by Tanvir Bush
‘Don’t you let her, Bill,’ screams Stella. ‘Don’t you dare! Don’t you bloody well dare! Not after what she did to my father.’
‘What you did,’ says Helen without rancour. ‘We did not touch him.’
As if on cue, the double doors to the wards swing open and two men, one wearing a Shandy Productions baseball cap, come in, panting, water dripping from their sodden trousers. Hanging between them, with an arm slung over each of their necks, is one Good Doctor Binding, gasping and shivering like a bream on a sandy bank. Apart from being soaking wet and obviously rather upset, he seems completely unharmed.
Robin, clutching the rubber mask he has been given, jolts. They are the two technicians he had lost! What the hell … ?
The man in the ‘Shandy’ hat discards Binding as if his touch burns him. His colleague, equally revolted, lets Binding slide to the floor.
‘Daddy,’ whimpers Stella. She wonders how much of the ‘true or false’ game he heard. She hopes not all. Not all.
‘Shandy’ man has dashed over to Helen and leans down to speak into her ear. His hand is ever so gentle on Helen’s shoulder and before he stands, he kisses her on the cheek. She smiles, seems to find strength.
‘OK. OK, calm down.’ She turns to Alex and the others. ‘The river is flooding,’ she announces. ‘A little water has already come into the basement. Help is on the way, but in the meantime we would ask all you nurses to return to your posts. Your patients will need you.’
Robin is dumbstruck.
‘Sweet Mary, Mother of God, that’s us,’ says Nurse Ashley, raising her hand, as if she is in school.
‘Yes, that’s you, darling,’ says Helen. ‘Off you go, quickly. The flood defences here are good, but best to untie the people in Ward B, right? Try the fuck not to kill anyone else. EVER AGAIN.’
For the briefest moment the clowns and the rubber-faced people move a step in around the nurses. They all make one gesture, fingers to eyes, fingers point forward. WE see YOU.
Robin actually squeaks, no longer able to make a coherent sentence, and continues to squawk in terror and relief as he and the other nurses dash away and down the corridor.
‘Don’t worry,’ says Helen. ‘Grassybanks has excellent flood defences.’ She takes a deep, slow breath and pushes the pain back down. ‘Please, Mayor Pearson,’ she turns her chair to the mayor and his entourage, ‘listen to your people.’
The Crow at the Crossroads
The old crow is warm and cosy, high up in her twiggy nest. She has one amber eye open wide, calmly watching the wild weather. The storm seems less irritated by the small creatures huddled up in the trees and the grasses, holed up under the earth and rolled up in the bushes. It stomps and pounds at the human things, their concrete and tar, their glass and their brick. Water pours onto the hot earth, but the earthworms rise and don’t drown. Frogs gloat. Fish watch happily from the dark of the river basin as their kingdoms widen exponentially.
A drainage culvert by the river cracks open and more water gushes, dark and frothy, into the road. The storm seems to pause to contemplate what to batter next. Perhaps it is beginning to flag … but the wind winds up again and the crow’s branch dips, as far below a large grey bus drives slowly along the watery track towards a crossroads. One road goes left to the front of the Grassybanks building where the field meets the river. Several other vehicles are sloshing to a standstill with water now over their axles. Men wearing bright reflective jackets are emerging from the trucks and cars, shouting and signalling to each other.
The other road swings right in a wide arc, away from the river and the car park, and wends up a slight ridge circling around to the back of Grassybanks.
The grey bus takes this right road, passing almost directly underneath the crow’s nest. The crow can hear the eeek-frum, eeek-frum of the windscreen wipers squelching across the windscreen. The bus slides backwards, leaving a deep imprint in the grass to the side of the road as it slips on the bank, then gains traction again. Mud splatters softly, and gears are crunched within. And then the bus is over the ridge and disappearing behind the wide bank.
The crow closes her eye.
Chris, however, has both his open. He sits, sore rump perched on the front seat of the bus, his eyes fixed on the figure of Mr Parnell, who parks the bus and tells Chris to ‘stay’, before cautiously sliding his way down the sodden grass ridge towards the back entrance of Grassybanks.
