Cull

by Tanvir Bush

  Chris is feeling much better, rested and pain-free … well, almost pain-free. It still hurts him to run, and he is missing Alex, and that is a whole other kind of soreness. Since he came back from the vet’s they have not been apart for a single moment – until today, that is – and she has even allowed him to sleep on her bed, which he loves, loves, loves! He will start curled up on the dog blanket on the end and through the night gradually snore his way up until he is lying with his head almost on Alex’s pillow, spreadeagled to get as close to her warm body as possible. Every now and then she will wake up and shove him over but without much success.

  And yet today he has been dropped here, and she has left him. It is difficult for him to understand why she has gone, even though he knew she was trying to explain it before she went. He wished she could learn to use her vibration to speak. Like the baby. Maybe the baby could teach her … when she gets back. Is she coming back?

  Another slow pustule of yoghurt runs down the table leg. Chris is edging combat-style on his belly towards it when he hears Alex’s voice, quite distinctly, coming from the other room. Joy rushes up into his heart and his head, like soda bubbles. He leaps up and whirls around, dashing as quickly as his sore rump will let him, in the direction of his beloved’s voice. But in the living room there is no Alex, no Alex energy, no Alex smell, no Alex. He runs to the voice and then, disoriented and a little anxious, he runs back into the kitchen. He can still hear her.

  ‘Alex?’ he barks.

  ‘What is it, Chris?’ Both Jenny and Serena are staring at him. He runs to them.

  ‘Can’t you hear her? It’s Alex? But … ?’ He dashes back to the living room again, and this time it occurs to him that Alex’s voice is coming out of the picture box. Is she in the box? Chris isn’t stupid, but the whole TV thing is beyond him..

  Jenny and Serena sit shocked for a second. Jenny realises that she has never heard Chris bark before. She pulls a wet wipe from the stack and wipes some of the yoghurt from Serena’s face and unclips her from the high chair. ‘Come on, sweetheart,’ she says, hefting her up and onto a hip. ‘Let’s go see what’s upsetting the dog.’

  In the living room, the first thing Jenny notices is that Chris is sitting about two feet from the television. His ears are pricked, head cocked and he has one paw raised. He is spellbound.

  Then Jenny notices something else.

  ‘Mosh!’ She has to shout over the sound of his drilling. ‘Mosh, get down here quick!’

  There is a pause upstairs.

  ‘What did you say, honey?’

  ‘Mosh! Come here, now!’

  She hears him coming down the stairs and feels him as he fills the doorway behind her.

  ‘Is everything—?’

  ‘Mosh, where did you say Alex was today?’

  ‘Hospital appointment.’

  ‘I don’t think that was the whole truth.’

  Jenny steps to one side so Mosh can see the TV screen.

  ‘What?’

  She points.

  Mosh peers. Then he makes a funny noise and steps closer and, hands on his knees, really looks. He has, even though he has not been anywhere near his daughter, managed to get a splodge of yoghurt on the back of his trousers.

  ‘Oh my God!’ On the screen is a journalist talking into the camera. She is a tall, attractive blonde sporting a pair of oversized tinted glasses.

  ‘Where did she get that wig?’ he asks Jenny.

  ‘I don’t think that’s the issue. Listen to what she’s saying.’

  It is Alex. Mosh just needs to look at Chris’s frozen posture to verify the fact. She is standing in what looks like a hospital reception, which is full of gambolling clowns in nurses’ uniforms and lines of people in rubber masks. Rubber masks that are all the same face, that of a serene young woman. There is circus music playing, but Alex looks deadly serious. Mosh reaches for the remote on top of the TV and cranks up the sound.

  In Which Alex Hosts the Show

  ‘… am speaking from the scene at Grassybanks where the Secretary of State for Health, Stella Binding, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, John Thorpe-Sinclair, and the CEO of TOSA, Henri Rennes, have become part of a bizarre sort of … protest. We are still unsure as to who is in charge of all this. Hold on, we are going to try and get a bit closer and see if we can talk to one of the protesters …’

  Alex is sweating under her wig. In fact, she is sweating everywhere, although she blasted herself with so much deodorant this morning she almost set off a smoke alarm. She had come here, to the Grassybanks opening, all Bond-style in her silly disguise, intending to confront Binding and Binding. She was blinded by anger. The doctor’s last words to her, ‘I’m sorry to hear about your dog. I don’t suppose he will be able to work again either,’ had clanged about her head for the entire week. The coldness masked by charm, the implied threat. And that terrible thought that kept her awake at night … had Binding pushed Gunter out of the window to stop him telling the truth about the CDD?

