The Poison People

by Alex Makepeace

  I need her though—we need her—Ma can give us food, warmth, shelter. Money. I need help for all these things. We both do.

  But I’m still standing there as it approaches twelve. I’m still there as it passes it—my bug won’t let me near the tower—yet I don’t want to leave. Not when I’ve come so far, not when I’m so near.

  It’s half-past the hour when I finally shift. I walk back down the street, pondering possible scenarios. Could I return tomorrow, make some kind of mark, leave some kind of secret message? Three streets lead to the tower. Maybe I could loiter in a different one each day—she’s bound to walk down one, if she’s walking?

  I’m girding myself for the long traipse back towards the centre, my thoughts on finding some kind of homeless hostel, when a bus pulls up. Deflated, depressed, I get on board.

  It’s only after I’ve passed her, I realise: that’s Ma sitting up front. Sideways to the driver, her mouth turned down, her tired eyes sightless—lost in thought or maybe half-asleep already.

  I sit down, my heart pounding. I put my hood back up, huddle myself against the window. Dare only to monitor Ma’s reflection.

  Yes, it’s definitely her—but older, uglier than the Ma of my memories. Shrunken, ghostly in the reflection, but it’s her, and I struggle to hold back the tears. Ma, my protector, my guardian angel.

  The bus has filled up by the time she is preparing to alight, so it’s relatively easy for me to bail out at the back of a loud group and fall in behind her, careful to keep my distance as she makes her way alongside a suburban park, crosses the road, and walks up the path of a Victorian villa. She unlocks the door and goes in. A few minutes later, a light comes on in the flat on the first floor.

  Well, she’s not being followed, as far as I can tell. There have been no slow -moving cars or others lurking in the shadows. Like the tower, the street is quiet, seemingly ordinary. This time my senses are clear.

  I walk past the house. Even though I can’t see any evidence of surveillance I can’t rely on that alone and I’m certainly not going to march right up the garden path, ring the bell.

  I go to the end of the road and turn the corner. There: a gravel lane leading behind the houses.

  Every step reports my progress, but it can’t be helped. I arrive at the rear of the house Ma entered. A flimsy fence separates me from a garden. I nudge the gate. It squeaks open.

  But before I go, before I commit myself, I wonder—how to get to Ma? I survey the upstairs flat, try to work out a way. I can’t see it, but I’m all revved up anyway. No time to dawdle. I can’t afford to hang about, attract the attention of your nosy neighbour, your Neighbourhood Watch.

  I dart through the gate, dash across the garden. But it’s not the human in me—Vereesh could do none of this. It’s all bug—the confidence with which I grasp the drainpipe, begin shinning my way up without a thought for the height, the how to.

  Look: I’m at the window. I press my nose against the glass, squint through the gap in the blinds. Ma, looking wan at a kitchen table, clasping a mug with both hands.

  I knock twice at the window. She looks up, but doesn’t move. I try again. She gets up, goes over. Opens the blind a fraction. Looks out, into the garden but doesn’t appear to see me. I knock once.

  She sees me, a look of horror on her face. She clutches her chest, looking like she might collapse. She mouths my name.

  Vereesh.

  With my free hand I press an index finger to my lips, shake my head. She appears to pull herself together. She raises the blind, opens the window. She’s about to pull me in but I mouth to get back. I hoist myself in.

  30

  Ma. The look on your face. Your hand over your gaping mouth, your joyful, tear-filled eyes, the slope of your shoulders as if a great weight has been lifted. Your sheer, uncomprehending relief.

  As I pull the blind back down, a finger still pressed against my lips in warning, I notice you pinch yourself.

  I point to the chair, for you to sit down. I pull a pad off the top of the fridge and write:

  - don’t talk—they may be listening.

  You nod, still drinking in my presence. You reach out for me, but I step away. I write:

  - Ma. I’m carrying SMALLPOX (I underline this twice). I’m OK but you could catch it.

  Your jaw drops. You shake your head. No, you mouth, they said it was terrorists.

  I shake my head. No. I pull up a chair for myself, write:

  - Is anyone else living here?

