The Bunker Diary (12 page)

I nodded. ‘It wasn’t even that
bad really. You know, I didn’t
get beaten up or anything, and
most of the time I didn’t really care what the other kids thought of me anyway.
But I just couldn’t stand having to be with them all the time. Watching them eat,
watching them wash. Hearing them belch and fart. Smelling their smells. It was a
ridiculous way to live. Everything about it just stank.’ I sighed. ‘You know
that horrible smell of someone else’s shit? It was like that,
all
the
time.’

‘So,’ Russell said, ‘you
ran away?’

‘Well, I didn’t exactly
run
.’

‘But you left school. You left
home.’

I nodded again. ‘Dad drove me back to
school after the summer holidays. He dropped me off, I waved him goodbye, and then I
just walked into town and got on a train to London. That was just over five months ago.
I’ve been living on the streets ever since.’

‘And how has that been?’

I shrugged. ‘It’s all
right.’

He smiled. ‘Any less
smelly?’

‘Not really. But at least you can get
away from it.’

‘Where do you sleep?’

‘Anywhere. Mostly around Liverpool
Street.’

‘Hostels?’

‘No, I tried one once. It was worse
than school. It’s best to stick to the streets. There’s plenty of places if
you know where to look. Doorways, abandoned houses, railway tunnels. It’s not as
bad as it sounds.’

‘What do you live on?’

‘Busking, begging, handouts. A bit of
stealing now and then.’

‘It must be hard.’

‘No harder than anything
else.’

‘Do you … ?’ he
hesitated. ‘Do you take anything to make it easier?’

‘You mean drugs?’

He nodded.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I
don’t take drugs. I’ve seen what they can do. I don’t want to end up
like my dad.’

‘But there must be a lot of drugs
around?’

‘There’s a lot of everything
around.’

Russell went quiet again then. He just sat
there, staring silently at his shoes. It seemed a reasonable thing to do, so I joined
him. They were nice shoes to look at. Like Teddy boys’ shoes. Black suede uppers
and thick rubber soles.

After a while he looked up at me and said,
‘You’re a remarkable young man, Linus.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘You stick to your guns.’

‘Do I?’

‘Well, you must get offered things all
the time. Drink, drugs … whatever. And you just say no. I think that’s
very admirable.’

‘Not really,’ I said. ‘I
just don’t want to die, that’s all.’

Now it’s late.

I’m tired, exhausted. I haven’t
talked so much for ages. I don’t think I’ve
ever
talked so much
about Dad. I’m absolutely drained. But I can’t seem to stop writing.

I feel a long way from everything.

Floating, sad, apprehensive, cold. I wish
things were different, but they’re not. They never are. They can’t be.

I can’t get Dad out of my mind. I keep
wondering what he’s doing right now. I try to picture him at home, in the front
room
maybe, sipping brandy in front of the fire. Or in the kitchen, at
the table, surrounded by the dark oak beams, the sealed brick walls, the copper pans
hanging on the wall …

But I can’t see it. I can’t see
anything.

It’s all too far away. Too long
ago.

Everything is too long ago.

I have hazy memories of being at home with
Mum and Dad when I was little, but I don’t know if these memories are true or not.
They run like bootleg DVDs in the back of my mind, all grainy and jumpy from being
copied too many times. I remember Dad making up stories and poems for me, singing me
songs, showing me cartoons and pictures in books … but it isn’t him,
it’s just a memory of him.

And Mum …

I don’t want to think any more.

I wish I’d asked Russell if
he’d heard anything about Dad, if he’d read any recent articles about him or
seen any interviews or anything. He does interviews sometimes, trying to promote his
latest project. He never talks about the Gribbles though. He doesn’t usually talk
about his personal life either, but I just thought that maybe if he had been on TV or
something he might have mentioned me. You know, a message or something, a plea for
information …

But I guess Russell would have told me if
he’d heard anything.

It’s hard not caring.