  Alex refuses to be afraid, to be made afraid. It is enough that she has to spend her life peering at the world through a murky twilight, that she has already had to give up her ambitions of TV anchorwoman, that she has already been humiliated over and over again at various Job Centrals, that life is hard and edgy and lonely. If Binding was in any way responsible for Chris’s attack, for Gunter’s fall … oh God … for the murder of these vulnerable people, then she will, she must, confront him. Alex, to put it simply, will no longer tolerate a bully.

  It had been Kitty and Helen who had let slip about the ‘official’ opening of Ward C. Kitty had been invited as the Kitty Fox Foundation had gifted several brand-new, state-of-the-art wheelchairs, but she had no intention of going along herself. ‘The entire place gives me the creeps,’ Kitty had stated flatly. ‘And anyway, it will be a fucking circus.’

  Alex had seen a look pass between Helen and Kitty then, something both tender and terribly sad, but Kitty refused to discuss the opening any more and wheeled herself back to the studio.

  Helen told Alex she should keep well clear. ‘There will be hellish security.’ She had peered closely at Alex, noting the tightness around her mouth. ‘Alex, you will only get yourself in even more shit!’ she had chided, urgently. ‘Stop thinking about it.’

  Alex couldn’t stop, though. She had insisted on attending, told Gerald, her editor, that she was covering the ward opening no matter what, and his distress over Chris’s attack had made him putty in her hands. ‘I’ll take Terry,’ she had said. ‘We’ll feed back live to the website. No funny business,’ she reassured him, lying. ‘Straight-from-the-hip, professional journalism.’

  But Alex being Alex, and therefore reckless, hasn’t thought it through. She realises this now as she scans the mute rubber- masked faces and the gurning yellow-haired clowns. She had never thought that a louder voice than hers might take this opportunity to protest too. She had, in her own rage, forgotten that she was not the only person who would want Binding, and whatever is happening at Grassybanks, exposed. Who the hell are these people? Her mind races along with her heartbeat. I wonder … she thinks. Could it be … ?

  Her friend, and now co-opted cameraman, Terry, is doing well, considering he has no idea what the hell is going on either. He isn’t the official Cambright Sun cameraperson – he is more the IT guy – but he stepped in when Alex asked. Alex likes and trusts him, which is more important. ‘These are the people who set their dogs on Chris,’ she has already told him. ‘They mustn’t recognise me. Would you be OK if I go in disguise?’

  Terry has never been the least rattled by Alex’s visual impairment. He understands that in her disguise she cannot be blind, and he has taken on the role of surreptitious guiding arm without a second thought.

  ‘Over here,’ Terry whispers. He is guiding Alex via a Bluetooth earpiece. She starts moving off in the wrong direction and Terry reaches out and pulls her back. ‘The screen is right in front of you. The wheelchairs are at one o’c
lock.’

  Alex nods. She needs to calm down and, literally, focus. She blinks, stops, trying to catch all the action in her peripherals, and puts the large screen squarely in her constricted tunnel of vision. ‘The circus music has stopped and the screen is flickering.’ She turns, keeping one foot pointed at the screen as a marker, and speaks directly into the camera and then moves again so Terry can zoom the camera in on the action.

  The clowns slow their insane jitterbugging and become still. They all turn to face the large screen. In the family room Alex can see everyone pressed up against the inner windows, gazing into the reception. They must be aware now that it isn’t just a show, she thinks. Surely someone will have called the police?

  There is a discordant shriek of feedback, and on the screen appears a huge, very luscious mouth, lips glistening with rose-pink lipgloss over perfectly even white teeth. The mouth smiles down at the world.

  ‘Welcome,’ it says. ‘Welcome, John Thorpe-Sinclair. Welcome, Stella Binding, and welcome, Henri Rennes.’

