve hit the railway station and they’re training troops.’

‘Have you seen Archie?’ Her eyes are so faded they’re barely blue. ‘He told me he was going to the shop.’

She always asks this, it’s on a loop inside her head. She loved my Grandad heaps — the kind of love I always thought existed between Mum and Dad.

‘He’ll be back soon,’ I reassure her. It’s not really a lie: sometimes she talks to him like he’s still here.

‘Gracie’s gone.’

‘Where to, Grandma?’ Hell, it’s worth a try.

‘She’s very sick.’

‘With what?’

Grandma paws at her nightie, scraping at something that isn’t there. ‘She’s somewhere very dark. It’s not like her at all.’

I squat down beside her and take her hand. ‘Never mind. Mikey and I are still here.’ It’s not the words that matter, just a soothing voice.

With more strength than I’d have expected, she pulls me into a bony embrace. ‘Poor child. My husband’s dead as well.’

The kindness in her voice nearly does me in. Could she understand about Dad after all? I have to gulp down air to hold myself together, clinging to her fragile frame like it’s a raft.

When her stomach rumbles and mine answers I trek down to the kitchen to find her something to eat. Gina, the lovely Samoan cook, is there already and insists on giving me a sympathetic hug. I take Grandma back a big bowl of porridge and help her eat — she’s forgotten how to get the spoon into her mouth. When she says she’s had enough, I bolt down the rest.

There’s a book lying on Grandma’s bedside table —
The Collected Poems of Walter de la Mare,
one of her favourites. It’s the book Jiao had too, the first time we met. I don’t suppose I should think anything’s weird any more, but it’s a bizarre, unsettling coincidence.

I begin to read it aloud: ‘
O, make no compact with the sun, / No compact with the moon! / Night falls full-cloaked, and light is gone / Sudden and soon
…’

‘Sudden and soon,’ Grandma repeats after me, her voice tolling like she’s announcing the end of time.

It’s funny how words take on a different meaning, depending on the time and place they’re used. I’ve read this poem to Grandma a dozen times, but
this
time it’s like the poet wrote it about Dad.

I have this real strong memory of when Grandma was still full of life. She had a massive stack of picture books that once belonged to Mum, and she would read to me and Mikey for hours on end. Sometimes she’d play the piano and sing with us, and in summer she’d take us to the beach to paddle in the shallows, always buying us an ice-block — shivery bites she called them — on our way back home. She used to call Mikey her ‘little munchkin’ and me her ‘little man’. I can’t believe how much I’ve missed her since I’ve been down south.

I read until she dozes off, then carefully brush a kiss
goodbye on to her papery cheek. She’s like a little baby when she sleeps, her mouth puckered like she’s nuzzling at her mother’s tit. It’s hard to drag myself away — especially as I’ve no idea when, or if, I’ll see her again. Even though I know her life is shit, the thought of losing her right now is totally unbearable.

Before I leave the room, I take a picture of her with my otherwise useless phone. Way back, people thought that if you took their photo you somehow captured their soul. I hope to god that’s true.

I walk back to the central city, tallying up every cop and soldier along the way. By the time I reach The Terrace I’m up over a hundred, and that’s not counting whoever’s flying the swarm of helicopters overhead. It’s like walking into the middle of a war movie.

I’ve mistimed my walk, and arrive outside the lawyer’s office building way too early. There’s nothing for it but to mooch about, trying not to look suspicious to the cops and trying to stay alert to people’s conversations as they hurry past. No prizes for guessing what the one and only topic is: everyone is absolutely freaked.

At last, just before nine, this really sexy older chick in a tight black leather skirt heads up the stairs towards the lifts, then turns back round and walks right up to me.

‘You must be Ashley,’ she says. ‘I’m Lucinda Lasch.’ Fuck me, she really is a porn star! All she needs is fishnets and a whip. ‘I saw you read your statement on last night’s news. Good for you! Shaun would be proud.’

I follow her seriously tidy tush into the building, mortified to see myself in the mirrored doors. I’m beetroot red by the time we reach her office on the fifth floor. The room is stacked with papers and lined with
shelves of box files. She directs me to a comfy chair and leaves the room, returning with a tray of freshly brewed coffee and a couple of steaming croissants. My guts rumble their thanks.

‘Now,’ she says, settling herself opposite me. ‘First let me say how truly sad I am about your father. It’s a terrible loss to everyone, but worst of all for you and Mikey.’