by Polly Ho-Yen
Angharad nods as though she agrees with me. ‘Where is this Martello tower? Is it close by?’
I shake my head. ‘It’s on the other side of the country. A place called Sandgate. On the east coast.’
‘How on earth are you going to get there?’
‘Any way I can. If I have to walk it will take me a long time. But I’m sure I can do it – I’ll just have to do as much as I can in a day. I’ll get there in the end.’
Suddenly Angharad lights up with an idea. ‘My granddad! He has a Land Rover!’ she whispers excitedly. ‘We could take that. We could all go.’
I shake my head. ‘They’d never let us. Steve would never let me go,’ I say. ‘He’d think it’s too dangerous. That it’s not worth the risk. You’ve seen how he reacts when I mention her.’ I can hear my voice turn in on itself as I imagine his furrowed, disapproving face.
Angharad slumps a bit and I know that she sees it’s true.
‘Thank you, though,’ I say.
‘I don’t want you to go,’ Angharad says in a very quiet voice. ‘It feels too dangerous. Especially on your own.’
‘Maybe I’ll come back,’ I tell her. ‘Maybe I’ll bring Sylvia with me.’ I try to sound cheerful although I can’t truthfully imagine that will happen. The distance that I need to travel to get to the Martello tower feels like a gulf, a hole that I will need to fall into and then climb my way out of.
And I don’t really know for sure that she is there. What if something happened to her on the way to the tower? What if she wasn’t able to leave the hospital? What if I travel all that way only to discover that she’s not there, after all. I dismiss the thought from my head; all I can focus on is getting there.
But then another thought comes to me. What if she is there and she won’t leave the tower? We’re stuck there, just the two of us. I remember the dank, mushroom-smelling room with the two sleeping bags laid out on the floor, the way that Sylvia’s moods would rise and fall as quickly as the wind picking up. I can barely admit how uneasy it makes me feel to remember. I quickly try to stuff the feeling away, somewhere inside where it can’t reach me.
‘I’d better go,’ I say. ‘Before anyone else wakes up.’ And before I change my mind, I add silently to myself.
‘Are you sure that there’s not another way?’ Angharad asks. Her voice rises steadily, panicking.
‘I’m sure,’ I say. ‘Please do something for me? Don’t tell Steve or your mum where I’ve gone. I don’t want them to follow me. Steve will know that I’ve gone to Sylvia but he doesn’t know about the Martello tower. Don’t tell him. He can’t know where I’ve gone. Do you promise?’
‘I promise,’ Angharad says.
‘Really promise?’ I say. ‘Not like last time.’
‘Yes. Really promise.’
‘If Steve knows where I am, he might think he has to come after me, but I’ll be fine with Sylvia and he’s better here on the farm with you guys. He does really love your mum, you know.’
Angharad looks like she is about to ask me a question but she doesn’t say any more and just nods her head a little.
‘Let me help you get the stuff that you need,’ she says. ‘I know where all the good food is in the larder.’
We pad downstairs in the silent farmhouse and Angharad raids the kitchen for me. When I’ve stuffed as much as I can possibly carry into my bag, we turn the large iron key in the old door and I step outside.
The moon must be hidden behind clouds but I can just about make out the shapes of the trees around me, and for a moment I just stand there and listen. It sounds like there is nothing to hear but if I really listen, I can hear a breeze shaking a tree, a small creature, possibly a mouse or a vole, scurrying through the undergrowth.
‘Billy?’ Angharad whispers.
I turn back to her.
‘Yes?’
‘Be careful,’ she says. ‘I hope you find Sylvia. And stay safe.’
I nod because suddenly speaking words seems like a difficult thing to do. It feels like they would get stuck in my throat if I tried to say anything.
I rummage in my bag and pull out How to Survive. ‘I want you to take this,’ I say.
I hold the book for a moment. Even in the darkness, it feels so familiar to me. It’s been my one link to Sylvia while I’ve been living with Steve, an invisible connection between us that’s been all mine. When I found it under the bin on the day she brought it to me, it felt like more than a book, it felt like trust, like belief, like something more than could ever be expressed in words. I know that Sylvia gave it to me because she wanted me to remember – not just everything that she had taught me – but to remember the two of us, together, as well. I want to pass that on to Angharad, in the same way that I wanted Anwar to have a pocket survival kit. I want to give them something to show how much they have taught me, how much I don’t want them to forget me and the friendships that have grown between us. I press the book into Angharad’s hands. ‘Just in case. It’s got everything you’ll need to know in it, just in case.’
‘I can’t… Billy… it’s your mum’s…’
‘It was Sylvia’s, and then she learned everything she needed from it and so she gave it to me. Now I’ve learned everything from it and so I’m giving it to you. I really want you to have it.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes… and if Steve asks where you got it from, just tell him the truth. Tell him I got it from Sylvia. Tell him I’ve been hiding it from him, all this time.’
‘Thank you, Billy,’ she says and she throws her arms around me. ‘Remember when we said that we could trust the people we could trust? Well, I trust you, Billy Weywood, I trust you with everything. Let me get something to prove it.’
