by Stuart Evers
Raymond Porter, Introduction to Frum: A Year with the Cargo Cultists (reissue, GD Editions, 2014)
13
Drum woke from a dream. Under the shattered spire, beyond the broken pub, he called for Gwen, but there was no answer. He called for Carter, but there was no answer. He called for Nate, but there was no answer. He wandered the obliterated streets, his hand bandaged and his uniform torn. By the post office, he called for Annie and there were noises on the wind, shrieks and hollers on the wind. They were saying Horse. The wind calling Horse, the draught from the water, Horse. Here, Horsey, Horsey. Here, Horse. We’re coming for you Horse.
14
On birthdays, her father would tell her how lucky she was. How lucky she was to have such nice things; how lucky she was when so many had nothing. He’d told her she should think of those people as she opened her presents; guilting her even before she could unwrap the book or small toy she’d asked for. Though he’d watch her undo strings and bows with evident pleasure, that was what she heard. Remember how lucky you are; remember that this is my gift.
Thank you, Daddy. It’s just what I wanted.
She wanted to tell Femi how lucky he was. How lucky he was that they let him sleep between them most nights; how lucky to have Robin; how lucky to have brains and imagination; how lucky to be there, breathing. To have made it out unscathed, cut from her, bloodied and bawling, all toes and fingers intact. She told Robin if she ever said to Femi that he was lucky, Robin could punish her in any way he saw fit.
Femi had made it between them in the night; neither Neka nor Robin now even noticing when he did so. He lay beside her, so still, the little sniffs of breath, the curls over his delicate ears, his mouth slightly agape. Her perfect little man. In private, she’d taken to calling him Beauty. Come here, Beauty. Would you like an apple, Beauty. Her name for him. Just between the two of them. Beauty.
He was beautiful, in an objective, modern kind of way. He was the kind of child who appeared in commercials for washing powder or toilet roll or brightly coloured clothing lines. His skin, other mothers told her, was a lovely shade of this or that; usually something sweet, something they would not pack in their children’s lunch boxes. His eyes were always described in relation to nuts. Strangers would say he was good enough to eat. They’d say that to Neka’s face, then look down again at her consumable, delicious boy.
(There were other strangers. Men who looked down at the baby and then approached her. Asked if the baby father was still around. Wherever she was, she’d say that the baby father was just around the corner, and would they like to meet him. She did not tell Robin of these approaches.)
In the early morning sunlight, Femi turning four years old; four years old and soon for school. The last birthday to be theirs and theirs alone; their last birthday of play, of swimming pool and picnic, of movie time in the late afternoon before Robin made it home from work, on time once in the year. Cake then. The smell of candles; the singing of the song; the reminder of his insistent, firm-lunged screech.
Femi in the sunlight, stirring, then suddenly bolt upright in the bed, as though winched to sitting.
‘Mummy,’ he said.
‘Hello, Beauty,’ she said.
‘It’s my birthday!’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s your birthday.’
‘Happy birthday,’ Robin said, as though he’d been awake the whole time, and perhaps had. He smelled malty, beery, the previous night escaping through pores. He put his arm over hers and cuddled them to him, to his smell. She liked it; Femi giggled.
‘A boy sandwich,’ she said.
‘Presents!’ Femi said.
‘Presents!’ Robin said.
At the foot of the bed, Femi’s birthday presents were wrapped and bagged, a half-year of saving and planning, all changed after a visit to Callum’s house and a viewing of Toy Story. Femi soon becoming obsessed, two instalments of the franchise bought from a charity shop and watched every weekend; the boy able to impersonate all the characters. She enjoyed the films, the sadness behind the primary colours. The single mother, the packed-up house, the boy and his toys oblivious to the reason for the elaborate birthday present and the downsizing move to a cheaper, smaller place.
Robin dragged the sack to the bed, held out something small, a packet of Toy Story pencils wrapped in Toy Story wrapping paper. Femi hurtled through the presents, was appreciative, said thank you for each one, moved on to the next, hoping for a bigger box, the one shaped like a spaceship. He wouldn’t find one.
