Submersion

  ‘Why?’

  There were two likely outcomes here – the aunt I knew and disliked would return and tell me to mind my own business with the harsh voice she reserved for me and me alone, or this defrosted, more fragile replacement would remain in the room and fulfil my needs.

  ‘There’d be no fooling you with a little white lie, would there Billy? You know too much already,’ she said, turning back to me. She grabbed the chair she’d used to steady herself and turned it round, closer to me. She sat down. ‘An inquisitive boy, aren’t we? Poking about where we shouldn’t be. Learning things that adults have purposely – with good intention – kept away from you. So, I’ll tell you. But we won’t speak of this again, you understand? Not to each other and not to anyone else. You hear me?’

  I heard her. ‘Yes,’ I croaked, feeling a throb in my throat. A sore lump was developing there.

  ‘Right, here goes,’ she puffed, taking some breaths in and out, readying herself; stalling, if she’d asked for my opinion. She didn’t. ‘I was very young when I had Joshua and Ethan. It was before I met my Jimmy.’ I’d never heard her refer to him like that – my Jimmy. It was the closest I’d heard to affection in her voice. ‘I was on my own, not long out of school and deeply ashamed. Mother didn’t want me to keep them, said I had to get rid of them. Do you know what that means, Billy?’ I nodded; yes, I knew exactly what she meant. ‘But I couldn’t imagine that. Mother said I couldn’t stay with her – I either got rid of it, or I left home. It – we didn’t know it was twins, not at that point. So, I did the latter – but your grandmother, my elder sister, had her own family and home by then, so I stayed with her. I met your Uncle Jimmy not long after they were born and it never bothered him, though I still felt my mother’s scorn and I think that imbedded a little shame in me that I’ve never been free of. Having children out of marriage, that wasn’t something I could ever accept, even though that’s exactly what I’d done. I always had a sense I’d be punished for it, sooner or later. And, when the boys were ten, I finally was.

  ‘Have you heard of the takings, Billy?’

  I had, I nodded, pulling the covers up over my chin, her words further cooling the room.

  Taken. Wasn’t that what my aunt had said about Elinor? She’d become one of the taken. I thought of Tilly Harrison, too, and her tale of children being taken from school.

  ‘The authorities took them out of school one day. Denied it, of course. The boys had gone missing, was the official story. Truanting, they claimed. I knew it wasn’t true – they were good obedient little boys. But I didn’t suspect the school or the authorities – I just assumed it was God, finally punishing my sins. They were dead somewhere, and my punishment was to never find out how or why. And that was how it was for a long, long time.

  ‘Eventually, the truth came out – someone with a conscience in the authorities spilled the beans. Do you know what that truth was Billy?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘The schools had been testing all the children. Testing their abilities on all levels – intelligence and strength. And they helped the authorities take the very best and test them further. The authorities kept the very intelligent ones and put them to work in secret laboratories. Times were desperate, Billy. Very desperate. We were running out of things – fuel, food, all natural resources petering away. Nothing was working. So, they took bright young minds in the hope they would invent solutions under the glare of bright lights and the intensified lens of a microscope. And it worked – to an extent. Certain things came to light and the death of our planet was slowed down. Just a bit.

  ‘Know what they did with the children when they were finished?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘No? Sent them back to their families. Know what they did with the children not smart enough? Never took them in the first place, usually. Know what they did with my beautiful twins?’

  There was a new edge to her voice, a fragility had crept in - an emotional instability that unnerved me.

  ‘They lost them, Billy,’ she said in almost a hush; spoken with just breath, her words hardly audible. ‘They lost them, Billy. They would have been thirteen when the authorities were finished with them. I’d have only lost them for three years. Instead, I lost them for a lot longer. But back then, all I knew – all we all knew – was that they were missing. I still thought they were dead. And even if I hadn’t, I had no idea where to start. In those early days of the takings, we had no idea whatsoever who was involved. No idea what had happened or where to start looking. Who to ask questions. That’s why the taking went on for so long – we lived in blind ignorance, trusted the very people who were, in truth, ruining our lives. Who were stealing our children. Can you imagine anything worse, Billy?’