She dashes back inside before I am able to stop her. She’s gone for just a few moments and then she’s back, thrusting something into my hands.
‘I want you to take this with you.’ She’s holding out the heavy picture frame and the photograph of her with her mum and dad. ‘This is my most precious thing. Maybe you can use the glass of the frame to do something survival-ly with. I don’t know. But please take it.’
‘No, no, I can’t,’ I say. ‘It’s yours, it’s too special.’
‘You gave me this.’ She holds up the book. ‘It can’t be more special than this. Please, I want you to have it.’
‘Okay,’ I say, looking at her smiling face in the picture. ‘Thank you.’ I push the frame into my bag.
I have been waiting for this moment for the last few days but now that it’s here, I find myself immobile. There’s a part of me that does not want to leave. I want to turn again to Angharad. I’m sure that she will still be standing at the doorway, hugging How to Survive to her, watching my every movement.
But I am certain too that if I turn around and see her just one more time then I will never leave. I will throw my bag down and retreat into the farmhouse. I feel like a magnet drawn to metal just thinking about it.
And so instead I force myself to put one foot in front of the other and walk away.
Only in this way, by thinking about just one step at a time, am I able to leave.
HOW TO START A JOURNEY (BY YOURSELF)
I don’t look back.
I try not to tell myself that what I am doing is stupid, that there is almost no chance on earth that I will be able to make it. That what I am doing is dangerous and every step of my journey is taking me further and further from any kind of safety.
I try to forget that the Greys exist. I try to shake them from my memory, for if I think about them for too long, I am sure, too, that this will bring me to a halt.
After a while, there is a rhythm to my footsteps. After a while, I know that I have walked far away enough now and if I did turn back I would not be able to catch sight of the farm. When I go further still, I lose the expectation that I had been carrying with me that Steve might catch me up and demand that I come back with him.
I try not to think about Steve and what he
will think when he finally wakes up and discovers I’m gone. I’m guessing he might be torn for just a few moments between wanting to follow me and wanting to stay with Julie and Angharad, but then reason will win out. He doesn’t know where I am going; there would be little hope of him finding me. The only choice he has is to stay at the farm, as planned; he can hardly abandon Julie now.
There’s another voice inside me that’s asking if he would even think about following me – that’s saying maybe he will be glad that I have gone. I know that I’m the reason that Sylvia became so ill which means I’m the reason that Steve left. Whatever he’s said about wanting things to be different, he probably never wanted me to live with him. He never really wanted me. That’s why it’s been so hard for him to believe me when we first discovered the Greys, because he didn’t really want me.
I look to the stars. I identify the Big Dipper and from there, I find north. I check it constantly to make sure that I am heading east, even when I am sure that I am walking in the right direction.
It comforts me a little to plot the shape of the Big Dipper. My eyes travel from star to star and then back again, over and over. Maybe it’s because their position doesn’t change, maybe it’s because the stars are beautiful. Maybe it’s because I sense Sylvia so strongly when I look up at them, it is as though she is standing beside me. Guiding me towards her.
As my eyes grow more accustomed to the dark, I stumble less but the more I detect the shapes of the trees and bushes around me, the more my fear grows. I start to wonder about the detail of their outlines. My mind begins to rush with the thought that perhaps there are Greys all around me. The shadowy trunk is actually a Grey, the dip in the ground is hiding another.
I want to freeze when I think these things; I feel my footsteps begin to slow, but I push myself onwards and onwards and I try to forget. I try to forget all that I have seen.
I try to forget that I could be surrounded by them.
Suddenly I hear the sound of something rustling in the undergrowth from behind me and my breath sticks in my throat. I force myself to turn around.
I trace the outline of a dark shadow moving steadily in my direction.
My eyes strain to identify them, trying to spot any marker of who it could be: the way that they walk or an item of clothing. I realize that I actually want it to be Steve, that I want him to have come after me, to stop me, to protect me. To want me.
But I know it’s not him.
When I look again I see that there’s another figure behind the first, and another behind them, and another behind them. I stop counting how many there are.
They could be an army.
An army of Greys.
* * *
I skitter through the trees as lightly as I can but when I turn, the Greys are getting closer. They’ve broken into a loping run now they’ve heard my movements.
I run as fast as I can. Roots trip me up, brambles claw me as I pass them. It’s as though I’m stumbling, almost falling, into the mouth of a cave. And I have no idea whether there’s another way out or if I’m trapping myself in a corner.
* * *
I reach a steep bank that I scrabble to climb up. I worry with every step that I will fall, that I will tumble backwards, but I press forward, I don’t look back.
I slip, and claw my fingers into the undergrowth to regain my balance, only to slide down a little further still.
‘Hold on!’ My voice no longer sounds like my own, words no longer sound like words; it’s all feeling, it’s all fear. I throw an arm forward and my fingers close around a root. I pull myself up with all my might, just enough to find footing so I can clamber up the slope.
The sound of the Greys behind me is like a drum. With each beat I propel myself on.
When I reach the top of the bank, there’s a low metal barrier and once I’m over that the soles of my shoes slap across hard tarmac in echoing, smacking steps.
A road. I’ve reached a road.