  ‘Wow,’ whispers Terry. ‘It’s the Rocky Horror Picture Show.’

  Alex doesn’t recognise the mouth, but the voice … she swallows. She thinks she recognises the voice. ‘Thorpe-Sinclair’s trousers are tearing,’ Terry tells Alex, adjusting the camera focus. ‘It looks to me like they have actually been superglued into their seats.’

  ‘Today is a very special day,’ says the mellifluous voice of The Mouth, thrumming out through the speakers. ‘Today we have three of the people who are at the very heart of the welfare reforms, and who are all in one way or another culpable for the results. We thought it was time to celebrate them in our own unique way! And who, you may ask, who are “we”?’

  The clowns wave their gloved hands wildly, silently.

  ‘We …’ and the voice distorts, becomes louder and horrific, a tangle of electronics and noise.

  ‘We are BOUDICCA!’ it roars. The clowns screech and cavort and come back to their positions again.

  ‘Boudicca,’ says Alex to the camera. Of course! she thinks. How could I have been so blind? And she plunges into her commentary. ‘The protest is being staged by a group calling themselves Boudicca. Up to now, this group has owned up to nothing more than graffiti and letters to the press.’ No one confessed to the booby-trapped wheelchair, she thinks. What could they want with Grassybanks?

  She can hear some people screaming faintly from the locked family room, so obviously they can hear everything from inside. Must be playing through speakers.

  Alex turns and nods into the camera. ‘And it would appear that Stella Binding, Thorpe-Sinclair and Rennes have actually been glued into their wheelchairs.’

  The huge mouth on screen smiles and a wet red tongue slowly licks its milk-white teeth. When the voice comes again, it is back to its lovely melodic warmth.

  ‘We thought a celebration would be appropriate, especially as we are about to give you each a whole new fresh perspective on life. After today you will be able to do your jobs so much better. You will be on the front line. You will be one of us. One of us!’

  ‘This is outrageous,’ Thorpe-Sinclair is spluttering, trying to wrench himself free. ‘Someone call security!’

  ‘Bring Thorpe-Sinclair! John Thorpe-Sinclair, the Minister for Work and Pensions,’ The Mouth sings.

  The clown pushing Thorpe-Sinclair’s wheelchair swings him in a wide arc in front of the other clowns, who clap and cheer, and past the windows of the family room where the mayor, the crowd of press, PR and others watch fishlike, open-mouthed through the glass. Thorpe-Sinclair is struggling hard, and as the clown passes, Terry zooms the camera in on the politician’s shirt and trousers stuck to the back of the chair. The seat of his trousers has ripped away at the top seam, allowing a little pink glow of buttock and white pant in the viewfinder. Thorpe-Sinclair is mouthing obscenities at the clown but can’t twist around in his chair, so the clown pays absolutely no heed, just carries on pushing and smiling at the crowd.

  ‘Definitely glue,’ says Terry to Alex. ‘That’s gonna hurt coming off. Must have been on the seat backs, bottom and armrests.’

  ‘We all know, John,’ says The Mouth, ‘because you tell us so often, that you do all that you do for the good of the nation. You are a man of honour and a patriot, and now, as the Minister for Work and Pensions, you have become wise. You have a plan for the people, especially for the broken of Britain. You know what is best for the depressed. Your nation salutes you! A million people back in work because of your changes? Well … OK, not a million exactly, right? Not people in full-time, permanent, contracted work, eh, but who’s to knock a statistic as gorgeous as that one? In many ways the actual real numbers are inconsequential, given the moral war you are waging on the limp and the lazy, the scroungers and the work-shy. Surely, you say, any normal person would rather work for nothing than take from the hardworking British taxpayer. Any normal person would rather die than be seen at Job Central scrounging.’

  Thorpe-Sinclair has gone quiet and is no longer trying to rip himself from the gluey seat. He is watching the screen, his head slightly cocked, trying to work out whether the voice is being sardonic.

