Stranded (20 page)

‘And I saw a flicker behind his eyelids. I am sure I did. It was the first movement I’d seen from him, in all that time.

‘“Nurse!” I yelled. They never come when you do that. Only on the TV does that work. I went and found someone, beside myself with excitement and anticipation. “Nurse, he moved! His eyelid. He moved his eye behind it.”

‘They came when they heard that, all right. I sat for the entire morning waiting for him to wake up. Nothing happened; but all the same, I knew what I had seen.’

‘And that,’ says Jean, ‘is why we’re here. It seemed like the thing to do. Both of us needed a change of scene, a bit of perspective, and we were doing this for our little Ben, our baby. We were doing it so we could tell him about it, whether he would hear our words or not. We were here so we could go back there.’

‘It hasn’t worked out so well for us, has it?’ says Gene. ‘Even before this fucking thing happened. I don’t think either Jeannie or I realised, until we got away, how much our lives had become about Ben and only Ben. We hated being alone together. Just the two of us with nothing to do? No thank you. Laze around on the beach when our son is hooked up to a machine? Why would we want to do that? We turned on each other. As you noticed.’ He clears his throat. ‘For which I suppose we should apologise, hey, Jean?’

‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ she snaps. ‘They were hardly enormously inconvenienced in the scheme of things. This, here, now – this is enormously inconvenient. I’m not going to say sorry for anything.’

Gene actually laughs at that. ‘Fair play to you. We’re not sorry, it seems. So when we realised we couldn’t stand each other’s company once we were away from our lives in Brisbane, we tried to do our own thing, separately, and in spite of myself I started to wind down a bit. I could not reconcile my lying on the beach with Ben lying in the hospital – that was never going to happen. However, if I kept busy, trekking through the jungle, running along that concrete path around the coast to those bigger places, swimming as far as I could in the sea, I found it was doing me good.

‘The day trip to this bloody place was supposed to be a reconciliation for Jeannie and me. I was feeling ready to go back. It was nearly time to see our Ben again, and I had so much to tell him.

‘And then this happened. I considered, and I still do, that the way that arsehole never came back was a direct message to Jean and me from the universe. I haven’t yet figured out exactly what the message says. Sometimes I think . . .’ His voice wobbles, but no one interrupts while he composes himself. ‘That Ben’s dead,’ he says, finally. ‘And that we are too. Or if not, we soon will be. My body’s giving up on me. I welcome that.

‘And maybe you’re right, Mark. Maybe it
is
something huge that’s happened in the outside world that’s kept us here. Those of us with families out there will be hoping it’s something very local, and I can’t for the life of me think of a credible event that would have affected folk from Brizzie to Paradise Bay but not us here. So I’m not letting myself think that everyone but us has somehow vanished in a puff of nuclear smoke.

‘The only thing I cannot bear . . . just cannot fucking bear . . . is the idea of Ben thinking we couldn’t hack it and have abandoned him. And Steve and Cassie doing the same, thinking we’d asked them to sit with him for ten days when all along we were planning to up sticks and never come back. I hope they look for us properly. I hope they realise. I hope they haven’t stopped being beside him, haven’t gone back to their normal lives and left him there, on his own in his room with just the nurses.

‘And the thing that keeps me going is the fact that we’re trapped here the same way Ben is trapped wherever he is. Sometimes I think he’s right here next to us, in spirit. I start to wonder if I’m actually in a coma the same as he is, and this is the place my mind has made for me.

‘But if I was, Ben would be here, and to be honest with you, I wouldn’t have stranded myself with you people – Katy here aside. No offence, but if this was in my mind, I’d have Ben with me, and I’d have a doctor, a survival expert and a foraging chef. Plus some books and magazines and flares. So I can only assume it’s real. And that’s that. My wife has barely interrupted me at all, so that proves it. That is our story.’

Cathy

July 1988

I am more scared than I have ever been in my life. When I thought I was about to leave this planet and go to live with Jesus, I was less scared than I am at the prospect of relocating by a matter of miles.

Tomorrow is the day. Everything is ready. I could still back out now, but it is unthinkable.

I have woken early and there is no chance I can possibly go back to sleep. My life is about to change for ever.