I’m exposed here, so I dart across it to the other side, looking for any place that I can hide, anything that will conceal me, but as I’m halfway across, I hear something approaching in the distance.
A noise growing louder as it grows closer. But for once it’s a welcome noise: the whining of a motorcycle’s engine.
* * *
I don’t think. I throw off my bag and desperately search through it until my hand closes around the hard, cold cylinder of the torch I found in Julie’s kitchen. It’s small, but powerful, although it feels quite light in my hand.
The headlamps of the motorcycle are flooding the road now; it will be past me, if it does not hit me, in the next few moments.
But I stand there, my feet rooted, in the middle of the road.
I turn the nozzle until the beam is as bright and as strong as it can be. I wave the torch as the motorcycle approaches me and I hold up my other hand, as though whoever is driving the motorcycle might be able to see me waving. Like I am an old friend, as though I am expecting them. For a mad, fleeting moment, I imagine that it will be Anwar. I picture him atop the bike, comically too small to be driving it, but hunched over the handlebars nonetheless, come to rescue me. But the truth is that I can’t see the driver in the darkness, I can only hear the roar of the bike and all around me, I am surrounded by shadows.
The motorcycle is almost upon me and is not showing any signs of slowing. The driver must be able to see me because there are no other lights. I think about this for a second as I look up to the streetlamps on the side of the road – I hadn’t realized when I first got here that none of them were on.
The engine whines and roars in alternate beats. It sounds as though it is speeding up, not slowing down. As it nears me, its light blinds me. I screw up my eyes and keep them shut as it passes me. I feel a rush of air whip my cheeks as it flies past me.
My heart sinks. It’s gone. The Greys will get me for sure now…
I almost don’t believe it when I hear the screech of its brakes.
I turn to see the motorcycle has stopped just a little distance down the road.
I run towards it.
HOW TO FIND HELP (WHEN YOU REALLY NEED IT)
The figure on the motorcycle is clad all in black. They wear a helmet so I can’t see their face.
A great, tall figure on a motorcycle: so huge they have to hunch over to hold on to the handlebars. A giant, almost.
I can make out the width of their shoulders – massive and broad – and I find myself thinking of the trunk of an oak tree.
I want to shout out – Please help me, can you help me – I can feel the words bubbling up inside me but they are stuck.
As I get closer, as I approach the ticking, grumbling motorcycle, my throat closes up. I can hear thundering steps striking the tarmac behind me. The Greys have reached the road.
The motorcyclist is shouting at me now: ‘Get on!’ They reach out a huge, strong arm towards me to swing me up on to the narrow seat behind them.
In a beat of a moment, I am up there, on the quivering motorcycle that feels, sitting upon it, as though it’s alive.
Just as the Greys are almost upon us, it bursts forward with a growl and a pounce and as I cling on to the bike, to the motorcyclist, we rush away.
I try not to look at their splayed, bent fingers, like twigs of a branch, reaching, growing towards us. They almost scratch at my arm; they are only millimetres away.
I screw my eyes tightly closed.
But the motorcycle leaps forward again with another sudden bolt of power and we are away, untouched.
* * *
We roar down roads. When I open my eyes, I can see we’re passing fields that are lined with darkness and trees that make shadowy, leering shapes. Their branches look like they might reach out at any moment and scoop us up.
It doesn’t take long before I start to feel stiff and uncomfortable, sitting on the back of the motorcycle, clutching on fiercely for fear of falling off.
It’s not until the sun has sta
rted to rise that the motorcyclist pulls into a smaller road, and then a lane and a lay-by. He pulls it into the clearing. The engine dwindles for a moment and then is still.
I almost fall off as I try to climb off. We are both getting off at the same time and it’s as though we are trying to untangle ourselves from each other.
The motorcyclist reaches up for his helmet.
The face in front of me is creased with lines, like a paper map that’s been folded and folded in on itself in all the wrong ways so it’s no longer neat, and is made into a completely different kind of shape.
When he speaks, it’s low and gruff but it also sounds a tiny bit like Julie – a voice that almost sounds like singing, in the up and down way of a Welsh accent.
‘So who’ve we got here then?’ he says.
‘I’m Billy,’ I say.
‘Billy,’ he repeats, rolling each syllable. ‘I’m Len. You gave me a bit of a turn when I saw you on the road like that. Though I suppose nothing should surprise me. Not any more.’
‘Thank you for picking me up,’ I say. ‘If you hadn’t come, or if you hadn’t stopped, the Greys would have…’
‘But I did,’ Len says gently. ‘Greys? That’s a good name for them.’
We fall silent for a moment, remembering them.
‘Where are you going to?’ I ask.
Len scratches his beard. It grows out in white patches, spikily. ‘I’m driving to Folkestone.’
‘That’s not too far from a place called Sandgate, is it?’ I ask.
‘Not too far. You know someone there?’ he asks.
‘My mum. I think my mum’s there,’ I say.
‘I won’t be able to take you all the way but I could get you pretty close.’
‘You’ll take me?’ I ask, unbelieving. Sylvia appears in my mind as I imagine getting all that way closer to her.
‘Can hardly leave you here, can I? What are you doing out here all on your own, anyway?’