  The screen is now showing a montage of John Thorpe-Sinclair’s most famous moments. There he is on the podium berating the malingerers, the work-shy, the parasites of Britain. ‘The public think homelessness is about having no accommodation,’ he is saying. ‘Homelessness is just an attitude.’ Here he is smiling as he unveils the plans for the shining new Care and Protect Act. ‘Beveridge was a mug,’ he says. ‘Work is what makes people human. If we give them financial aid where is the incentive to work?’ Here he is with the Queen, and now here he is at home, on his enormous estate with his little wife, Wilma, and here he is declaring, ‘Anyone can live on the Basic Benefit. It just needs careful budgeting.’ A whirl of news bites and radio clips, articles, photos, and then just his huge moon face smiling down on the assembled rubber-masked folk in the Grassybanks reception.

  Silence.

  John Thorpe-Sinclair still appears to have a small smile on his face. A cocky expression of ‘that wasn’t bad’. Can he really be that stupid? wonders Alex. Can he really not see the danger he is in? She steps forward, and a clown leaps in front of her, so close that even Alex can see the tired flecks of skin under the mottled white pancake make-up.

  ‘Don’t intervene, Alex,’ says the clown very quietly and right into her ear. ‘Not yet. You will get your chance to ask questions.’

  The clown steps away before Alex can respond. Its arms swing strangely, the gloved hands hang down, the arms soft and jointless.

  ‘Jesus … Jules …’ Alex gasps.

  ‘What is it, what did it say?’ Terry is asking, but already Stella Binding is being wheeled forward to face The Mouth.

  ‘Ahh, Stella. One hardly needs an introduction. Golden girl, daughter of a good doctor, childless wife to what is essentially now a crip in the making.’ The voice is harsher, the poison dripping between every vowel. Helen’s voice, thinks Alex with both awe and deep sadness. It may not be her mouth on screen but it is her voice. Her dear, birdlike, dark-haired friend, the very one who comforted her, saved her, after the attack on Chris and her stupid fight: Helen. Helen is Boudicca.

  Stella’s montage is similar to Thorpe-Sinclair’s. Key moments from key speeches in her rise to Health Minister. Various podiums, speeches: ‘The youth today must realise that work is not optional. Just because you went to university doesn’t mean you are better than anyone else in this country. If the work is there, you damn well have to take it. But what about those unable to work, disabled or … ? We don’t believe that people who are genuinely unable to work will be left behind. Our government has pumped millions into the Care and Protect Act. We are a government completely dedicated to ensuring the protection of the vulnerable.’ There is another montage of her visiting hospitals, kissing children, with her husband. Oh poor, poor Gunter.

  Alex and Terry move cautiously forward. Alex is br
eathing hard. She won’t intervene, not right now. She realises now that she loves her LDA family, even if some of them may be brutal … may be Boudicca. Had she not also come today to shout and scream in public at Binding? To ‘out’ him? Does that make her Boudicca too? She understands now that she has been manipulated, led this way, pulled that. They needed her. They probably knew she would come today. Did Helen … Jules … did Kitty … did her friends set her up? She looks at the three wheelchairs with their prisoners.

  Thorpe-Sinclair still doesn’t get it. Stella isn’t so slow. She has her face turned away from the images on the screen and is looking directly at Alex. Stella’s face is tight with anger, her pale cheeks flushed with pink. When Henri Rennes is pushed beside her, he leans as if to offer her encouragement and she says something too quietly to be heard, but sharp enough to make him recoil.

  The Mouth is back. Lips are licked, and glisten with fresh gloss. ‘But we are missing someone. Someone we need to play our Grassybanks Ward C opening games! Could it be?’

  Now from down the corridor comes the sound of clattering and jangling. Two more clown-nurses appear from the wide double doors leading to the wards and they are pushing not a wheelchair but a full-sized bed, one of the adapted beds from Ward B. There is someone in it, someone struggling under the sheets.

  ‘I believe some of you may have already met Nurse Dyer. She is here today to introduce us all to the original, specially designed Chiller Beds! These beds are only found here at Grassybanks. They have been adapted for one special purpose. But let’s allow Nurse Dyer to show us, shall we?’

  One of the clowns moves to the top of the bed and flings back the sheet covering the twisting body. Poor Nurse Dyer, hat now fallen over one eye, uniform rucked up to show her skinny knees and blue varicose veins, is furiously squirming. The clown leaps back, pretending to be afraid.