The Ice People

by Maggie Gee

  She’d seemed to be watching me more closely than usual as I threw vests and jumpers into a suitcase. They have big eyes, Doves, with long quivering lashes, and she seemed to stare right into my soul. ‘I’m happy,’ she claimed – but her voice sounded quavery. And ‘Life is fun’ – but she didn’t sound sure. I picked her up, and her stubby little wings did their ‘cling’ manoeuvre, which was very like a cuddle. She felt warm and soft. Of course I couldn’t leave her, as simple as that – she was family. I was glad to have decided, and I carried her down in the lift to the car, and manoeuvred her sideways into the boot. ‘Sorry, Dora.’ I switched her to ‘Sleep’.

  I went back up again feeling a bit better but wishing I had something else to give Paul. Some way of thanking him for all he had done – but then the doorbell rang, it was already twelveoclock, and the boys had arrived. Good boys, right on time.

  We had a little whisky to give us courage. Ian produced some buzzers for us all. I did have doubts, but my hands were trembling, and we all took one, and then one more. I thought, my hands mustn’t tremble on the trigger. After two buzzers I felt a bit steadier. I played them Luke’s recording of ‘Wings of a Dove’. Far away, far away … in the wilderness build me a nest, and remain there for ever at rest …

  It was sentimental, but so was I – so were we, we men, we are creatures of feeling, of violent emotion, of love and anger, though some women think that we have no feelings, because we are sometimes short of words … Oh, for the wings, for the wings of a dove.

  And then we shook hands, all five of us, quite formally, and silently, and then laughed, and hugged, and went downstairs.

  Outside in the street, the mean winter light seemed to make us look smaller than we were. Paul had very blue eyes. They looked worried that day, and perhaps he was not quite as young as I’d thought.

  And then we were off. It was only just past lunchtime, and I’d got some sleep the night before, yet I found myself feeling curiously lethargic as the car sped on to the flyover with us all grimfaced, arms touching, quiet, our faces set in the flat white light. Something was going to happen, I knew, that would change everything that had gone before. These men beside me were my allies, my friends, my Roman phalanx, my noble Greeks. Going into battle. The car purred on, with Ian driving and Paul beside him and me in the back with the other two men lest there was a spot road check and I was recognised. The other four had all brought balaclavas; they would burst in behind me with the shotguns. I had the Magnum tucked into my belt, underneath my jacket, relatively light when I looked at the monsters the others would be toting, yet its presence was burning a hole in my jacket, pressing like a hand on my thigh and groin. The traffic thickened at the junction. There had been an incident with a transporter, and road police swarmed around like ants. We had to go slowly, quietly past them in a file of dully normal people, but nothing was normal, we would be too late …

  ‘Fuck this,’ said Ian, and suddenly pulled out and screamed past the queue of cars in our lane. A minute past two. I was cold but sweating, and I smelled the sweat of the others, too, acrid, fresh. Suddenly the building came in to sight. It looked – I don’t know – curiously motionless; I had focused on it so hard for so long that I expected it to be living and moving, waiting to confront me, ready for the battle. It stood still and gothic in the afternoon light which made it a different red from normal, rawer, duller, more like … meat. The windows glittered in the sun. I thought of an animal covered in flies. I wasn’t going to kill anyone.

  I was breathing hard. My heart hammered. It was three minutes past, no, four minutes past. We screeched on to the pavement by the service door. Then everyone but Ian fumbled their way out, trying not to drop the guns. I felt breathless – and incredulous, because now they were going to put their balaclavas on. I halfwanted to laugh, but this was really happening, and Paul was pushing me towards the door. ‘Good luck,’ he said, and the little push became a little squeeze at the end, and I halfturned, and he looked at me, and I saw in that split second how much he loved me, and I’d never taken him seriously. ‘Thanks,’ I gabbled, ‘You’ve done everything,’ and I think I almost kissed his cheek, which was smooth as a boy’s, but there was no time left –

  Six steps to the door. My legs were weak. It was fivepasttwo. Just five minutes late. She wouldn’t be there. She would be there. Luke would have been spirited away …

  I rang the doorbell. Nothing happened. I felt afraid to ring too loudly, too urgently, lest everyone hear me, but if nobody heard, how would I get in …? Then I heard the door begin to code, and braced myself, hugging the solid weight of the unfamiliar thing under my jacket.