  You shake your head. I slump into the chair, overcome by fatigue.

  Cup of tea? Ma mouths.

  Another strange bed, another new place. But this time there’s no arm flung over me, long fingers with absinthe-green nails. This time I am alone, except for Ma’s peachy scent on the pillow. I can hear her pottering about in the kitchen.

  Home again. A different place, maybe, but home is where you are, Ma, when I am with you. It’s not Edgbaston, Hebdon or Hyderabad. Just you.

  I can’t be sure you really got what I told you. When I talked about the missing time, first with Kobro, Magda, Akka, then out on my own. Of course, there were some things I left out. Ahmed for one. How could I mention what I’d done? But for the most part I told it straight.

  When I finished, you gave me a searching look, mouthed: look at you, you’re filthy. First a bath, then bed. We’ll talk more in the morning.

  I slipped beneath the sheets, feeling safe.

  The memories that make us, the warm thoughts we curl up to as we drift off to sleep. The happy times.

  Edgbaston simply seemed to go on for so long—each endless summer, each long crawl towards Christmas. Clive once said that time speeded up as we got older because every minute, every moment, consisted of a smaller fraction of the period we’d spent on earth. So a summer back in Edgbaston at age six was maybe a twentieth of my entire lifetime. Even now, those six years loom large—and why shouldn’t they; they were almost a third of my existence.

  I had time to root myself here, which is why the leaving was such a wrench, but it’s not that I think of as I drift into sleep. It’s the happy repetition, the drowsy pre-school porridge, Ma at the school gates, the long afternoons with Victoria, the girl from upstairs. It’s how I became Vereesh.

  Once we left Hyderabad, Ma went into deep Elizabeth mode. All the trappings of her time with the Swami—her long, flowing dresses, her long, flowing hair, her mala—went too, almost overnight. She had her hair cut short, dyed blonde. Wore black most of the time. Short black jackets, tight black jeans. She kind of scared me, to be honest.

  She kept this look for most of our time on the move. It was only when we began to slow down that her look began to soften too. She let her hair grow and the blonde grow out. She began adding some colour to her wardrobe.

  The Swami too gradually began to creep back into our lives. I first noticed his presence on the cover of a hardback book Ma had got from the library and was reading while I played with my Action Man in front of the gas fire. He caught my eye and I surveyed him from different angles. She looked up from the book, peered at me over her half-moon spectacles.

  “What’s so interesting, little toad?”

  “Nothing,” I said, still squinting at the black-and-white image.

  “Come on,” she said. “Say.”

  “Is that . . . ” I said, “Father Christmas?”

  This seemed to take her by surprise. “No, Matthew, it is not Father Christmas.”

  She continued to stare at me over her spectacles but I swiftly lost interest. If it wasn’t Father Christmas, then what did it matter?

  Because by then I had all but forgotten the Swami. Although I could still remember Big Beardy going up in smoke, that was almost half a lifetime ago and I couldn’t match the cadaver that burst into a ball of blue flame with the black-and-white image on a book that was not about Father Christmas and therefore of no consequence.

  But the bearded impostor began to increasingly crop up—on more book covers
, on the beaded necklace Ma had begun to wear again inside her blouse, on postcards propped against the mantelpiece, on a calendar Ma one day returned home with. In the end I asked, “Ma . . . ”

  “Yes, Matthew.”

  “Who’s that?”

  Ma gave me the same long look that had met my earlier question.

  “You don’t remember?”

  I tried. “It’s not Father Christmas?”

  “No.” Ma smiled sadly. “It’s not. It’s the Swami. Who . . . we were in India with. Do you remember India? Where the monkeys were?”

  “Yes . . . ”

  “Do you remember the old man with the beard, who used to talk to you? Play with you?”

  “Y . . . es . . . ”

  “Well,” said Ma, “that’s him.”

  “Why is he . . . ” I pointed at the postcards. “All over?”

  “Because . . . ” Ma thought. “Because he was a great teacher, Matthew. A favourite teacher of mine.”

  “Like Miss Clements?”

  Ma smiled. “Yes, like Miss Clements.”