  I shook my head again. No, no I couldn’t. All of a sudden, I wanted this to be one of Tristan’s macabre tales – one of those stories that gave me nightmares and made Mother furious. My great-aunt’s account was far worse and I was certain Mother would have silenced her had she been present. But Mother was still out there, with Great-Uncle Jimmy.

  ‘Well, let me tell you a bit more, Billy. It turns out my boys were of different ability. Very different. Ethan, my beautiful Ethan – he was the smart one. Very smart indeed. So, they carted him off to their laboratories and put him to work with test tubes and Bunsen burners and the rest. You know what they are, Billy? No? Well, let’s just say, they are handy equipment. Stuff needed to help save the world. And Joshua? I bet you’re wondering about my Joshy? Yes. Well, Joshy was of a different calibre altogether. Not as smart as Ethan, but very strong. Very brave, and he came in handy in a very different way. Yes, he was very brave, my Joshy.’

  For a moment or so, Great-Aunt Penny was lost. Something had distracted her from her determined diatribe. A memory, maybe? A shadow fell across her face, as she remained diverted. Unsure if it was the right thing to do, but sensing that I had to do something, I asked her a question.

  ‘What happened to him?’ I asked simply, and my great-aunt’s beady, accusing look returned, giving me a glare that said what are you doing there?

  ‘What?’ she questioned, then she softened slightly, as if my recent ordeal had just come back to her. ‘What was that, Billy?’

  ‘Joshy,’ I answered, but then corrected my overfamiliarity. ‘Joshua. You were going to tell me about him. About what happened to him?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, her face blank and for a second I thought she might hold back. That maybe she’d lost her momentum and her brief reflection had brought it all to an end. ‘Well,’ she began and then something happened that I hadn’t seen before – my great-aunt began to cry. Not out loud, but, as she began to speak again, as she completed her tale of what had happened to the other twin, tears streamed down her face, catching on her lips, her voice cracking. ‘Oh, yes, my brave Joshy. You see, they took some of the less smart children away for other reasons. They weren’t supposed to. Whilst the authorities were quite happy to take intelligent children, the others were supposed to be left alone. But some were tested for strength – for their endurance.’ She paused, eyeing me, checking I understood where she was heading. ‘They tested their endurance to pain, Billy. That’s what they did to Joshua. And they found that he could withstand quite a lot. So, he disappeared too. I lost them both, Billy.’

  She paused again and I took a moment to catch up, to put the story together, to make sense of it all. So both boys had been taken from their home when they were ten – one for his intelligence, the other for his ability to withstand pain, for his strength. And, once the truth of what the authorities had done came out, unlike other children, they were not returned. They were lost, missing, gone. And yet Ethan had returned – hadn’t he? Ethan, beautiful Ethan, who had been kept in the attic room of the abandoned shop.

  ‘Ethan was at the shop,’ I said and my great-aunt nodded, solemnly, holding up a hand: give me a minute, the gesture said. I waited a short while and she spoke again.

  ‘Yes. We got Et
han back. Just Ethan. Eventually. Too many years after he’d first been taken. And it was too late by then. He was damaged, Billy. Not safe.’

  ‘Not safe?’ I echoed, feeling that the extent of what I had done – of what I had unleashed – was about to be revealed.

  ‘Attacked people. Badly, seriously, I’m ashamed to say. Went for Ronan with a knife.’

  ‘Grandad Ronan?’ I exclaimed, partly to be certain, partly to claim his familial standing.

  ‘Yes, your Grandad Ronan,’ she conceded, understanding my need to make the connection. ‘Quite badly. Quite seriously. He’s lucky to be alive, but we kept it in the family,’ she added, admitting Grandad Ronan inside our ancestral circle again. ‘No police involvement. So, in return, we kept Ethan safe in the shop. Out of harm’s way. Locked up for his own good.’

  I had a question, held back, but a go on from my great-aunt encouraged me further.

  ‘Isn’t there somewhere he can be looked after?’

  ‘Like a special home?’