  The building spoke. ‘Delivery code,’ it said. ‘Inform delivery code’, but the last word ended in a strangled squawk and next minute the door was swinging open, and there was Briony’s frightened face. ‘Quick,’ she said. ‘I’ve disabled it, but come inside and shut the door behind you.’ I’d hoped, I’d expected that Luke would be there but ‘He went to the toilet,’ she said, ‘you’re late, and he was nervous, he couldn’t wait,’ and ‘Thank you, thank you,’ I havered genteelly, a homicidal maniac grinning at her with four heavies waiting just out of sight, and ‘Shut it behind you,’ she hissed at me, but I couldn’t bloody shut it, though I wanted to please her, though I’d never, ever intended to hurt her – I couldn’t bloody shut it, because mayhem, murder – I heard the sound of children singing, in careful harmony, not far off, and I knew all this was a dreadful mistake, that I had to call it off and go away – At that moment all four of them burst in behind me and nearly knocked me over as I stood there frozen; an instant of silence, were we all embarrassed? – and then they were shouting things from films like ‘Fucking get on with it’ and ‘Freeze’ and ‘Hands up’, and Briony was screaming, a thin high scream like the thin skin of something precious tearing, and then I realised it was Luke who was screaming, he stood there above us at the turn of the stairs, framed by a pointed Victorian window, and I leaped up six steps like an Olympic athlete and grabbed him, his boyish, miraculous shoulders, and said, ‘It’s Dad, Lukey, it’s Dad’, his eyes were enormous with love or panic, how could he be afraid of me? I pushed him down the stairs ahead of me as I heaved my revolver out of my belt, no one would keep me from my son, and then doors were opening off to the right and the guards had arrived in their grassgreen uniform, two of them, with stunguns, five, a dozen, running clumsily, pulling down their visors – I saw Timmy spin round curiously slowly and raise his rifle, I knew he would shoot – then the world exploded, I was battered, deafened, but I backed through the door on to the freezing street, clutching Briony and Luke in front of me, Luke seemed nearly as big as Briony, clawing at them frantically with my left arm and waving the Magnum in my right, saying a script that I somehow knew, ‘Don’t shoot, or both of them will die.’ But as I came out there was a little step, I nearly tripped and my finger tightened, I still don’t believe I could have squeezed the trigger but a thunderous explosion tore at my arm and a huge red flower, a gout, a flood, a great foul hibiscus of blood and flesh, instantly erupted from Paul’s thin chest, stopping him dead as he ran behind us … Stopping him dead. I think he died at once. He stared for a second, he looked young, he looked startled, he opened his mouth and a plug of thick blood on a stem of red jerked out of it, and Paul went down, I saw him fall, but we went on scuttling back into the car, just me and Luke and Briony, I know I yanked her by the hair …

  The world was ending as we roared away, with Dora bouncing like a ball in the boot.

  PART TWO

  13

  The weeks and months that followed were the strangest of my life. Strangest and most wonderful. They began in chaos, grief, regret. I had killed one man, and possibly more …

  I felt as if I had killed both my friends, for we’d left Timmy in the clutches of Wicca. That green horde closing in from behind, their cruel, identical, sexless faces … How could I have abandoned him?

  You don’t know what you can do until
you’re desperate.

  Lucky for Paul that the wound was fatal. They took Timmy alive, and although he was sprung from prison by the Manguard not many weeks later, he’d already confessed at length, on screen, to being one of a highly organised ring of ‘pederasts and childmolesters’.

  How much torture must that have taken? I have never seen Timmy, since that cold white day, but I think he was a brave man. A decent man, surely. I can only guess how long he was tortured. My mind goes numb when I think about him, when I think of the damage I have done.

  My son. What did I expect Luke to feel? We hadn’t seen each other for over a year, ever since the farcical evening when Sarah discovered me in bed with Dora. I had no idea what she said to him, or what those other bitches had told him, how much they had tried to blacken my name … As I now longed to blacken her name, to try and explain to him why Wicca were mad, mad and wicked and – the death of us all, for if men and women couldn’t live together …

  I looked at Luke. He was thirteen years old. It was hard to believe; he was still slight and slender, with an almost girlish beauty of face, smooth pale skin, smooth rounded shoulders – I knew he wouldn’t understand.