The toy he wanted was expensive, too expensive. She’d argued with Robin over it; said that they should get a credit card, but Robin was adamant.
‘We spoil him now and what happens later?’ he’d said.
‘It’s just a toy,’ she’d said.
‘It’s a fifty-quid fucking toy,’ he’d said. ‘It sends the wrong message.’
The message not the money. Robin was uneasy about the acquisitive nature of his boy. His need for things, for possessions. Like Femi was skidding, vaulting, away from him already.
Through a friend of Callum’s mother, she’d found a Buzz Lightyear second-hand. The mother she’d bought it from had opened the door and behind her two grown boys fought over a video game. She handed over the toy and took Neka’s ten pounds. A moment, then, between them. Would that one could swap a life the same you could swap a toy for cash.
Neka got the toy home and imagined it surveying the new surroundings, finding it wanting. She set about cleaning it up with nail polish remover, erasing as many stains and as much ludic history as she could. She spent a week trying to remove the name of Buzz’s previous owner from the left foot of the toy; then started on the ANDY scribbled on the right before remembering that ANDY was the name of the boy from the film. She laid the toy to rest in a shoe box, the plastic spaceman judging her as she covered him in sliced ribbons of white and purple crepe paper. The inanimate face stared so long she cried as she put him at the back of the wardrobe.
Femi unwrapped a pair of Buzz Lightyear pyjamas, shucked off his own there and then, pulled on the spaceman nightwear. They were pristine white, the purple detailing deep and new.
‘I am Buzz Lightyear,’ Femi said. ‘I come in peace.’
‘Nice to meet you, Buzz,’ Robin said. ‘You’ve got a friend in me, pal.’
They sang then, her two boys, tuneless singing, full of joy. She got up as they sang, walked to the wardrobe and took out the wrapped box. The box not like in the film, not like the one from the toy shop. Robin had said it didn’t matter, but she felt sure it did.
‘Here you are, Femi,’ Neka said. ‘I must have forgotten about this one.’
Femi’s eyes so wide and his mouth a perfect O. The little teeth, the first gap on the bottom row, the burst of love. Holding the wrapped shoe box, inside the off-white Space Ranger; the stickiness of the helmet’s action; the felt-tip mark on the right wing she could not wipe away.
Femi picked the Sellotape from the box, the toy rattling inside. Do not break, Buzz. You have a new mission, Buzz. You must work for us, Lightyear. Femi fiddled with the last bit of tape and Robin tried to help, but Femi pushed him aside.
‘I can do it myself,’ he said.
And so he could. He unpicked the last of the tape, flapped open the lid and nestled there was Buzz. Good as new, Buzz. Nothing ever as good as new. A shriek then. Loud like the moment he was born. He hugged the toy to his chest, then looked it up and down, disbelieving.
Femi went for the buttons on the spaceman’s breast, finger out and ready to press. She’d tested them; they worked roughly sixty per cent of the time. Femi pressed a button and Buzz spoke.
‘The atmosphere here is toxic,’ Buzz said.
Robin looked at Neka and, over the sound of an actor’s sampled voice, they both laughed for the first time in weeks.
*
She took the stairs down from the flat, Femi smeared with suntan lotion, smelling like holidays, Buzz in hand. A hell to get him out
of the Lightyear pyjamas, the scuffle making Robin late for work, only the enticement of the swimming pool finally getting Femi into proper clothes.
His hand in hers, they crossed the road, the sun already high, and the usual battle to keep a sun hat on Femi’s head. In her pocket she carried the small stone Femi and Robin had painted for her, their initials and a heart on the flat underside. A birthday tradition, something small from Robin handed to her when they were alone, alms for the blessing bestowed upon them, upheld with a smile of conciliation.
