In-Flight Entertainment

by Helen Simpson

  Rivers and streams all toxic – fertilisers, typhoid etc. So, we’re following G’s DIY system. Dip billycan into stream or river. Add three drops of bleach. Boil up on camping stove with T-shirt stretched over billycan. Only moisture squeezed from the T-shirt is safe to drink; nothing else. ‘You’re joking,’ I said, when G first showed me how to do this. But no.

  9th August 2040

  Radio news in muddy sleeping bags – skeleton govt obviously struggling, they keep playing the Enigma Variations. Last night they announced the end of fuel for civilian use and the compulsory disabling of all remaining civilian cars. As from now we must all stay at home, they said, and not travel without permission. There’s talk of martial law. We’re going cross-country as much as possible – less chance of being arrested or mugged – trying to cover ten miles a day but the weather slows us down. Torrential rain, often horizontal in gusting winds.

  16th August 2040

  Rare dry afternoon. Black lace clouds over yellow sky. Brown grass, frowsty grey mould, fungal frills. Dead trees come crashing down without warning – one nearly got us today, it made us jump. G was hoping we’d find stuff growing in the fields, but all the farmland round here is surrounded by razor wire and armed guards. He says he knows how to grow vegetables from his allotment days, but so what. They take too long. We’re hungry now, we can’t wait till March for some old carrots to get ripe.

  22nd August 2040

  G broke a front crown cracking a beechnut, there’s a black hole and he whistles when he talks. ‘Damsons, blackberries, young green nettles for soup,’ he said at the start of all this, smacking his lips. He’s not so keen now. No damsons or blackberries, of course – only chickweed and ivy.

  He’s just caught a lame squirrel, so I suppose I’ll have to do something with it. No creatures left except squirrels, rats and pigeons, unless you count the insects. The news says they’re full of protein, you’re meant to grind them into a paste, but so far we haven’t been able to face that.

  24th August 2040

  We met a pig this morning. It was a bit thin for a pig, and it didn’t look well. G said, ‘Quick! We’ve got to kill it.’

  ‘Why?’ I said. ‘How?’

  ‘With a knife,’ he said. ‘Bacon. Sausages.’

  I pointed out that even if we managed to stab it to death with our old kitchen knife, which looked unlikely, we wouldn’t be able just to open it up and find bacon and sausages inside.

  ‘Milk, then!’ said G wildly. ‘It’s a mammal, isn’t it?’

  Meanwhile the pig walked off.

  25th August 2040

  Ravenous. We’ve both got streaming colds. Jumping with fleas, itching like crazy. Weeping sores on hands and faces – unfortunate side-effects from cloud-seeding, the news says. What with all this and his toothache (back molar, swollen jaw) and the malaria, G is in a bad way.

  27th August 2040

  Found a dead hedgehog. Tried to peel off its spines and barbecue it over the last briquette. Disgusting. Both sick as dogs. Why did I used to moan about the barter system? Foraging is MUCH MUCH worse.

  29th August 2040

  Dreamt of Maia and the Swiss Army knife and woke up crying. G held me in his shaky arms and talked about Russia, how it’s the new land of milk and honey since the Big Melt. ‘Some really good farming opportunities opening up in Siberia,’ he said through chattering teeth.

  ‘We’re like in the Three Sisters,’ I said, ‘“If only we could get to Moscow.” Do you remember that production at the National? We walked by the river afterwards, we stood and listened to Big Ben chime midnight.’

  Hugged each other and carried on like this until sleep came.

  31st August 2040

  G woke up crying. I held him and hushed him and asked what was the matter. ‘I wish I had a gun,’ he said.

  15th September 2040

  Can’t believe this notebook was still at the bottom of the rucksack. And the biro. Murderer wasn’t interested in them. He’s turned everything else inside out (including me). G didn’t have a gun. This one has a gun.

  19th September 2040

  M speaks another language. Norwegian? Dutch? Croatian? We can’t talk, so he hits me instead. He smells like an abandoned fridge, his breath stinks of rot. What he does to me is horrible. I don’t want to think about it, I won’t think about it. There’s a tent and cooking stuff on the ground, but half the time we’re up a tree with the gun. There’s a big plank platform and a tarpaulin roped to the branches above. At night he pulls the rope ladder up after us. It’s quite high, you can see for miles. He uses the platform for storing stuff he brings back from his mugging expeditions. I’m surrounded by tins of baked beans.

  3rd October 2040

  M can’t seem to get through the day without at least two blowjobs. I’m always sick afterwards (sometimes during).

  8th October 2040

  M beat me up yesterday. I’d tried to escape. I shan’t do that again, he’s too fast.