  He spent a lot of time staring at Dora, though mostly when she was switched off, his expression a mixture of repulsion and fascination, but when she was switched on he practically ignored her. He seemed to have lost his old love of Doves; I suppose that Wicca had demonised them.

  He would only talk to Briony. They were the innocent parties in this. He shrank away when I tried to hug him, and perhaps my attempt was hopelessly clumsy. Do you hug boys in their early teens? I didn’t know; I had had no practice. Often I caught him looking at me sideways under long white lashes, broodingly, as if he were trying to work out who I was.

  One night when Briony had gone to sleep, something happened to give me hope. We were hiding with Eric, a contact of Timmy, who ran a boys’ Learning Centre near Weymouth. He wore nuskin trousers that hugged his crotch, an unnecessarily bulging crotch, and I’d tended to keep Luke away from him.

  I was lying on the couch in the screen room, netting and dozing, using my headset, wearing the new pyjamas I had bought against the cold – expensive fluffy things in real ‘natural sheep wool’. They were white as well; I was a giant lamb. At least, I looked less alarming than usual.

  Luke suddenly appeared, halfasleep in the doorway. He stumbled through, blinking at the light.

  ‘Water,’ he said, a command or a question.

  ‘Of course,’ I said, switching my headset off. ‘Can’t you sleep?’ I got him the water. He took it, silently. He still had no beard, not the faintest hint of a dark shadow, and his voice was clear, light, high. He didn’t seem eager to go back to bed.

  ‘Am I a prisoner?’ he suddenly asked.

  It was a reasonable question. I had a gun beside my couch.

  ‘You were a prisoner before,’ I said, ‘with Wicca. You weren’t allowed out. You weren’t allowed to see your father. I did want to see you, you know.’

  He nodded; maybe Briony had told him. ‘But now I’m not allowed to see my mother,’ he said. ‘Did you two always fight with each other? I don’t remember. You must have done.’

  This stung, and I began to deny it, but he shook his head. ‘It doesn’t matter. Could I go back if I wanted to?’

  He didn’t say he wanted to. ‘I don’t know, I haven’t thought about it yet.’ How could I simply let him go back, after Paul had died, after Timmy had been tortured? I’d risked everything to get him out. All the same, I was afraid to say ‘No’ to him.

  He said, and for once he looked straight at me, his blue eyes alight with intelligence, ‘I think you’re scared to say ‘‘No’’ to me.’ This fact didn’t seem to displease him, though.

  I nodded. ‘I …’ The words stuck in my throat. ‘I’m – very fond of you, you see.’ There was a pause. He listened, sipping his water, looking down at his toes, which I saw were bare. He must be freezing, but this moment was precious, I wasn’t going to tell him to get his slippers. His toes were long and white, like fingers. ‘Look, I don’t like guns,’ I stuttered, uncomfortable. ‘Or any of this kidnap nonsense. To be honest, I didn’t know what to do …’

  ‘You aren’t going to kill me, are you?’ he asked. He must have seen I was hurt, because he answered his own question – ‘I know you aren’t. But where are we going?’

  ‘I haven’t decided,’ I temporised. ‘Partly it depends on you.’

  ‘I want to see my mother. I miss her.’

  There was a long silence. I felt like a brute. ‘We’re going to have an adventure,’ I said, trying to work out how to cheer him up.

  His eyes brightened. ‘I like adventures – at least, I like reading about adventures. I don’t think I’ve ever had one yet.’

  ‘We’re going to Africa,’ I blurted out.

  There; it was said.

  ‘What about Mum?’ said Luke, blankly. ‘I don’t want to go to Africa. In any case, Africans hate white people. They won’t let us in. I’ve seen it on the screen, they’re always saying there are too many of us.’ He was gabbling now, fully awake.

  ‘Do you remember what I told you when you were little? How I’m partly black? I mean, I’m not all white.’

  ‘No,’ said Luke, peering at me. ‘You never told me that.’

  ‘I did.’ Probably when he was too young to take it in, because I didn’t want to leave it too late, like Samuel.

  ‘But I’m white,’ said Luke. ‘I’m white as anything’ – Suddenly sounding like a sixyearold. And indeed, he couldn’t have looked much whiter, sitting in the light with his brilliant pale curls, the skin on his face almost transparent, his limbs like twigs with their bark peeled off.