The windscreen is fogging up with each hot doggy breath, and there is condensation on Chris’s whiskers and droplets forming on the long hair in his pricked ears, but he remains stock still, absolutely focused. Parnell has made the bottom of the grassy knoll, and in several long strides through ankle-deep water he arrives at the back garage entrance, the very one he and Chris had stumbled upon previously. There are no piled-up barrels for Chris to lose a ball under now, just the rain, grass, the tar and a garage entrance, shut.
Parnell kicks at the slats on the garage door and feels for a handle, finding one near the ground just above pooling rainwater. He leans down, heaves and gives a loud yelp, clutching at his back.
Chris, shocked into action by the sound, twists clumsily around on the seat. His body is still aching and stiff from the dog attack, but he is getting impatient. His whole purpose is finding Alex, and he can sense that she is near. It isn’t a smell yet and he can’t hear her voice, but there is that vibration they have together. His whiskers quiver. Yes, Alex is definitely ahead. He can’t wait any longer. He sticks his head and chest out of the open door on the driver’s side of the bus, and his eyes narrow against the prickling rain. Alexalexalex? Where? What direction? And now his trembling, flared nostrils get a tiny hit. Fried onions, mushroomy underarms and mouldy trousers. Even in the homeopathic quantities of stench atoms to clean air, Chris’s marvellous nose can capture the smell of … Terry! And yes! Terry will know where Alex is!
A few feet away, Parnell reaches down again, one hand on his creaking knee, and pulls again at the heavy door. This time it shifts upwards a few inches and water pours from inside in a gush, and then a lessening stream, and then a trickle. Parnell puts a hand on his lower back and leans again to the handle. Jerks harder. It comes up with a groan but just another few inches before sticking. Parnell yanks a couple more times but to no avail and begins to straighten up, shaking his head to clear the rain that is dribbling from his grizzled eyebrows.
A dark furry shape dives past him, under the gap of the door and into the darkness beyond.
‘Chris! Come back, you daft bugger!’ yells Parnell, shocked, but the dog has disappeared. ‘Ah shit!’ Parnell stands for a moment listening to the sound of barking echoing from inside the building, becoming fainter as Chris moves further away. Well, I guess he’ll fetch ’em quicker than me, all right, he thinks and turns with renewed purpose back to the bus. He will need the jack to crank open the garage door. No turning back now, old man.
Behind the Masks
The storm clouds have blotted out the sun, and so Alex doesn’t see the rubber-masked figure step forward at first. Terry does, and swings the camera.
‘Alex, turn around,’ he says, and Alex does. Some of the performers are unmasking. It is disconcerting in the extreme to see the rubber masks being pulled off people’s heads. That soft, empty rubber mask of the girl pulled away to reveal many faces that Alex recognises from the LDA and many more she doesn’t. Mayor Pearson is looking unsure, still protective of the little crowd of anxious people at his side.
‘Oh, come on! Where is your sense of humour?’ Helen whirls her chair in a tight circle and points at the miserable VIPs stuck in theirs. ‘Think what we could have done! Maimed you, for instance. We considered it, darlings. Thought about gifting you a physical disability: a blinding, say, or an amputation or two, a quick lobotomy? But you all have so much bloody money and access to private healthcare – it probably wouldn’t change a thing. It might happen to you anyway, life’s odd like that. An accident, a genetic fuck-up, old age. One mome
nt you are human, the next you are detritus. It isn’t the physical, the mental malfunction in the end. It is unnecessary cruelty, shown and shown again. Surely that, after a time, becomes evil?’
The unmasking performers and some of the clowns gather and kneel, crouch or stand in front of Mayor Pearson and his entourage. There is a strange calm now, an expectation in the collected faces. Helen twirls again but when she speaks her voice is hoarse.
‘So instead we thought we would show you what it feels like to be the butt of a joke. To be treated like a joke. To be stuck, afraid, always bloody afraid and to have your life in the hands of a bunch of clowns. You’ve gotta laugh, right?’
The performers raise and lower their hands but none are laughing.
‘Here you go, Mayor … perhaps you can all laugh at this?’