  “Ah.” That made sense. My favourite teacher was Miss Clements, who I loved most dearly and who would kiss us all goodbye before we left each afternoon.

  “Would Miss Clements,” I asked, “have a calendar?”

  Ma laughed. “I don’t think so, little toad, but why don’t we make one?”

  So the Swami was re-introduced into my life as Ma’s teacher and it all made sense.

  We three happily coexisted until the age of about eleven when, bored one afternoon, I actually picked up one of his books and began to read it.

  Much of it, of course, didn’t make sense, but what drove me through this strange world, this storm of fresh information, was the knowledge I was entering Ma’s secret, adult realm. Ma viewed me with a mixture of surprise and apprehension when she first caught me reading. I slammed the book closed as if she had caught me flicking through a porno mag. But later, when she wasn’t about, I’d tilt the book open, begin working my way through the words. It felt as if I was becoming an initiate into some kind of secret learning. Ma’s reaction when she caught me again—almost tiptoeing around me, clearly keen to ask me about it but afraid to say anything—made me all the more interested.

  How she managed to hold her tongue for a few whole weeks I’ve no idea, but when she finally asked me, awkwardly dropping it into a mealtime conversation about school (“speaking of teachers, I notice you’ve been reading mine. What do you think?”) I could barely suppress my smile.

  “He’s okay,” I said. “I don’t understand everything,” I admitted.

  Ma’s face creased with joy. Christ, I thought, what have I said?

  “You can’t expect to understand everything, Matthew,” she said, all husky. “After all, you’re just starting out.”

  I shrugged, stabbing a chip. “I guess.”

  “What is it you don’t understand?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I said. “Some of the names . . . ”

  “Names?”

  “You know . . . Buddha. What was that?”

  “Buddha wasn’t an it, Matthew, he was a prince . . . ” And Ma began to guide me through the teachings of the Swami.

  So it was not really the Swami who was my teacher, but Ma. Ma who I should have postcards and calendars of, whose smiling portrait should sit in the mala around my neck. Ma who, about a year later, I asked about sannyas.

  Ma had been a sannyasin, that much I knew. It meant follower or disciple and was the traditional route one took if one chose to follow the Swami’s path towards enlightenment. “Follow me,” he said, just as the Christians say Jesus saves or Muslims call on you to submit, or Alcoholics Anonymous insist you acknowledge a higher power: all these paths share the insight that salvation can only come from a form of surrender.

  And so it was with the Swami, hence sannyas.

  Like most of our major conversations, we had it over the breakfast table.

  “Ma . . . ” I said, thoughtfully scraping up the last of my cornflakes.

  “Yes, Matthew?”

  “I’ve been thinking . . . ”

  “Matthew, you’ll have to get a move on. You’ll be late for school.”

  “About the Swami,” I said, knowing this would get her attention. I didn’t look up but felt her eyes on me.

  “Yes, Matthew . . . ”

  “You’re a sannyasin, Ma . . . ”

  “I . . . yes, Matthew, I am.”

  “What do you have to do?”

  “Do, Matthew?”

  “To become one. A sannyasin.” Ma considered this.

  “Well, in the first instance it means committing yourself to the way of life taught by the Swami.”

  “Then you get . . . a new name? Like you did?”

  “Yes,” she said. “You can.”

  I toyed with a few more cornflakes. I said, “I would like to take sannyas.”

  When I looked up, Ma was crying.

  I’ve felt all sorts of emotions, looking back—from utter belief to utter embarrassment—but I guess Ma tried to do her best in the circumstances.

  She said she would look into it and let me know. What I guess she must have in fact been doing was working out a way to make it feel genuine to me without it, strictly speaking, being genuine. The Swami was dead. Of course, his teachings lived on, which was the whole point, and the ashram still existed in Hyderabad, acting as a kind of Vatican, only without a pope, so to speak. I guess she could have contacted them, arranged some kind of induction pack or something, but that would have rather defeated the object of the preceding five years or so keeping out of the spotlight, beneath the radar. No—what she would have to do was initiate me herself.