Sarah shrugged it all off when the Rapture never happened, said it had been interesting anyway and went back home. The TV people pushed their cameras in her face but she walked right on through them without even turning to look.

It was Sarah I went to when I realised I needed to leave.

I am sixteen. That is most of the way to being grown-up. They thought I was old enough to be married. I say that I am old enough to make my own choices. I choose not to become a Village wife. I choose the wide and sinful world. Whatever happens, it is the only choice I can make.

Nobody has ever told me not to leave. No one has said what a sin it would be, and that anyone who tried would be struck down by God and then hunted down by Moses and brought straight back. No one has said that because they do not need to. I am about to attempt something that is unthinkable.

The way I feel at the moment, it is either this or kill myself. If one does not work, I have made fallback preparations for the other.

For the past week, I have taken a few things to school, at the bottom of my bag, every day. Although GCSEs are over and we don’t have to go in, I have told Cassandra and the others at the Village that I want to go, to read quietly in the library and prepare myself for my wedding. And to be honest, everyone is still trying so hard to act normally after the non-Apocalypse that no one has bothered to question me.

Sarah has met me there every morning, and she has taken away the things I have given her. If anyone looked in my wardrobe and drawers, they would discover that half of my clothes, such as they are, and all of my toiletries and books have disappeared. I will walk out of here this evening with nothing, and I will never come back.

Although no one has ever left, people have died. Victoria died. We had her funeral here. It was awful. It was in the paper and everything. Now I wonder whether God struck her down because she was leaving, rather than for swearing as we were always told.

I am trying to cleanse myself of thoughts like that. God did not strike her down. A car did.

Although this fact makes me wonder who was at the wheel.

I have left a note for Cassandra and another for Philip, because it seems only fair to tell someone personally if you are running away a month before you are supposed to be marrying them. I told Cassandra I was going to Scotland, but I only said that because I’m not.

I’m going to go to school in a few hours, and Sarah will meet me there, and we’ll go straight back to her house. Obviously I have no money, but her parents (who I haven’t met because I’ve never been allowed to go to anyone’s house) are going to help.

‘Turns out they got a bit of a scare,’ Sarah said, ‘when I joined you because the world was going to end. And they were so pleased that I came back again – they thought that Moses guy was going to make us all commit suicide when it didn’t happen. Can you imagine? Turns out they were absolutely bloody beside themselves. That makes them want to help you get away too. They’re desperate to save you.’

I smiled at that. ‘Saving’ me by helping me leave the Saviour? The world has turned on its head. It is scary but thrilling.

‘You can’t stay in the town,’ she said, ‘or those people will come along and haul you back. You know that. I know that. We all do. So we’re going to drive you to the services, and my auntie Michelle will pick you up there and you can go and stay with them in London. They live in Isleworth. You can live with them for a while, then get a job and a flat or something.’

I just nodded. I cannot imagine staying in Isleworth (I had to look it up in a street atlas at school just to find out how to spell it), and I cannot imagine Sarah’s auntie Michelle or the uncle Steve who goes with her, or the twin cousins Joe and Max. I can certainly not conceive of myself with a job, or a flat. It is petrifying but amazing, and it is hard to express just how determined I am. The world is opening up before me, and I am trusting the goodwill of strangers.

I need to do some A levels, and I need to earn some money. I need to become myself.

For the moment, however, I just need to get out of here. This is the strangest thing: as the sun rose that morning, and the Apocalypse never happened, everything inside me changed completely. I look at ‘Moses’ (and one day I will find out what my father’s real name is), and I see a power-hungry charlatan. I have read about people like him in my English texts (Richard III, Lady Macbeth, for instance). I hate him. I despise everyone who is taken in by him, not least myself. No wonder there are so few people in this community. No wonder everyone at school laughs at us. They are right. We are wrong.

I have had a Damascene conversion in the other direction. I do not believe in God. I certainly do not believe in the Village’s God. I want to evangelise my new-found atheism. Perhaps, when I get out there, I will.

I listen to the other girls breathing. I wish I could take them with me. I ought to give Martha the chance, because somewhere beneath her placid exterior, I sense that she is not happy either.