  14th October 2040

  If we run out of beans I think he might kill me for food. There were warnings about it on the news a while back. This one wouldn’t think twice. I’m just meat on legs to him. He bit me all over last night, hard. I’m covered in bite marks. I was literally licking my wounds afterwards when I remembered how nice the taste of blood is, how I miss it. Strength. Calves’ liver for iron. How I haven’t had a period for ages. When that thought popped out I missed a beat. Then my blood ran cold.

  15th October 2040

  Wasn’t it juniper berries they used to use? As in gin? Even if it was I wouldn’t know what they looked like, I only remember mint and basil. I can’t be pregnant. I won’t be pregnant.

  17th October 2040

  Very sick after drinking rank juice off random stewed herbs. Nothing else, though, worse luck.

  20th October 2040

  Can’t sleep. Dreamed of G, I was moving against him, it started to go up a little way so I thought he wasn’t really dead. Dreadful waking to find M there instead.

  23rd October 2040

  Can’t sleep. Very bruised and scratched after today. They used to throw themselves downstairs to get rid of it. The trouble is, the gravel pit just wasn’t deep enough, plus the bramble bushes kept breaking my fall. There was some sort of body down there too, seething with white vermin. Maybe it was a goat or a pig or something, but I don’t think it was. I keep thinking it might have been G.

  31st October 2040

  This baby will be the death of me. Would. Let’s make that a conditional. ‘Would’, not ‘will’.

  7th November 2040

  It’s all over. I’m still here. Too tired to

  8th November 2040

  Slept for hours. Stronger. I’ve got all the food and drink, and the gun. There’s still some shouting from down there but it’s weaker now. I think he’s almost finished.

  9th November 2040

  Slept for hours. Fever gone. Baked beans for breakfast. More groans started up just now. Never mind. I can wait.

  10th November 2040

  It’s over. I got stuck into his bottle of vodka, it was the demon drink that saved me. He was out mugging – left me up the tree as usual – I drank just enough to raise my courage. Nothing else had worked so I thought I’d get him to beat me up. When he came back and saw me waving the bottle he was beside himself. I pretended to be drunker than I was and I lay down on the wooden platform with my arms round my head while he got the boot in. It worked. Not right away, but that night.

  Meanwhile M decided he fancied a drink himself, and very soon he’d polished off the rest of it – more than three-quarters of a bottle. He was singing and sobbing and carrying on, out of his tree with alcohol, and then, when he was standing pissing off the side of the platform, I crept along and gave him a gigantic shove and he really was out of his tree. Crash.

  13th November 2040

  I’ve wrapped your remains in my good blue shirt; sorry I couldn’t let you stay on board, but there’s no f
uture now for any baby above ground. I’m the end of the line!

  This is the last page of my thirtieth birthday present. When I’ve finished it I’ll wrap the notebook up in six plastic bags, sealing each one with duct tape against the rain, then I’ll bury it in a hole on top of the blue shirt. I don’t know why as I’m not mad enough to think anybody will ever read it. After that I’m going to buckle on this rucksack of provisions and head north with my gun. Wish me luck. Last line: good luck, good luck, good luck, good luck, good luck.

  Charm for a Friend with a Lump

  FIRST LET ME take a piece of chalk and draw a circle round you, so you’re safe. There. Now I’ll stand guard, keeping a weather eye open for anything threatening, and we can catch up with each other while we wait.

  Have a glance through this garden catalogue if you would. I need your help in choosing what to plant this spring. I thought the little yellow Peacevine tomatoes, so sweet and sharp, along with Gardener’s Delight and Tiger Toms; but there’s a lot to be said for Marmande too.

  I’ll have a word with the powers-that-be. The Health Czar. Ban parabens. I’ll keep away the spotted snakes with double tongue, I’ll be like Cobweb and Mustardseed in the play; I’ll make sure the beetles black approach not near. By naming the bad things I’ll haul them up into the light and shrivel their power over you. Hence, malignant tumour, hence; carcinoma, come not here.

  Then I thought I’d try those stripy round courgettes this year, Ronds de Nice. You have to pick them as soon as they reach the size of tennis balls, you mustn’t let them get any bigger than that or they won’t be worth eating. They’ll swell and grow as big as footballs if you let them. As for fruit, what do you think of Conference pears? Or, the catalogue recommends the Invincible, a very hardy variety which crops heavily and blooms twice a year.