  We made a weekend of it. We took our camping stuff to the Lake District and there Ma taught me the rudiments of The Dance, talked me through the basics of the Swami’s philosophy, and told me her own story. Finally, under a starry sky, Ma solemnly said: “Very well then, Matthew. Close your eyes.” I heard her rustling about, but I kept them shut tight. “By the powers vested in me by my teacher the Swami, I hereby anoint you,” and I felt a warm dab on my forehead, “Bohdi Vereesh.” I felt something placed over my shoulders. There was yet more rustling, then I heard her getting up. There was the ching of her lighter. Then she was settling down in front of me. “Open your eyes,” she said. “Vereesh.”

  We were sitting within a circle of sparklers. “Welcome to the world, light giver,” she said.

  I kept the name until I was around fifteen, when I reverted to Matt. Why? I don’t know. I was self-conscious, I wanted to fit in at school. I didn’t want the townie girls to think I was some kind of freak. It didn’t feel like a big deal at the time until Ma caught word one lunchtime and I saw the look on her face. Not aimed at me, mind, she never said anything to me. More a flash of private grief, and I felt bad for a moment, then indignant—it was my name, wasn’t it? I could change it if I wanted to!

  But I’m back now, Ma, I’m back to your Vereesh.

  It’s morning.

  I pad through to the kitchen in my t-shirt and boxers. Ma’s bent by the washing machine, pulling out the rest of my now clean clothes. Her face lights up when she sees me.

  They were filthy! She mouths. I kind of smirk awkwardly and sit myself down at the table. She lines me up some breakfast, then sits down opposite. She gives me the same penetrating look.

  There was blood, she says.

  I look away. Oh, Ma, I want to say. I’m not a bad beastie, honestly. But I’m not good neither. What was it Magda said?

  “My darling baby boy . . . we’re not normal. We’re not even nice.”

  There was an accident, I say. A bombing, I mean, when I was trying to get out of London. During a demonstration. Must have come from there.

  Ma nods, her eyes welling up again.

  I heard about that, she mouths. It’s all getting so mad. She shakes her head.

  Summer is dead.

  She was a litt
le fighter, Ma mouths through the tears, she wanted life so much, but in the end, it just overwhelmed her. The doctors said if they had known earlier she might have had a chance, but it was just so unexpected. By the time they realised, it was too late to treat effectively. I’m so sorry, she whispers, she liked you very much.

  I hold my head in my hands.

  Summer, just becoming a woman. I remember her last glance, trying so hard to be grown up.

  “I’ll make sure they don’t disturb you . . . ” Where is God, I wonder. Where is God to have taken two of the sweetest people—Daniel and now Summer—away through me. The least deserving of an early, dreadful death. A kind of holiness about them both, in their innocence. Where is the God in that?

  I would kill myself, I would turn myself in if I could—I try to explain to Ma but it won’t let me. It’s all about survival, you see? The survival of the fittest. I’m so sorry, Ma. I’m so sorry.

  Ma closes her hands in front of her face as if in prayer. She sits herself upright. Vereesh, she mouths, don’t be sorry. It’s all I ever wanted, after all, for you to be safe.

  Ma leaves at 11.30 to return to the tower. If they are watching, we don’t want to raise their suspicions. She’ll also try to pick up some stuff for me on her way back providing she doesn’t suspect she is being followed.

  I return to the bedroom, lie on the bed and look up at the ceiling. It’s the first time since I was confronted by Akka on Green Lanes I’ve really had a chance to think.

  Summer is the first ghost to appear. I watch her lift the cup to my mouth. Parade around in those ridiculous clothes, a kid in a hurry to grow up. Then Daniel, his quiet confidence within a world that must have left him agog. His determination to do well, to make a life for himself. Ahmed. Unsmiling, suspicious of me from the off, but spot on. Noble almost, on the lookout for his mate. His effort to collar me. His last gasp, last glimpse—of his murderer.

  I wipe my hands, these killer’s hands, on the duvet. No wonder I’m wanted, hunted. And they’re right to, too. I can’t fault them for it—I would do the same if I was in their shoes. Hunt me down, pull me apart, see what makes me tick.