Two people now, one taller, one shorter, stand, having pulled off masks to reveal a child of about seven and a stick-thin Asian woman. It is the kid who says to the mayor, ‘My dad worked really hard, but he had a heart attack and then they told him he had to find work even though he was all panting an’ he was breaving like a dragon breaves and … and couldn’t really walk far, and then he fell down and he died, and my mum … she is always crying …’ He tugs at his mother’s hand and she curves her lips at him, but it isn’t really a smile.
‘Someone told us about Boudicca,’ says his mother. ‘They help us now. We join with them. We are Boudicca.’ Alex recognises the woman now. She occasionally works behind the bar at the Ladies’ Defective Agency. Alex scans, sees more, recognises more.
One by one the figures in the masks walk forward, removing their masks and relinquishing their stories. There is Mrs Honey talking about Joanna, and now Dawn wheels herself forward and shows her scars.
A woman pipes up, ‘My cousin Leo was a meth addict. He had lost touch with everyone but me. He disappeared three weeks ago after being picked up by a group called Homeless Action! Later they said he had died of “natural causes” during the treatment.’
Another. ‘Colin had uncontrollable epilepsy, but they told him he was fit for work. They laughed when they said that, “fit for work”. They thought it was funny. He was a really sweet kid, but the stress was too much, and he had a massive seizure and died.’
More voices, more faces emerging from the masks. People clustering around the mayor.
‘I am Boudicca! My husband killed himself when his appeal was rejected. He had severe depression, but they wouldn’t listen.’
‘We had faeces thrown at us because we took our wheelchairs to a cinema and blocked the aisle by mistake.’
‘My mum has Alzheimer’s. Her care assistant punched her in the face because she wet herself. We are Boudicca!’
The mayor is trying to listen, but what with so many people eagerly and angrily explaining why they had joined Boudicca, and the stories being so tragic and terrible and frightening and ridiculous, he cannot help recoiling, taking a couple of steps backwards.
Behind him, on the white screen, appear even more faces, each person in a little box, talking about themselves or someone they love, had loved, had respected, had cared for, being discarded or stomped on by the city. There are so many voices. One talks over another and another and another until, with the people gathered around the mayor and the faces on the screen, a hundred people and more are all talking at once, and the voices become a roaring thunderous sea of noise that drowns out the storm outside.
The lights die and so too, the noise. Now all is quiet, and in the sudden lull come just three countdown blips and then the screen lights up again. Now there is one small clear voice and one pale face on the large screen next to the plaque. A young woman with wide brown eyes, porcelain skin and long, dark brown hair. A young woman wearing a sky-blue cardigan and jeans. A young woman in a wheelchair. She is filming herself, and in the background there is a messy bedroom, clothes scattered on the bed and a large soft toy badger. On the wall a poster of the periodic table next to a female pop star in a ruby bikini.
‘Hi Mum …’ Her voice trembles. She starts again. ‘Mum and Dad.’ Stronger now. ‘I know how much you love me. I love you so much too.’ She pauses. Steadies herself. Her eyes glitter, but she won’t cry. ‘I know that you said we could get through this, but we all know that my condition is going to get worse. I am getting tired of the names, of having my chair kicked, of being spat at. I am not like you, Mum. I can’t always find the funny side. I don’t think I can be strong like that. The disabled loo wasn’t working again today and Mrs Cleaver told me to use the girls’ loo but I had to crawl and … and … and … a girl called me a mutant. We … people like me … like you and me, Mum, I don’t want to grow up with this … I am so sorry, I know how badly this is going to make you feel, but I think it is the only way for all of us. They won’t let you and Dad stay home and look after me when things get worse. I will have to go to some place, some centre and, I tell you, I know what they do there! I wish you and Dad would believe me. If I have to be … eradicated … I would rather do it myself.’
Now her tears fall, making dark blue patches on her pretty cardigan. ‘I love you so much. Please don’t hate me. Please understand. If I do this … maybe people will listen … I dunno … maybe this will help.’
The girl reaches up to the camera and the screen goes dead.
Laura Shandy … of course. Alex remembers now. The young woman who had killed herself three years ago. Alex doesn’t need to be able to see clearly to realise that the young woman’s face is everywhere. The rubber masks worn by the Boudicca Army are terrible empty-eyed replicas of her luminous loveliness.