There was a job; somewhere in the dour Midlands; away from friends, away from their life, far away from dead babies. A team of men had come for him, approached Robin directly, said they’d been observing his work and that he was the man they wanted for a new project. He would be in charge of implementation, strategy, the very ethos that ran the initiative. He would be able to hire a small number of staff and he would be paid the kind of money neither he nor Neka thought people like them could ever earn. Nothing ludicrous, but comfort money; saving-money money; university-fund money, money-to-not-worry-about-money money.
Robin had showed her on a map the place he thought they could live; not so far from his parents, a town she’d never heard of. Rob had done his research: the time it took to get to London, distance from shops and pubs, local places of interest, the best schools. She’d not seen him so giddy since the Poll Tax Riots. The move and the project. The fact they had come to him, directly and without asking anyone else. The kids he would be helping. And all she’d said was that she’d have to think about it.
‘You have to think about it?’ he’d said.
‘It’s not just your decision,’ she’d said. ‘You’re asking me to give up everything.’
She could see what he wanted to say: that there was no everything to give up. The everything she talked of was him and Femi, who were both eminently portable. There was no job, so what else was there? A park around which to walk? A market at which to shop? Cafes in which to drink coffee and pubs in which to drink cider? Friends they saw rarely these days? A city they no longer took full advantage of?
‘I’m sorry,’ he’d said. ‘I’m sorry. Of course you need time to think about it. It has to be a decision we all make together.’
A week of silence since, the simmer of it roiling as it had when they’d argued over adoption, neither of them even sure of their respective positions. A week of silence and thankful now, the both of them, for the Space Ranger and his comic timing. Perhaps, she wondered, as she pushed Femi higher and higher on the swing, the toys were alive after all.
*
At the swimming pool’s reception it was busy, the assembled looking like they were trying to scale the desk. A woman dashed out clutching her phone, almost knocking the two of them to the ground. Neka heard the word bombs and wondered why everyone was still here if there were bombs in the swimming pool. She heard the tinny noise of a small television, the sound of sirens, the whump of helicopter.
‘Mummy,’ Femi said. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Nothing, Beauty,’ she said. ‘Just something on the television.’
She heard the reporter repeat what was known at this time. She heard the reporter say the names of the London places that had been attacked. She told Femi to take Buzz and sit on the bench while she made a quick call. She called Robin and got his voicemail. She texted him and she called and got just the sound of his voice, and the sound of beeps, and the sound from the television.
*
Femi said she was a bad mother. That she had never loved him. He was making his body limp, refusing to be taken from the swimming pool, crying his eyes out, calling for his father. Women passed and they must have thought the boy’s father was dead in the bombings, couldn’t have avoided it. The kid with the Buzz Lightyear screaming for his daddy and her on the phone frantic, calling everyone she could think of. No one answering, and that being neither salve nor hope. She picked up Femi and Femi tried to wriggle from her, almost fell to the concrete below, slipped down her arms and started to run away. She grabbed him by the back of his T-shirt, yanked him back, slapped his legs. The first time she’d ever hit him, the only time, and now people thinking the boy’s howls for his father were more for protection than grief.
‘Now sit still,’ she said. ‘Sit still there and be quiet.’
He sat on the floor. She put her hand into her pocket and stroked the stone, its flat underside. Stroked it and felt the cool of it, the smooth of it. Her phone rang, a number she didn’t recognize.
‘Did you hear the news?’ Robin said. ‘I must have just missed it. They say Canary Wharf’s been shut down. Gunmen got it under siege.’
‘You’re okay?’ she said.
‘Everyone all right here,’ he said. ‘All accounted for, thank God. Where are you?’
‘At the pool,’ she said. ‘You’re okay? Everyone’s okay?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m coming home now, we’re all going to walk back.’
‘Stay safe,’ she said. ‘I love you.’
‘I love you too,’ he said. She looked down at the edible boy, melting with tears and snot.
‘Tell Daddy you love him,’ she said. She put the phone in front of Femi’s mouth. ‘Tell Daddy you love him right now.’