I fear I cannot trust her, however. I must do this on my own. This is the last time I will wake up in my top bunk in this stupid cabin. In a matter of hours, I will be gone.

I have fallen asleep without meaning to. I know that because I can see my surroundings by a dim and dappled light, and the rain has stopped, and the jungle around us is phenomenally noisy, with screeches and tweets and chirps. Every leaf seems to be quivering and unfurling. New flowers, I think, have opened. The air is clean and clear.

I move Ed’s arm off me as gently as I can and, holding a thin tree trunk for support, stumble to my feet. All my muscles are aching, particularly at the top of my back, and when I stretch, everything hurts. There are angry red bite marks all over my arms, and when I start to think about them, I find them on my legs, my cheeks, every exposed part of my flesh.

Ed and I slept right where we were sitting last night as we listened to Jean and Gene’s heartbreaking story. It is disconcerting to be here in this new, fresh world: one moment I was sitting up all night unable to see a thing and listening to relentless rain, and the next I am here in the Garden of Eden.

Katy is asleep near us, and I skirt her unconscious form as I pick my way to the beach. I see Jean up on the boulder, sitting cross-legged and looking out at the sunrise. There is no sign of Gene, Mark or Cherry.

The water is as flat as it always is. The sand is pockmarked all over where the rain has attacked it. This makes the beach look completely different. It has been defined by its powderiness until now, and suddenly it is heavy, darker, and all stuck together. When I walk on it, I leave deep prints.

I can see Jean’s footprints coming out of the rainforest and walking straight over to the foot of the boulder where she now sits, her back straight as a rod. There are other footprints that wander around, down to the water, back again, and back into the jungle. I walk over to examine them, and decide that they belong to Mark and to Cherry.

The old fire looks pitiful. It has been battered so hard by the rain that the half-burned leaves and branches have been blasted away from one another, and all that is left of it is wan grey bits of forest scattered over an area of beach. It will be difficult to light a new one: everything is covered in water now.

I walk down to the sea and stand in the shallows. That, at least, has not changed. It is as warm and soothing as ever.

We eat fruit and drink from the rainwater that filled both ice boxes overnight. Ed and I make a sandcastle with the newly suitable sand, and lose ourselves for hours in forming towers and bridges.

‘That’s a novel courtship ritual,’ Gene observes when he strides out of the forest and over to us. ‘Building sandcastles together. Quite the little lovebirds.’

I smile up at him. I wonder, now, how it was that I never saw the pain in his eyes. I thought his misery was just because of his fractious relationship with Jean. Now it seems obvious that it is something bigger: something huge.

‘Come and join us,’ Ed offers. ‘We need a gatehouse. What do you think?’

‘Hmm.’ Gene sits down and surveys the random edifice we have constructed. ‘Well, for one thing, this place needs a better floor plan, but that’s your business. For another, it would be good if the ocean here was tidal so the moat would fill up. All the same, I’ll give it a go.’

Gene is soon absorbed in his work, constructing a perfectly round tower at a short distance from the castle, and making a straight road joining the two.

‘That makes our castle look seriously crap,’ Ed muses.

‘It really does.’ Gene’s house is perfect in every detail. Ours is like a haunted house from a cartoon but far more random. ‘Shall we try to make it better?’

‘Why don’t we knock it down and start again? On a much bigger scale. Look, if that’s the gatehouse, then we need to be
way
bigger than it.’

We set to work. The sun is high in the sky, and Katy is fishing alone, before we even look up.

When Mark and Cherry emerge from the jungle, I take no notice. They run over to us and I look up, rather annoyed to have my dead-coral roof-laying interrupted.

Then I see Mark’s face and I know something has happened. He is radiant, pink and breathless; alive in a way none of us have been for a long time.

‘Come and see!’ he says. ‘Ed. Esther. Gene. Everyone. We’ve been exploring the island. From the inside. Following the paths around to see what there is. You know we thought you couldn’t get through the jungle? We thought you could get to the spring and that was all? Well that’s not true. You can reach another beach! And guess what we’ve found? Come and see. Leave your castle. You won’t believe it. You have to come with us.’