‘Her name was Laura,’ says Helen. And then Alex sees it at last. The resemblance. The man behind Helen, wearing a baseball cap with ‘Shandy Productions’ on it, takes it off, leans down and kisses his wife on the cheek.
Helen smiles at him, continues. ‘She was my daughter. Nicholas, my husband, nicknamed her Boudicca because she was so vibrant and beautiful and went everywhere in a carriage. She was a straight-A student and really funny and friendly. I’m not just saying that because she was my daughter. Ask anyone.’ Helen stops speaking for a moment, her breath is ragged. She raises her head and looks directly at the three sat in the gluey wheelchairs. ‘Laura – “Boudi” – rolled herself off the top of the central car park in town. Three storeys. When we got to the hospital, they told us she hadn’t been killed instantly. Apparently, she took a good hour to bleed out. No one was interested in finding out how we could have stopped her. No one anywhere seemed to care. In fact, one of the doctors turned to me and said I of all people should know that she had done herself a favour. The doctor said to us that it might be better for everyone this way. Later, someone graffitied “Test Your Wheelchair Here” at the top of the car park with an arrow pointing over the edge. We checked. It’s still there and someone has freshened the paint. You got to laugh, right?’
The siren noise is outside now, and there is faint shouting, but inside no one says a word. Everyone is looking at Helen, and Helen in her wheelchair looks at the silent clowns, at Alex and at the others. Her face is twisted and her hands are spasming. She shrugs, unable to say another word.
Alex doesn’t think there is anything more to be said, anyway. It’s time we end this and get the fuck out of here, before it’s too late, she thinks – but something inside her has opened to the possibility that it is already too late. She is so glad Chris is safe, is far away from all this. She hopes he is chewing something tasty. She wishes she could bury her face in his earth-and-honey-smelling coat, and she wishes … she wishes … what does she wish for?
Compassion? Revenge? To just be left the hell alone … maybe … yeah, that would be nice. Just thinking about Chris seems to cause her an audio hallucination. She imagines she can hear Chris barking, his low woof followed by two high yips. Impossible, surely. But Terry has also paused and now pulls off his headphones, head cocked, ears pricked. Alex watches him, listens. The rain clatters, and the wind booms but th
ere again … a woof and two yips. Alex is very alert now, her whole body an auditory receiver. Chris? It can’t be!
Mayor Pearson hasn’t heard the dog. He steps forward. His eyes are red-rimmed, as if bleeding. As Terry films him, the mayor takes the rubber mask that one of the clowns has given him and stares at the empty eye sockets. He shakes his head and then turns to Helen. ‘I had no idea,’ he says, ‘but that is no excuse. I am culpable for letting this disgusting practice continue in our city. These … Nazis, here—’ he gestures with his large hands at Binding, still kneeling on the floor, and at Thorpe-Sinclair, Rennes and Binding in their sticky traps ‘—must be condemned, but I too … I mean … this is inconceivable. How did I not know about this? I should be stripped of my office.’ He sighs loudly and rakes fingers through his thinning hair. ‘Boudicca, all of you … I am, on behalf of the people of Cambright, of England, truly sorry.’
Alex is moving slowly sideways, arcing around the mayor and edging backwards, instinctively drawn towards the back-corridor exit and Chris’s ‘Woof! Yip, yip!’ A couple of the clowns catch the sound of barking too. They glance over shoulders, eyes flicker. They look battered now, these clowns, paint curdled on their faces, wigs limp, faint scowls showing through the huge red smiles. Alex recognises one.
‘I think it’s Chris, my dog,’ she hisses to Jules. ‘He must have run off to find me. I think …’ She shrugs, feeling stupid and saying it anyway, ‘I think he must have got in through the back. Maybe we should think about an exit strategy too?’
Jules stares at Alex impassively. Then she gives her head a little shake, as if waking up, blinks at Alex and nods. ‘Your lovely dog, eh? OK, why not. I’ve heard stranger things. And,’ she whispers, glancing behind her, ‘you are right. It’s time some of us got out anyway. Some of this lot are fragile. They don’t all need to be here when the police arrive. You lead the way out, and I’ll get them organised.’ She hisses to one of the protesters, and he leans in to her painted face to listen to her instructions as Alex signals Terry and takes another step towards the sound of her dog’s excited barking.