Hard enough to make you cry.

Last night I dreamed about Lugless and
Pretty Bob. They were at school with me. It was night-time, in the dormitory. Lug and
Bob were holding court, telling stories, and all the kids were sitting round listening
to them. The strange thing was, I didn’t know any of the kids’ names. I
recognized their faces, but I couldn’t put any names to them. Anyway, they were
all sitting round with their eyes glued to Lug and Bob as if they were TV stars or
something. Pretty Bob was leaning against the wall eating a banana, and Lug was sitting
cross-legged on the floor telling how he lost his ear.

‘Nah, nah, listen,’ he was
saying. ‘You know the thing about whatsis? The crow-man, flowers, the painter,
Vango –’

‘Goff,’ said Pretty Bob.
‘Von Goff.’

‘Right, him. See, what he did, there
was this other painter man did jungles and tigers and stuff and Goff din’t like
him –’

‘Gangrene,’ said Bob.

‘Yep, yep, that’s him. Goff had
a fight with Gangrene and Gangrene shot off Goff’s ear. And that’s what
happened with me. ’Cept it was crayons with me.’

‘The Terminator’s
crayons,’ said Bob.

Lug grinned. ‘Yeah, the Turnimaker.
Whoo, he’s a big boy, that one. See, I took his crayons and he ate my
ear.’

‘That’s why he don’t get
no drinks,’ said Bob. ‘You ask Lug if he wants a drink, he says, “No
thanks, I got one ear.”’

All the kids started laughing.

And then I got up and said,
‘That’s not what happened.’

And everyone looked at me.

I said, ‘A dog bit him, that’s
all. That’s how Lug lost his ear. A dog bit him.’

Everyone’s eyes went cold, like
I’d ruined everything, and then the scene faded and the view panned out to a small
white building standing alone on the top of a hill in the middle of an open prairie. I
think it was a farmhouse. It could have been a chapel, but I’m pretty sure it was
a farmhouse. Like one of those old-fashioned places you see in Western films, you know?
A plain wooden building with a bell tower at one end and a corral out the front. The
bell tower was what made me think it might be a chapel, but I’m sure it was a
farmhouse.

It was summer. The sky was clear and blue,
the prairie grass was whispering softly in a lazy breeze. The corral, if that’s
what it was, formed a perfect circle bounded by a white picket fence.

And that’s where I was sitting. Right
in the middle of the corral.

I don’t know why I was at this
farmhouse, but I’m fairly sure I didn’t live there. I don’t think
anyone lived there. And I don’t know where I came from or how I got there either.
The dream had no journey. But I have a kind of dream-memory of crossing the prairie and
climbing the hill, and I can remember the feel of the long grass brushing softly against
me …

Anyway, there I was, sitting cross-legged in
the dry dirt in the middle of the corral … surrounded by a host of furry
animals. They were toy animals, stuffed animals, you know the kind of
thing. Soft toys with glass eyes and stitched mouths. And they all had the most
incredible brightly coloured fur. Vivid yellow, electric blue, fluorescent
red … orange, lilac, cartoon pink …

And they were alive.

They
were
stuffed animals, but they
were also alive.

They didn’t do very much in the dream,
they just sat around in a gently fidgeting circle, murmuring softly to one another,
glancing at me every now and then. They were definitely alive though.

There’s no doubt about that.

There were about two dozen of them, maybe
more. Thirty or so. Monkeys, bears, cows, dogs, tigers, lions, pigs, sheep, penguins,
crocodiles, chickens … all kinds of animals. They were all about the same
size, about the size of a small dog, or a cat, and they all had coats of irresistibly
soft and shiny fur, the kind of fur that makes you want to reach out and stroke it.

But I didn’t reach out and stroke
it.

I didn’t stroke the animals.

I didn’t have to. All I had to do was
sit there and let them smile at me. That’s all I had to do. It was wonderful.

I think they loved me.

Simple as that.