  I nodded.

  ‘He was in one, for a while. Had lived there for some years as a stranger, a nobody. You see, not only was he lost to me, but he was lost to himself, too. On the inside.’

  My great-aunt tapped the right side of her head for effect.

  ‘They were difficult times, Billy. For everyone, but… As all our resources became scarcer still, these homes began to close down, and the authorities had to find new places for their residents. Their patients, they claimed, not that anyone was being treated. So, after years of not caring about who these people were or where they came from, the authorities spent some time and money on finally finding out. That’s how we got reunited. It took a while. Ethan only had his memories of us up to a ten year-old and many of those had faded. So, these weren’t enough in themselves. But we had gone looking again, too, and had an anonymous tip-off as to where he might be staying. And, as luck would have it, we found him.’

  She paused, caught in her memories, taking her time, allowing them to become clearer.

  ‘I still see all those beds, lined up, one after the after, in a long thin room. Like something from an old book. Like something from a war. Bed after bed after bed. It was dirty. They called it a hospital, but it was filthy dirty and no one was getting better. No one was being treated for anything. You know what haunts me?’

  I shook my head. I wanted to say yes, because surely it was obvious. But nothing had been obvious so far, so I refrained.

  ‘The faces of all the boys – men, by then – all the boys we left behind. As we were taken along the ward to Ethan’s bed, they all thought, they all hoped that we were coming for them. But no, we just came for him. Our broken boy. My one half of a pair.’

  Great-Aunt Penny inhaled a long, slow breath, gathering her own thoughts, I guessed. Trying to recall how far she had gone – what had been told so far, what was left?

  ‘I suppose you want to know where Joshua is? What happened to him?’ she asked, cutting her rumination short.

  I nodded slowly – yes, I did, but I didn’t want to seem overenthusiastic.

  ‘Wish I knew, Billy. Wish I knew. He could be alive, out there somewhere, or he could be dead. We’ve looked. We went back to the ho-.’ She paused, tears piercing through her eyes again, blurring her vision, puffing her skin. But she seemed determined to continue. ‘Went to the hospital where Ethan had been, but there was nothing. Checked their records, asked about other hospitals. They were eager to help – there was a lot of guilt for those involved, but they were also eager to give all these damaged people back. But we found nothing. No trace of Joshua at all. Ethan had seen him, once, he told us, years ago, he reckoned, but.’ Another pause – a distraction, like earlier, sending her off course, sending her into a numb oblivion.

  ‘Aunt?’ I questioned, trying to draw her back.

  She smiled, dryly, bravely.

  ‘All I know is he is still gone, Billy. Still lost. Ethan too, now,’ she finished, not meaning to apportion blame, not meaning to imply because of you, but it was there. And it remained between us, invisible, silent, but present. ‘I think I’ll make some warm milk,’ she eventually said, standing again. ‘Might help you sleep.’

  Then, my great-aunt left the room, pulling the door to on the guest room. I heard her further down the hall, in her kitchen. If she did heat up some milk – part of me doubted she even had any – she never bought it back to me.

  And, as promised, we never spoke of Joshua or Ethan again.

  I was in and out of consciousness for several days – over a week, I found out later. A fever set in and my glands swelled up like balloons, according to Mother. I don’t remember anything clearly enough. I recall faces – Great-Aunt Penny’s, Great-Uncle Jimmy’s, Mother’s, too. My memory has an imprint of cold flannels on my skin and hot, bland soup passing my lips. But I don’t remember moving. Don’t remember leaving North Courts and plummeting to the waterlogged ground in that stinky, metal lift. Don’t recall the ride home in the boat. Have no memory of being lifted back up three flights of stairs to my little attic room.

  So, I missed some of the drama.

  I missed what happened to Grandad Ronan.

  I just woke up to the sound of torrential rain, battering at the roof of our house, demanding to be let in. My room was suffering the very worst of it, being at the apex of the house. Opening my eyes, I found Mother beside me, keeping vigil.

  Seeing me awake, she excused herself for a moment and then brought me something to eat and drink. I smiled when I saw what it was – a single, soft boiled egg.