  ‘You look it, but you’re not. You’re my son, Lukey. I’m a quarter black, so you’re an eighth –’ A look of incomprehension and disbelief. ‘Don’t worry about it, never mind. But they’ll let us in to Africa. If we get there in time. We have to go soon.’

  More definite now, his shallow jaw setting. ‘I don’t want to go to Africa.’

  ‘We’ll talk about it another day. . .’

  ‘Are the Wicca soldiers trying to shoot us?’

  ‘No … Yes. Not you. Me.’

  ‘Mum wouldn’t want to shoot you. She says she’s sorry for you.’

  ‘Really.’ The tone of my reply was lost on Luke.

  ‘Yes. And that’s what the teacher said in the Cocoon. We were meant to feel pity for all the men who like Doves better than anything else. Like you do, Dad.’ It was an accusation.

  ‘Actually –’ I said, but again, when I needed it, my voice choked up. ‘Actually, I love you more than anything. More than Dora. Easily more. Most in the world.’ It was something I’d never said before, for always before there were the two of them, Sarah and Luke, level pegging, jostling.

  He grinned, and then the grin faded. ‘You don’t love Mum any more, then?’ It sounded as though he had accepted it.

  ‘Yes, in a way, but – we don’t agree.’

  ‘It’s because of me,’ he said, slowly. ‘She’s sent the soldiers because of me.’

  ‘It isn’t your fault. It’s our fault, Lukey. One day maybe – one day, who knows.’ I spread my arms hopelessly in fluffy white wool, indicating vaguely that things would get better, but he nodded forlornly and rubbed his forehead as if he were rubbing a line away. Without a word, he slouched off towards his bedroom, looking like a teenager at last, and turned in the doorway, not fully towards me, and repeated, softly, ‘Don’t wanna go to Africa.’

  After that night, though, he wasn’t frightened of me, and often asked to sit in the front when we drove, and I let him, after dark, when his blonde curls would not be noticed. (I’d suggested a haircut, but he refused, and I wanted to avoid a battle about it.) I hoped he was forgetting the horror of the kidnap, but one day to my surprise he started asking about it, eager to know all the practical details, where we got the guns, how we’d learned to use the
m, how I had got Briony to open the door …

  I realised, with a little shock of pleasure, that my teenage son had begun to admire me.

  The kidnap was a public relations gift to Wicca, who used it to improve their position in the polls by fifteenpercent over the following week. ‘MEN KIDNAP CHILDREN’ the headlines howled, with details of the incident both real and imaginary. Even I didn’t know how much to believe. According to the screens, some children had been shot, not fatally, but one in the cheek, ‘threatening her sight’, and another in the knee. Hideous, but possible. Timmy had been carrying a heavyduty shotgun, and the pellets would have sprayed, maybe ricocheted, and hit two of the children I’d heard singing next door, so calmly, with such dreadful normality … Not one of the reports said that I was Luke’s father. The kidnap was supposed to be the work of an unspeakably sinister group of perverts, not far away, it was strongly hinted, from the leadership of Manguard.

  I’d been following the news obsessively from a succession of safe houses, men’s safe houses, mostly Manguard connections, as we drove by circuitous roads to the south, trying to avoid the emways with their constant camera surveillance and unpleasant little sixstrong fleets of bikepolice, cruising up and down like arrows of geese in their dark greased plastics and menacing goggles –

  That poor child’s cheek. ‘Threatening her sight’. Once I woke up shouting, and was instantly afraid the noise had put us in danger. I don’t think I ever did that again. Remorse, I learned, is a luxury …

  (And that was a lie. Only yesterday I woke with a thin bony hand across my face, clamped over my mouth like a great spider of ice, and it was Kit, one eye furious in the firelight, hissing ‘Shut up, Sol. You was shouting in your sleep. Who this Sarah you keeps shouting about?’)

  We were an odd crew, odder than I meant us to be, Briony, Dora, Luke, myself. We’d dropped Ian, minus his balaclava, at his mother’s house on the way to Bristol. I think he was relieved to say goodbye. But we’d ‘done our bit’ and ‘behaved like men’, he said something like that, something mute and embarrassed, and I nodded, hugging him – he’d risked his life. We’d behaved like the soldiers we had never been, never had a chance to be, like outlaws or heroes in a childhood film; we hadn’t been wimps, or panicked like girls …