Femi pouted into the phone. He nodded his head.
‘Love you, Daddy,’ he said.
She took back the phone and the line had gone dead. She called back and he answered.
‘Stay safe,’ she said.
‘I will,’ he said. ‘Now, go swim. Forget about all this.’
*
They ate their picnic and walked home, the streets still doleful with shock, the faces of everyone still, reflective. She had some hours to make the Buzz Lightyear cake, to get dinner on. The sun shone with indifference, some people cycled by as though they hadn’t heard. Femi was laser blasting anything that moved with the arm of the Space Ranger, and she let him do that, though the sound was harsh in her ears.
They crossed the road and a man walked past them, tall man, good-looking, familiar-looking. Like someone from her past, someone she might once have worked with. He walked past them and then crossed the road. She heard the noise of a motorcycle and then the thunk of body on asphalt, the pock of the head hitting the ground.
The motorcyclist drove off, did not look back, and she did not get the licence plate, but ran to the man on the ground. She called for an ambulance and soon other mothers were around her, trying to help him, trying to stop the bleeding on his head.
‘You get off, love,’ a man said. ‘Take the boy away. I know CPR.’
She looked down at the man, his half-opened eyes, and she felt sure he mouthed her name just once. Just once, him saying Anneka. She stayed there in his eyeline for a moment, thought that he might be about to die, but then he vomited, the spray catching the running shoes of a jogger.
When she later told Robin she wanted to move, she’d tell him it wasn’t about the bombs. It would not be a lie. Not because of the bombs, but perhaps because of the man run down by the motorcycle. Life too short. You could be knocked down by a bus.
‘Let’s go home,’ she said and took Femi by the hand. ‘It’s almost time for cake.’
The Thirteenth B’ak’tun
2012
Sunday 4 – Friday 9 March
Tuesday, 6 March 2012
Drum’s primary carer had a slide-rule fringe and long red hair. Not strawberry blonde, auburn or ginger, but fire-engine red, red right down to its dark black roots. The colour looked strange on her, something perhaps leftover from her youth, clung to and now stuck with. It swished when she moved, even more than her scrubs. Swished now as she opened the curtains.
Since arriving at the hospice two days before, Drum had thought a lot more about Alina – Alina who dyed her hair and cared for the dying – than he had about anything else more pressing. He wondered whether this was deliberate. Whether her hair was designed as some kind of distraction, a diversion to keep her
patients from looking too far into their own souls, into their own pasts, weighing them against what was to come.
‘How are you feeling this morning?’ she said, opening the window just a crack.
‘Do people make sarcastic comments when you ask that?’ he said. ‘I imagine they do.’
‘Yes,’ she said, laughing. ‘A lot of them do. You know, “How do you think I’m feeling?” or “Well I’m not dead yet!” It helps, I think. Humour’s important. Reminds you you’re still thinking.’
She rattled some pills into a paper cup, handed it to Drum with a cup of water.
‘How’s the pain?’ she said.
‘What pain?’
‘That’s good. It means the drugs are working as long as they’re supposed to. You don’t feel nauseous, do you?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Just a little away with the fairies.’
‘That sounds like fun,’ she said.
‘Swap you any time,’ he said.
Alina helped him from the bed to the commode, him sitting there until he’d performed a small shit; the crap hard, like passing a pebble. She wiped him up and down and set him on the easy chair by the bed. Quick and practised this; impressive. She had better English than the other Poles and Latvians in the hospice; she’d been here for almost twenty years, so she said, following in her grandfather’s footsteps. He’d been stationed in the town during the Second World War and never shut up about it when he returned home.
‘Your wife will be here in half an hour,’ Alina said. ‘She says she’s been sleeping well.’
‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘I’m glad about that. She needs the rest.’
An understatement, that. Gwen had found it impossible to sleep with his groans and sudden wakings, the gasps of pain and the shat bedclothes. A respite this. His idea. A week in the hospice, just a week, to let her catch up; a week for him to get some care.