  ‘Uncle Jessie?’ I asked.

  She shook her head, no not from him. He wasn’t back yet, her look told me.

  ‘Uncle Jimmy,’ she said.

  Mother sat on the edge of my bed. She allowed me to eat my egg, which was accompanied by some toast and a hot cup of weak tea, remaining still and quiet. Then, when I had finished, she took the china from me and placed it on the floor.

  This signalled she wanted to talk. So, I guess I was well enough to cope with the scolding I deserved – for truanting, for stealing, for breaking into the old shop and letting my mad cousin out of the attic. But that wasn’t what happened. That wasn’t what she had come to say at all.

  ‘Billy, it’s time we had a good talk,’ she began, her voice softer than usual, like Aunt Agnes’ and my heart raced with anticipation.

  Then she expelled a string of the most unexpected words.

  ‘It’s time I explained about your father,’ she said.

  14. Agnes

  I had barely slept when Esther and Uncle Jimmy came battering at my front door, banging it hard enough to knock it from its frame. My conversation with Reuben had ended sometime after midnight and it had taken me a good hour to completely wind down from the day’s revelations.

  I had two days away from the office before I was expected back. Two days that should have been an opportunity to recuperate – to collect my thoughts and consider exactly what I could or should do next. At the very least, I could have expected one full night of sleep, but it was not to be.

  ‘I’m coming, I’m coming!’ I called, pulling on just the bottom half of my protective gear, not bothering with the mask. I knew who it was – as well as throttling the door, they had cried out loud enough to wake the whole street.

  Opening the door, I noticed lights quickly switch off in houses across the road. The racket had been enough to rouse my neighbours – but now I’d answered the call, electricity was swiftly being saved again. No one came out to check if I was safe or that I knew who my rowdy callers were.

  ‘What on Earth..?’ I began, as Esther and Uncle Jimmy pushed past me, Esther storming ahead in a panic.

  ‘Ethan has gone missing,’ my uncle explained, rushing just ahead of me, but with less urgency than my sister.

  ‘Ethan?’

  ‘Yes, Ethan is missing!’

  ‘From the home?’ I questioned, following up, confused.

  Esther met us
both in the upstairs hall, shaking her head.

  ‘He’s not here,’ she confirmed, then glared at me, her eyes hot with accusation. ‘Why couldn’t you just answer the bloody phone? I’ve been frantic with worry! I thought he might have come here! I thought he might have-.’ She stopped herself, holding back tears – out of character for Esther, tears. And it had been a long time since I’d seen such irrational fury in her.

  ‘Why are you looking for Ethan here? Why would he be here? And why are you looking for him at all? If he’s missing, why aren’t the authorities out there looking? They must have people for this.’

  A conspiratorial look was shared between my sister and uncle.

  ‘What don’t I know?’ I asked, with a sudden feeling that the sleep I craved – the rest my exhausted being sorely needed – wasn’t coming any time soon.

  ‘I need to get back, Uncle Jimmy. I need to check how Billy is doing.’

  Another indication that I didn’t have the full picture.

  ‘What’s happened to Billy?’ I asked, and Esther rolled her eyes and flared her nostrils with more fiery allegation.

  ‘If you’d answered your bloody phone you’d know!’

  I’d taken it off the hook after the fourth or fifth round of ceaseless ringing.

  ‘I needed you, Agnes!’ she continued, her blood-red anger giving way to something else. I heard hurt in her voice, fear, too. Raw fear. ‘My son’s been missing! He might die! Oh my god, he might die, Agnes!’

  And, just like that, my stern, hardy sister melted away. Her collapse was so liquid that it took both my uncle and I to catch her and carry her to somewhere safe. We placed her on the small sofa in my kitchen area and I sat with her, whilst she sobbed.

  Uncle Jimmy sat at the kitchen table, unknowingly mimicking Reuben from just hours before. Whilst Esther got it out of herself – a phrase I imagined our late mother would have used – Uncle Jimmy gave me the bare bones of what had occurred, of what had reduced my sibling so.