  Let’s not even start on those predictable but useless paths which lead to nowhere. If only I hadn’t smoked at fifteen, if only there hadn’t been that betrayal, if only I hadn’t spent so much time putting up with the insupportable – whyever did I think endurance was a virtue? Didn’t I want to stay alive? If only I hadn’t sipped wine, or drunk water from plastic bottles. If only I hadn’t gone jogging the day Chernobyl exploded. Oh, give it a rest! We live in the world as it is, we all have to breathe its contagious fogs. It’s wrong of them to claim it must somehow be our own fault when our health is under attack.

  Let’s get back to the catalogue. Help me choose some soft fruit. If I had more space I might try gooseberries again now there’s this new cultivar that cheats American blight. But it’s probably wiser to add to the existing blackcurrant patch; here’s a new one, Titania, ‘large fruit and good flavour. Crops very heavily over a long period. Good resistance to mildew and rust.’

  We’re advised to build up an arsenal of elixirs if we want to strengthen our own resistance. We’re told we ought to call in light boxes, amulets, echinacea drops and oily fish, we should fix on organic free-range grass-fed meat, Japanese green tea and a daily dose of turmeric. And if we’re really serious about protecting ourselves we must avoid dry-cleaners, getting fat, aluminium, insecticides; shun trans fats as the devil’s food; forswear polystyrene cups. We’ve got to fight shy of white bread, a sedentary lifestyle, perfume and anger, if we truly want to save ourselves. And even if we tick off every item on the list, there’s absolutely no guarantee that it’ll lengthen our span by a single day.

  On your last birthday, with your natural dislike of being reminded of the passing years, we skirted round the subject for a while. I asked what you’d be doing to celebrate. You scoffed. You said you’d rather forget about it. Do you remember? Then I reached down into myself and managed to say, ‘You should celebrate, your birthday should be celebrated, because the world’s a better place with you in it.’ May you continue to pile on the years, but with more pleasure from now on. In time may you embrace fallen arches and age spots; decades from now may your joints creak and your ears hiss, may your crows feet laugh back into the mirror at your quivering dewlaps.

  Nobody in their right mind looks at an old oak tree growing in strength and richness and thinks, You’ll be dead soon. They just admire and draw strength from its example. May you keep your hair on and your eyebrows in place. May you never have to wear a hat indoors. May you and your other half tuck two centuries under your belts between you and then, like the old couple in the tale, when some kind god in disguise grants you a wish, may you go together, hand in hand, in an instant.

  I’m willing you to be well. Do you hear me? If there does happen to be some disorder in your blood I’m like Canute – I’ll stay here by you and turn the tide. You’re my persona grata.

  And if they find that some weed or canker has gained hold after all – Japanese knotweed, it might be, that ruthless invader and ignorer of boundaries – well, then, we’ll deal with it. There are powerful new weed-killers these days, and they work. Doctors are like gardeners in the way they know how to distinguish between healthy growth and uncontrollable proliferation. There’s a fine line, and what I am casting a spell for is that nothing inside you has stepped over it.

  In my spell we are dreaming our way forward through the year into the green and white of May, and on into the deep green lily-ponds of June. The lushness of June, its new heat and subdued glitter of excitement at dusk, its scent and roses, that’s what we’ll aim for. I do love roses, their scent and beauty, particularly my Souvenir du Dr. Jamain and the thorny pink eglantine beside the vegetable patch.

  We’ll have a party there this Midsummer’s Eve, up by the tomato plants and ranks of cos lettuce, just the two of us. Let’s write it in our diaries now. I can’t spare you. You’re indispensable! We’ll have a party, and pledge your health by moonlight on the one night of the year when plants consumed or seeded have magical powers.

  There is a great deal of talk about the benefits of mistletoe extract and so on, but I’m not convinced. You can spend a lot of time and energy chasing magic potions, when you might be better occupied weaving your own spells over the future. En route, sleep will help. Everyone has their own private walled garden at night where they can prune their troubles and dream change into some sort of shape. That’s what I’m trying to say, a dream can be a transformer, as well as providing a margin or grassy bank where you can rest while the outside world goes on. Active dreaming, which is what I would prescribe, can be a powerful form of enchantment.

  You’re not out of the woods yet, that’s clear; but a little while from now I want you to walk out of the woods and into the June garden. Leave the black bats hanging upside down; they’ll stay asleep. While we wait for summer, let’s choose to be patient and hopeful. And soon, not really long from now at all, I aim to smile at you and say, Come into the garden, friend of my heart.

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  Version 1.0

  Epub ISBN 9781409090854

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  Published by Jonathan Cape 2010

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  Copyright © Helen Simpson 2010

  Helen Simpson has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  First published in Great Britain
in 2010 by

  Jonathan Cape

  Random House

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 9780224089647