I just sat there, they smiled at me, and
then after a while the bell rang and it was time to go. And that was it. The farm bell
rang when it was time to go back down the hill. The bell rang, I stood up and walked
away, down the hill, and the animals’ eyes went cold, like I’d ruined
everything, and then the dream faded to black.

It doesn’t mean anything. Dreams never
mean anything. All it means is that everything’s the same. School, the street,
madmen, beggars, animals, me … we’re all the same.

We’re all interchangeable.

This afternoon I showed Russell around the
building. There wasn’t really much to show him, but it was still slow going. He
tires very easily. His eyes – his
eye
 – keeps glazing over and he has to keep
sitting down for a rest. So it took a long time, but that didn’t matter. We
didn’t have much else to do. I showed him everything. The lift, the rooms, the
walls, the floor, the ceiling, the grilles. And he studied it all with a quiet
intensity, asking me questions, touching things, listening, sniffing, making notes,
looking at things, all the time nodding quietly and humming to himself.

Afterwards he went into his room to think
about things.

An hour later he came out and called us all
to the table.

‘We’re in a reconditioned
bunker,’ he announced. ‘The walls are constructed of .75-metre concrete
strengthened with steel mesh. The roof is at least one metre thick and the foundations
are set in about three metres of concrete. The lift shaft is made of tank steel and
probably protected with heavy blast walls. Lights, heating, plumbing, and ventilation
are powered by a diesel-engine generator system.’ He paused and looked at the
ceiling. ‘Those grilles were originally part of a filtration system for extracting
radioactive material and chemical or biological agents. The system has been adapted to
allow gases to be pumped
into
the bunker, and the grilles have been fitted with
audio and video surveillance equipment –’

‘What’s a bunker?’
interrupted Jenny.

Russell smiled. ‘An underground
building. Like a bomb shelter. Most of them were built in the early 1950s when the
threat of nuclear war became a reality. They were originally intended as command centres
for the deployment and firing of our anti-aircraft defences.’ He gazed around.
‘Of course, the original building would have been a lot bigger than this. There
would have been lots of rooms, a command centre, communication equipment, even different
levels. This …’ He waved his hands, indicating the building. ‘This is
just a small part of the original bunker. Probably the living quarters. The rest of it
must have been sealed up or blocked in. That’s what I meant by reconditioned. You
see –’

Bird yawned loudly.

Russell looked at him. ‘I take it you
find this uninteresting?’

‘Well,’ said Bird, ‘it
doesn’t exactly help a lot, does it?’

Russell said nothing.

Bird said, ‘Hey, don’t get me
wrong. I’m sure you know what you’re talking about, and if I wasn’t
stuck down here I’m sure I’d find it fascinating. But let me ask you
something. All this fancy talk, all this historical bullshit – how’s it going to
get us out of here?’

Russell didn’t answer.

Bird grinned smugly – like the fool who
thinks he’s outsmarted the professor – and his fat eyes glanced around the table,
seeking approval. No one said anything. There wasn’t anything to say. Bird took
that to mean we agreed with him.

‘You
see
?’ he said,
grinning triumphantly. ‘You see what I mean?’

I felt like hitting him.

After that the meeting kind of petered out
and we all drifted
away to sit around doing nothing. A little while
later though, I met up with Russell and Fred and we had a little chat about
something.

I can’t tell you what it was.

It’s a secret.

It’s evening now. Seven
o’clock, eight o’clock, something like that. It’ll be dark outside.
Dark, cold, probably raining. I expect it’s windy too. One of those hard gusty
winds that spits the rain against the back of your neck like tiny wet needles. I
wouldn’t mind some of that right now. A bit of rain, a sharp breeze, the night
sky. Stars …

Shit.

This is the worst time of day. From about
five until midnight. That’s when the time
really
drags. I don’t
know why. It’s no less boring than any other time of day, but for some reason it
really gets to me. The silence, the whiteness, the emptiness.